Finding "Flow"

Lately as you have probably noticed I have been talking and blogging a lot about things like sprezzatura and congruency. I think perhaps as the title of this piece implies I am pining to find my "flow".

Seth Godin, Daniel Pink and others talk about flow, that place where everything is clicking and hours just seem to disappear. It may happen at work, when you are enjoying an athletic activity, or the company of others. We have all experienced it and it is what "brings us back".

I kind of like to think of engagement as flow on an organizational level. Groups of people who become immersed in what we are doing and enjoying it to the point that the processes and the results blur. We see the value and the values alignment and so we provide our discretionary effort, that last bit that puts us over the top.

I don't think that organizations or individuals can maintain a state of flow constantly, but I think we can provide environments where we see it and experience it frequently. As I allude to I think it is much more about providing an environment than "direction".

Godin describes that each of us has our "art" embedded" in us somewhere. It doesn't mean we were born to paint or make music or even be a crafts person of some kind, but there is something we were born to do.

I think I like like Godin because of two primary reasons above others:

• Like me he feels like Frederick W. Taylor, the "father" of scientific management, contributed to a model that has repressed the human spirit for multiple generations
• He is one of the only other authors I have read of late that actually draws upon and and mentions Monty Roberts, the original "horse whisperer", and his concept of "joining up" rather than compliance as a model for interpersonal and organizational relationships.

As you know I feel like concepts like lean manufacturing, six sigma, and others are inherently self limiting because they do not take into account the "human" dimension. You don't see anywhere in those models where they talk about art or flow or sprezzatura. It is about consistency and numbers and process. Probably makes my friend Frederick Taylor orgasmic in his grave!

I am pleased when I see that the younger generations are demanding more of the opportunity to find "flow". They call it different things like work life balance, and autonomy, or others; but at the root they are seeking if not demanding environments that provide them with at least that opportunity.

So I guess at the end of the day whether you want to call it "flow", or sprezzatura, or congruency, or engagement why are we so afraid of it? The "numbers" show that how ever you label it the results in key performance areas are vastly superior to the "old" ways of doing things.

Isn't it time to embrace a new model- especially when we can see the "proof in the pudding"?

It Takes A Village

I had a chance to read several different articles recently that at least to me reinforced something I have always intuitively believed, collaboration is more powerful than individual excellence in an organizational setting.

In many of the presentations that I do I use the illustration of the Nigerian soccer team in the Olympics a few years back. The team was composed of a group of people who were committed to the game and committed to each other. There were no "superstars" that would be recognized internationally. The interesting thing is that this group of committed individuals went on to defeat the "best" teams in the world and win the gold medal.

I think many cultures, at least western ones love the concept of the hero or all star. The individual who will ensure victory. The interesting thing is that these are usually individual contributors. I differentiate these individual contributors, even "superstars" from leaders. I think it is two different skill sets.

Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford is one of my favorite organizational development "gurus". He has written a short article on BNET about so called "stars" in the financial industry and the practice of large players to recruit such "stars" and pay them fabulous sums of money. He decided to do some research on the ROI of such investments. He found they typically fell flat, the "stars" performance rarely approached their previous performance much less exceeded it. He points out similar correlations in professional sports. A great recent example is soccer star David Beckham. The LA franchise that acquired him has yet to see the benefits of the dollars they invested in winning matches. They have seen gate receipts go up because fans will pay to see him play.

Pfeffer points out that it would seem that environment and coaching play a huge role in performance. Having supportive colleagues, access to resources, and good management and coaching seem to matter quite a lot. I think Malcolm Gladwell makes a similar point in Outliers, people who excelled had great innate ability, but they also had access to resources and a highly supportive environment.

The other interview clip I saw on BNET included industry leaders including the VP of Innovation for Google. She was asked about the impact of the recession and other factors leading to innovation or the lack there of. Interestingly she posited that once again the key differential in high performing companies is the human capital and creating and nurturing an environment that allows them to contribute. Pretty interesting coming from a technology firm. She also pointed out that many great companies had their genesis in recessionary times, the people at the firms collectively rose to the challenge and innovated and over came the obstacles.

As a student and advocate of engagement I am a big believer in this model. Statistics show that organizations with high engagement increase per capita 21% higher than their peers and outperform their peers and competitors on every critical metric. The key is that this is collective performance and per capita. The approach is collaborative rather than reliant upon "superstars".

In my previous post Dr. Dolan of the University of Michigan talks about a key attribute of leadership being the creation of an environment that attracts talent and its development. The role of the leader is to attract and develop, not to "perform" tasks as an individual.

So where am I going with this? I am not suggesting that you discard efforts to hire the "best and the brightest", but rather than suggesting that you not rely on hiring somebody else's superstar to increase your organizational performance as an exclusive strategy. Creating engagement and raising the collective talents and performance of your organization would seem to be a much more effective long term strategy.

Leadership should be evaluated in terms of their ability to build and create strong teams and develop talent rather than on the basis of individual accomplishments and talents. Being an excellent "coach" is more valuable than being the best "player" for those we put in management and leadership roles.

Just something to think about....

A New Look At "Engagement"

Some of my latest reading on engagement has continued to intrigue me on this topic. Marketing professionals have been talking about "engagement" at the customer level for some time now, but I have recently read a couple of pieces that explore it in a new way.

The new Peppers and Rogers Group article discusses it in a way that feels more real to me- an integrated model that says that you will only really achieve true engagement when you build engagement with your customers on a solid foundation of engagement with your employees.
Intuitively that makes sense to me. If our employees are the cornerstone of our "brand" they must be as passionate about the brand as your Marketing folks or the agency. The brand must be embedded into the culture. When they talk about the two newer levels ; best practices and products, and pride of association they include the internal "stakeholder", the employee, as well.
They also talk about the foundation for engagement- the foundation is trust. How interesting? With all of the new technology and processes it still comes back to trust, which means relationships as the key.
As you know, we are deeply committed to this concept of engagement at the employee level- we call it moving from Compliance to Commitment(tm).

The other interesting reading I have done talks about two kinds of engagement as it relates to customers- emotional engagement and behavioral engagement. At its most simplistic, emotional engagement is when people are drawn to you. They remember your commercials, they can remember your mission statement or brand position.

Behavioral engagement is a little bit more real. Do they buy your products and services? They not only know your mission statement they buy your products and services. Do employees "live" the brand or just wear your logo wear?
In a reverse kind of a way this reminds me of WalMart. Other than the happy people on their commercials I don't meet too many people who admit that they actually shop there. They are the retailer everyone loves to bash. Small towns fight court battles to keep them out of their boundaries. Yet, somehow they manage to remain the largest retailer in the world. Is this an example of behavioral engagement- I wonder?

In the employee context we take attitude surveys, measure turnover, hold picnics, and measure "morale". Are we measuring emotional or behavioral engagement on the part of our employees?

The take aways I have from my reading are simple:

• You will not have true engagement with your customers without engaging your employees
• You will never have true engagement with your employees with out building and nurturing a foundation of trust.
• They have yet to invent a technology that builds trust. You have to do it the old fashioned way, person to person, one at a time.

My article on the business case clearly demonstrates the "numbers" for an engaged workforce and the financial competitive advantages that highly engaged versus non-highly organizations enjoy. In the final analysis then I would caution organizations to check their "foundation" before they invest in technology or process to improve financial performance.

After all these years it still comes down to trust.