Managing time to BREATHE April 6, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Creativity, Ideas, Innovation, Leadership, Problem solving, Talent Management, Thinking.add a comment
Yesterday’s post got me thinking about thinking time and breathing space. We all need some of both to do our best work.
For me, thinking time is essential space for gathering new ideas, mulling over problems and percolating new solutions. I read voraciously, gathering inspiration from almost everything that I consume. Every time you read something it can inspire different thoughts. Depending on your need of the moment and your current state of project maturity, a second or third reading of a text may produce a new perspective previously unnoticed. If you allow for intuitive reading (some might call it scanning) then the thoughts you need will have a tendency to step forward from the page, or your eyes will glance to the paragraph of insight. Creativity is the ability to connect previously unconnected ideas. To build links and find synergies where none existed. The same is true for scanned reading and application thinking time.
Your problem + intuitive reading + thinking time x breathing space = optimal solution formed from synergistic application of insights.
I wrote yesterday about how important it is to give people space to explore, create and percolate. Today, the message is to let them breathe:
- Be themselves
- Realise their strengths
- Explore new ideas
- Acknowledge their weaknesses
- Try new skills
- Have fun
- Err (make mistakes didn’t fit the acronym!)
Give people room to breathe and space to think (explore, create and percolate) and you may find yourself with an impassioned workforce delivering the full intensity of their talents towards organisational goals.
If you are celebrating Easter this weekend – I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I will post again on Monday!
Creativity, exploration and thinking time April 5, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Creativity, Innovation, Leadership, Talent Management.add a comment
One of the intended outcomes of creating an impassioned workforce is a clearly differentiated business. The theory being best talent x optimal creativity = superior performance. How then do you go about creating an environment where people apply their talents creatively in the pursuit of organisational objectives?
I believe in 3 contributing factors:
- Space for exploration
- Support for creativity
- Percolation/thinking time
Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.
William Plomer, Author
When you think about it, creativity doesn’t come from staring harder at whats already around you. As Sam Harrison reminds us in his book Ideaspotting, lightbulbs weren’t invented by exploring candles, Walkmans weren’t invented by exploring turntables and cell phones weren’t invented by exploring landlines. True creativity comes from exploring beyond what’s already staring you in the face. And as someone once used to say to me, “There’s no monopoly on good ideas”, meaning that the best ideas can come from anywhere in the hierarchy.
Many years ago, when I was fresh-faced and enthusiastically inexperienced, I had a wonderful opportunity to explore, create and percolate. I was working for a major bank in the UK and we were at the leading edge of the call centre revolution. We were looking for ways to improve service delivery from remote centres, removing traffic from the retail branches and improving transaction efficiency. In my naivete, I suggested we try benchmarking other more established service operations outside the banking industry. While call centres were a new venture for banking in the early 80’s, they had become well established in the telecoms and automobile insurance business. I suggested we set off on an expedition to investigate what was working and not working elsewhere and bring back our findings to aid the bank. To their credit, my managers at that time allowed me time away from the office (unprecedented for a very junior team member at that time), supported my drive to seek out new findings and allowed me sufficient time to pull together recommendations. When you consider I probably ranking 5765th in line to the organisational throne at that time, that was a lot of trust they were showing in me and my ideas.
From that experience, and others to follow I learned the following:
- Give people the space and time they need to explore new ideas.
- Allow them reading and thinking time, to look beyond their immediate surroundings to find new connections to bring to your organisation.
- Allow junior members of the team to explore beyond their job description. As mentioned already, there’s no monopoly on good ideas. Minds not yet entrenched in organisational patterns are likely the prime breeding ground for new connections.
- Be careful to avoid not-invented-here syndrome. And its close cousin “we’ve tried it before and it didn’t work”. Fresh ideas plus new timing plus new champions may just be the combination needed to make it work.
- Let people get OUT of the office. As Sam Harrison writes, “nobody spots hot ideas in cold offices.”
- Senior managers and executives already have extensive freedom. Providing them with more freedom delivers only incremental satisfaction. By giving a small taste of freedom to your junior staff and they will love you for it. That may include a small discretionary expense account, invitations to away days and off-site meetings, license to go out and interview customers etc.
What other ways have you found to build space to explore, create and percolate? Please share your ideas and add to the conversation.
An impassioned workplace is not a conflict free zone… April 4, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Careers, Leadership, Self-improvement.add a comment
Bob Sutton has received a lot of acclaim recently for his aptly titled book ‘The No Assholes rule’. As well as being an accomplished author, Bob is also a professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and maintains a personal website (Work Matters) as well as hosting a Harvard Online blog called The Working Life. This new blog is worth a look, with Bob sharing details of his new ‘creating infectious action’ class at the Stanford d. school and showing the mythical ‘mission on a napkin’ that the co-founders to the school came up with (great pic!). I especially liked the perspectives on organisational life. I may not agree with everything that Bob writes, but you’ve got to admit he has some good points, and that’s the point of today’s post.
When I think about the best and most inspiring workplaces, they are not entirely conflict free zones. In fact, constructive disagreement and collaborative debate can be the source of great inspiration in the workplace. A catalyst, to inspire people to dig deeper and come up with something more. Many of us do our best work when we are under some pressure to deliver. Conflicts in the workplace are not to be subdued, avoided or ignored. In fact, to use the words on the napkin, ‘Radical Collaboration’ can occur when people are allowed to disagree and evolve a shared perspective through constructive means. A counter argument can force you to re-evaluate your thinking and can lead to greater depth. The important difference between constructive disagreement and the assholes described in Bob’s book are a level and tone of mutual respect, appreciation of diverse interests and beliefs and a willingness to operate as if your answer is not the only way to skin this cat. Essential skills for any leader aspiring to be inspiring rather than ‘book fodder’ .
Recruitment ads and CEO blogs as engaging tools! April 3, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Brand Management, Communication, Leadership, Recruitment.1 comment so far
Two great posts at Jeffrey Treem’s blog Inside the Cubicle caught my eye today. The first was a take on internal communication and executive on-boarding through blog power! Jeffrey reports how Jamie Chabra of Bob Evans Farms set up a blog for new CEO Steve Davies, to introduce him to the organisation and provide all employees direct access to their new leader. I am certain that this level of openness and inclusion will have increased passionate engagement, as people felt their opinion count to their new CEO. The transition to a new leader is always a period of great uncertainty and to my mind Steve Davies shows great empathy in establishing a blog and providing a portal for his people to get to know him. The advantage in return is that he gets to drive the water cooler conversation rather than pretend it doesn’t exist. Very impressive!
In the second (after a little more digging through this excellent site) I found a story about how effectively interactive media can be used to dramatic effect in recruiting. This story (which tracks-back through several iterations including a posting by Amy Gahran of PoynterOnline, Toronto Globe and Mail journalist Matthew Ingram, and Cory Bergman of Lost Remote in Seattle – the power of viral!) has to be seen to be believed! Again, by involving all these ‘extras’ in the campaign to recruit a new editor, the organisation is ensuring their commitment to the final choice! I wish ALL recruitment ads were so impactful!
Jeffrey, thanks for a great site. I wish I could reference all your articles! So far the read has been very worthwhile!
Deeper curiosity reveals surprising strengths April 2, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Careers, Leadership, Strengths, Talent Management.2 comments
Do you know what your colleagues and peers do when they are not at work? What drives them? What gets them leaping out of bed at the weekend ready to face the day? How do they spend their vacation time? Where do they rush to after work?
I don’t just mean the cursory chat about their weekend that takes place by rote on a Monday morning. Are you really curious about what drives the people around you to willingly devote their ’spare’ time to an outside interest? The key to passion at work can be hidden in the natural motivations of your team mates beyond the workplace. Author Marcus Buckingham would suggest that the activities people are naturally drawn to and which they find absorbing may hold the secret to their strengths. He has written several books on the topic of finding and playing to your strengths for peak performance. In his Stronger Teams Blog, Blaine Collins references Buckingham’s book to list the ways strengths can be identified and used effectively to build stronger teams. For a complete write up of the book you can see Blaine’s article on Joyful Jubilant Learning.
I have facilitated many business meetings where icebreakers revealed surprising information about people who had worked together for many years. Colleagues looking with new found respect at someone they thought they knew. How could you not be impressed on learning that a quiet, unassuming member of your team was an Olympian! Or one of your partners used to play with the Beatles before they got famous (giving it all up for a stable career!). Wouldn’t it make you look at someone with fresh eyes when you learn that in their spare time they build houses for Habitat for Humanity or they give skating lessons to youth. These are all real examples from people I know and YES it does make me admire them and want to look for ways their strengths can be used in the workplace. Junior members of the team may have extensive experience of managing groups and projects through their outside interests. Elders may have some tales of inspiration to share in areas well beyond their official title.
As a leader, what do you do to encourage people to bring their passionate interests to work. To help build an appreciation amongst your team of the diverse skills and experience which may be hidden below the surface. Show a deep curiosity about people’s outside interests and you may just reveal some surprising strengths.
The trusted employer March 30, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Careers, Leadership, Retention, Talent Management.2 comments
I just posted a comment to a great article on Charles Green’s site “Trusted Advisor Associates”. If you operate anywhere near professional services, you couldn’t have missed the impact of Green’s book “Trust Based Selling”and his renowned work with David Maister “The Trusted Advisor”. Charles Green and David Maister promote the idea of trust as a cornerstone to all business relationships and how building, nurturing and sustaining trust is the multiplier for profitable business.
I’d like to suggest that trusted relationships extend far beyond those you are selling to or advising. With the current market for talent, building trusted relationships must also be the route to getting, keeping and leveraging the most talented workforce.
Here are five ways you can build trust with your employees to develop a lasting and profitable relationship with them:
- Allow time for trust to develop. Trust does not happen overnight. When you are working with new people acknowledge that you will both need to invest time in the relationship to develop trust and let them know you are prepared to do that. I don’t expect people to trust me from the first moment but I do want us both to be open to the possibility of trust.
- Keep your promises! As a leader, everything you say will be interpreted as a commitment, and anything you don’t do after suggesting it will be interpreted as a broken promise. Don’t say or promise anything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, unless you are 100% committed to following through.
- Show them how to achieve their goals. All employees want to see personal progression. For some that might mean promotion, for others it may be something different. If you understand the goal that someone is working towards; understand and appreciate the needs that are driving them to get there; you can show them the way.
- Allow them to prove themselves. Trust is a 2 way process and often one side has to reach out and offer trust before the other can receive it and reciprocate. If someone bestows their trust on us, we will often feel compelled to ’step up’ and validate the honour. Allow your people to prove their trustworthiness in increasingly high profile areas.
- Trust in the power of mistakes. No-one is infallible. Mistakes happen. People mess up. Often the best opportunity for learning comes from the greatest errors. If we worry too much about falling and hurting ourselves, we never learn how to skate, ski, ride a bike or do anything worth doing. Build an environment where people do not fear mistakes but know that if they do mess up, you will guide them rather than berate them.
I am sure there are many more ways you can think of to build and sustain trust in the workforce but these were the first 5 I could think of. Please feel free to add more!
As for Charles and David, maybe your next book should be The Trusted Employer!
Talent Management or Brand Management? March 29, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Brand Management, Leadership, Talent Management.5 comments
In my professional capacity I operate in the field of Marketing and Business Development, helping the organisation establish and grow its brand presence and convert prospects to advocates. Why then, some might ask, am I speaking/writing about employee engagement, recruitment and retention issues and other such stuff? Surely these are HR topics and belong to the realm of human capital experts? But not so. These topics are critical to everyone wishing for the success and longevity of an organisation, and with brand equity increasingly becoming the domain of the CEO, it is vital that everyone plays a part in creating and sustaining an impassioned workforce.
The corporate brand is only as strong as the company’s ability to deliver on the brand promise and to craft meaningful customer experiences. Any and every employee who interfaces with the customer is part of the branding, ergo the value-building process. In fact, every employee in the company who doesn’t interact with the customer is part of crafting the overall corporate brand, as well, since their job performance has a direct impact on the company’s product or service offerings and its public perception. This impact can be good or bad.
The effects of employee engagement or disenchantment with an organisation can have dramatic impact on its ability to grow. Just as an unhappy customer can spread the word to many connections, so can a dissatisfied employee. And sometimes its the quietly disappointed that are the most dangerous. They have disengaged but are still occupying a seat on the bus; lurking but not really helping progression. Engaged employees don’t just make for a happier work environment, they are essential to the expression of the brand and a critical component of brand management. For brand management to be fully realised, HR and Marketing personnel need to work together to ensure consistency.
Keeping employees March 28, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Leadership, Retention.1 comment so far
A short post today – making up for the LONG post yesterday.
If you are interested in employee engagement and talent retention, you’ll find some excellent topical resources on Anna Farmery’s site “The Engaging Brand Blog”. Anna runs a blog carnival called “keeping employees” and posts links to the best submissions on a regular basis.
Take a look. You are sure to find some interesting and different perspectives on this wide reaching topic.
Do these feet fit here? March 27, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Leadership, Retention.add a comment
Anyone who may have happened to glance at my blog in the week since I started will notice that these are early days for me in the blogosphere (no kidding batman!). I am just finding my way, learning how to use the tools and trying to find my voice.
These early day ramblings and efforts to figure out what I’m doing and how I can make a difference are analogous to the awkward first moments of any new job. The excitement of the chase is over, the job is yours and you now need to claim it and make it your own. You start your new position eager to impress and motivated to deliver results. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the first few days and weeks after starting your new position are the prime opportunity a company has to really capture your attention, ignite your interest and develop a firm foundation for your ongoing loyalty. In the HR community they call this phase ‘on-boarding’ (Heres the Dilbert version) and a whole body of knowledge is emerging about what works and what doesn’t work to fully integrate new members of staff into the organisation.
While we have probably all got tales of woe from bad on-boarding experiences, I want to share with you a story about my best experience. The way that my position started with my last employer was so impactful and positive that it drove me through 12 years of loyalty, passion and committed performance, crossing 2 continents, through 3 very different positions and spilling out into every connection that I made both inside and outside the organisation! I am not speaking about a regular ‘induction’ process. My energies were inspired because of the graciousness and humanity of the way I was introduced to my new workplace and my colleagues to me. ItzBigBlog has several posts reflecting on humanity and graciousness in recruiting, and in particular, the role of the executive in setting the tone of graciousness for new recruits. The manner in which my integration was supported, not just at inception but for an extended period beyond the typical 2-3 weeks of being ‘the new gal’, followed many of these ideals.
It started on a September day in rural England. I was arriving for my first day of work at the most beautiful and imposing country manor house. A residential training and conference facility I was invited to join as a sales training manager. When I arrived at the front desk, the receptionist was aware that I was coming and welcomed me warmly, saying they had all been looking forward to me arriving. My new boss David spent about half an hour verbally walking me through the basic information I would need (how the place operated, who’s who, the org chart etc.) and then took me to see the Director, who oversaw the entire operation. At this point, most people would assume a cursory introduction to the Director and then back to meet with the rest of the team, but that wasn’t to be. Ralph, took me for a guided tour of the facility, along back corridors, through oak panelled rooms, up to the residential blocks and into the kitchens. While the place was magnificent (the manor was the birthplace of Benjamin Disraeli, one of Britain’s most famous prime ministers), I was most impressed with the way in which Ralph personally introduced me to each and every staff member we came across on our tour. Kitchen maid or training manager, office admin or groundsman, Ralph knew them all and they all knew him.
The day continued in the same vein. A meeting had been prearranged with my new training colleagues. Several people joined me for lunch (okay, it helped that we had a fully functioning restaurant on the premises), and the icing on the cake was that I started on the same day as a company fun day. At 3pm the entire staff of the building and grounds (close to 100 people) gathered in the gardens and we had a barbecue, played boule and mingled til the early evening. It was the most amazing entry to what turned out to be a wonderful working experience.
While not every facility can claim to be so attractive, and it’s not always possible to start people on a day when you have a fun event taking place, it was the little things on that day and the days to follow that made the biggest impact. The way that people really seemed to know each other and care about each other. If I was due to have a meeting with one of my new clients (my clients were the Partners and Directors of one of the UK’s largest firms of chartered accountants and management consultants), David would coach me on the interpersonal dynamics, communication preferences and the politics underlying every meeting. Our team meetings were an opportunity to review not only what we were working on but also how we were working together and where we could improve. Ralph encouraged everyone to take daily coffee breaks together so that training staff and admin staff would connect frequently and silos would be minimised.
Now, like any organisation, we had workplace challenges. Days when things went wrong, people disagreed, conflicts occurred and crisis hit. It wasn’t sweetness and light every day. But the work that had been done by David and Ralph to lay the foundations for a strong and integrated workforce carried most of us through those moments. We had a strong team who could weather most storms and who worked really hard to make a difference because David and Ralph made it worth it! I decided my feet fit on day one and never looked back.
Are you listening? March 26, 2007
Posted by impassioned in Communication, Leadership.add a comment
In the 2000 movie “What women want”, Mel Gibson suddenly gains an ability to hear the unspoken thoughts of the women around him. The film is hilarious, tapping into a collective consciousness of the gap between what we think versus what we actually do, especially in the workplace. While Mel initially uses his new-found insights against his boss Helen Hunt, he quickly becomes astonished at the depth and quantity of unspoken and unmet needs in the women around him. He begins to notice Erin the file girl, who is so disheartened with her work and her life she wonders if anyone would even care if she just disappeared one day.
Current studies of employee engagement suggest that people need to feel their job is important and meaningful, that they have opportunities for advancement and they share a positive and rewarding relationship with peers, superiors and subordinates. They need to feel like they are being valued and understood. That others care what is on their mind. The fact is, just because someone doesn’t voice an opinion, doesn’t mean they don’t have one!
If you were to develop extra-sensory perception with those around you, what might you learn? What are they not saying? What are their unmet needs? What do they speak about behind closed doors and in whispers around the water cooler? How many Erins are walking the corridors wondering if anyone would even notice if they didn’t show up tomorrow? The grapevine exists in every organisation. The question is, are you listening?
