Right Management, a ManPower Company. surveyed more than 900 workers in North America and asked: Do you plan to pursue new job opportunities as the economy improves in 2010? The results were shocking:
--60% - Yes, I intend to leave
--21% - Maybe, so I'm networking
--6% - Not likely, but I've updated my resume
--13% - No, I intend to stay

It is obvious that too many employers neglected employee needs in dealing with the economic downturn. However, there are 5 areas employers can address to mitigate this negative impact on employee engagement:

#1: While the future might look grim in the eyes of some employers, employees
at other companies are working hand-in-hand with their supervisors to create a
positive future for the company.

#2: While some employers are hiding bad news from their employees, other
companies are keeping their employees informed and updated, even if the
news isn’t always good.

#3: While some employers are cutting jobs or scaling back on promotions, other
employers are helping their associates see opportunity in the midst of the crisis
for their own growth and development.

#4: While some employers may be instituting hiring freezes and cutting back on
perks, others will continue to find ways to reward those who are taking care of
customers and keep them coming back.

#5: While some employers are scaling back employee benefits, others are
committed to helping maintain the health and vitality of those who work for
them.

For details on how some employers are actually beating the odds and holding the line or increasing employee engagement see: http://www.leadershipbeyondlimits.com/2009/01/how-to-gain-ground-in-economic-downturn.html

Labels: Best Places To Work, employee engagement, workplace culture

Social networking tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. are re-humanizing business. That was my biggest take-away from from the Ohio Growth Summit 2009 which had an entire track devoted to social media for business.

I must admit I was surprised. Although I have been pretty active on LinkedIn for some time: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomrausch I am only just getting active on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tcrausch and I just recently updated a long-neglected Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1522495234&ref=name However, I hadn't really put together the idea that all this technology was re-humanizing business.

A recurring theme of the sessions was how most businesses don't "get" the potential power of these tools. I certainly only had a glimpse of their full power prior to hearing from some people who have really leveraged these communication platforms. People are making important connections using these tools. They are also doing "hard business". They are finding new clients and distribution channels. They are recruiting the best and brightest of the next generation of employees. They are building cultural capital and high employee engagement cultures by encouraging the use of social networking by their employees. The social media-savvy business still seems to be the exception though.

Many organizations remain too rigid and hierarchical to embrace these tools. There is the great and pervasive fear of losing control- an illusion to which many still cling. There is also the popular and hard to refute personal reason for not playing the new social media game: I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YET ANOTHER THING ON MY TO-DO LIST!

Well, this world just keeps spinning faster and it turns out that it only takes a little bit of strategic focus to get these powerful tools working to re-humanize your business. Here are some simple ideas to consider:

1. Encourage your new business development/sales & marketing folks to learn what the experts on LinkedIn are doing.
2. Get your tech folks and HR team together to explore how you can best use the tools your employees are already using to build a stronger culture.
3. Get your customer service folks to start "listening" with the tools and then figure out how to actively engage the conversations already happening about you.
4. Have your leaders start blogging- for the team or for the public or both.

Chances are, with a little strategic effort, you will find these tools will begin to re-humanize your business too!

Labels: cultural capital, customer service, employee engagement, networking, re-humanizing business, social media, workplace culture

In previous blogs we have reviewed Stephen M.R. Covey's first two "waves of trust" - self-trust and relationship trust - derived from his ripple effect metaphor of trust. The model which is introduced in Covey's book, The Speed of Trust, suggests that trust is interdependent and flows from the inside out. Covey's third wave of trust is organizational trust. He suggests that the first two waves of trust might be in place, but if the systems and structures of the organization do not promote trust - it may diminish.

If an organization espouses a value for trust, but has highly bureaucratic and controlling systems, policies and processes; the employees will not experience trust. Dissonance is then created between who the organization says it is and what is actually experienced. Leaders rarely look for indicators of trust in their policies, systems, and processes; nor do they often consciously build trust there.

Covey suggests that organizations that are aligned between holding a value for trust and enabling it, will exhibit these behaviors:
1) Information is shared openly
2) Mistakes are tolerated and encouraged as a way of learning
3) The culture is innovative and creative
4) People are loyal to those who are absent
5) People talk straight and confront real issues
6) There is real communication and real collaboration
7) People share credit abundantly
8) There are few "meetings after meetings"
9) Transparency is a practiced value
10) People are candid and authentic
11) There is a high degree of accountability
12) There is a palpable vitality and energy - people can feel the positive momentum

From the above list we can see that trust is an imperative for a healthy organizational culture. Leadership Beyond Limits, LLC offers a tool that will help leaders measure the level of trust in their organization, as well as other values essential to a healthy, productive culture. The values posted on the wall could become a source of little more than amusement, if employees are experiencing something different day-to day.

Labels: Stephen M.R. Covey, The Speed of Trust, trust, workplace culture

Our employee engagement partner, Quantum Workplace, recently came out with some very useful research about how the top "Best Places to Work" companies are bucking the negative trends of the current economic recession. You can watch a free 30 minute webcast of the research findings here.

They identified the top five areas where the best of the best are out-performing the rest. Each of the five areas is supported by five to seven best practices, many of them low or no cost action steps that business leaders can implement to keep a positive culture alive, even in these challenging times.

We also feature a .pdf summary of the webcast in our online resource library which can be accessed here: http://leadershipbeyondlimits.com/resources.htm There is no cost for registration and you can access many other employee engagement resources in addition to this research summary which is entitled beating_bear_market.pdf

We encourage you to take advantage of these great new resources.

Labels: Best Places To Work, employee engagement, workplace culture

Leadership has many definitions. At Leadership Beyond Limits, we subscribe to the efficacy of transformational leadership as presented by Bass and Avolio (1994). This leadership definition implies that leaders lead followers to levels of higher morals. In addition, transformational leadership implies that the followers are better off with the four I's of:

1. Idealized influence - does the right thing for the right reason
2. Individualized consideration - treats each person as an individual and with care and compassion
3. Intellectual stimulation - offers employees stretch goals and encourages creativity and innovation
4. Inspirational motivation - lives from his/her values and inspires employees to build on the vision

I recently came across an excellent scholarly article that painstakingly researched the various definitions of leadership. The authors identified 92 discrete dimensions of leadership, along with a 93rd miscellaneous list of 20 more leadership characteristics. The authors believe that researchers, scholars, consultants, and leaders have helped create confusion around the definition of leadership in that we have examined the parts of leadership but not the whole. They draw on the story of the blind men describing the elephant and the different accurate descriptions that each blind man gave, yet each was insufficient to understand the whole.

The article is definitely worthwhile if you haven't yet read it, you can find it here:
http://www.regentuniversity.org/acad/global/publications/ijls/new/vol1iss2/winston_patterson.doc/winston_patterson.pdf

If you find that interesting, you will likely also appreciate their longer working paper, which includes the above analysis, along with a more in-depth discussion of servant leadership:
http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/working/integrativedefinition.pdf

I admire the authors effort at creating an integrative definition of leadership, and appreciate their metaphor that reminds us that leadership is a large, complex animal.

Labels: cultural transformation, employee creativity, employee engagement, employee happiness, leadership, leadership development, transformational leadership, work excellence, workplace culture

Have you seen the third edition of the biennial Global CEO study conducted by IBM? It is worth a read. The executive summary can be downloaded by clicking here. The findings make a strong argument for creating a high employee engagement culture.

8 out of 10 CEO's see significant change ahead, yet feel there is a huge perceived gap in their ability to manage that change.

Customers continue to be more demanding, well informed and socially aware.

40% are changing their enterprise models to increase collaboration.

Finally, the enterprise of the future goes beyond philanthropy and compliance and reflects genuine concern for society in all actions and decisions.

These conditions make a high employee engagement culture a necessity, not a luxury. If you want to know how to build and maintain a high employee engagement culture, you can download our white paper here.

The full IBM study is available at ibm.com/enterpriseofthefuture

Labels: business, compliance, customer service, employee engagement, enterprise, future, workplace culture

Our good friend, Catherine Finamore Henry, Ethics Officer and Vice President, Business Development at SmartPros Legal & Ethics will be speaking at the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics 2008 Compliance and Ethics Institute (CEI) on the topic of honor codes.

This age-old tradition is still central to many institutions and cultures, including universities, service groups and the military. Catherine examines the historical significance of honor codes and how they can be used to successful bind together a group in a common cause. Honor codes are only useful when they are lived out and Catherine will discuss best practices on making them come alive and not simply be words enshrined on a plaque. Hint: find ways to tie into shared values.

Her talk will take place on Monday, September 15, 2008 at 11:00 am - 12:00 pm as part of SCCE's CEI 2008 conference (http://www.complianceethicsinstitute.org) which is being held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, Chicago, IL on September 14-17, 2008.

If you plan to be in Chicago for the conference, don't miss her talk.

Labels: compliance, ethics, honor code, workplace culture

The recent passing of George Carlin has meant the loss of one of our generation's sharpest observational critics. Many people mainly remember Carlin for his more notorious comedy bits, but I often found his jokes as insightful as they were funny.

I was recently reminded that he is credited with coining a term that has a unique value for business: "vuja de". The bit went something like this:
"Do you ever get that strange feeling of vuja de? Not deja vu, vuja de. It's the distinct sense that somehow, something that just happened has never happened before. Nothing seems familiar. And then suddenly the feeling is gone. Vuja de."

Doing a bit of internet research, I found that The Fast Company Blog commented on this a few years back. "Vuja de happens when you enter a situation you've been in a thousand times before, but with the sense of being there for the first time. As French novelist Marcel Proust said, "The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes."

It may be a bit of a stretch to put Carlin in the same class as Proust, but if vuja de is synonymous with seeing with fresh eyes, then it is a skill that should be taught in all MBA programs. It is a key prerequisite for creativity and innovation, and it is a central hallmark of healthy, adaptive corporate cultures.

Too often leaders can fall into the trap that "we have seen this all before...", effectively shutting down any opportunity for fresh analysis or innovative approaches.

The next time you find yourself in a familiar business situation, take a minute or two to see if you can summon up vuja de. Ask yourself what might be going on beneath appearances. See if you can see things from a fresh perspective, a new angle. George would love it.

Labels: innovation, leadership, seeing freshly, workplace culture

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her best selling book Eat,Pray,Love, describes a discussion with friends about the vibe of different cities. The friends suggested that each city has a word that defines it and identifies most of the people who live there. Whatever the majority "thought" might be is the word for the city. If you've read this entertaining book you know that the friends dubbed Rome with the word "sex," New York with "achieve," and Los Angeles with "success."

The underlying truth of this exercise is that we learn the values of people through our experience with them or being among them. The core essence of a group of people or an individual reveals itself to us through actions, words and structures.

On a recent trip to London I asked a friend, a Londoner, to describe the essence of her city with one word. As she hesitated, I offered the word "tradition." We'd just witnessed the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. My friend offered a word that held deeper truth for her - "tolerance." My mind connected with the scene at Heathrow Airport, a diverse melting pot where differences such as language create a chaotic buzz, but tolerance lends a melody. The important point is that "tolerance" is true for her. It is her experience of her city.

What word would describe the essence of your organization? Is it a word you've chosen for your organization or has it developed organically? Said another way - what is the predominant value expressed in your organization?

Leadership Beyond Limits offers a tool that allows you to determine with certainty what values your employees see expressed in the organization and how those compare with their personal values. This information is vital. If there is misalignment between their personal values and what they experience in your organization, they will be looking for a better match soon.

Open your next leadership team meeting by asking each person to write down the one word that describes the essence of your organization and then share them. The discussion might be revealing or affirming, but it will likely be one of the most important discussions you will have that day.

Labels: Eat Pray Love, organizational values, workplace culture

This story has mainly been told in the Midwest, where a motivational speaker V.J. Smith was so touched by a Wal-Mart cashier that it ended up changing his life, and the lives of thousands of others. Smith was so impressed by the warmth and genuine personality of Aaron "Marty" Martinson that he began to talk about him in his speeches to businesses, schools and other organizations. Eventually, he was so inspired that he wrote a book about Marty, which is sure to reach a much wider audience now that he has teamed up with Mac Anderson at SimpleTruths.com

I encourage you to take the time to visit some of these links and listen to the story of how a humble old man, now deceased, is still making live better.

Here is the link to the inspirational movie:
http://www.richestmanmovie.com

Here is a link to a news clip showing how children respond to this story:
http://www.lifesgreatmoments.com/kdlt.htm

Here is the link to a speech about Marty by V.J.
http://www.lifesgreatmoments.com/video.htm

Anyone can be a leader. Marty sure was.

Labels: employee creativity, employee engagement, leadership, passion, work excellence, workplace culture

In my last blog I wrote that Gallup research reveals American employees feel they spend only 12% of their time playing to their strengths, yet working from strengths is a pathway to human flourishing. Employees who find "flow," the perfect intersection between skill and challenge, are maximizing their performance. Building a strengths culture is a missed opportunity for most organizations.

Author, Marcus Buckingham, who is at the center of the strength's movement concedes that little progress has been made on the strengths front. The majority of American workers still believe that fixing their weaknesses is the key to success and few employers have adopted practices that embrace capitalizing on employee's strengths.

What stands in the way of this movement?

First, employees will only begin focusing on their strengths when they see that it is desired and embraced by their leaders. Leaders who let go of their focus on fixing the weaknesses of their direct reports and transform to a style where they fully understand and utilize each individual employee's unique gifts will notice that their employees transform. This requires a great deal of direct communication and coaching from the leader.

Second, the organization must let go of rigid human resource systems. The human resource systems that support a strengths-based culture are more flexible than the traditional systems most large businesses use. Most organizations have a list of desired competencies that each person is evaluated against and the "competency gap" is scrutinized. Of course, the "gap" provides plenty of fodder for annual performance evaluations, where employees develop action plans to close the gap - a deficit approach.

Finally, job description development and its linkage to compensation has become such a finely tuned machine, it leaves little room for flexibility, creativity and appreciating the distinct gifts of each individual contributor. Employees are asked to fulfill all aspects of a job because "it's in the job description."

The strengths movement calls for leaders who are prepared to coach and mentor their direct reports in a way that inspires the greatest use of each individual's strengths. This provides some unique opportunities for leaders to maximize the potential of their combined talent pool. When supported by human resource systems that provide flexibility and encourage a focus on the best each person has to offer, leaders will find the performance of individuals, departments and the organization flourishing.

Labels: flow, strengths, workplace culture

When organizations undertake cultural transformation, they believe that by fully engaging employees they will ignite new levels of employee creativity and higher levels of productivity. That is expected.

What is never known, however, is how that creativity will manifest. Often, it transcends even the highest of expectations and deeply inspires customers and fellow employees alike.

If you haven't heard the story of Johnny the Bagger, you are in for a real treat. Follow this link and be inspired to ignite your own unique passion.

Go to http://www.stservicemovie.com to see the inspirational movie of Johnny the Bagger.

Labels: cultural transformation, customer service, employee creativity, inspiration, workplace culture

One of Leadership Beyond Limits foundational beliefs is that organizations that are committed to an appreciative inquiry culture are dynamic and resilient.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is currently revolutionizing the field of organizational development. First articulated by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, two professors at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, AI is now widely recognized as one of the most practical tools in the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. Why are forward thinking business leaders embracing AI? The results speak for themselves. Here is a sampling of results reported at the recent 2007 International AI conference. See if you agree that these are examples of dynamic and resilient businesses.

Two, four-billion dollar companies used Appreciative Inquiry to create 'a merger of strengths' realizing $75 million in synergies in the first 100 days, and an estimated $300 million in synergy savings in the first year.

A cover story in Forbes told the story of the application of Appreciative Inquiry at one of America's fastest growing Fair Trade premium coffee roasters and their subsequent revenue growth. When the company began using AI as its organizational development approach, stock prices hovered around $18 per share- today, five years later, the stock continues to skyrocket at over $61 per share. (NASDAQ).

A Fortune 500 telephone company used AI to improve union-management relations and to re-write the contract. Estimates place the value of the initiative in the millions of dollars, saving the company thousands of jobs, and securing a stronger competitive positioning in the field.

A large retail grocery chain involved more than 500 front-line employees and managers in the development of customer service innovation projects. Results include 35% higher sales per man-hour ratio and powerful stories of how employees have transferred this experience to their families.

A crippled defense program was over budget, behind schedule, and facing cancellation. Relationships between employees, unions, and customers were at an all-time low. AI approaches were implemented for strategic planning and transformation to a team-based culture. Within five years the program became the 'cash cow' of the largest aerospace company in the world. It won the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award.

AI works so well because it is based on some very powerful principles. The Positive Principle states: The more positive the question, the greater and longer-lasting the change. This is very different from the traditional "problem-solving" approach that is deeply embedded in the American business tradition, where the focus is on fixing what is wrong. The underlying belief is that we already know what is wrong and if we can just "fix" the perceived problem and return to the status quo we will achieve an ideal state.

The idea that we already know what "should be" is itself very limiting. Although he was talking about education when he said it, Enstein's observation rings true for the business "problem solving" approach: "It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."

Peter Senge put it another way: "We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what's really important to us." This leads us to another AI principle, The Anticipatory Principle which states: "Images of the future inspire present day changes." The success stories described above came about because people were invited to pose positive questions about their future. In doing so, they came up with innovative new solutions that would have been impossible to imagine had they taken a problem solving approach.

We intuitively know that dreaming future is more inspirational than planning one. After all, Martin Luther King did not say, "I have a strategic plan." Instead, he shouted, "I have a DREAM! and he inspired a movement. When business leaders encourage employees to ask positive questions about a shared vision of the future, amazing things will happen.

Labels: appreciative inquiry, cultural transformation, workplace culture

Do you remember the California Milk Advisory Board commercials from 2002? They highlighted the slogan: "Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California." The ads featured talking and signing cows discussing the pleasures of life in warm and sunny California. The underlying message was that happy cows give better milk.

Ironically, the California Milk Advisory Board was sued by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals suggesting that the depiction of the cow's living conditions was deceptive. The lawsuit sparked a false advertising debate among the dairy community that included the question of how a cow's happiness is measured. Some great questions flow from legal debates.

Despite the unhappy drama that surrounded the happy cow commercials, they were popular for a reason. My guess is that people intuitively resonate with the concept of happiness resulting in quality work. And the commercials were fun. Who wouldn't smile at a singing cow?

What we have come to learn from the science of Positive Psychology is that happy people have a greater opportunity to produce quality results than those who are unhappy. Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has conducted ground breaking research that supports this theory. Barbara's work suggests that when we experience positive emotions we are more intelligent, more creative, have a more global perspective, and are less racially biased. In addition, while we experience positive emotions we build sustainable physical, psychological, emotional and social resources. While positive emotions may not last, the resources we build as a result of them are long lasting. These enhancements improve our well-being over time.

On the contrary, negative emotions narrow our perspective and limit our options. When we're stuck in a negative emotional space self-advocacy prevails. Work environments filled with negativity result in silos, empire building, withholding of ideas and information and doing things the way they've always been done. Luckily, positive emotions can reduce negative ones.

I worked in Human Resources inside a large organization for many years. We routinely surveyed our employees as they left the organization regarding their work experience. One rating that was routinely low and would not seem to budge despite our efforts to influence it was, "My supervisor cares about and works to resolve problems." It was only after we took action to create a more positive culture, that we saw a 20 percentage point positive movement in that rating. Actually, there was positive movement in all of the leadership ratings. I contend that being positive and being around positive people opens up new ways of thinking and supports us in finding new solutions to old problems. As Albert Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Will quality work flow from happy employees? Research from the field of Positive Psychology would suggest so. Could there be a better learning lab than the financial results of Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Places to Work? These companies intentionally develop a positive culture and they routinely outperform their competitors. We know that positive emotions cause success for individuals. The Best Places to Work are proof that collective positive emotions create success as well.

While the jury is still out on how to measure the happiness of a cow, the science of Positive Psychology offers us many ways to measure the happiness and well-being of human beings - the secret to your organization's success.

Labels: happiness, positive psychology, workplace culture