Zealise Blog

A Different Perspective on Employment

Do you ever stop to think about why you are working?

Or who you are working for?

For most of us work is something we have to do. We have no choice. It is essential for our survival and so is unavoidable and inescapable.

But what about your employer – the person or organisation you work for? There perhaps you have more choice. So, if you have no choice about the need to work, but you do have a choice as to whom you work for, what does your place of work say about you? Or, to put it more directly, who do you really work for?

The fact is that each and every one of us ultimately works for ourselves. Irrespective of the name of the organisation, who you boss is, or who pays your wage, your work is how you spend a large part of your waking life. And it is your life and no-one else’s. So it is part of your self-expression and when you boil it down to the lowest level, there is no getting away from it: you are ultimately working for yourself.

Think about that for a moment. Then ask yourself how this changes your attitude to your work. After all, if you are not enjoying your work or maximising your personal potential, you are effectively wasting your life, aren’t you? And since to the best of our knowledge we only get one, and that one is pretty short, it seems a pity to waste it, doesn’t it?

So you see, it’s not about work-life balance – it’s about work-life integrity.

Now change hats. Think of yourself as the employer. How do you view your people? Do you see them as a “resource” and there to do only what you tell them? Or do you see them as people who, like you, are also trying to make the most of their short lives? If so, what are you doing to help them?

The good news is that, whatever you do, you will create greater work-life integrity for both your people and you. This will inevitably transform performance all round. And that makes it worth thinking about, doesn’t it?

An Essential Element for Employee Engagement

Are you really surprised?

Sometimes it seems that we research things where we should – certainly if we are worth our salt – already know the answers. Perhaps this is necessary to reassure us and give us the confidence that we are on the right road. Certainly the results of the latest global survey by Blessing White, highlighting trust in senior leadership as an important factor in employee engagement appear to fall into this category. After all, would you really expect people to be totally engaged if they felt the senior leaders were a bunch of ... (you fill in the blank!)

And certainly the conclusion that "Trust the boss" implies is that senior management “deliver engagement.” But is that the correct conclusion?

The “disconnect” showed only 36% of engaged employees trusted their line managers, compared with 75% percent of the total sample population. This is very surprising, not just because the percentage that trusted senior management remained almost constant for both groups at around 50%, but because traditionally HR have led you believe that dissatisfaction with one’s immediate manager is the primary cause of:

• Employee disengagement; and hence, ultimately,
• Employee turnover.

Yet here you have more engaged than disengaged people who distrust their line manager – and all while the overall trust in senior management shows insignificant difference. So clearly there is something here that warrants your deeper consideration.

The conclusion that trust in senior management is important may be valid, but do you think it warrants the degree of promotion that it’s given? After all, only 30% of people are engaged anyway. And even for those employees “under half trusted their senior leader!”

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

So if it is not the employee’s immediate manager that elicits engagement – and it clearly isn’t – and it isn’t trust in senior management – which may be a factor, but clearly not as significant as the report suggests, then what does?

Are you barking up the wrong tree in your endeavours to win “the talent war” or “the hearts and minds” of your employees? What if engagement is intrinsic? Certainly, that is what I have always believed. It is what the name Zealise is intended to convey and what the solutions we promote and champion offer you - the means to inspire your people to fulfil their own potential. Isn’t that the recipe for true engagement?   

Talent Management versus Employee Engagement

Do you sometimes wonder if HR has a split personality?

It certainly seems that way at times. For instance take the following 2 statements taken from the same talk by Vance Kearney, Oracle EMEA HR Director.

Statement 1:

“Talent is less available and the only way you can recruit talented staff is if their current employer has made a mistake with them [and they want to leave].”

Statement 2:

“Engagement is a good thing, but we are often ignoring skills and talent. If you engage poor talent in your organisation, you are not going to get the outputs you want.”

There are any number of points that you can take issue with, not least the perpetuation of the prevalent HR tendency to separate talent and people. Is there really less talent today than there was 5 or 10 or 20 years ago? Have people really become less talented? The fact that there are no longer 30 pages of recruiting in the Sunday Times is surely more indicative of the changing nature of the recruitment market than anything else.  

However, you can see the inherent contradiction here, can’t you? If there are truly less people on the market today than there were previously, and people only leave because “their current employer has made a mistake with them” is this not de facto evidence that employee engagement efforts are becoming more effective? Of course that would seem to be the logical conclusion. However, it is not borne out by the latest Gallup survey results which indicate that only 11% of employees are engaged – or to put it another way 89% are disengaged. Nor is the UK, where Kearney is based, excluded from this as this recent report also shows.

It would therefore seem that Kearney’s stark warning that “talent management should take precedence over engagement” is totally misdirected. Not only is the science questionable, but:-

• Talent comes in the guise of people;
• People are more engaged when they are fulfilled and their talent is recognised and appreciated.

Thus it should be obvious to any manager worth his salt – especially an HR manager – that developing talent and engaging people are one and the same thing! HR will never get it right until they realise this, and headlines like "Internal talent is best - and better than engagement" certainly won't help!  

Hanging on to your elephant's tail?

What on earth?

I was re-reading Ricardo Semler’s “Maverick” the other day, when I was tickled by his question, “What would you rather have, the tail of an elephant or an entire ant?”

Of course it helps to know the context. After all, unless you are the elephant or an old-school maharajah wanting an elephant’s tail to keep the flies off you, there cannot be much demand for elephant tails!

Actually, the quote comes at the end of the chapter in which Semler talks about profit-sharing and the fact that employees at Semco are entitled to 23% of the profits. Effectively he was the principle “donor” in this arrangement, and he conceded that he felt 23% was “awfully high.” However, he explains his decision to go along with it by saying, “But I kept telling myself I stood to make at least as much money in partnership with a motivated workforce as I would as the sole beneficiary of the fruits of less inspired workers.”

Wow. Here’s someone who really understands the power of ownership and the glorious, potent effect it has on employee engagement.

His point is that employee ownership is what unleashes the true economies of scale and unless you have a fair and equitable basis for sharing profits you are basically operating with at least one hand tied behind your back. And, in case you think this is latent or blatant socialism, he makes the point elsewhere that “Few ideas are as capitalist as profit-sharing.”  

So where do you stand? Do you want to hang on to your elephant’s tail, or do you want the ant?

Standing on the shoulders of ...

Success is never a solitary achievement.

Isaac Newton recognised this when he said, “If I have been able to see further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”

Yet none of us achieve anything without depending on others. Perhaps there is a bit of poetic licence in Newton’s description, but the reality is that none of us can do anything without the efforts of others. Do you ever drive along the motorway and wonder about the people who helped to build it? Or travelled by train without thinking about the pioneers who built the first railway lines?

The fact is without their efforts nothing which we take for granted today would be possible. And that is as true in business as it is anywhere else. For example, greateManchester United might not be quite the same team without Wayne Rooney, but without the efforts of the groundsmen who keep the field in shape for Premier League and Champions’ League action, Rooney et al would find their game a lot more challenging. Similarly, Amazon might never have become the force it has without the people who locate, pack and ship your order.

Business is all about people. So ultimately it all boils down to your people. That is why it is more than a cliché to think of your people as your greatest asset. And the good news is that nobody wants to do a bad job, which means that the dice are loaded in your favour. That is why employee engagement is such a key issue. For, if your people are disengaged, you have lost your major competitive advantage.

Even, more significant, however, is the fact that if your people are disengaged, the problem resides with you. The culture you create and the environment you engender is what determines their level of engagement. So where do you and your organisation stand on that front?

If you don’t know if your people are engaged or not, or – even worse - if you know that they are disengaged, then you have a challenge. Unlike a reputation, engagement does not take a long time to create, but like your reputation it can be destroyed in an instant. And if it is, it takes a long time to restore. That is why you need to stop just talking about your people as assets and actually treat and manage them as though they were. That way you’ll be able to stand on their shoulders to create a human pyramid of success, without them feeling abused or taken advantage of.

The Joy of Satisfaction and its Power

Would you dispute the power of appreciation? No, me neither. But something that must come pretty close to it is the joy of satisfaction. You could even say that satisfaction is the ultimate of self-appreciation.

Of course that is something that was clearly evidenced at the recent Olympics. Who could ever forget the joy of achievement witnessed by medal winning athletes? The joyful celebrations of a Usain Bolt or a Mo Farah?

Sometimes such celebrations were a stark contrast to the tears of those who failed to win a medal. Of course neither really fits with the Olympic spirit that it not the winning but the participating that counts. But in both cases the extreme emotions are shaped by expectation.  For the winners the joy of meeting or exceeding expectations crowned their efforts while the desolation of those who didn’t win stemmed from their inability to meet their own expectations.

Yet these emotions were not unique to medal-winners and non-medal winners respectively. There were many instances of disappointment from silver and bronze medal winners who had expected gold. And, on the other hand, there were many non-medal winners who were ecstatic to have achieved PB’s (Personal Bests.) So it would seem that the pleasure of participating is in fact tied to personal performance and, more pertinently, to the ability to claim that you had performed to your potential.   

And, when you think about it, this is no different to life generally. When you perform to or exceed expectations you are happy, and when you fail to do so, you are unhappy.

So what lessons are there here for you and your business?

Surely the most glaring is that the more people you have who are performing to their expectations, the more happy people you will have. Unfortunately business is ongoing and, unlike the Olympics, is not concertina’d into a single two week period. Thus you not only have to ensure you help make your people happy, but you have to ensure that you sustain that happiness.

But don’t despair. You are not responsible for this! Just as an athlete is ultimately responsible for their own performance so your people are responsible for theirs. If they cannot perform to their own expectations they will not be satisfied and nothing you can do will make them happy.

However, you may be doing things that make them unhappy. Persisting in identifying new ways to monitor and measure performance and then trying to find ways to incentivise superior performance is definitely one of these. The key lesson from the Olympics is that the emotional response is personal. Satisfaction brings joy and joy is power. But this power is intrinsic. Thus you need to be looking for more intrinsic motivators to engage your employers.  

Daniel Pink is a champion for research that proves that extrinsic motivators – sticks and carrots – not only don’t work for any non-mechanistic task, but can be counter-productive. In his book “Drive” he states that “For too long there has been a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” Are you failing to follow the science? Are you persisting with extrinsic motivators rather than developing the intrinsic ones?

You only have to take a look at your own life experience to understand the science and recognise how powerful intrinsic motivators are. So why persist looking for the wrong sort of motivators? Give your people autonomy of determining their own performance and you will create the joy of satisfaction. You will also release a power that will transform your team and organisational performance.      

Medal Winning Performance: The Power of Purpose and its Teambuilding Potential

So the Olympics are over for another 4 years. However, the London Olympics were so chock-a-block-full of awe-inspiring deeds that the memories will remain. And there are a couple that really stand out.

The first was Kate Walsh, the captain of the Great Britain (field) hockey team. Her jaw was broken by an opponent’s stick very early in the competition. However, instead of accepting that her Games were over, Kate had surgery to insert a steel plate in her jaw and resumed playing two days later, with a face mask and the help of some pain killing drugs. She missed only one game and her team went on to win the bronze medal.

The other was US sprinter Manteo Mitchell who broke his leg half way through the first leg of the men’s 4x400 relay. You might think this was disaster (or, at the very least, a major blow) but he ran on, finished his race and ensured that his team qualified! Describing what happened Manteo said, “As soon as I took the first step past the 200 metres mark, I felt it break. I heard it. I even put out a little war cry, but the crowd was so loud you couldn’t hear it. I didn’t want to let those three guys down, or the team down, so I just ran on. It hurt so bad.” So perhaps it was justice that his team not only qualified, but ended up winning the silver medal in the final.

Both these events are mere footnotes to the final outcome and, as the Games recede into the annals of history, are likely to be forgotten. You could say that “these things happen” and “it’s just sport and not really important.” However, if you were to do that you would be missing so much: there is so much more to them and a much greater lesson to be learned.

You see these examples epitomise what a team is all about. A team is a corps where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the interests of the collective transcend those of its individual members. But this only happens when there is shared purpose and a common commitment to that purpose. So, while sport provides a good – almost universal – example of this, you would make a great mistake not to seek to apply it more widely. And can you think of anywhere you could apply this more than in business? After all, a business has a purpose and therefore, by definition, everyone in the organisation is working for a single team.

Yet, unfortunately, two major distortions dilute this concept.

1. The size of the organisation and the scale of its operations. All too often this means that you break the team down into smaller teams. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it means all too often you lose the concept of the organisation as one team. (If you doubt that, just ask yourself to what extent the concept of “need to know” pervades your organisation?)
2. The pre-occupation with trying to motivate people and the almost universal belief that you do this best by creating a competitive environment that has the smaller teams vying with one another. 

If you are looking for medal-winning performance you need to recognise and create this power of purpose. Only then will you have a team - dedicated people who are totally committed and who will ensure the results you are looking for. It doesn’t even have to be a gold medal, but you will never succeed without this. So start by asking, “Is there a common purpose in our organisation? Are we a single team?”  

3 Key Principles for an Engaged, Energetic & Effective Organisation

In another Eureka moment the other day I realised that I have never shared the key principles that drive all my business endeavours. This is despite the fact that they are integral to everything I have been doing and all that I have been striving for.

However, what makes it worse is that these principles are fundamental to all business and commercial activity.

Still, they say it is never too late, so let me rectify my oversight and spell them out now.

Embracing these 3 principles enables you to cut through complexity, reduce the sense of personal pressure and empowers you and your co-workers to build and sustain personal and organisational success. You will also make your life – and theirs – more enjoyable, more fulfilling and more rewarding.

1.    The organisation has a purpose. Any organisation exists to provide a product or service and as such has a clear role to play in the world. This provides its raison d’être and is the central axis around which everything revolves.

2.    The organisation is one team. As long as the organisation is clear about its purpose everyone in the organisation has a part to play in enabling it to fulfil that purpose.

3.    Organisational success depends on every single member of the team. Nobody wants to do a bad job and we all want to make a difference. Thus the more fulfilled and successful each team member is individually, the more successful the team.

You will agree there is nothing radical or alarming here. In fact there is nothing new: it is all stuff you already know but have somehow buried and forgotten. And, in doing so, you have made your own life more difficult. It is no wonder your efforts to restore a sense of engagement, energy and enthusiasm feel futile. How can you expect to inspire others when you are sabotaging your own endeavours?

Of course reawakening to, resurrecting and recommitting to these principles is only a first step. You must still put them into practice. You need to weave them together to craft the organisational integrity that enables you to optimise your people and their potential, inspiring greater personal effort, energy and engagement that powers through your organisation to bring improved performance, better results and sustained success.
   
So wouldn’t it be great if you had a mechanism to do all this? Well, it exists. And my mission is to help you to find out more about it and successfully shape the new tapestry for your organisation. So why not explore with me how my employee ownership model could help you to win the talent war, transform your organisation and shape a future that benefits everyone?

Happiness, engagement and work-life integrity

What makes you happy?

Whatever it is it is personal and unique to you. Yet according to my friend Alex Kjerulf, The Chief Happiness Officer at Woohoo Inc., happiness stems from 2 things – results and relationships. And, if you take it to the essence you cannot argue against that. It is the things that you do and the people that you do them with, and for, that make you happy.

I was reminded of this when I received notice of his latest blog, which included a recording of him being interviewed by David Zinger, founder and host of The Employee Engagement Network, and I listened to the two of them discussing the relationship between happiness at work and employee engagement. I thoroughly recommend that you invest the time (22 minutes) to listen to this (or read the transcript.) It has some ‘real gold’ nuggets.

I found it a wonderful reminder of why I formed Zealise to begin with. You see the principle for me is the conviction that “nobody wants to do a bad job!” Of course that is simply a different way of saying performance is just as important to the individual as it is to their manager. In fact, in light of Alex's insight, it may be even more important! Either way, a key goal for me was enabling people to feel more fulfilled in their work, and I set out to find a way to achieve this.

I did this with my model of employee ownership. This, however, actually addresses the second cause of happiness. That is because, by creating a sense of belonging, it does more than anything to create a binding relationship between employee and organisation. Using David’s simple definition of engagement as “connection”, ownership creates – or at least facilitates – this in a way that nothing else can. It makes work more of a relationship in itself, rather than an obligation.

Yet by breaking down the ‘you versus me’ barrier of industrial relations that has historically eroded organisational performance, ownership also inspires improved personal performance as the individual does more to maximise their contribution. It means you are now working more directly for yourself and hence, by extension, for those you love. All this embeds better performance and so addresses the results aspect as well, helping make people happier. It simultaneously makes work a (more) vital part of life. This engenders greater work-life integrity, enhancing that effect and providing a more effective solution to the work-life balance conundrum that is currently pre-occupying the HR profession.

What do you think? Do you want to join Alex, David and me and help make the workplace a happier, more engaged and more productive place?

What a difference being sociable can make!

Where do you stand on social marketing? That is not an easy question. Even the term ‘social marketing’ invokes a multitude of different concepts.

That is partly why a blog “Why social business will be bigger than social marketing” by Anna Farmery at Engaging Brand caught my attention this week.

However, while I think Anna is spot on with the points she makes and the examples she gives, I cannot help feeling that there is a more fundamental issue here that we are all in danger of missing. And it is to do with the whole concept of ‘social business.’ After all, isn’t all business social?

Just think about it for a moment.

Any organisation exists to provide a service. Whether it is a ‘for-profit’ corporation, a public sector or NGO, or a charity, its ultimate purpose is to serve. It cannot survive if it doesn’t! It doesn’t make any difference whether it is serving a very small, clearly defined and closed community, a nation or a global market, it sustains its existence by meeting a need. This inevitably means it is making a contribution to society and so makes it social.

Then there is the fact that the interaction is ultimately human. There is an old sales cliché that “people buy from people.” This is a truism. But it has broader connotations and applies to all business. The essence of business is human interaction and that makes it social.

And that is not all. The law recognises this implication by assigning organisations a legal persona. This gives them the same rights and obligations that a human has.

On top of that an organisation is itself a collective of people. It requires any number of people to carry out its purpose. This also makes it a social activity.

So there you have it. All four of these factors mean that all business is social business. There is no getting away from it. Of course this is why a business has to focus on its people in order to optimise its performance and improve its results.

Unfortunately this is all too often neglected or forgotten. As Anna points out, things are changing and the recognition of social business is certainly a step in the right direction. But perhaps like me you can sense that this is still too narrow a concept. In order to align all four social attributes you have to create a social culture. And in order to do that you must put a greater emphasis on the internal social structure. To put it more succinctly, this means you must put a greater emphasis on your people and how they work together.

That is why I persist in promoting the concept of a universal employee stake in the organisation. It will certainly bring all these four elements together in a way nothing else can. And I don’t know about you, but I cannot think of a better way to align the organisational objectives with those of the employees than employee ownership. Can you? So what are you waiting for?