Zealise Blog

Customer Experience Comes from the Hearts of Your People

“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” That quote from Simon Sinek caught my attention this week. It seems so obvious. Yet the majority of our customer experience tells us that it an extremely rare phenomenon. You don’t need any employee engagement statistics to tell you that the vast majority of people either do not love their jobs or the organisation they work for.

That is why a great customer experience stands out brighter than a comet flashing across the night sky. Let me share a story about what I mean.

Organisational Development is about Your People

Where do you fit on the chart below?

People Matter: My Vision

I see a day when all people of all nations will rise up and live their life to their fullest potential.

I see a time when people will no longer allow work to be a four-letter word and something to balance with life, but will value it as a vital, integral part of their life.

I see a world where work is not a bind but an opportunity for every person to celebrate the uniqueness of their being and the way they express who they are.

I see that each and every person will recognise their work as their contribution to humankind and make it a focal point of their lives. And that, as they do so, they will strive to maximise what they give and, in the process, optimise who they are.

I see that, as people recognise work as part of life and not an adjunct to it, they will regard their work as their business and do everything in their power to make it a successful business that blesses the people it serves as well as themselves.

I see people treating work as part and parcel of what they have to do, not out of compulsion, but simply to be the best they can possibly be; in order that, when their time is up, they can look back with pride.

And I envisage workplaces that recognises people for who they are; that sustain, nurture, encourage and enable them to be their best.

I see workplaces that cease to manage people as a resource and instead improve efficiency by encouraging, enabling and endorsing self-management. I see workplaces that acknowledge people for the assets they are, giving them back their independence and pride, and basking in the better results this brings.

I see workplaces where command is dead and control is a collective responsibility rather than an imposition: where organisations pursue purpose rather than profits at any price.

I see workplaces operating as single teams, where people do not compete, but work to support one another for the common good; of individual, business and the wider world.  

I see this new outlook bringing a new enthusiasm and creating a zeal that makes it all a joy. I see reduced conflict and greater co-operation that makes the world a better place and enhances its chances of survival.

I see you helping to make it happen!

(With acknowledgement to Martin Luther King)

Bay Jordan

Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, a company created to help larger small to large business organisations to properly value their people and thereby inspire them to optimise their self-worth and so engage them that they transform organisational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “The 7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement.”

People Matter: The Mantra of Leaders

“We JUST need to engage our heads and our hearts in a leadership process that validates the worth of every individual. Where everybody matters.” (My emphasis) What do you make of that statement? Do you agree?

You will not be surprised that I do. It comes from a Bob Chapman TedTalk that I found incredibly inspiring and I thoroughly recommend that you take 22 minutes to listen for yourself. Here is the link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn-lIEv1LU&feature=youtu.be A key takeaway is the phrase, “Everybody Matters.”

The conviction that people matter is the distinguishing characteristic of most truly great leaders and “people matter” should be the mantra for all aspiring leaders. Perhaps that is what is wrong with modern leaders. They focus on measurements, with money as the key measure, and not on people.

How red tape strangles employee engagement

My apologies to my devoted fans (you know who you are LOL) for being late with this week’s blog. I hope you will forgive me when I explain how this came about (and not want to strangle me!)

We are providing a training course for a large global client. They are running the course in a central European country, with the majority of the delegates coming from that country, but including some from other European countries. Nothing unusual there, but ...

How to be a Real Leader

“The goal of leadership is producing servants.” What do you make of that statement – a recent article headline? Do you agree?

For me it encapsulates everything that is wrong with our approach to leadership. Let me explain why.

How to Escape the “War for Talent”

Are you familiar with the “War for Talent”? Worse still; are you caught up in it?  Recruiting and retaining people with the right skills to ensure, maintain and sustain the success of their business may be the number one concern of many CEOs. Only last week I read a headline, “70% of CEOs say they cannot find the right talent.”  Don’t you be drawn into this ‘phoney’ war. 

The term “War for Talent” was coined by Steve Hankin of McKinsey and Company in 1997, which means it has been around for nearly 20 years now. That is certainly testament to the catchy headline it makes. Yet it referred only to a likelihood of an increasingly competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining people as employees. So what you need to ask is, “How likely is this scenario?”

Why Human Capital Accounting is Becoming Imperative

“Something fundamental is afoot – and it’s structural rather than cyclical. In other words it is not a blip.” That’s according to the October 2014 issue of “Management Today.” In an article entitled “The Disappearing PLC”, it highlights the fact that, since the Wall Street high in 1997, public listings have declined 50% in the USA and UK, 23% in Europe, and 5% in Asia. So what are the implications of this?

How to Inspire the Right Attitude

Employee engagement is, essentially, a matter of attitude. Think about it for a moment. What you are looking for in employee engagement, is employees who are enthusistic, energetic, and enterprising. All of those are states of mind, which collectively you can call ‘attitude’.

This means that efforts to create employee engagement are fundamentally efforts to create the ‘right’ attitude.

But attitude is innate. It comes from inside the individual. This means it is not something you can invoke, instil and insist upon. So you cannot create it. At best you can only inspire it. So how do you do that?

Revealed: The Link between Purpose and Powerful Employee Engagement

Purpose is fundamental to stainability and success, but is all too often neglected. It never should be. Let’s take a closer look and see why.