What "Type" Are You?

Greetings from San Diego. I have the opportunity to be out here and meet with a group of colleagues that I deeply respect to talk about new ways to motivate and work with people.

During my trip I have had a chance to catch up on a little reading and explore some of the work of two of my favorite social and business "system" commentators, Daniel Pink and Seth Godin.

My question comes from a model/theory that Pink explores in his book Drive -the surprising truth about what motivates us. Perhaps the reason I enjoyed the book so much is because what Pink describes and what I believe are in such close sync.

He also tees off on one of my favorite targets- Frederick W. Taylor, the "father" of scientific management. This is the theory that non management people are not terribly intrinsically motivated so productivity is best optimized by routinizing their tasks.

Pink's type "I" argues that at least some part of us is driven by needs for autonomy, learning, and purpose. He doesn't take the position that all work and all people fit this model, but that many do. He even goes further and uses the "P" word, Purpose and suggests that most of us seek this with varying degrees of energy. Kind of resonates with the concept of focusing on what "matters" doesn't it.

If you haven't yet read the book I commend it to you. In addition to stimulating your thinking he also provides some "templates" for both organizations and individuals.

Seth Godin's latest work - Linchpin is another fascinating read. He explores that a new category of critical "player" is emerging in organizations. Traditionally we had labor and management and the lines were pretty clear. Linchpins are those people who can connect groups and individuals.
Their skills are in communication, building trust, and relationships; not sciences or technology. Kind of sounds like they are building engagement doesn't it? He even uses words like obedience aka compliance and how we built it into our work and social systems and the costs we are experiencing because of it. I especially see this represented in the U.S. labor law infrastructure; most of it was written in the 40's and 50's with little meaningful change since. If you are familiar with it you know that it is highly structured and based on an adversarial model.

Any of you that know me or my orientation know that concepts like working with people, creating engagement, and related models speak to my heart; but I think anyone in any organization would benefit by exploring the concepts these two discuss.

One of my favorite quotes talks about "employees being physically, emotionally, and psychologically impelled. They gladly give up other choices."

Maybe it is just me, but that sounds pretty exciting. What do you think.....?

Opportunity from Chaos

The Conference Board announced that employee satisfaction is at an all time low and several other studies say that based on "dis-engagement" the U.S. economy is operating at about 30% efficiency. Yet another study says that the supply of "experienced" talent is going to decrease while demand increases. So where is the opportunity? Well call me Pollyanna, but I see several areas.

In a recent article Daniel Pink, author of Drive as well as several other great management books, states that loyalty isn't dead it has been redefined. He even provides a whole bunch of ways to build this redefined loyalty into your organization and redefined loyalty can translate to engagement which directly contributes to sustainability, profitability, and productivity.

Although 25% of the workforce will be over 50 by 2020 in North America and Europe and the over 45 customer demographic will be 40% larger than the 20-45 group by 2012 these folks have more money to spend and incidentally research shows that the over 50s have as good or better skills as their younger counterparts. By matching up the customer facing workforce with the demographic shift it represents opportunity rather than loss.

Building engagement requires a strategy, but it is not necessarily cost prohibitive or limited to large, complex organizations. In fact many of the elements of an engagement strategy are pretty simple in their foundations:

• Hire the right people. Think about your organization and your values and the values of your customer base and build it into your hiring and selection processes.
• Create great jobs. Great jobs are not necessarily about compensation. They give people an opportunity to contribute and work in an environment that fits them.
• Participate in helping people build great careers. Loyalty should be based on contribution not tenure. Employees who give you 110% while they work for you are loyal. Employees who speak highly about you to customers and other potential employees are loyal.
• Re-recruit constantly. Smart employers spend a lot of time ensuring that employees understand their personal contribution to the business and where they fit in. Do you really think this is easier in organizations with thousands of employees than it is in smaller organizations?
• Take advantage of local resources. Most of the foundational element of successful engagement come down to relationship skills not technology. I am talking about things like setting expectations properly, giving feedback constructively, recognizing positive results and similar skills. Most of those skills are taught by your local Chamber of Commerce or community college. You don't need an expensive "top tier" consulting firm. Best practices and templates work great for the company who developed them and consulting firms who install them.
• Think local, act local. To a great extent most of us operate in our local community. By engaging and investing in our community we build and reinforce relationships and it relationships that drive organizations not technology or systems by themselves.

In my mind we must decide whether or not we will use the "lessons" from this latest recession as a learning opportunity or concede defeat. I am hoping it will cause us to examine root causes and to redefine how we work with our employees, customers, and communities and they we will capitalize on the benefits of commitment rather than compliance. We have to decide.

Social Networking, Engagement, and Change; Are They All Related?

The last few weeks have been very interesting. I continue to marvel at the stories I hear about communications, information, engagement, management practices and a host of related issues.
As you all know I think engagement is the most compelling productivity and profitability strategy since the industrial revolution. I just got what I believe to be some validation from an article I read on BNET summarizing and interview with Daniel Pink.

In the interview Pink talked about why "right brain" thinkers who are skilled at communications, empathy and related skills will "rule the world" and that how "left brain" thinkers especially in English speaking countries could find themselves "commoditized".
His thinking is that many of the highly linear "systematized" left brain skills like accounting, engineering, mathematics, and related activities are relatively easy to transfer cross culturally especially if the "language" barrier is not a factor. He went on to point out that in the very near future the largest population of highly educated, linear thinkers may be in India, not the U.S. or other "English speaking" countries.

He argues that the skill sets that are and will be in high demand are those with creating alignment with ideas, seeing the big picture and being able to articulate in a powerful way to others, and the skills of empathy and engagement. He points out in his research that this may be why many business leaders educational backgrounds are in liberal arts rather than "technical" disciplines.

As you know I strongly believe that the most critical factor in successful organizations is relationships, so you can see why Pink's thinking resonates with me.

I have had the opportunity of late to talk with two different executive groups about what I perceive as the critical link between engagement and social networks. As I mentioned in a previous blog - Tell Me a Story; I see social networking in some ways as returning to our old oral traditions, passing along information person to person.

In some ways just as the Industrial Revolution damaged the social contract and concept of personal competency it largely shifted control over the flow of information to "management". Mainstream media contributed to that phenomena, to quote my friend John Mayer again " when they control the information...". Social networking has returned control in some ways to the individual.

In the "new" engagement model discussed by Rhoads and Whitlark, BlessingWhite, and others they describe the highest level of engagement as being pride of association. You have moved past a transactional relationship with your employees, customers, and other stakeholders to sharing a set of ideals. Is it just me or can others see why using social media appropriately and effectively contributes to this?

As a corollary I continue to be dumbfounded by organizations that do dumb things and some how assume that their actions aren't going to show up on a blog site, and in a big damn hurry! Do we think that our customers, employees, and future employees live on Mars where they can't access that information?

I hear stories about organizations that are perceived as using the recession to practice some pretty Draconian human resource practices; Do they really think this isn't going to show up on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc? Do they really not believe that when the economy recovers that those memories will evaporate? That is the corporate equivalent of the kid not believing his naked beer bong pictures on MySpace affected his interview possibilities!

It is interesting to see what social media is doing in a fundamentalist country like Iran. Do we really believe the Ayatollah is just trying to play well with others?

So I guess my perspective is that indeed there is a relationship between these phenomena. They all come down to the need to build and sustain trust based relationships.

We have already discussed the link between engagement and productivity, sustainability, and profitability. We have seen the power of social media to distribute information (sometimes even accurately) in almost blinding speed. We have also heard that one of the single biggest reason change initiatives and strategies fail is because they aren't properly communicated.

Sounds to me like Pink is right, math and science aren't the answer this time. It's going back to systemic big picture thinking, creating a bridge for people, and trust. Daunting, but not un-doable.