Reducing Fear in a Human Organization
Economic cycles come and go (thankfully for those of us living through the current challenges!). Based on who you believe, these cycles are caused by politics, Wall Street bankers, demographic change, corporate greed, growing global influences, the whims of Warren Buffet and/or Bill Gates or some combination of the above orchestrated by an evil consortium of naughty world leaders. Personally, I think it’s some mixture of this list minus the naughty world leaders.
When economic times are difficult, people react in fairly predictable ways. The most common reaction is fear. Fear impacts us in complex ways and is generally a damaging emotion. On occasion, fear can serve a positive purpose – it can motivate and focus us – but it only works for short periods of time and is generally a bad motivational tool because people will do all they can to avoid putting themselves in fearful situations. The current economic situation is especially tough because we can’t know when things will get better and we’re not sure how we’ll be impacted going forward.
Fear can be reduced at work when employees have an understanding of what is expected of them and how those expectations translate to success for themselves and for the company. One of the tools that can be used to clarify expectations in the workplace is a Recognition and Reward System that is designed to cover all job descriptions in the organization. So, while there still may be general economic uncertainty outside the walls of the company, within the sphere of what an individual can control there can be confidence that doing good work leads to a positive outcome. When a well-designed RRS is in place, fear is reduced and people are put in a position to be happier and more productive.
Recognition and Reward Systems as a Tactic
Organizations have Employee Engagement strategies that contain many components – compensation, benefits, job description, physical environment, culture, learning management, recognition and reward… All of these components are created in the context of where the organization wants to go and what current business circumstances will allow. Yes – there is a strategy for each of these employee engagement ingredients, but the ingredients by themselves will not solve for much – they have to operate in conjunction with everything else in order to have impact.
The RRS is a big deal and can have a significant impact on employee behaviors and, ultimately, organizational engagement. But it’s not THE deal – it’s an interesting and high profile tactical tool. As you evaluate your RRS, it’s critical that you consider your organization’s engagement strategy. It can be fun and seductive to create a really cool RRS that has lots of bells and whistles – but if it doesn’t support where your company is headed, that really cool program might be a bust.
Engaging Young Leaders in Herat, Afghanistan
I recently traveled to Herat, Afghanistan to work with young leaders in that community. Most of the work involved teaching
leadership principles and conflict resolution. Apart from that, I spent some time with individuals and small groups discussing business specific issues. The people I worked with were a mix of recent university graduates, business executives, managers and academic leaders. It was fun getting to know them and to work on issues that were important to them and to the area where they live.
Three pictures tell the story of the trip
I experienced a great deal of shared interests between me and the students I worked with. Immediately diving in to important issues came naturally and, though there were differences of opinion at times, the differences were enlightening and added to the group’s experience. Because of the cultural differences, everyone had to make the effort to engage in a discussion that was different than normal – initially uncomfortable, ultimately rewarding.
A Taliban terrorist group exploded a bomb outside a building occupied by an Italian organization doing relief work in the area. It happened to be just a few doors down from where we were working and living. People were killed and injured and it was awful to experience. I couldn’t get over the contrast in what the group I was involved in was doing and the destruction that was being created, literally, next door.
Even after the craziness of “bomb day”, the students we were working with still wanted to meet and, by the next day, we were able to find a venue that worked well enough to continue and complete the week’s work. Somewhere in this crowd, perhaps, is the future leadership that can help this part of the world stabilize. It’s impossible to know what will happen with these individuals and with their country – but where there is willingness to engage in discussion and to stretch individual perspectives, there is hope that positive change can occur.
The Power of Symbolic Recognition
I’m a proud Dallas Mavericks fan and I’m thrilled to see them win their first NBA Championship. I loved seeing the drive and the emotion that the Mavs players had throughout the playoffs – these are very highly paid professionals but, clearly, they were playing for much more than money. The Mavs owner – Mark Cuban – is famous for…well…doing things differently. He’s had huge success following that path and I’m not surprised that he’s thinking about doing something different than the traditional Championship Ring. Based on what his players are saying, Mark might want to reconsider… Here’s an excerpt from this morning’s Fort Worth Star Telegram –
DALLAS — Mark Cuban is toying with the idea of giving his players something else other than a ring as a memento for winning this year’s NBA championship.
The only problem is: His players and coaches want a ring.
“We’ve got to talk to him about that,” forward Dirk Nowitzki said. “I don’t think the last word has been spoken yet. He always wants to do something different, wants to do something bigger, but the ring is just so classic.”
The Dallas Mavericks and coach Rick Carlisle said if Cuban wants to give them something else — including the ring — they’ll accept it. But if they had their druthers, the ring is what turns them on.
“As a player and a historian of the game, you want the ring,” guard Jason Terry said. “You look at the Sports Illustrated cover of Bill Russell holding those (11 championship) rings, you see Phil Jackson’s (11 championship rings). You want that ring; that means a lot. “That’s the thing that you go to your grave with.”
If the players and coaches get a vote of the ring issue, Cuban would be out-voted by a landslide.
“I think I would vote for a ring,” Nowitzki said. “I’m a man. I don’t know how I’ll feel about a bracelet. So I’d rather go with the ring.”
Mavericks players wouldn’t step on the court without being well compensated. But once that box was checked, they focused on competing to win an NBA Championship. And now they want the symbol of that accomplishment.
When you’re designing your organization’s Recognition and Reward System, don’t forget to create symbolic awards that will tell the story of the achievement over and over.
As Jason Terry said, “That’s the thing that you go to your grave with”
A Picture of Maslow
I took this photo while leaning out a car window during a business trip to Kurdistan (Northern Iraq).
I like to ride bikes and, generally, notice fellow cyclists wherever I happen to be (though I don’t always take pictures of them…creepy…). This shot happened because I was shocked when I saw cyclists in Kurdistan that looked like the guys I ride with in the states. People ride bikes for transportation all over the world – but guys in lycra on high end racing bikes? That tells me something different…
I wasn’t paying attention to the background when I took the photo, but it’s clearly new construction – which I’ve seen all over Erbil. So what’s significant about a lycra clad peloton riding past new construction in Northern Iraq? This…
When safety is assured and relative prosperity is in place (food, shelter, sustaining income, defined community) people will look to personal interests in their search for individual significance.
Five years ago, this shot could not have been taken in this area because of armed conflict, little economic activity and horrid roads. Currently, this part of Iraq is experiencing political stability and an economic boom and the population is enjoying an opportunity they’ve not seen in decades – the opportunity for free self-expression of personal interests. The opportunity won’t come without the pain of transformational effort – it’s much easier to build structures and buy bikes than it is to engage people and maintain the momentum that sustains growth – but guys in lycra and new construction tell me that things are looking pretty good in this part of Iraq.
There’s a message here for any organization. It’s a great “culture check” to scan the people you work with and see what they’re doing with their lives. Companies want their people to be engaged at work and people are more likely to be engaged at work if they are happy outside work. Common sense? Sure, but consider what an organization can do to add to an individual’s work experience that may enable greater overall life enjoyment. Flex hours? A well designed Recognition and Reward System? Greater personal control of how work gets done? There’s a long list of possibilities, but anything a company can do to acknowledge individual’s desire to lead holistic lives is fair game.
Be purposeful about creating an environment that not only enables efficient work but also accommodates non-work interests. When you do that, your people will feel the freedom to live “whole lives” and you’ll gain from greater levels of individual engagement.
Warren Holmgreen
This is me and a new friend – Warren Holmgreen.
My wife, Catherine, and I met Warren when we stopped for a burger while on vacation in the Texas Hill Country. Warren drove up in a blast of gravel and dust – both in ample supply at the joint where we stopped – hopped out of his van and walked in to order his burger and fries. Catherine and I were sitting outside and I noticed the slogan on the side of his van, “I Sharpen Anything That Cuts”. I challenge you to create a more perfectly succinct elevator pitch.
As it happens, Warren was in the mood to sit outside as well and soon took a seat a few tables away from us. When you’re in a small town in Texas, you just talk to people – so we talked to Warren.
Pretty quickly, he moved his meal over to our table and continued telling a series of stories that were some of the most interesting I’ve ever heard. Warren is sort of a walking book (maybe 50 pages or so), so I’ll hit the highlights and then close with what struck me most:
- Born and raised in far south Texas
- Grew up in a musical family and sang with his mom
- WW II B-24 pilot
- Post war pilot trainer
- Held down various jobs while raising 4 kids
- After the kids were out of the house, he traveled the country in a trailer with his wife working for insurance companies as an adjuster.
A while back, Warren’s wife got sick and they needed to stop traveling. To continue to earn a living, Warren went back to a skill he learned while growing up around his dad’s machine shop – knife sharpening. He’s got all the tools he needs in his van and he travels to his Hill Country clients (mostly restaurants) and quickly sharpens the tools of their trade. You’ve probably figured out that Warren is closer to the end of his career than the beginning (by the way, he’s the guy on the right in the above pic). He’s actually 86 and still works full time.
Here’s the cool thing – Warren has always liked to sing. Instead of telling us about it, he just started singing as we sat on the porch of the burger joint in Waring, Texas. He belted out a Harry Connick, Jr song, “The Man in the Moon is Smiling”. Not just a few bars…the whole song. Turns out he’s taking his “music box” and going to sing for a group of folks that live in Fredericksburg at a place that Warren called, “the old folks home”. It’s the first time he’s performed in public (I guess not counting his impromptu song for my wife and me) and he’ll be doing it the week of the one year anniversary of his wife’s passing.
When I’ve reached the number of years on this earth that Warren has, I hope I still look at life with the perspective he has – hopeful, engaging, aggressive and fun.
5/11 Edit… Here’s a segment of a note I got from Warren after I shared this post with him…
I had no idea I had an inspirational bone in my body, but I learned long ago that “attitude is everything” and I guess that is why I make friends easily. I also believe I know what love is….probably the most valuable realization of my life, in my opinion. I enjoyed our brief meeting very much.
God Bless, Warren
Re-Defining the “McJob”
McDonald’s is hiring – 50,000 people – in one day.
Definition of MCJOB : a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement (Webster’s)
McDonald’s catches a lot of flak for different reasons – that happens when you’re the market leader in your space – but they’re making a strong statement about their employment proposition and I think good things will happen. McDonald’s is putting a lot of effort into communicating the value of working in their restaurants and raising the perception of what it means to work there. Of course, in any organization, the effort has to be sincere and the promises made pre-hire, whether specific or implied, need to match the experience post-hire; otherwise things can fall apart. I bet McDonald’s gets this part right…
Here’s a link to the career page on McDonald’s website. I think they are very clear about what they offer and how employees benefit. It is especially interesting to see the percentage of their current restaurant managers as well as their franchisees that came from “MCJOB” ranks (75% and 50% respectively). Jan Fields, President of McDonald’s US, started her career in a McDonald’s restaurant making french fries
http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/careers/working_here.html
The Miller Company will be going to lunch at our local McDonald’s tomorrow to support the effort. We thought it was cool that they’re being purposeful about communicating why working at McDonald’s can be a very good thing and we wish them well…
We’ll see people being hired – some of them may be the future leaders of McDonalds.
Recruiting Grit
This weekend’s story in the Wall Street Journal made me wonder how organizations evaluate the level of “grit” within employees. Grit, defined by Webster, is “firmness of mind or spirit with unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger”. According to the article, success rates of long term objectives depend more on grit than on talent. Well, cool…but how does an organization identify grit? If it can be identified, how do you recruit it?
Here’s my take -
By far, the two most important things organizations look for when hiring are talent and a track record: What can a person do? What have they accomplished and how will that accomplishment transfer to success at a new company? Unlike the disclaimer in your financial adviser’s e-mails, I actually do think that past performance is the greatest predictor of future success. Those two things are fairly easy to establish by evaluating resumes, checking references and performing tests. Beyond talent and track record, there’s an effort to establish “cultural fit” which is a little more subjective, but can have a battery of tests associated with it as well. Once talent, track record and cultural fit are solved for, is there anything else that can be done to determine how someone will perform for your company? As far as the hiring process, I’d suggest this is about all that can be accomplished. What about grit?
I don’t think companies choose gritty people quite so much as the right kind of people choose to be gritty for companies worth the effort.
What is your company doing to ensure that the right amount of grit is being applied by all that talent you spent so much time and money identifying? Are your on-boarding practices strong? Is your work environment healthy? When people perform well, are they rewarded? Do individuals know how they win?
Getting this right is the difference between engaging talented people and hiring employees with talent.
Limitless Engagement
I went to see the new movie, “Limitless”, with Bradley Cooper. It’s a really fun show with a great cast and an interesting plot. If you’re a movie fan at all, you’ve already heard the gist of the story line – Cooper’s character takes a pill that allows him to access 100% of his brain capacity. The pill by itself doesn’t impart new knowledge or change his character – it just enables the use of every piece of information he’s ever absorbed as well as instant mastery of new information. To the people he encounters in the movie, he comes across as incredibly smart and wildly talented.
As I watched the movie, I caught myself thinking, “How cool would it be to be that smart and that talented!”. After the buzz of enjoying the movie was over and I reflected on the messages in the show, I found myself feeling a little guilty because I know I have capacity that others either don’t know about or rarely see and I know I can contribute much more to the life experience of other people within my sphere of influence.
I’m pretty certain there’s no real life pill out there that can duplicate the movie experience – so until that pill is discovered, I have to make choices about personal engagement as well as how I contribute to engagement levels in my workplace and the other environments where I interact with people. I’ll never get to 100% engagement like the movie portrayed, but I can contribute more.
Individuals make choices about how much to engage in a given situation and companies would do well to keep that in mind. Here’s a short list of things organizations should consider as they work toward creating an engaging environment:
- Is the business model current and valued in the marketplace and is there a vision regarding the future communicated to employees?
- Do you know what kind of people succeed within your organization?
- Is the physical environment conducive to getting work done?
- Do people know what they are supposed to do and do they have the skills to do it?
- When employees perform well, will they be rewarded and recognized appropriatley?
There are reasons (some obvious and some not so much) why answers to these questions matter and the list goes on a bit, but you can see the direction. Companies that remove all the possible barriers to employee engagement will be attractive to people that are trying to achieve their potential. Sounds like a limitless situation to me.
“But I Gave You a Keychain”
Misadventures in recruiting and onboarding!
Engagement doesn’t result from appropriately timed gifts. It’s the result of a stimulating culture within an organization that tells them why what they did matters.
Hopefully, this video doesn’t remind you too much of your own office! But, if it does, laughter is the best medicine, right?
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