This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Archive for February, 2011
The golden rule at work
There’s much “wrong”, and amusing, with this short little orientation film from the 50s [with thanks to Michael's recent post]. But there’s something very right.  The message that the teacher, Mrs Percal, delivers to her students:  “Don’t forget the golden rule” just because you’re at work.
Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion, her mission to bring compassion to the world [including some pretty surprising places like Pakistan] and the movement that is growing daily in support for the Charter reminds us of the power and importance the golden rule can have in our lives.   But what about our work lives?
The golden rule in the work place. Now that is “an idea worth spreading“!
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The engagement factor
A little noodling on a snowy winter day.
Communication often finds itself at the centre of the employee engagement discussion. I find this interesting because I doubt if you were asked to describe the elements that impact their engagement that communication per se would come to mind.  Or it wouldn’t be a major focus.  I know it wouldn’t for me.
Instead isn’t your level of engagement  based on factors like:
- The business you’re working for. What stuff does the business do and what impact does it have?
- The nature of the job you get to do. Is it management or non-management? Is it hands on or hands off? Constructing stuff, moving stuff, or taking stuff apart? Etc.
- And your experience of the business. What are the working conditions like? The kinds of people you get to work with? The level of collaboration? Etc.
For every one of us, each of these main categories of factors will have different elements that are important to us. And for each element they could be positive, neutral or negative from our point of view.
|
Factors |
Elements |
From the employee’s point of view |
|||
| Positive | Neutral | Negative | |||
| What | The business we’re in -What the business does and the impact it has
Â
|
       [Insert the things that matter most from the employee’s point of view] |
|||
| The job – What I do “at work” every day
Â
|
|||||
| How | The brand experience -What’s my experience of the company?
 What’s our customer’s experience of the company?
|
||||
Taken together, these rankings in relationship to each other[1] will result in a level of engagement – high, medium, low, non-existent.
What I find interesting is that these elements of engagement are more likely to be about  organizational design and management than they are about internal communications.
I’m not saying communications isn’t an element. It certainly can be; especially where it’s in anyway discrepant with the brand values. It’s just doesn’t seem to be the place to start.
What do you think?
[1] This is based on something called “digital decision making” an approach discovered by Robert Fritz.
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Humanizing cold hard facts
Yesterday, my cousin’s wife [thanks Star], sent me a link to Lightening in a Jar.
It’s a slide show. It has no special effects. The photography is mediocre. The graphics bland. It’s got the sappiest music ever. There’s no action.  No voiceover.  It’s just a series of pretty dry facts.
I’ve seen it before. It struck me then as it did now. It’s so cheesy and still so very compelling. Why?
The genius  is that it brings the humanity back to something that is otherwise just conceptual – the population of the world [can anyone picture billions], the number of people who wake up hungry [can anyone picture a %?]. They take what is otherwise incomprehensible and sometimes overwhelming data and translate it into something very human; something we can all picture – a small village of 100 people. It’s a simple idea, not all that well implemented, and the result is brilliant.
There’s something for every manager and communicator to learn here.  Conceptual cold hard facts can tell stories that are relevant, meaningful and emotionally powerful!  Now for that simple idea.
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The emotional reality of the workplace
In my early career I was a retail turnaround specialist and managed a series of successful business transformations. One principle I held for myself, and others who worked with me, was that we could fire ourselves and each other and “get off the floor”. Sometimes being face to face with customers is too much. And, when you’re not in the mood, or not able to get into the mood, then you better “get off the floor”.
Well turns out this principle is grounded in science. There’s something called emotional contagion.  And those of us who work in and around organizations have probably all experienced it without necessarily recognizing it or knowing what to do about it.
Emotion in the workplace is not something we’re that comfortable with. We prefer to think that our workplaces are emotion free zones even if we know from experience that this is just not so. We’re emotional beings and our moods – happy, sad, afraid, angry, friendly, surprised, disgusted – come with us to work, are created at work and spread.
Something to consider when you’re in communications. These moods individual and collective create the context for communications.
How aware are you of the emotional context for communications? Â Does it change what and how you communicate?
In the organizational environments I find myself in, I’ve never seen any program for raising awareness and developing skills for managing emotional contagion – the good and bad of it. Maybe it’s time we recognized that we aren’t robots just because we’re at work.  We have emotions.  We don’t need to be helpless in the face of them.  We can understand them – our own and others’ – and manage them.  And, sometimes it means getting off the floor.
What do you think? Â Could you and your team be better at managing emotional contagion?
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It’s about the system. It’s about balance.
Today’s inspiration comes from C-Notes. The question posed was [and I’m paraphrasing]: As you design the customer experience do you think about it from a system point of view? Do you think about the balance?
I don’t think we do. And, we do even less of this kind of thinking when we start talking about the employee experience. We don’t seem to have/or take the time to really understand these relationships, the kind of experience we want them to have and the implications  that would have on what and how we do things.
It’s the kind of process that takes up front thinking. It takes time. And it can challenge all kinds of preconceived notions and assumptions. This kind of thoughtful and intentional orientation to organizational change is much more like walking a labyrinth – all be it one on steroids – than any linear change model would ever suggest.
And in my experience, very few organizations have the will to really think it through; to back up and understand what they are trying to do and the implications that has on their organization and the communities around them. But when they do what happens next is amazing. Teams gain deeper understanding. Decisions that were written in stone are reversed or adjusted.  Opportunities open up that had never existed or been explored. Barriers disappear. Things change for the better; for employees, for customers and for investors.
Has your organization got what it takes for this kind of conversation?
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