Clusters

In building his organizational mission, Tony Hsieh was wise enough to ask all his employees one question...Why? He evolved Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs into the Happiness model. The questions Tony asked of those he interviewed got to the core of what they really wanted. He believed one's professional goals, aspirations for personal entertainment, and mission to serve those they loved were central to one purpose...

To Be Happy!

In his book, Start With Why, Simon Sinek introduced the golden circle. The general premise, "people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it". You may have a great product...it may help people toggle their social platforms more effectively, but WHY are you in business? What is the center of your circle?

What is YOUR WHY?

You exist in a Cluster.....your work, family and hobbies are interconnected by one thing: YOUR WHY

In order to find synergy among the seemingly unrelated things that make up your cluster, you have to find your WHY. These are the elements of your life....the petals to your flower....Your WHY is at the center of it all.

Are You Present in the Moments In-Between?
We work hard to develop opportunities to experience happiness. We are in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We put in long hours to afford family vacations, a gift for the wife, and/or the newest gadget for the kids.....none of it matters! We find happiness not in the things we pursue but in the things that remind us to stop chasing what is not there. Moments in the park on a Tuesday afternoon bring us greater meaning than the sweet 16 party that cost us half of our bonus. To recognize and to be present in the moments in-between is the true path to discovering what is genuinely important.

You might sell a data management tool (that is the 'what'). You may have an uncanny knack for developing efficient and cost effective data management processes for your clients (that is the 'how'). Your mission for being in business is your WHY. It's not about the products you make or how you bring them to market. It's your purpose on this earth and how it relates to your business persona that matters most.

If your purpose is clearly defined and you are passionate about your mission; profits come naturally. If you are passionate in your purpose you need not force solutions where they do not exist or to act out of character. If you are engaged in what you do you can connect humans instead of grinding numbers.

Find Your Tribe
Align yourself with your boss - the person for whom you work wants you to succeed! If it seems otherwise, look in the mirror. Are you being forced to do something you wish not to do or are you making it difficult for your leader to lead? Hiding from your professional superior will not make him/her go away. Develop a plan that will help you mutually succeed and devote yourself to it. Communication built on trust drives high level relationships. If you fail without asking for help you cut your safety net.

Connect with your support staff - there are people in other departments with whom you will need to work. The people with whom you work may be less intelligent than you, they may not work as hard as you do and they may be less motivated than you are.....that is not an excuse to berate them. Instead of passing tasks and asking for accountability, you should empower and help others find purpose in what they do. At the very least - always say please and thank you!

3 Friends - find 3 friends at work. These need not be people in your department or division. Consult third party observers with whom you can share your professional experiences and gain insight. A variety of viewpoints helps you form a grander perspective. Without a formalized relationship in place people are more forthcoming and candid in their advice.

What are the Metrics of the Space Between?
How much is your free time worth?

We often devalue ourselves by allowing the things we do not want to do to drain our focus and energy. We neglect to imagine that the most important time is not spent on the clock but off it. Your most profound inspiration will happen not within your cubicle but on a path in the park.

How are you spending your free time?

You must choose between what you want to do and what you have to do (and prioritize accordingly). Stress is a result of inelegant goal setting. If you are only driven by the mandatory directives of others, you will never be happy. The discovery of what is important to you comes from making time to escape your professional structure. Break the mold and elevate your mind. Put your energy into what you want to do. Find inspiration in every task by relating it to your WHY.

Sunset....
:) Success is the discovery of happiness.
:) Your WHY is your true mission - it should be at the center of every decision you make.
:) The moments in-between are far more important than grandiose events.
:) Developing multi-tiered relationships will give you a more fully formed workplace perspective.
:) Your free time is as important to your success as your time on the clock.

Homework: Develop a cluster that relates the subjects above. Prioritize your time/energy toward what is genuinely important. Identify your WHY and remind yourself of it every day.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Culture Shift

A few years back, I adopted the practice of waking up ridiculously early. I found I was unable to manage my busy life so I decided to do something about it. Where many start their day in traffic jams, I speed through empty streets. I spend the first 2 hours of my day alone in a coffee shop. By the time the others are arriving, I am gone, on to start my day ahead of everyone else. I put the headphones on, fire up the lap top and hyper-focus. One day, someone interrupted me....

If you understand the "calm before the storm" logic behind my morning mission, you can guess I cherish the time alone and wish not to be engaged in disruptions. But, one morning the Manager of the coffee shop asked me to remove my headphones. He told me he wanted to buy me a cup of coffee for my loyalty to his shop. I accepted. He then told me it would cost me one conversation a week - "I want to bounce a few ideas off you, I'll buy you a cup of coffee every time I do". He didn't know the nature of my degree or my profession, he just needed someone to listen (when no other customers were around). I accepted.

A week became a month and a month a year. We became friends. We connected really well. Like a good bartender, he knew how to ignite my trust. Like a good patron, I knew how to listen. He was hell bent on succeeding, so was I. We was full of ideas, so was I. Neither of us had any apprehension about sharing our thoughts with one another. There was no judgement or formality between us...it was 2 people drinking coffee while everyone else was asleep.

Over time, I came to discover that this guy was having conversations with a lot of his customers. He was also engaging his employees. He didn't seem to care about posting promotional materials, he didn't worry about his new hires industry experience, he wasn't hung up on quick fix rebates. He was creating a culture. I could have chosen 10 different coffee shops, his felt like home.

When he quit so did the staff of extraordinary people he had hired. The promotional material went up and the regulars kept to themselves - the culture was dead.

We talk a lot about culture in today's work world. It can be cultivated by one person. Some times one person makes a difference. That person who inspires others to work hard with positive intent, that person that is inviting of your input of how to make things better, that person that is willing to step away from their work to understand what it means to his/her customers.

We get so caught up in systematic efficiency, marketing strategy, and the right way to manage our employees; that we forget that we are people among people. Some times you have to use your I-phone to actually call someone. Some times you have to stop pretending you know everything and ask for input from others. Some times you have to buy someone a cup of coffee, step away from the lap top and share your experience.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

The Employee Purpose Perspective

The catch phrase "employee engagement" has already become an over-used commodity. That's what we do. We grab on to a catch phrase and seek to wish it into existence. We buy a worn out strategy and hope for unique results.

Everyone wants employee benefits like Google. Everyone wants a corporate culture like Zappos. So they invite a team of consultants in, pay them a ton of money and say, "make my company like Google".

Newsflash: Google, Zappos and all great organizations got that way by taking chances. They did not ask for 'best practices', they created their own. They did not seek to copy a company culture, they took time to understand their employees and create relevance for them.

In the book Linchpin, Seth Godin challenges us to create an indispensable personal value by utilizing our irreplaceable skill. The Blue Ocean Strategy focuses not on bloodying the water in a competitive shark fight but to eliminate competition by charting new waters. Students go to Harvard to 'create careers' not to qualify themselves for a top paying 'job'.

There are no easy answers, there are no expert consultants, and there is no such thing as best practices. I cannot put a 'one size fits all' business plan on your desk and expect to change your organization. You have to try harder. You have to put aside perceived standards and roll up your sleeves. You have to challenge yourself to get up from your desk, get out into your hallways, and find the "IT" that exists there like no where else.

If you are not willing to do the emotional work....your company will never change. Stop wasting your money by paying an outsider to create the next soon-to-be irrelevant catch phrase. Stop paying people to energize your team with temporary motivation. Stop telling your employees to read a book in hope of creating a common organizational purpose.

Over the next several weeks we will review the roadmap for The Employee Purpose Perspective. A challenging 7 step self-analysis that any organization must invest themselves in to create a purpose driven culture. While the execution will be difficult, the premise is simple:
1. Collaboration not competition
2. Purposeful intent creates cultural perspective
3. Organizational initiatives must have personal relevance
4. Every directive must have a unique value proposition
5. Reward the willingness to embrace the impossible
6. Extend a personal mission to each employee
7. Professional purpose is a willingness to fulfill personal desire

Sound Impossible? Good! Let's start thinking about what is impossible and use the aforementioned 7 step process to make it reality.

If you are not ready to dedicate yourself to investigating what today seems completely unachievable, you cannot change your organizational culture.

The only way to enhance employee engagement is to do a deep dive into your culture and enhance daily.

There are no perfect metrics, no case studies, no benchmarking, no references, no best practices and a finish line does not exist. You will have to throw down your crutches and sprint through this process, every day!

If you are willing to change your organization, the lives of your employees, and the world for the better; stay tuned to this blog. If you are looking for easy answers, unsubscribe.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Creating Culture

More often than not when people see my last name I get one of the following responses:
Where are you from?
What Nationality are you?
Is that Russian?

To which I respond: I'm from California, the nation I represent is America and I'm not Russian but I love Vodka (being that we're playing the stereotype game).

Frankly, I found my culture on La Pera circle in the early 80's. Karen Hunter, Gabe Rowland and the Walker Brothers were my countrymen. We started playing ball on our block and when we were old enough we ventured a few blocks over to challenge those kids in a game of touch football. We banned together, we looked out for one another, we took pride in our block and no one was f-ing with us. We didn't need a flag to fly or a discernible physical commonality; it was in the air. If you came on our block you had to get through the guard to play kick ball.

The culture I subscribed to was created by me and my friends and it meant more to me than the songs of my forefathers or the meals my Grandmother made. So, It stands to reason that in evolution from our names, skin colors or gender; there is a climate to our lives that focuses on now not then. In example, it can be said that the place you work is a culture in-and-of-itself.

A lot has been said about organizational culture of late and this is one HR trend that I believe in. Without question, if you can create an engaging environment between the four walls of any office, satisfaction is guaranteed.

So what do you need to do to create an Engaging Organizational Culture:
* Core Values
* Metrics for Success that Reflect the Population
* Action Oriented Leadership

How Do You Spell Integrity?
Recite your organization's core values...How many people can actually do it? My guess is not many and that is a shame. Take away departmental goals, rank, tenure & the Core Values of any organization are what level the playing field.

Core Values fail to engage for two reasons:
They are too broad
Middle Managers have failed to interpret them to in a meaningful way

I would bet that 80% of organizations have Integrity and/or Accountability as a core value. The extended definition is honesty, the most important professional characteristic any one can possess, why don't we understand that? If as a Manager you cannot explain to your team why honesty is important you are mis-cast. Traditionally, what you will hear from Middle Managers is, "its a core value, its important to our Chairman, know the definition". What a waste!

The definition of engagement is knowing the significance organizational core values have to YOUR role in the company.
* If you can differentiate the company mission to your own success you are guaranteed to find personal significance in every day....within the goals of the organization.

Know Your People
As a consultant people ask me, "as an expert, what would you recommend to improve our culture?". How should I know, it's YOUR company. If you don't know what the people who work for you want, how can I help you? If I offer industry best practices that are not applicable to the people who walk your halls, you are simply re-manufacturing more mediocrity...that's what got you into this mess in the first place:
- Don't worry about being safe
- Make it meaningful
- Make it fun

Detachment is not a Strategy
How often do our Leaders work from a 10,000 foot view? Of course, our CEO cannot be in Kansas every month to opinion poll the Transportation Supervisor. But, there are a few ways to get the real facts:
- Use your Open Door Policy as a means for improvement not to judge who is un-coachable
- Engage real conversation with people at all levels to get 'real' feedback
- Take the formality out of Organizational Input

Surveys are tough because I know that even though they are framed as 'confidential', someone above me will be looking at my feedback and judging me accordingly. This is not the fault of the CEO or the individual contributor but rather an affect of insecure Middle Managers. (see a trend developing here?)

You have to develop a culture of trust! To know that I can give you feedback and you can discern if I am bitching or actually interested in evolving organizational objectives. How can we do this?
- Look for hard facts to accompany the (sob) story
- Ask how the 'problem' effects the Organizational Mission
- Share feedback instead of burying it
- Help redirect instead of judging

In Summation (without assuming):
It doesn't matter what you look like, how you talk or what your life goals might be. If I can ask everyone to find the pot of gold on the same treasure map, our goals are laid out for us. Different teams may take different routes but in the end we all find the treasure.

Create a Mission and help each of us understand it's significance to our own lives. Stop asking for feedback if you are not going to use it to evolve organizational goals! Create team goals that reflect our input and strategize accordingly.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave