Monday Funday

For years I've questioned research that reflects 3 of 4 people dislike their job. From the trenches in Silicon Valley, I'd say the majority of the people with whom I work enjoy what they do. Sure, we'd all prefer to be on the beach but sand between your toes gets annoying too. Most people when asked aren't going to jump for joy at the prospect of explaining "what they do (for a living)". Still, we all get up, get out and make it work.

I'd say disengagement doesn't necessarily spell complete disdain. I am of the opinion that human beings are reasonable enough to accept their working contract and make the most of it.

Call it Engagement or Happiness or Purpose: there are a few very simple steps in the ladder to finding a way to Love Mondays.......

Believe In The Buzz
I remember my first International Sales Meeting at my first real job. I was mesmerized! I held those up on stage presenting in the same light I did Iggy Pop or Jerry Garcia. They were Rock Stars with a mission they believed in and a whole lot of verbal confetti to go along with it. I recall being at the bar talking to a few of the more seasoned salesfolk who politely kept from rolling their eyes as I re-read my notes.

With experience tends to come apathy. But the more you allow yourself to believe the corporate speak, the closer you'll get to achieving your goals. At the very least, let the kids believe in it!  

Love Your Boss
I've had 3 bosses for whom I knew I couldn't work. They replaced people who hired me with all the grace of an alcoholic step-dad. Not only did these individuals not support my career path, they genuinely disliked me. People don't leave companies they leave managers who have replaced the managers who used to like them.

If you and your boss have a common mission, success is certain. If your boss hates you, QUIT!

There is nothing worse than going into a job you hate. If your boss was brought on to deter your success, enjoying your job will be difficult!

Don't Be Annoying
The aforementioned boss hatred was likely deserved. I used to be the guy in the room who opposed every point for the sake of doing so (turning a 30 minute meeting into a 2 hour meeting).

We all want to make an immediate impact on any organization we join. Here's how to do that:

1. Hit your revenue goal
2. Follow leadership direction
3. Be a good teammate
4. Shut your butt with a coconut

 In contrast, here are the ways to drive yourself directly to the doghouse:

1. "Replay All" to emails with "ideas"
2. Consistently share information that doesn't apply to the tactical line to production
3. Ask a ton of questions or comment at length in team meetings
4. Make your Manager's job harder   

Focus on You   
If you are failing at your job it is the direct responsibility of one individual:

YOU

Keep your head down and do work that benefits goal attainment. Don't gossip. Don't listen to workforce veterans about "the way things are done around here". Don't feel that you have to share to contribute. Do not compare yourself to others. If you are going to question the current state of things, you better have data and action planning to support your suggested re-direction. Separate yourself from negative people. Don't pretend to be smarter than you are. If you are wrong, own it. Get better every day.

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave

The Fast Lane to Failure

I have the rare privilege to observe organizational culture from the periphery. In essence, I am trusted to visit historical constructs and identify areas of concern.

It gets easier every day.

Whether it is my work with college students or global corporations, there are a few very certain red flags that assure broken culture:

• The loudest voice is the negative voice
• Any iteration of change is viewed as enemy
• Tenure is automatically associated with influence
• Excuses are given greater attention than performance

I had a ton of success very early in my career. I wasn't great at my job, I was simply unwilling to fail. Sooner or later, reality caught up with raw motivation and I had to learn to adapt. I struggled with the intensity of a baby having his toy taken away. I abused my social clout to shade my inability to perform. I don't lack sympathy for those in a rut, I've been there and it sucks. One usually works their way into a rut when they lose focus. 

As I abused my social influence to gain validation from my peers, one unspoken truth hung over every conversation like a chandelier:

I knew I wasn't evolving and I was unwilling to take action.  

Organizations with entitled cultures always fail. For some, the fall is more-gradual, but those who empower inadequacy only deter those willing to try.

There a million different ways to accomplish your goals. If there was a silver bullet to success, everyone would be successful. There is, however, a laser-tight way to fail....

If you allow negativity any audience, your odds for success grow less-certain.     
We can be guided by our lack of willingness to give in to the things that distract us.

I've never met anyone with a bad attitude who has been successful. The great news is that negativity is fixable.

People who present themselves as negative may just be having trouble framing their intensity. Their intentions may be good, they may just be allowing their drive to look like a car wreck.

You might choose to surround yourself with people who validate your negativity. But. here's a newsflash:

They are not laughing with you, they are laughing at you. 

The more your negativity fills the room, the easier it is to ignore. 

If every day you wake up with the intent of replacing challenges with action planning, you will win the day.

If you enter the day under the impression that the day is going to suck.... it will!

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave  

Tracking Employee Lifecycle

We who study Employee Engagement are consistently looking for trends in hiring and the direct effect on retention. The Human Resource landscape is slippery, no other profession is tasked with such a diverse cycle of management skills. The ability to find great talent, train, engage and promote are an unenviable set of tasks. Recruiters mirror sales people, Total Rewards professionals have to have an acumen for numbers and the disparate technologies that represent the progression from hiring through promotion can make one's head spin.

So, we stare down the inevitable:

How do we create an synchronized strategy from recruitment to retirement.... ????

Let's start with the job market....
As a new generation of talent enter the workforce are expectations changing? 

Are those escalated in age better equipped with irreplaceable experience?

Is a recession coming?

Do elite talents have any interest in job hopping?

Those who are great at what they do are probably not interested in switching jobs and there are others who simply do not have the proper qualifications. So, staffing professionals are tasked with finding people who are qualified, able to engage and humble in their entry level financial expectations. 

Prospective employees have a few simple expectations:

• A product/service they believe in
• Leadership that is visionary yet receptive to change
• A culture of transparency
• A manager they enjoy serving

Sounds simple enough but the ability to pull together these traits under a common mission is difficult. Companies are often great at producing quality products but lacking in employee development. Again, our staffers are called upon to sell the good qualities of the company while side-stepping what isn't working.     

Sustaining Engagement....
Getting them in the door is one thing. Delivering on promises is another.

Once employees are trained they need to develop the confidence to acclimate to the culture. Our extended HR team has to sustain the attraction of the hiring process with technology that is accessible and intuitive. HR is then called upon to make sure there is a vessel for strong manager/employee communication while keeping leadership abreast of the action in the trenches.

Take inventory:

• Does training scale to specific functional traits while enhancing soft skills?
• Is your Human Capital Management technology integrated and engaging?
• If employees and managers aren't on the same page, how will you know?
• Does your CEO recognize general employee goals?

Train, Reward, Challenge and Eliminate Silos!
     
Seeing departures before they happen.....  
If exit interviews are part of your engagement strategy, you are a step behind. The popular counter is to have HR integrate "stay interviews". If you need to administer a survey for employees to validate your existence, your workplace relationships might be fractured. 

Managers should have an accountability plan for their employees that is more parts celebration of achievement than calling out deficiencies.

Recognize in public, discipline is private.

If in every day you leave people with a firm understanding of what is working and where they need development, there is no guess work. People know when they haven't performed to their fullest potential, calling them out twice a year doesn't work.

Ask yourself: do our hiring enticements continue through our day-to-day engagement propsition?    

We all just want to represent something we believe in among people we respect and an ever-evolving challenge cycle complete with rewards at every step of progression.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave  

We Are Not Giving Up

With all the difference that surrounds us at the moment it is getting difficult to avoid disengagement.

The political climate is crippling us. Everyone has a published opinion. Negativity seems to have won. We are seemingly further from one another than we've ever been.

What happened to us? What happened to love? Where do we go from here?

My life moves in uncommon contributions to humanity (some more inspiring than others):

• Youth sports are in a state of disarray due completely to parental interference.
• College students are making a concerted effort to dispel social violence but it is still happening.
• Reports show that 70% of people dislike their job. 

The aforementioned assumptions would mean that the work to which I've dedicated my life is a huge waste of time. Good thing I believe none of it!

The wonderment in everything we do remains firmly planted in a simple ideology:

The easiest thing in life is to disbelieve and join the negativity

But, not us, we're not going to let that happen!

In spite of all the practice we've had, it's time to relinquish arms in an effort to get a little closer.

There are people who will advise that life comes down to a few crucial moments. I think life comes down to a few songs.

Let's explore the leadership ideology of Kate Tempest in a time when leadership is defined by those bold enough to stand up for their belief that humanity is at our best when we are not divided. 

I felt it clawing at my clothes like a grieving friend

Getting old sucks: You think you've learned all you can, your body breaks down and your worries are kept silent in your bedroom at 3am. We hide from expressing our vulnerability for the sake of keeping up defenses, choose a side and use our emotion to fuel aggression. Maybe we could acknowledge that we are all dealing with the same frustration. Are we pretending to be too busy to admit we could use a little help?

The other part about getting old is that your friends begin to die. Last week, I lost another friend.

There is no way to tell a person that their hang ups in the moment are not worth their agony. Indeed, we tend to power through the difficult human struggles to get past them. We look at the faults and failures of others as something that didn't happen to us then count our blessings. What we don't realize is that our friends failures are distinctly our own.

We just don't care enough. Embracing the short comings of others would only serve to bum us out.

What The Fuck?

More empathy, less greed, more respect 
... you heard it from yourself when you were lying in your bed (and couldn't sleep), thinking:

Couldn't We Be Doing This Differently? 

It's hard helping people who need a friend. We tend toward celebration more than picking a friend up off the floor. People keep their heads down and their hackles up.

The worst advice I ever received was: you have to look out for yourself

That's backwards. Those who put their personal privilege last so as to engage others always win. There is little competition in doing the hard stuff. 

Think of the last time you talked to a friend who genuinely cared about your struggle. I'd venture to guess at the times when you really needed someone to listen, all they could do was talk.
  
Regrets lie in words unsaid, time diverted and the priority of self. Self-confidence is an affect of helping others.

Don't let the millions of unauthorized authors destroy you with their inability to embrace collectivism.

Don't allow the voices of the negative to be the loudest.

Don't give up hope!

Don't Forget to Remember,

Dave