Mistaken or not, how easy to see that over 2000 years ago 3 royal scholars/astrologers/scientists would have been compelled to see what such a vision pointed to.

In a world of an imploding America, and Arab Spring that still cracks hearts and sidewalks, and a Europe at the edge of its biggest challenge since the second world war, how does one not seek a guiding star?

The great unifying visions of the human race have lead to so much suffering. Having found our star, or our interpretation of that star’s . . . → Read More: We Could Use an Orient Star]]> Share/Bookmark

Comet Lovejoy - Lester Barnes

Prima Facie

Mistaken or not, how easy to see that over 2000 years ago 3 royal scholars/astrologers/scientists would have been compelled to see what such a vision pointed to.

In a world of an imploding America, and Arab Spring that still cracks hearts and sidewalks, and a Europe at the edge of its biggest challenge since the second world war, how does one not seek a guiding star?

Verso

The great unifying visions of the human race have lead to so much suffering. Having found our star, or our interpretation of that star’s message, it seems our next instinct is to define those who experience the vision differently as ‘other’. And the enemy.

Hundreds of thousands of years of defining and protecting our species, our tribes, villages, clans, and families, have lead to first coagulate and calcify the story of the vision, and then violently defend that story against all others who saw it differently.

If there is a moral arrow, and I believe there is, then will the day come when we experience a vision like this, and then instinctively weave the creation of its story into something entirely new?

We will know that story is entirely new and entirely right when it clearly undergoes two transformations: it atomizes and becomes a singularly unique story for each and every soul that absorbs it, providing 360 degrees of orientation; those millions of perspectives all reconnect instead of splintering and dividing, providing a truly universal story of healing and new direction.

Utterly utopian, I know.

I’ll keep my eye on the evening sky.

You want the wheels on your car aligned. When the wheels are even a little bit out of alignment, the ride is uncomfortable, the wear on tires and other parts goes up, and the vehicle works less efficiently. When the wheels are critically out of alignment the ride is unbearable, and your safety is at risk.

When things that matter in your business and your life are not in alignment:

What are you selling?

If nothing, then you are not in business. If only commodities, then you won’t be in business for long.

“But wait,” you say “I am a service provider. I don’t sell commodities. So I guess I’m safe.”

Sorry. A service alone is still a commodity. In the brave new world of social business, anything is a commodity to the extent to which it is a) a transaction that consists only of the exchange of a good or service for money, and b) reproducible in every important way.

So a service which is repeated over . . . → Read More: The Social Market: Relationships, Stories, and Desire]]> Share/Bookmark

What are you selling?

If nothing, then you are not in business. If only commodities, then you won’t be in business for long.

“But wait,” you say “I am a service provider. I don’t sell commodities. So I guess I’m safe.”

Sorry. A service alone is still a commodity. In the brave new world of social business, anything is a commodity to the extent to which it is a) a transaction that consists only of the exchange of a good or service for money, and b) reproducible in every important way.

So a service which is repeated over and over again, where the narrative arc ends completely when money changes hands, and which can be replicated by any competent professional the world over, is a commodity. And commodities have no place in the social marketplace.

The antonym of ‘commodity’ in this paradigm, is ‘experience’.

An experience in the context of social business, begins before the customer comes into direct contact with the business, and lasts long after the core transaction has taken place. And each experience is unique.

An experience is the product of a unique interaction between equal players. In the social market, the focus is on the unique relationship between the buyer, the seller, and the environment. That particular relationship cannot be reproduced and is becoming the new USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Social tools, especially those focusing on place (like FourSquare or Facebook Places) create the opportunity to customize interactions for both the buyer and the seller.

An experience is a story. The traditional models of acquisition and retention are losing their definition. Through digital social channels, we become aware of brands long before we click a link or walk through their doors. We are made aware of them through the conversations of those we trust, through targeted ads, and through the directed stream of data that flows around us. Sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and the shaped offerings and reviews from sites like Amazon provide a near-global conversation about brands, which those brands can participate in, but not control. At mid-transaction, the story continues as business and consumer exchange information, and successful businesses attempt to create a remarkable experience with each visit or purchase. Then after the sale, the digital threads connecting consumer and business remain sticky and elastic. Follow-up, follow-through, return-incentives, and CRM all lose their distinct post-purchase roles and flow backwards and forwards to sustain the relationship and the experience of the brand for as long as possible.

In the social market, desire becomes more nuanced. In 20th century marketing, brands would try to speak to our desires for acceptance, status, fulfillment. But the whole experience had a tawdry one-night-stand feel to it. As soon as you purchased that object of desire: the house, the nicer car, the bigger TV, something akin to post-coital depression set in until the credit-fueled dance of desire started again, focused on a new fetish. In the social market, the seductions still continue, but there is nuance and a deeper commitment. Apple probably understands this better than any other brand. The combination of beautiful objects and a tribal-cliquey sense of being part of a special community is masterfully handled by Apple. Our desires remain, and brands will still seek to fulfill them, but the pace must be slower. The nature of the fulfillment must be richer. As Apple knows, it can’t just be about stuff any more. And I think it is just the beginning. There are deeper and more subtle desires that brands can connect with and act as partners in fulfilling: the sense of belonging, the sense of making a real difference in our communities and globally, a spiritual dimension… In my memory, the Body Shop perhaps best understood and exploited (not necessarily in a bad sense) this. But they were before their time. Lululemon is close. But there will be many more: successful businesses will find ways to act as partners in shared stories that address our needs and desires, and weave together the social, the commercial, the emotional and spiritual into extended, and profitable, shared experiences.

The experience must be truthful. If there is one thing for which tolerance is evaporating rapidly, it is deception in the market. And sustainable relationships and real experiences cannot be built on lies. It will be interesting to watch as the marketing, PR, and branding universe adjusts to the truth that whatever else consumers will demand, it is… the truth. Punishment for deception will be swift and many times fatal, as the social networks (including many of the consumer rating sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp mentioned above) spread bad news at a speed with a reach we have not seen before.

I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

Business Fundamentals.

Rules.

Each of these disciplines have rules at the heart of them.

So why do I find myself constantly going back there to think and act out of the box? Isn’t getting out of the box, out of the rut, all about breaking the old rules?

No. This is a complete failure of insight. We are not boxed by rules. We are boxed by habits, instincts, and unexamined emotions. One prejudice creates a prison of a box more . . . → Read More: Back to the Middle to Get Outside]]> Share/Bookmark

Information theory. Physics. Classical music & jazz. Monastic orders. The sciences of the brain and cognition. Statistics and probability.

Business Fundamentals.

Rules.

Each of these disciplines have rules at the heart of them.

So why do I find myself constantly going back there to think and act out of the box? Isn’t getting out of the box, out of the rut, all about breaking the old rules?

No. This is a complete failure of insight. We are not boxed by rules. We are boxed by habits, instincts, and unexamined emotions. One prejudice creates a prison of a box more secure than all the laws of physics combined.

Despite the popular conception that the ‘box’ is the world of rules, order and structure, it is the opposite. The box is our emotions, instincts, and habits… all the stuff we are supposed to ‘get in touch with’ to get out of the box. It is a box of comfort. The box is not really a box at all. It is a groove, a deep groove of habits of thought and actions, made deep by our going over the same ground again and again.

The best way to get out of the box is a reality check. A real-ity check: a return to the world prior to, and impervious to, our assumptions and prejudices.

This is why even a cursory understanding of the laws of thermodynamics or probability trumps ‘common sense’. This is why learning to read a statement of cash flows is more valuable than reading one more woowoo pop psychology The Secret of Blah Blah Blah Success book. This is why understanding that you multiply two unrelated probabilities (for example the probability that you will have an opening for an employee next month, and the probability that some great talent will walk through your door looking for a job), that you don’t add them, is more valuable than clinging to the law of attraction. It is why understanding the Pareto distribution is more powerful and freeing than $1000′s in inspirational speakers.

The next time someone says: “we need think outside the box,” notice what happens next. If it is some kind of pseudo-brainstorm group-think  exercise, or even worse, the not-laws of The Secret, then all you are going to get is new layers of crud built on old layers of crud. In a weird MC Escher-like journey you will think you are making forward progress, when you will only find yourself exactly back where you started… less the energy you had when you started (check out the laws of thermodynamics for why that happens).

On the other hand, if the “getting out of the box” exercise begins with someone reaching for a giant scraper, to scrape away the layers of unexamined assumptions and habits, while saying something like “Let’s get back to fundamentals and rebuild,” then you know you have a hope of getting out of that box.

 Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

So really, are we too busy? Too distracted? Have we lost something important that we once had?

Reading What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction Of . . . → Read More: Give it a Rest. Downtime and Productivity]]> Share/Bookmark

It has become a truism that many of us are too busy.

My trouble is that every time I hear a pronouncement like that I feel my feet cleaving and two little bumps pushing through my skull just at the hairline. The urge to advocate for the devil becomes strong.  For example, when I hear someone say we should all be seeking balance in our lives I get like that… but that’s another article.

So really, are we too busy? Too distracted? Have we lost something important that we once had?

Reading What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction Of Deep Thinking And Sacred Space on Fast Company reminded me of this important question.

In this case the answer (unlike the persistent question about balance) is yes. We are losing something. The loss is measurable, as are the impacts.

Especially as managers and leaders we need time to think. And not just any time. Time where we are free for an uninterrupted period of time to think without a particular goal or objective.

Reflections on Thinking Time

• Interruptions cost. There is a growing body of evidence that shows that every time we are interrupted in a task, the brain requires 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to recover. So when someone bugs you for “just a minute” they are actually costing you at least 10 minutes of productive time. And that multiplier gets larger as we get older.
• The more you direct your brain, the less real problem solving it can do. The best way to approach a complex problem is to spend a significant amount of time studying it and then walking away. I would say “put it out of your mind” but that is actually the opposite of what really happens. When we really focus on a problem we are using certain parts of our brain. When you let go of the problem, it doesn’t go out of your mind at all; it sinks deeper. Now the rest of the brain can do its job without you micromanaging it. Sleep on it, go for a run, take a long shower, meditate, do something where your mind can wander. There is a famous story of August Kekulé and his discovery of structure of the benzene molecule. After enormous amounts of research and thought, the solution occurred to Kekulé as he was daydreaming. The image of a snake with its tail in its mouth passed through Kekulé’s mind and he realized in that moment that the solution he had been seeking was a ring structure. Kekulé was not in his lab when this solution occurred to him, he was riding a horse-drawn omnibus.
• You really can’t be on all the time. Not only is it not a good idea, you literally can’t. There is a lot of evidence that shows that the brain, especially in its executive functioning (that’s the decision-making stuff that goes on largely at the front of the brain), has limited resources. The longer you hammer away at a problem, the more you reduce your brain’s capacity to solve any problem at all. That is not to say that extended periods of focused thinking is not productive. Given enough rest (including mental rest, or as we like to call it ‘spacing out’) we can work at a problem for quite a long time. But if you try to do that for one problem after another, making tough decisions all day long, the quality of those decisions will deteriorate. Throw in fatigue and interruptions, and you can see where this is going.

Find Space to Think

As a leader or a manager, you owe it to your organization and your team to make the best decisions you can. How do you do that? Here are six tips:

1. Set aside time each day to think. Put it right in your calendar. This is not a ‘left over’ activity to cram in spaces after other things are done. Even 20 minutes a day can make a difference. Go for a walk. Close the door to your office. Head to a local coffee shop. Put your work down, and get out of your normal work space.
2. Turn off digital distractions. You can’t always stop people from interrupting you. But email inbox bells, smartphone bleeps, social media alerts… all of those can be turned off.
3. Sleep. Get as close to eight hours as you can. Don’t be afraid to nap when the opportunity presents itself.
4. Drive in silence. I love listening to the CBC or to audio books on my longer drives to meet with clients. But I also enjoy driving in silence. Often I will even turn my Bluetooth earpiece off.  Some of my best thinking time happens in the car when nothing can distract me.
5. Walk or run. Centuries of common practice, especially in monastic traditions, have taught the value of walking meditation or walking prayer. There is something about the rhythm, the passing landscape, the absence of interruptions, that engenders that deep, undirected and creative thinking like nothing else. Of the three places I think the best: shower, car, and walks or runs, it is the latter that are the best. My only challenge sometimes, is to retain a good idea until I get home!
6. Sometimes technology helps.While one of the biggest culprits in the creation of “thought, interrupted” is digital technology, I sometimes find it a great ally. I use the voice recorder on my phone a lot. I have written before that my favourite tool to use in recording ideas and conversations is my Moleskine notebook.  But when you are stopped at a stoplight or walking through the city, you can’t always take out your notebook and write down an idea. I push a button, record my idea, and let it go. Not only does this help me capture the ideas that might otherwise evaporate, it allows my mind to keep wandering because I am not stressing about forgetting the thought I just had.

Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Recently, a wonderful person on my social media network tweeted this (thank you @promote_it):

So why wasn’t I there?

That question got me thinking again about the things I choose not to do in my business. These are are decisions about ROI for me and for my clients. If you have any thoughts on how you manage your priorities, let me know!

So here’s my list… framed as questions people . . . → Read More: Why Don’t I Go To Tweet-Ups?]]> Share/Bookmark

A while ago I wrote a blog on what I don’t do. Looks like I am going to have to declare a few more things I don’t do.

Recently, a wonderful person on my social media network tweeted this (thank you @promote_it):

So why wasn’t I there?

That question got me thinking again about the things I choose not to do in my business. These are are decisions about ROI for me and for my clients. If you have any thoughts on how you manage your priorities, let me know!

So here’s my list… framed as questions people have asked me.

1. Why don’t I advertise? I’ve tried it, but the ROI consistently sucks. I only carry 10 to 12 full-time private clients at a time and 99% of them have come to me as referrals. Most of the time I am at capacity, or have a waiting list. Direct promotion has worked for me from time to time when offering a workshop in my local community. The most effective tool has been my newsletter.  I work hard to stay in touch, follow through and treat people well. I know my credibility is only as good as my last conversation; that’s where I put my resources.  I have never understood the purpose of the ads I have seen on Facebook and other sites shouting: “Use Our Secret System to Get More Clients!!” I have almost always had all the clients I need, so I guess treating people well, making a difference, and following through, constitute a secret system. Who knew?

2. Why don’t I do webinars? I am sure that webinars work well for some people. Every one I have tried though, pretty much put me to sleep.  It wasn’t always the content, it was the format.  And when I talk to others who have participated in webinars they too speak of secret trips to the bathroom, the fridge, and to scanning Twitter feeds while the Webinar goes on in the background. So I’m not the only one who struggles to stay engaged. I’m not interested in putting hours of work into a presentation, only to have people quietly get up in the middle of it to go fix a sandwich. You know you do it! And again, the ROI is soft. I have the clients I need, I do keynote presentations and workshops, volunteer, and love writing for my blog when I can. Which one do I give up to work on something of unproven value to myself and my clients?

3. Why don’t I go to tweet-ups? Again, I’m sure they are probably a lot of fun. But I have two questions/ thoughts about them:

• I see all social media as a significant but small part of the overall communications/marketing/PR world that I am more interested in. Carol Roth sums up my feelings beautifully here. I am concerned that too much social media activity (including Tweet-ups) is becoming the 21st Century equivalent of medieval scholars arguing about how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin. We need to return social media back to the status of an important but basic tool. I would be a lot more impressed if small business owners threw as much energy into understanding general marketing and profit generating strategies! Why can’t we have “account-ups” or “listening-ups”?
• I make a living helping business owners and professionals establish priorities and commit to them. The priorities I have are supportable and make a difference to my clients and in my own professional life. Which one would I give up to attend things like tweet-ups? Would a tweet-up return the same value as whatever I would have to give up?

You will notice two common threads in my decision-making processes here: ROI and priority management.

They are really the same thing. Every resource, and especially time, is extremely limited, I don’t care who you are. Sustainable success is a consequence of the decisions you make about how you invest those resources. The mix is unique for every person and every business, but what you can’t do is allow every ‘flavour-of-the-month’ to make those decisions for you. Sometimes the most important thing you can say, is ‘no’.

Want to improve your communication with customers, employees, and other stakeholders? I help organizations improve communication, create effective social media & content strategies, and improve management practices.

There’s more! Interested in the fundamentals of running a small business successfully? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

One challenge I have as a coach is supporting my clients in developing lists of priorities that keep their process moving forward, without overwhelming them.

An inspiring article by John Jantsch called The Logistics of Time suggested an interesting approach. In this article, John explores the idea that every business has three clocks it must attend to: Real Time, Deal Time, and Meal Time. While my thinking has deviated from John’s original premise, the basic idea remains the same: that there are three . . . → Read More: Music of the Spheres: A Model for Business Planning Part 1]]> Share/Bookmark

You can’t do everything. So how do you decide where to put your time and energies?

One challenge I have as a coach is supporting my clients in developing lists of priorities that keep their process moving forward, without overwhelming them.

An inspiring article by John Jantsch called The Logistics of Time suggested an interesting approach. In this article, John explores the idea that every business has three clocks it must attend to: Real Time, Deal Time, and Meal Time. While my thinking has deviated from John’s original premise, the basic idea remains the same: that there are three cycles of different duration in a business. John proposed marketing ‘clocks’: real-time monitoring of the environment; relationship-building, converting, and closing deals; and building the long-term security of your meal-ticket by focusing on the deeper work of  your vision, mission, and values.

I have re-framed the concept as three cycles: the current cycle, the growth cycle, and the deep cycle.

I have a life-long interest in music and acoustics, and I see these three cycles as being like sound waves. In acoustics we look at things like frequency, or oscillations per second, and period, the distance between one peak in the wave and the next.  The two are related. A high musical note has a high frequency  (measured in thousands or even tens of thousands cycles per second), and a short period. A mid-frequency wave  (think alto saxophone, or the middle keys of a piano) has slower oscillations (the middle ‘A’ on a piano is 440 cycles per second) and longer periods. In music the notes described as low, or bass notes, are measured in 10’s of cycles. The lowest sound normally audible to humans is about 20 oscillations per second.

I have applied these cycles to business planning. I think of the frequency as the ‘pitch’ or ‘business’ of the activity, and the period as a measure of how far into the future the planning cycle looks.

1. The current cycle encompasses those activities that maintain the operation and deliver on products and services already sold. This cycle includes accounting, operations, logistics, human resources. There is a great deal of repetitive, predictable, and reactive activity. This cycle isn’t sexy, but failure to attend to it, to commit time to its maintenance and tuning, means early and catastrophic failure. The ‘period’ for this cycle is very short: somewhere between hourly and monthly.
2. The growth cycle captures everything that gets the next sale, hires the next employee, or plans for the next equipment upgrade. In this higher-frequency cycle, the focus areas (pricing, networking, promoting, acquiring, evaluating) require more creativity, and imply a greater degree of risk, than the current cycle. The period of the growth cycle is monthly to quarterly.
3. The deep cycle is about the long, slow, deep building that ensures the sustainability of the business. The period of the deep cycle is between 18 months to 5 years.The deep cycle is about building foundations (the lowest note in a harmony is called the fundamental), and planning for significant new directions in the future. This cycle may contribute nothing to current revenues, but is where great leadership makes the greatest impact. The deep cycle is about imagining and envisioning new markets, new services, new methods of delivery, and sometimes entirely new business models.

When a business assigns the right degree of focus and optimum level of resources to each cycle, it creates a harmony (an idea also introduced by John). The question is: what are the optimum levels of focus and resources required by each cycle? What do you think? Thinking in terms of money, time, and human capital, what level of investment is appropriate to each level?

Read Part 2 Here…

I provide support for small to medium-sized businesses in developing growth plans and ensuring execution. I have clients throughout Western Canada. Contact me at clemens@clemensrettich.com

Its not going to get better. Get over it.

When I interview a potential client (I call it “seeing if we can stand to be in the same room together”) one of the things I listen for is conditionals. I listen for things like “When that new employee is fully trained…” or “I just need to get month-end behind me, and then I’ll get my my operations manual done” or “If I can get my line of credit paid down, then I’ll invest in …” When I hear those things, I know I am in . . . → Read More: As Good As it Gets?]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

Its not going to get better. Get over it.

When I interview a potential client (I call it “seeing if we can stand to be in the same room together”) one of the things I listen for is conditionals. I listen for things like “When that new employee is fully trained…” or “I just need to get month-end behind me, and then I’ll get my my operations manual done” or “If I can get my line of credit paid down, then I’ll invest in …” When I hear those things, I know I am in conditional-land and we have work to do.

The first step to dealing with this is to play a game called “Let’s Imagine It’s Not Going to Get Better – Then What?” What if this current reality is as good as it gets? What if ‘good’ or ‘bad’ aren’t even useful words. What if the current mix of the predictable and the chaotic are just the way it is?

Then you realize that more often than not, now is the time to act. And it’s not about time management, it’s about priority management. You can’t manage time. There’ll be 24 hours today, and 7 days this week, no matter how many time management books you read. What you can manage are your priorities. Know what your main goals are for this month, this quarter, this life… and then evaluate how you are spending each moment of each day in relationship to those goals. It’s not that the conditionals are not important. They are. The problem is, there is no sense of where anything fits. There is no sense of what the return is on doing those things rather than something else. And when time is limited to 24 hours, you have to choose.

And its not about balance. A “balanced” life is another verbal trick, like “managing” time. What exactly is it you are balancing? Time? Is your life more ‘right’ when you spend 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours with family, and 8 hours working? That’s pretty balanced. But what if a key relationship needs your focus right now? What if your professional goals need you to put in 14 hours right now? Do you think Wayne Gretsky, Lady Gaga, Nelson Mandela, Wolfgang Puck, Steve Jobs, or Albert Einstein are or were ever ‘balanced’ people? Did they get what they got through careful time-management? Did they wait for things to ‘calm down’ before taking the next big step?

I’m thinking not. I think all those if’s and when’s are just the future tense of shoulda’s and coulda’s. It’s all part of a world of magical thinking where time can be managed and a life can be balanced.

I think it works like this:

1. Through accident or stubborn searching (most likely a mix of both) you zero in on what really matters. For you. That work that energizes you when you are exhausted. That thing you just have to do. That you would do for free if you didn’t need the money. Focus and precision matter here, not balance. As Marcus Buckingham states: genius is precise. Genius does not live in a conditional world of if’s and shoulda’s.
2. Having ‘figured it out’ you spend unbalanced, unhinged amounts of time doing it. You figure out by design and by chance what kinds of practices, decisions, and actions best feed the beautiful monster, and they become your focus every day. They are the things that get done before other things. They become the necessary priorities.
3. At the end of the day, and at the end of your life, you fall into bed exhausted. As the dark pulls around you, you close your eyes knowing you have made a difference.

How do we make that work in our typical lives? When we have children and partners to love and care for? When accidents happen, and we find ourselves bouncing around in a Drunkard’s Walk, sails torn and compass spinning?

I am still working on that, but one thing I believe: conversations matter. Focused, highly tuned conversation where everyone spends as much time listening as speaking. Where everyone listens not only to the words, but the suggestions and hints behind the words, and the unspoken things that lie between the words. In conversations with those we love or trust (ideally both) we find what our genius intends us for. And sometimes we even learn how we are to get there.

In the real world, with obligations and distractions all around us, I believe it is in great conversations that we figure it out.

Clemens provides coaching services for professionals, business owners, and managers. If you are ready to take that next step to become even more successful, send Clemens a message.

Anger is a natural emotion that has its place, but rarely in the workplace. When we respond to injustice, disrespectful behaviour, or threats, anger can be a useful tool. However,  uncontrolled anger or aggression only lead to more conflict and have no place at work or at home.

Some steps in changing aggressive behaviour:

Image by Clarita

How to keep the wheels turning even when you aren’t looking…

The Problem: you want your staff to go the extra mile. You want your team to take some risks. You want your employees to ‘get the big picture’ and do what it takes to make it happen. You want the wheels to stay on the bus even when you aren’t there.

What you want is engagement.

But no one’s buying. If you want something done you have to spell it out in detail, or just give up and get to that ugly . . . → Read More: Perpetual Motion Management]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

How to keep the wheels turning even when you aren’t looking…

The Problem: you want your staff to go the extra mile. You want your team to take some risks. You want your employees to ‘get the big picture’ and do what it takes to make it happen. You want the wheels to stay on the bus even when you aren’t there.

What you want is engagement.

But no one’s buying. If you want something done you have to spell it out in detail, or just give up and get to that ugly “I’ll just do it myself” place of the defeated manager. You feel like every time you turn your back, the wheels come off the bus again.

You’ve got zero engagement.

Engagement is defined by John Gibbons (writing for the Conference Board) as “a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work”. Notice the line from emotional connection to greater discretionary effort.

Discretionary effort is the phrase that describes what every employer wants: for the employee to figure out what is needed for sustainable success, and to do whatever is needed to get there – without anyone standing over their shoulder… Stuff just gets done.

So how do you get your team to this place? What do we require to become fully engaged? In my experience, three things are needed: clarity, hope, and commitment.

Clarity
In his book The One Thing You Need to Know… Marcus Buckingham writes that the one thing you need to know about great leadership is “Discover what is universal, and capitalize on it.” Buckingham tells us that what is universally required of leadership is clarity. Specifically, an optimistic clarity about the future.

We’ll work our hearts out for you if you can make us see with clarity the future we are all headed for.

Leadership is the work of leaders. That means get out front and lead. You must see the future with an optimistic clarity that inspires others to follow. Leadership does not just require optimism & clarity; leadership is optimism & clarity.

Hope
Hope, as I have defined it, has two components: an optimistic vision of the future, and the belief that we have what it takes to get there. As a leader your clarity of vision creates the precondition for that kind of hope. We must see where we are going, and we must believe it is a place worth getting to, before we decide to invest our blood, sweat, and tears to get there!

The success of every great religious leader, every reformer, every leader of any expedition across any ocean or continent has been dependent on their clarity of just how much greener that grass “over there” is.

When we can see that where we are headed is better than where we are now, clarity becomes hope.

Great managers play a critical role in inspiring hopefulness in teams. They support our contribution by constantly encouraging further growth where they know we are already strong, and by giving us opportunities to use those strengths for the greater good.

Great managers act as match-makers between our strengths and the jobs that need to get done. The result, when all is right, is that powerful feeling of a team that is firing on all cylinders, and every member is clear about their role in the success of the overall project. And like so much in life, success builds more success.

When clarity and hopefulness exist in an organization, the stage is set for the third component of total engagement: commitment.

Commitment

Starting on a journey of change and growth requires clarity and hope. But there is no journey at all without commitment. Commitment is the action piece. It’s time to start walking. Commitment is, to paraphrase Nike Corp., ‘just doing it’.

Organizational change sometimes feels like a leap of faith. The inherently chaotic nature of the environment & human nature, make the ‘perfect plan’ an illusion. Commitment is taking the first step over the edge without that perfect plan. Commitment exists when we step forward with clarity & hope about the future, with the best information we have, and at which there is no turning back.

If clarity is the domain of leadership, and engendering hopefulness the domain of great managers, commitment is the responsibility of the whole team. If clarity and hopefulness are the call, commitment is the response.

We see where we are going, we believe we can get there, and we have all committed to taking the first step together. Now we have engagement.

Keeping the wheels turning

Total engagement requires complete clarity.

Do you want your employees to tap into that mysterious ‘discretionary effort’ that means the wheels stay on the bus even when you are out of the building? Then make sure that you have done your part to be clear, and to connect our strengths to the task at hand. If you’ve really done your part in this, then you’ll get passionate engagement.