The "First" Engagement Initiative

Those of you who know me know that engagement, true engagement is an area or opportunity that I feel pretty strongly about (sorry Laurie). I think the emphasis is on true engagement. Engagement in my mind is defined as voluntary or discretionary effort that employees bring to their job everyday. True engagement is when that phenomenon spreads to your suppliers, your customers, and your community.

True engagement is accomplished using a number of tactics and strategies, but it is not a "program", it is a culture that lives everywhere not in HR. You don't accomplish it with pep rallies and reward and recognition programs by themselves. You build the culture and then you live it.

Another area that has intrigued me for a while and is taking on new dimensions in light of the health care debate is the relationship between personal competency and engagement. Personal competency is the stepchild key principle that was embedded into the original constitution, kind of a neglected cousin to personal property. Personal competency was the idea that each of us had the right and responsibility to manage our own futures, that we were not bound by our heritage or lineage. The key is the balance between right and responsibility. In a way doesn't that sound more like a partnership than a hierarchy? Doesn't that kind of sound like engagement in a way?

I have talked about personal competency at length and how to great extent with the coming of the Industrial Revolution a variety of forces combined so that we exchanged our personal competency for a kind of "corporate feudalism", we gave up our "equality" for security like corporate or organizational pension plans, health care benefits, etc. The industrialists were all about this model. Dumbing down skill sets and creating structures based on "compliance" is easier, in the short term. Our Founding Fathers were not real big on the concept of corporations, but that is another story.

When I look at our current situation as it relates to health care I see similar potential issues related to personal competency. I want to go on record as saying that I believe access to basic health care is a right that everyone should have access to, and I do mean everyone. The fact that we have one of the most advanced and expensive health care systems in the world and our morbidity and mortality rates put as at like number 30 is embarrassing to me (think countries like Cuba and Costa Rica). I also believe that access to basic care is good business and good for the overall economy. We are spending upwards of 10% of our GNP on health care on our "stellar" results and the number is getting bigger, not smaller. A big part of that is that people without access to preventative care get their care in ERs, the least efficient and most expensive way to provide it. Since they can't pay for it the costs get passed along to those who can pay, kind of like shrinkage in retail.

Here is another data point for you to consider. According to the American Medical Association sixty percent of health issues (and therefore costs) are related to lifestyle rather than hereditary. In plain terms that means we cause it! The issue is also that if I have not;

• Participated meaningfully in paying for the costs of care for me and my dependents
• Been provided with any meaningful information about what I or my dependents can do to improve my health or reduce expenses
• Been incentivized to change my behavior
• Been educated on the impact of escalating health care expenditures on other parts of the business

then the chances I am "invested" in making changes to my behavior are pretty minimal. No personal competence or engagement here folks!

As a former HR executive I can also tell you that most organizations strategy to deal with the rising costs of benefits is to;

1. Cost shift to employees through higher deductibles, co pays, etc
2. Reduce benefit offerings
3. Eliminate categories of employees from coverage

Is it just me or do these methods seem to miss the root causes as well?

I am not going to belabor that point and make this about health care.

I guess my point is that maybe just maybe the Founding Fathers intended personal competency to be the first real engagement initiative. My personal engagement model is based on five elements:

• Respect
• Responsibility
• Information
• Equitable rewards
• Mutual loyalty

Is it just me, or do there seem to be some parallels between that and personal competency? Maybe personal competency and true engagement are both about doing things with rather than to people ?

Were the Founding Fathers really that visionary, I wonder......?

Do Try This At Home!

I know for years we have encouraged people to think global and act local, but I want to explore a different paradigm with you.

As you know I am extremely passionate about the concept of creating engaged environments and strong employment brands. Often what I hear from people is " that's great Mark, but I am a small business with a small work force and small budget". The other thing I hear is "how"?

I came across a couple of pieces earlier this week that I thought were nothing short of brilliant in explaining both why and how this is relevant to small business.

Paul Mitchell, the brilliant Australian social scientist www.thehumanenterprise.com.au, shared some things that both resonated with me and were immediately applicable to businesses without regard to their size.

• The first thing that Mitchell did was describe leadership in a simple, but very compelling way. A leader excites their followers to exceptional performance. This definition is especially relevant because performance and effort are what engagement is ultimately about. Not happiness, not "satisfaction", but performance. Those others factors maybe contributors, but at the end of the day we need results.

The next thing that Mitchell talked about were the four key elements that every business should build into their "value proposition":

• Great leaders focus on followers. Mitchell and I share the belief that relationships are the "glue" in organizations. Truly effective leaders do things with people, not to people. With their employees, with their customers, with their suppliers, with their community.
• Build a sense of community. Following that same theme leaders understand they are part of a community and they invest in it. They build and nurture relationships on a foundation of trust and respect. They exchange value and values not transactions.
• Be yourself, but with more skill. Mitchell calls this authenticity. Everyone has allowable weaknesses, his point is to focus on your strengths and core competencies. Seek out other relationships internally and externally that complement your skill sets and offering.
• Focus on what matters. Mitchell suggests that we look for significance in ourselves and others. Find what you and others do right and celebrate it whether they are an employee, a customer, a neighbor, or a stranger. Connect them to the larger community and the larger context. We are a village, not an island.
• Build the excitement. There is an old amusing expression "if you are excited, you might want to let your face know". This speaks precisely to Mitchell's earlier definition of leadership. Be excited and share excitement. If you are not excited and don't believe in "you", how can you expect others to?

Added to this wisdom from over the "pond" I had a chance to see some results from the national survey and initiative on engagement from the U.K. that showed similar things. The country wide study found that there are four elements that build and sustain the engaged environment:

• Listening
• Treatment
• Coaching
• Role and role modeling

Once again it comes down to relationship. Listening and treatment speaks to my guiding principle of respect. Coaching and role speak to the principle of the big picture and autonomy. Role modeling speaks to authenticity and values. The British study also found that when leadership commits to these behaviors they become "viral", they spread through the organization both formally and informally.

By the way they did examine compensation as well and what they found was again consistent. Money may initially attract, but the most important qualities of compensation are perceived equity and fairness. So the short story is if you do compensation well it is a break even, it won't detract from engagement. If you do it badly it will destroy your foundation. Once again we see the tie back to relationship that once we get past survival mode it is about fairness and equity, not dollars.

So when you think about building and reinforcing your brand, be sure you include these elements. The interesting thing is you don't need a big budget or large staff and yes, you can do this at home......

Doing "What Matters"

I had the opportunity to attend another brilliant presentation this last week by a man I admire a great deal, president emeritus of the University of Oregon, Dave Frohnmayer. Although President Frohnmayer may be best known for the 15 years he spent as university president he can also list Dean of the U of O school of law, Oregon Attorney General, state legislator, and Rhodes scholar. A true renaissance man.

He was speaking to a combined group of community leaders and "aspiring" leaders in the form of students from a local private university. Much of what he said resonated with me, but there were particular aspects of his presentation that really struck me.

One of the most interesting themes he discussed was our evolution as people, especially those of us who aspire to lead or manage others. He said that as we are young and we begin our careers we start with the question-
What do I want to do with my career?
We hear this question and discussion a lot from young people; how do I best manage my "career"?

The next evolution he describes is the place where we ask the question-
What do I find fulfilling or meaningful?
I know I have certainly spent some time pondering that question and I rather suspect that I am not alone.

The last question or stage was the challenge he put to those who lead-
What matters?
The point of this question is that we move beyond the "I" and begin to examine our contributions in the larger context of society and the world. It is an interesting point. Should we have people in leadership roles that haven't evolved to that place?

The other part of what he discussed particularly resonated with me; he encouraged everyone, but especially leaders to see themselves and others in terms of their whole personhood. Some of you know this is a familiar place for me.

He referred to people as diverse as Jung and Machiavelli as recognizing that we all carry a "shadow side" and that the most effective leaders recognize this in themselves and others. They don't try to deny it, they incorporate it in their leadership style and acknowledge it in others. They have people around them whom they trust and have the courage to point out to them when this "shadow" becomes a detriment rather than an asset or neutral. He also talked about how the recognition and "mastery" of your shadow elements is evolutionary and occurs over time.

When I first entered the work force like President Frohnmayer suggested I spent much of my time focusing on my "career". Now that I have had three or four "careers" I recognize that a career is a journey you to a certain extent look back on rather than plan.

I have found for me personally that the second and third questions have intertwined. I believe passionately that a different way of people relating to each other in organizational settings is better for the individual, the organization, and society in general. In my case that model is what we now call engagement or employment branding.

Those of you familiar with me also know about my fascination with "Whole People", my belief that this idea of partitioning people off in the "work self" and personal self is ineffective and kind of silly.

The last JFHF3HCJD6FE few years have been an interesting part of my personal journey so I found it somewhat validating to hear from someone I respect that perhaps I am not doing it "wrong" after all.

So what I would leave you with are two questions-

• Have you determined what matters to you?
• If you answer yes are you pursuing it, and if no do you have a plan to change that?

Look forward to hearing from you.....

So You Want To Be A Leader?

This is actually the topic of a presentation that I used to do for our local Chamber of Commerce leadership development program as the last chapter of an eight month development program. Our intent was to send them out with both a sense of empowerment and accountability to something larger than themselves and their companies.

I among others have had the opportunity to discuss and debate what differentiates leadership and management on the "pages" of this blog, linkedin, and a number of other venues as have thousands of others smarter than me.

I ran across a summary of an interview with Robert Dolan, Dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, on BNET that I think summarized it it more succinctly than I have ever seen or heard before. He stated, "a manager maintains the status quo and delivers profitability, a leader performs three essential functions-

• they develop and encourage great talent merely with their presence
• they see new opportunities and innovations and push the organization to pursue them
• they act as a moral compass for the organization and role model the appropriate adoption of the organizational values and principles."

We can argue for decades about all of the other characteristics and attributes, but what I really like about Dolan's point is that they describe action and doing rather than passivity.

I found this summary especially timely because I hear the media and others starting to declare that the recession is "over". It is over because the stock market is moving up and large corporations are starting to declare profits again. I guess the fact that they expect unemployment to remain in double digits for the foreseeable future and that we have a health care crisis represents a rounding error. Not to me.

I like to think of myself as a realistic optimist. I was hoping that the recession would serve as kind of a national wake up call on a number of key societal issues. As anyone who has read my blog, my book, or other publications knows I am a big fan of engagement, true engagement. That is a system where stakeholders align in a common purpose. Studies show that organizations who adopt and maintain engagement strategies outperform their competitors in every key dimension. I was hoping the recession would cause more organizations to recognize that engagement is not only necessary, it is good for business.

I still remain hopeful that the "end" of the recession doesn't mean we think we have solved the health care issue. We have a very expensive system that delivers health care inefficiently and with pretty poor outcomes.

I am also a fan of personal competency. Getting away from the corporate and governmental codependency that has dominated our economic model for the last several generations. Employees need to be given an opportunity to engage and in return they need to be educated and expected to play a role in decisions about their health, their long term economic security, and generally be financially literate.

Much of the debate around leadership is whether leaders are born or "taught". Is it a series of characteristics or traits or is it behavior? I kind of like the behavior model. If you have capacity and you don't do anything with it are you really a leader? I think that is similar to the point Malcolm Gladwell made in Outliers, a high IQ in and of itself is no guarantee of spectacular success either personally or professionally, you must apply it.

When I look at where we got to and how we got there I have to tell you I see a lot more people in business and government who are managers- protecting the status quo and profitability; than leaders, individuals who develop deep talent, challenge their organizations to innovate, and act as moral compasses and role models not only internally, but externally.

Even the debate over health care represents an interesting model; we recognize it is compromised, but we seem (at least our "leadership") to embrace significant change in a model that doesn't work in delivering against key performance measurements.

I heard earlier this week that the performance bonuses paid out by the major financial institutions exceeded their recorded profits. Am I the only one who missed the logic of that decision?

How can we declare the recession is ending with record unemployment?

So for me I like Professor Dolan's definition of leadership. To his three characteristics I would add two more of my own:

• Come to work every day prepared to be fired for doing the right thing.
• Think about your "legacy", what you leave behind more than your "career", what you take with you.

It would appear to me that if you choose leadership rather than management as defined by Dr. Dolan you might not find the field nearly as crowded. What do you think?

A "Healthy" Debate

I have been following the discussion and debate around our health care crisis and alternative solutions with particular interest. As a human resources practitioner and consultant I have probably been involved with health care in one fashion or another for thirty years.

The discussion of whether or not we should have a national plan is particularly interesting, as is the general debate on where the "fault" is for where we are at today.

I used the word crisis because I believe we really do have a crisis. Although I think we have some of the most sophisticated systems and processes in the world we have huge issues with our delivery system. It is also interesting to me how little the average person understands or aspires to understand the health care system.

I had a chance to listen to a HBR (Harvard Business Review) Idea Cast with Dr. Richard Bohmer the other day. It was probably one of the most succinct discussions of the issues with health care that I have heard in years. Dr. Bohmer points out that there are really are three major issues with our health care system in his mind: how we define a service, how we finance health care, and how we deliver health care. I found his discussion really valuable. He also gives a great explanation of the difference between managing health care which deals with defining and delivering services as opposed to "managed care" which he refers to as an insurance or financing model. I won't bore you with all the details, but I will tell you it is a value added 13 minutes to listen to his interview.

Health care is delivered and defined in his opinion currently as a series of separate events beginning with diagnosis and then proceeding through treatment and "follow up". He argues that health care delivery and costing should be based on outcomes rather than the way we currently track and price it. It is kind of like lean manufacturing or total quality; success is determined by outcome not process.

What I found interesting is most of the debate I hear is about providing access to care and financing, I hear very little about outcomes.

The other thing I find I hear very little about is the individuals responsibility in their health care. I don't mean just paying for it, I mean accountability for lifestyle choices and related activities that directly and indirectly affect health care costs.

Most of us have historically had our health care provided through our employer, our spouses employer, or in some cases the government. We pay a fraction of the real cost and understand the way it works like we understand Cantonese. The insurance industry doesn't make it much easier. For years health care was considered like paid time off a "fringe benefit". Then we noticed that the cost of that particular fringe benefit continued to go up at double digit rates long after wage inflation receded. By that time we had created an entitlement.

When this becomes particularly interesting is when we start to track connections. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford believes (and I agree) that much of our health care related costs connect directly or indirectly to our work environment. If you are stressed about your job it effects your health. If you are stressed about your home life it effects your work. Some studies say it costs us $200 billion annually! In a shaky economy when you are concerned about losing your job and your health care benefits the problem accelerates.

I also believe at least at this stage there is little about personal accountability in health care delivery. We are suing Big Tobacco successfully for misleading advertising and withholding information about the addictive and health risks of smoking, but we are reluctant to reduce or deny care to smokers.

We want to label the calorie content in food, but do we want to deny or reduce coverage to those who have bad eating or exercise habits? Are we ready for employers to require wellness programs and screening as a function of company provided health care insurance?

Do companies educate their employees about things they can do to affect their health and the companies costs? Not many in my experience. Should we allow "tiered" coverage for people who deliberately practice behaviors that could or actually affect their health?

I don't mean to imply that as Dr. Bohmer points out "fixing" health care is a complicated issue, but should we be addressing personal accountability along with delivery, definition, and financing?r

To me this speaks of respect, engagement, and personal competency. What do you think?

The Power Of Relationships

As you all know I agree with Margaret Wheatley that the most important influence in organizations is relationships; not systems, not technology, but relationships.

I had the occasion to join a friend last evening with a friend and colleague of his I hadn't previously met. I found his friend to be charming, personable and very articulate. As our discussion turned to the inevitable " so what business are you in", he said that he worked for an organization that distributes a pharmaceutical type of product that is manufactured in Europe. What was especially interesting was that he shared their "distribution" network was almost exclusively based on relationship selling; no large sales force , no "cold calling". It is based on trust and referral.

A week or so ago I mentioned an article by Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford. He opined that much of the issue with health care in the United States is in many ways relationship based; most Americans rely on their employer for health care and for economic security. Compared to other countries our "safety net" is pretty small. He talked about the effects of stress about their employment and the accompanying systems like health care tied to employment and the direct correlation to health care issues. I agree with him.

I read some articles and listened to a couple of "idea casts" on BNET this week that illustrated the same thing from a different angle- the relationship between employees and leaders and how in these times especially employees watch their leaders for any sign of positive or negative events or signs. They do that normally, but in these times it is exacerbated to the nth degree. Marcus Buckingham says the most important attribute of leadership is clarity- people want to believe their leaders have a vision.

My own personal research validates information published by Peppers and Rogers, BlessingWhite, Gallup, and others about the power of engagement. I am talking about true engagement which includes customer, employee, shareholder, and stakeholder. Organization's with high engagement outperform their competitors consistently and by an order of magnitude. Engagement is about relationships.

I have written and spoken a lot lately about social networks and their increasing importance in communications strategy. I believe that social networking is about relationships.

I have also written and spoken about the "social contract". In historical times the poor were tied to the wealthy. They literally "belonged" to the property or estate for hundreds of years. The American "experiment" was all about eliminating that. You could come here and reinvent yourself.
You could homestead a piece of property of start a business. Then we ran out of frontier. Consistent with the rest of the world the Industrial revolution occurred. We exchanged the value of personal competence for the promise of "security" in return for "obedience" The power of the great capitalist was tempered only by the labor movement. That was about relationships,
however dysfunctional.

The "world" economy changed that social contract. American industry was not always dominant, our quality suffered and correspondingly so did our market share. Interestingly much of the "new" management models like lean manufacturing and TQM have very strong relationship components to them. U.S. companies retreated from economic security in return for "loyalty". Traditional pension plans are almost obsolete. The parental relationship between employers and employed relative to health care is in crisis mode. Our health care model is parental. We don't address root causes of costs, we shift them around. People don't want to share responsibility for their health or the costs of treating them. That is a relationship, although another dysfunctional one.

I am not suggesting that a "parental" model is appropriate. Anybody that has ever heard me speak, worked with me, or read any of my writing knows better. I rather like the concept of "personal competence" and relationships founded on mutual respect and honesty between employer and employed, taxpayer and government, supplier and customer, and individuals. A relationship based on respect, information, and mutual responsibility and built on a foundation of trust. Maybe I am just nostalgic or misguided, but I think that is what the Founding Fathers meant so many years ago when they formed this country.

Tomorrow is Independence Day, maybe a good day to reflect on what they meant and the critical relationships in each of our lives. I think that is what I'll do, how about you?

A Matter of Balance

The power of language intrigues me. I participate in a group of people much smarter than I am in trying to re-shape how we define words and their context and the effect that has on perception and understanding. I find it plays an enormous role in many applications, but the place that intrigues me the most is in the arena of leadership.

As many of you know I am an enormous proponent of engagement as a cultural norm. I feel that organizations where the inter linked relationships are based on shared values, respect, and a common vision and goals will always be more successful than a transaction based relationship. I also differentiate true engagement; which involves employees, customers, and shareholders, from engagement models that focus exclusively on "loyal" customers.

The Sotomayor nomination has created an interesting debate regarding the appropriateness of empathy in the judiciary. Should a jurist consider context and circumstances in rendering a decision or merely the "facts"?

I used that as the basis for a question I posed on LinkedIn as to the appropriateness of empathy not only in the judicial system , but to the essence of leadership. Is empathy an essential or at least important characteristic in effective leadership? The vast majority of the responders agreed that it is, but there was some dissent arguing that empathy can cause decisions to be made on the basis of emotion or disparate consideration for the interests of one "stakeholder" group over another.

I think we are finding much about our "objective" models that are based exclusively upon numbers and singular shareholder groups is flawed. I mentioned in a previous blog that Bill George of Harvard stated that a possible positive outcome of the current crisis is a new "balanced" model. Even more recently Richard Rumelt of UCLA mentioned in an interview with McKinsey that much of our current circumstance was based on reliance exclusively or primarily on short term "numbers" and indices that don't tell the whole story.

Another interesting debate is whether or not organizations should focus their efforts on shareholder satisfaction or stakeholder satisfaction. As you might suspect my perception is that organization who focus exclusively on shareholder value rarely maintain sustained success. I would submit that much of our current financial crisis is predicated on focusing on the value to the shareholder as represented by stock price to the exclusion of other stakeholder values. I have seen debates on LinkedIn and other venues insisting that shareholder value is the primary or exclusive measure of organizational success, but if you ignore or minimize the interests of the other stakeholder groups how do you stay in business?

In the past week I had a great conversation with a colleague who is trying to "re-invent" the practice of human resources management. Like me she is concerned that HR has become overly concerned with policy and procedure and systems rather than "people". We want to ignore or minimize the human element. Organizations are staffed by people.

I have another colleague who works in the area of trust. She has become frustrated occasionally with potential clients who don't particularly value strategies and systems to build and sustain trust with their customers, suppliers, or employees. They are not sure they can track a direct correlation to the bottom line. Hmm, sounds like a shareholder versus stakeholder issue.

Yet another colleague has designed a management system she calls KindExcellence(TM). Her belief (and I share it) is that kindness and excellence are not a polarity, but rather an axis. You need both to operate as an effective leader.

In my model responsibility and respect form a similar axis. If you allow someone to perform in a manner that doesn't live up to your expectations or their capabilities is that truly a respected based relationship?

I guess at the end of the day I agree with Margaret Wheatley that the most powerful force in organizational systems is relationships. These other elements are important as long as they are kept in "balance".

I think I will continue to endeavor to manage "whole people" and to include empathy in my decision making model. I particularly like the way a Buddhist philosopher put it in a quote a colleague shared with me.

"A person who cannot genuinely empathize with others can never excel as a leader. So much of what ails society today is the result of too many people in leadership positions who do not or cannot identify with the plight of their fellow men and women. It is in enduring pain and struggles that the earth of our humanity is cultivated. And it is from this earth that a capacity to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of others blossoms." - Daisaku Ikeda.

I think that sounds like balance......

Yes, Virginia We Still Need Leaders!

I saw question on LinkedIn this week that really kind of caught me off guard. It was asking why we can't outsource management like other "non-core" functions.
That explains a lot to me about where we are in our current relationships between stakeholders and the financial crisis. One response to that question was that we already had outsourced management- their role is to represent the "owners" interest in interacting with customers.
Hmm, not much of a stakeholder viewpoint there.

I read a couple of excellent articles on BNET this week. The first was by Jeffrey Pfeffer, the professor and author from Stanford. He was talking about the real lessons we should be learning from the Detroit meltdown. He points out that indirectly the leadership of the auto industry has inferred that much of the issue can be laid at the feet of the UAW- that paying for health care and retirement benefits represents $1500 to $2000 per vehicle. He examined it a little deeper and said he believes the bigger issue is the $6000 per vehicle difference in revenue per vehicle between Detroit and Japan! He said he got those numbers from an industry report that is no longer published, because of resistance from the Big three.

Pfeffer says the real problem is one of desirability; American production vehicles are not as desirable so the big three has relied on incentives to create sales rather than design innovation, quality and other differentiators. He also talks about the the billions that GM and Chrysler paid out to appease shareholders. The Japanese reinvested in better equipment, better technology, and financial reserves. His indictment is that the people running Detroit (and Wall Street) have been obsessed with the numbers to the detriment of listening to customers and employees.

Steve Tobak talks about similar leadership failures in high technology and other industries- can you say AIG or the financial services sector? One of the things I have noticed over the last few months is a resounding silence around personal accountability from industry "leadership". He goes on to say we need to get it- we are not a global monopoly anymore. Customers have choices and will act on them.

We blame it on the economy, we blame it on the unions, and now we are itching to blame it on the Chinese for buying up our debt!

I have talked before about true engagement, your customers and your employees, and the resulting benefits. I have also discussed the issue Pfeffer focuses on ; we need real leadership, not management by the numbers. I am not suggesting that numbers aren't an important consideration, but I would submit if you focus on the core activities you need to create true engagement the numbers will follow.

The role of the leader is to create clarity for the entire organization, the role of management is to remove the ambiguity between the larger vision and the individual employee's job. If we have gotten to the stage where we truly believe that we can outsource those things we truly are in deep trouble.

The Audacity of Hope

I have written quite a bit over the last few weeks about engagement and personal competency among other things. I actually think that these two things have the opportunity to contribute pretty significantly to the issues we face.
To support my position I would point out the $200 billion annually that the American Mental Health Association says we are losing to "presenteeism". I would also point out that organizations that successfully embrace and implement an engagement strategy enjoy competitive advantages in productivity, profitability, and sustainability. Only 30 percent of organizations have implemented such a plan. Maybe they can do more for us than relying exclusively on government support from the stimulus package.
I think the time has come for us to look at new models and new partnerships. The old models aren't working.

I had some positive things happen this week that cause me to believe that we may come out of this ok.
I had the opportunity to accompany my son on an interview of a colleague I respect very much. This gentleman and his family represent an old fashion sense of values that " to whom much is given, much is required". They have quietly, but methodically provided leadership in their community for five generations. It was especially rewarding to hear him discuss how his personal leadership model had evolved and how he had embraced "engagement" as a model for community development. He told my son that "people support what they build and own" and how he had come to a place of recognizing his role as a "visionary" and explorer, but the most important part of that role was to pass ownership of the vision and its outcomes on to others. It wasn't his success that was critical, it is the success of the vision.
What was even more exciting is that he had asked his nephew to participate in our discussion. His family was not only personally "paying forward" in the community, he was providing the role modeling and the expectation to the next generation that the same would be expected of them. His nephew seemed absolutely committed to that prospect and prepared to embrace it as well.
Quite bluntly those values are not being taught in most of our business schools. While we revere explorers- we teach mapping. We focus on data and systems, not communications and engagement. Technology and information are important, but they don't create engagement. It is good to know that they are being taught.

I had an opportunity as well to catch up with a former protege. He has demonstrated the capacity and capability to lead and I am pleased to see an organization recognize that. It was really meaningful to hear him discuss taking conversations we had and problems we had worked on in a previous "life" and use them as learning opportunities for his current staff. He too recognizes and embraces the concept of "paying it forward". It was also great to hear him talk about a multi year strategy to move the organization from compliance to commitment. He recognized both what needs to occur and that it is a process rather than an event.

I have commented before that I think the current generations or not as complacent or disloyal as we describe them. They just reject a lot of our models.

Our current models encourage people to exchange personal competency for "security". Unfortunately we can't provide security anymore either. A lot of people "grew up" in an environment where the employer provided their health care and their retirement. We took those competencies away from them. Now we want to either give the responsibilities back or have the government manage them. When we began losing ground in productivity our first reaction was protectionism and the second was off shoring. Neither of those sound like personal competency either.
We are angry at the financial services organizations and the automobile manufacturers, but haven't we been complicit there as well? We took the loans and we bought the cars.

The young people I had a chance to interact with said a couple of things that stuck with me. You must role model the behavior you expect and you must hold yourself personally accountable. They seem to get it. They also seem to recognize that people need help seeing a different way to do things, especially when it was never expected of them or encouraged.

I am hoping that our current crisis provides the catalyst to explore a different model between employer and employed and between government and citizen. Let's not be enablers, let's be partners. I think that is what the Founding Fathers had in my mind when Madison suggested a central government to deal with the issues of the "great and aggregate". One could make an argument hat considering where we are as a society with health care, education, and productivity the government has a role, but that role should be limited to catalyst and facilitator.

So my "hope" springs from two sources; the courage and commitment of my colleague and people and families like his, and the "emerging" leadership I see willing and able to explore a new model.