"Thank God it’s Friday" is the mantra of the disengaged workforce. Worldwide hordes of employees are unhappy in their jobs. According to Gallup (Gallup Poll, 2005) the annual financial loss in the
Research on the happiness in the workplace shows there is direct correlation between employees' happiness and the financial performance of the corporation. When the employee derives meaning out of her job, her happiness and performance rise.
Aligning the objectives and values of the employees with those of the company has alchemic effects: employee's productivity and overall well-being improves, as well as that of the corporation. Can your company jump start this virtuous cycle?
Age of Disengagement
Attracting and retaining talent is the common corporate challenge in the new millennium. Cyclical and structural factors are now aligned in a new and alarming way, creating clear conditions for a talent war:
· The first baby boomers are retiring and the working population is shrinking
· Productivity improvements are flattening out
· The big surge in workforce participation for women seems to be over. Indeed, for new mothers, workforce participation is actually going down
· Unemployment is very low
· Imported talent and outsourcing grows by the minute
Not surprisingly, employers are growing concerned about these increasing talent constraints. A talent war has been declared!
Without disregarding the profound negative impact of high staff turnover (recruitment cost, opportunity cost, brain drain, drop on productivity), there is another less obvious challenge to the talent war. It is not enough to only attract and retain talent, but also to retain engaged talent. When employees are actively or partially disengaged, their productivity drops and the whole culture around them becomes negative, preventing innovation and growth. The companies that find the means to engage the enthusiasm and professionalism of their people will undoubtedly supersede their competitors. That is their edge in the global economy. These companies recognize that talent is not only important, but is the key competitive advantage in today's marketplace.
Today's new breed of professionals has little to do with the previous one. New hires cannot be managed without understanding them first. They are highly educated, independent thinkers, with unlimited access to information across the world. They are extremely creative individuals, with less regard for authority and a powerful world-wide network. It is expected that people of this new generation will experience up to 7 career changes in their lifetime. To attract, retain, engage and develop this new breed of professionals will take many of us out our comfort zone.
The Gallup Management Journal conducted a study among US employees. They studied the perceptions of the effect that happiness and well-being had on job performance. According to James Clifton, CEO and chairman of Gallup Organization, in the
- Just 25% of all employees are actively engaged
- 55% are disengaged
- 20% of these are actively disengaged
Disengaged employees are not necessarily negative or positive about their employer. They are passive. They attend, they participate...they are passionless timekeepers. A new term has been coined to describe them: bored-out. They could be engaged, if their personal purpose were aligned with that of their employer.
The actively disengaged employees show their disagreement with their work, employer, colleagues, the entire world… They criticize, destroy and undermine the accomplishments of their engaged colleagues.
Engaged employees are builders. They want to build their careers and their company. They are aware of their talents and strengths and want to use them at work every day. They consistently perform at high levels. They work with passion, and they are emotionally connected with their employer: it is their company. They are creative and transformational.
Taking the
| In the second half of the 20th century a new society of individuals emerged—a breed of people unlike any the world has ever seen. Educated, informed, traveled, they work with their brains, not their bodies. They do not assume that their lives can be patterned after their parents' or grandparents'. Throughout human history, the problem of identity was settled in one way—I am my mother's daughter; I am my father's son. But in a discontinuous and irreversible break with the past, today's individuals seek the experiences and insights that enable them to find the elusive pattern in the stone, the singular pattern that is 'me.' " —Shoshana Zuboff & James Maxmin, The Support Economy |
Trends to explain the now and build tomorrow
The latest technological changes have brought dramatic transformation in the global economy, in our organizations and in our lives. Some years ago, companies used to portray the concept of globalization. Now, globalization is each one of us. The individual is the owner of his own brand, his own talent and the limit of his own imagination. To be a leader today is to lead free-agents, to lead CEOs of the Me. Inc. This is extremely challenging. It would be easier to herd cats!
The personal computer has allowed every soul on the planet to generate content in a digital format. Now we can express our creativity, knowledge and insight on a public platform. The web allows us to manipulate content like never before.
After Netscape IPO, the Internet exploded. With the massive investment in Internet companies around the turn of the millennium, the world became wired. The dotcom boom generated a massive fiber optic wiring of the world. The burst of the dotcom bubble did not kill the Internet; it created a new world, an interconnected world.
The last factor in the Internet evolution was telecommunication protocol and standards. They created the computers inter-operability that we now enjoy. The combined ability to generate and share digital content worldwide has changed everything: the way we do business, the way we learn/teach, the way we think, the way we live.
From download to upload
We used to be passive receivers of information. We were handed encyclopedias. Now, it is time to actively generate our content. We share our insights by writing, blogging and vlogging. Prime examples of this active behavior are Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of the world. People around the world are sharing their knowledge. Another example of this is YouTube. From ‘good old days' videos to political videos, from educational to humorous videos, we upload and share our interests. The foreign correspondent job is almost extinct. Now locals are uploading their view on current affairs on diverse websites, including BBC and CNN. We are now the content creators.
From command and control to full transparency
Uploading tremendous amounts of information has generated a transparency unimagined before. Take Google Earth as an example, now you can see your house and that of your friend in
From business rule to the world of the free agent
Before, companies sold a locally-manufactured product or service using a local workforce. Now, individuals can sell to anywhere in the world, a product/service produced from somewhere else, using a workforce composed of employees, outsourcers and clients. A Mexican housewife sells handicrafts that are made in
From money to trust, respect and admiration
We still use money, but we are seeing an increasing number of moneyless transactions. Some of these transactions are based on talent exchange. Some of them are facilitated by the Internet, with house-swapping and bartering of public speaking services in exchange for graphic design services.
Purposefully building the Age of Creativity
The world has changed around us. We were sleeping. We did not notice. We were busy with our to-do lists and reacting to the way things have always been. Now it is time to wake up to the reality that, in order to be a leader in the 21st century, we need to unlearn the behaviors and practices that used to be effective. The old systems for staff retention and growth no longer work; they no longer inspire talented people to put their creativity at the service of the corporation. These systems are not only useless, they are hazardous.
1. From top-down to organic / gain respect by giving it
Now the leader is not the almighty one. The leader is an inspiration, a context builder. The new leader knows that she cannot legislate a high-performing culture with just mission statements. She knows that engagement grows organically, one person, one team, at a time. The employee engagement strategy should be shared with other managers and leaders, enabling the level of engagement to grow in an organic manner.
The new leader is not an expert; she connects the dots for the experts. She puts together the expertise of her team to the service of her company, her customers and her entire network. Her team respects her, because she respects them. People recognize genuine respect; they cannot be tricked by a utilitarian pat on their shoulder. The new leader must authentically respect and admire her staff. She will do so because she's focused on their strengths. She sees the strengths of each one of the members of her team, of each one of the members of her network.
2. Focus: learn the art of selective action / Wow projects
Busyness is dangerous. Doing too many things has brought us stress, heart attacks, ulcers, divorces, suicides. A stressed leader is not inspirational, because she cannot listen. When a leader cannot listen, she cannot connect to the desires, ideas and intentions of others.
Busyness is useless. We don't need to do all that we think we need to do! Some actions don’t have to be taken. Some e-mails don't have to be read, let alone answered. Some meetings do not have to happen. Some projects should not happen. So many reorganizations have brought less and less efficiency, increased staff turnover and destroyed company's value. They can be a cumulative waste of time/life to all participants.
Busyness is laziness. We need to make a conscious effort to clean up our to-do list. We need to ask ourselves can that action could be eliminated completely…can it be outsourced, delegated, automated? Outsourcing stimulates the global economy and global entrepreneurship. Delegating develops skills by presenting challenges. Automating increases efficiency.
You are a leader. Your mission is to inspire, to motivate. It is time to develop beautiful systems, WOW projects, and meaningful products! In the new economy, success is about Inspiration! Creativity! Imagination! Beauty! Choose your projects carefully. Chose your actions carefully. Choose just one action per day that will support this objective. Make sure your do it and forget about time management.
4. Passion and talent-oriented
It is impossible to engage people with money, courses, corporate dinners, corporate parties; these ways are all rather cosmetic ways of trying to instill a deeper meaning. To really engage people, the leader has to understand what makes them tick. The leader must be very aware of the needs and capabilities of her team.
A disengaged employee is a liability for the company. Any investment in them is pure waste. To engage them is critical. The leader should strive to align the passion and talent of each individual to that of the company. Usually people are good at several things, they have several talents. However, they are only passionate about some of them. When talent and passion comes together, you have magic! When you can assign your team members to positions/roles where their talent and passion meet the job requirements, you will have full engagement, full commitment, innovation and creativity!
5. Mash expertise / bring something extra / weird is good
This age is not for experts. This age is for people who are able to connect the dots. Leonardo Da Vinci was actually built for today's environment. He is the perfect example of connecting the dots. He had many titles: painter, sculptor, musician and even scientist and engineer.
Unlikely combinations are the name of the game. Let's take Steve Jobs. After dropping out of college, he took calligraphy lessons. He loved the different fonts and appreciated the details – the small differences between each font and the beauty of the closeness between characters. Appling his previous knowledge of calligraphy to personal computing was what made Apple computers so successful.
To be a leader in this new age, we need to bring something extra. We need to nourish our imagination through art and creativity. We need to add value by mashing unlikely specialties.
6. Learn how to learn, teach how to learn
All the changes that we have been experiencing in the past 100 years are nothing in comparison to what we will be experiencing in the coming 100 years. The speed of change will only accelerate. We can no longer stick to our old knowledge, our old patterns, and our old paradigms. We need to continuously update our knowledge and our behaviors. Learning is the solution. We need to learn to observe and connect the dots, without outside input. We need to learn to think for ourselves and not be overwhelmed with the massive amount of data we have at our disposal. The only way to deal with this is to learn how to learn.
7. Be a good collaborator
The transactions of the future will rely less and less on money. We will buy and sell trust. We will buy and sell admiration. The only way to survive in that environment is to learn how to collaborate, to share, to connect with others. Join a non-profit organization or a club. If there isn’t an organization that you would like to join, create one! A simple cooking club can teach you the recipe on how to collaborate. This is a network economy; you need to be connected, both locally and globally.
8. Develop the art of selective hearing
In today's world there is a tremendous amount of data available. It is not easy to distinguish between information and white noise. A new leader must be able to identify the difference between the two. Fasting from the TV, newspaper, radio and e-mail are my favorite recommendations for distancing ourselves from white noise before we select what we want to pay attention to. The ability to focus our attention is liberating and inspiring and is an extremely useful quality in today's leaders.
The world of business is rapidly evolving and we have to pick up our pace in order to stay ahead. Our willingness to disregard the ways of old, to adapt to the new and to offer creative solutions for the future are what make us valuable leaders to our company and our team.
