What Drives You?
Connecting is a personal thing, the essence of being human. Connecting is the fuel that keeps the fire of high engagement burning, and engagement is the great difference maker in peoples’ lives. Lasting engagement is driven by connecting—first connecting with myself, then with others one-on-one, in up close and personal relationships.
This thing called ‘connecting’ is what drives me. I can look back on my path and identify significant things that have happened and helped shape the person I am.
What drives you? What experience(s) really stick in your mind and have a good deal to do with who you are, what you think, what you do? Of the two drivers that really stand out for me, one is more personally impactful than the other, therefore tougher to relate. I’ll start with the less challenging of the two.
Cipher
I first came across a short story called Cipher in the Snow by Jean E. Mizer in a college textbook that has been long lost. Even though Cipher is fiction, Cliff Evans has haunted me since. My fear is that this fiction all too often reality.
I was a substitute teacher for a couple of very rewarding years. Teachers would typically pass along their insights as to who to watch out for…the problem students. I was expected to be the regular teachers’ surrogate iron fist for these problem students, and march them to the office at the first sign of insurrection which, they assured me, was sure to come.
A school administrator once told me the toughest thing to accept for any educator is that you cannot win every battle. I was just a substitute but the story of Cliff Evans drove me every day, not those all-knowing cautions.
If I am heading into battle, I first develop a strategy. My favorite substitute strategy was to convert any alleged Enemy I received intel on. If successful, the battle is won. So I made special efforts to connect with those tough cases I was warned about, those who had been written off. More often than not, I won.
That was several years ago. Still, when I run across one of those tough cases now and then we are genuinely glad to see each other. They remember and appreciate that I cared enough to connect with them. We still have a genuine connection.
What really drove me in education, and what still drives me in business and socially, is this burning question posed by Mizer in Cipher:
How do you go about making a boy into a zero?
The grade-school records showed me. The first and second grade teachers’ annotations read “sweet, shy child;” “timid but eager.” Then the third grade note had opened the attack. Some teacher had written in a good firm, hand: “Cliff won’t talk. Uncooperative. Slow learner.” The other academic sheet had followed with “dull;” “slow-witted;” “low IQ. “ They became correct. The boy’s IQ score in the ninth grade was listed at 83. But his IQ in the third grade had been 196. The score didn’t go under 100 until seventh grade. Even shy, timid, sweet children have resilience. It takes time to break them.
How about beyond education? How much influence does ranking individuals drive the reality of who they are and how they perform? Can we make a worker a “zero”? It seems we are obsessed with making people “average” starting very early in the education system and continuing with traditional performance assessments and competency-based development.
All in all, we’re just another brick in the wall. If this link is still functional, it is a powerful piece on human mass production.
A while back I revisited Cipher. It’s easy to Google. I had never forgotten the story’s title, or the lesson. Or Cliff Evans. But I had forgotten just how powerful Cipher really is.
How could a person not care?
Driver #2: Steely Dan
I’ve lost good friends I played music with, some of whom self-destructed. While I’m rather fond of Steely Dan the band this is about Steely Dan the man, and it is a tough one to relate here. “Steely Dan” remains deeply unforgettable thirty years later.
Dan had destructive habits. I believe we must chart our own course, and I felt back then there were personal space lines I shouldn’t cross. So I was the bandmate who was always there to pick Dan up and put him back on his stool. No judgment, no criticism, no meddling.
I wasn’t there the last time Dan fell off his stool. I was hundreds of miles away. Just like Cliff Evans, he collapsed in a snow bank one cold January Iowa day and died. I realized I had been an enabler. I didn’t connect with Dan like I could have.
Those things have shaped me, along with my professional experience in influence-wielding prior roles. When is it my responsibility or duty to step up, voice my concern, get involved? Conversely, when do I need to make the choice to shut up and let it go? And, can I live with the results of shutting up?
These drivers have set the stage for a great internal conflict, and it is a continuing source of stress for me. Life really is all about choosing your battles wisely, about being able to deal with the reality and the consequences of not winning them all. But when you are driven to connect, driven to be the great problem solver and wise counselor for all, how do you survive?
Still looking for the answer. If you join the search please let me know if you come across the key to this dilemma. There’s a lot at stake.
Was Darwin Right?
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change. (Darwin)
Following is a real-world dilemma, once again using the bell curve. What would you do?
You’ve been tasked to research leadership development material for a rather “young” group of leaders in a startup operation. Based on comments and observation you are concerned with the varying levels of team leader buy-in to the training. Your original focus was “what is the best way to get everyone on board?” But the initial effects of the kool-aid have worn down and now you’re beginning to wonder “can we realistically expect everyone to happily hop on the bus and go to Disneyland with us?”
Framed in terms of variation and natural distribution, below is the bell curve of leader buy-in. The left tail is comprised of nay-sayers and no-wayers, while the right tail has visionaries and natural leaders. The largest population is the fence-sitters in the middle.
Would it be more effective to offer elective leadership development to any interested person, regardless of whether they are currently leaders? The “deadwood” on the left can choose to participate and improve, and we may convert some of them. But if they don’t want to or can’t get on the bus, we can’t drag them on board and expect good results.
I really hate to ask this…would we be better off developing from scratch those with potential and the right attitude, rather than attempting to shape and mold miscreants against their will?
This is a major shift for me, may lose some sleep. Your thoughts?
The Bell Curve and Performance Levels
As it so often does, a conversation on the Employee Engagement Network has prompted a spinoff here. The topic on the EEN was recognition and engagement. A few factoids from the posting, based on Gallup data from research of 4mil US workers:
- Number of workers estimated to be extremely negative about work or “actively disengaged”: 22 million
- Cost in US dollars due lost productivity, workplace injuries, absences and fraud: 1 trillion
- Rank of “feeling unappreciated” among reasons for leaving a job: 1
Check out the EEN thread. For now I’m going to diverge…
Discussion prompter Steven noted….it’s hard to imagine somebody being a top performer while being disengaged.
Hard to imagine but not unheard of, if you consider engagement as a combination of high levels of both performance and job satisfaction. There is that rare endangered species that is compelled to excel in their performance regardless of their level of satisfaction. It may be possible to sustain high performance short-term without high satisfaction, but long term the inevitable outcome of “all give and no get” is burnout.
So there is yet another indicator of the importance of the good fight the practitioners of engagement are embroiled in.
EEN contributor Anita said: …Usually the high fliers get the rewards, the failures are mentored. and the good enough person is ignored! Not good for morale.
Anita’s statement led me to the following. Hopefully it won’t upset statistical purists too much if I borrow their bell curve of normal distribution attributed to variation that can be found in everything under the sun …. Including job performance.
If you were to plot an organization’s level of job performance by individuals the variation would result in a roughly bell-shaped curve. The low performers and high performers would occupy opposite tail segments of the bell curve while the “good enoughs” are the Great Majority in the middle. For nothing more than critical mass, Anita’s ‘good enoughs’ in the middle are a dangerous segment to ignore.
What if the “good enough” were made more of a focal point…if that population was positively impacted would not the entire distribution shift to a new, higher midpoint due to critical mass if nothing else? The high performers would be driven to ‘stay ahead of the pack’ while the tail end of the dog would either try to keep up the rear or fall off completely.
Just thinkin’.
Culture-Evolution, Revolution? 7-S Thoughts
We’ve had some good ‘culture’ conversations on the Employee Engagement Network before. Recently, a poster offered this: Is There Collaboration in Your Culture?
The topic just naturally gravitated toward the old dilemma…where does culture come from? How do you change it?
I’ve done a little on Change Management here: see Change is OK, Just Don’t Mess With My Stuff… but am taking a slightly different view here. To frame my initial response I called on the old standard McKinsey 7-S model, where “shared values” (translated – culture) is at the center of the model. Among the satellite S components: style, strategy, structure, systems.
An individual-based performance mgmt system, departmental silo structure, and misaligned micro goals all encourage all drive “me” style which impacts culture. All “S” components are interrelated. Therefore to consciously impact one all must be addressed. On the flip side, if you mess with one you inadvertently mess with the others. By design or default, the “S” components tend to change together. Better to plan! Strategy and systems drive style / culture:
- Strategy: set goals that require collaboration to complete.
- Systems: use performance mgmt to manage those collaborative projects. Interdependent success (or failure)
- Style: items 1 and 2 demand communication, collaboration, teamwork
EEN contributor Steven wrote…too many companies are rewarding individual efforts and ignoring successful teamwork. Emphasis–cross functional teamwork. I feel it’s even worse going half the distance, falling in love with the “t” word but only within departments / functions. So instead of a cowboy culture you have gang affiliation, still turf-centered.
Ben’s comment in the EEN discussion will hopefully trigger discussion…The culprit is top management. They create the culture and their people follow their leadership whether it is good, bad, or ugly.
I support that view, under two specific conditions. First, where a founding leader instills his own values upon the organization, and they take root and are nurtured by subsequent leadership. Second, when leadership re-engineers an organization that addresses all seven “S” components together. A rarity?
Other than those two instances, in my opinion culture is evolutionary—the ultimate collaboration.
More on Performance Management
See prior post. Another performance management conversation is taking place now on the EEN, a few excerpts and my thoughts follow. You have to sign up and be a member of the specific group to join the discussion, but at least you can check it out here.
David Marklew started the discussion with this:
What would the reaction in your organisation be if an announcement was published stating that they (performance appraisals) were being scrapped – happy faces or sad faces from both sides? I’m smiling just at the thought of the reaction.
Is perf mgmt just a seasonally hot topic? Maybe, considering that PM is typically only thought about “seasonally”. One of my issues with it, or more accurately with the way it is misused.
First need, I think, is to re-think what it is: an alignment and planning process, then a project management / status reporting tool. As such, it cannot be a semi-annual check-box ritual to comply with HR policy. If a project management tool, and the business plan drives the projects, how frequent should the touches be? Re-positioning elevates the relevance and importance.
(John) SMART objectives tend to be outdated very quickly – far more quickly than the time to the next appraisal…Per the comment above, when projects and priorities change plans need to change too. No way can they be carved in stone at the start of the period and left alone.
(John again) some managers will avoid feeding back on performance and development progress if there is nothing in place. This is one of my biggest concerns. Hate to say it but sometimes we need to be nudged into talking to one another!
Alison nailed it for me: It isn’t the tool which needs to be abolished, what about the skill of the user, how it’s used and how it’s positioned, these are surely key to how engaging the action is, like with most tools….Perhaps tailor made appraisals with a central core of organisational requirements might engage
If core competencies, or guiding principles etc etc exist, how well do they get driven into reality? To me, using a perf mgmt process is one ideal way. An issue, however, is how to objectively assess a person’s performance on the softer attributes.
At issue also is what Alison notes as the skill of the user. Like most anything else clarity, fairness and consistency are essential. Without these perf mgmt is a dangerous loaded weapon.
(David B) they have become so bureaucratic that many managers dread that “time of the year” when they have to be done…think about it, a time of the year, not ongoing! I’m in the camp of de-formalizing them, but making sure at the same time that that kind of communication doesn’t fall through the cracks, and that people get feedback along the way. So yes, scrap the “system”…
Need: ongoing, regular touches. Give people the skills they need to effectively use the process, including giving and receiving feedback (TALKING to each other??!). Use the process to manage execution of the business plan, as well as to drive the softer attributes into reality.
Balance the process by adding the individual development element.
David B said expect managers to do their job…. a well designed perf mgmt system should simply be a value-adding tool to help them do their job!
Performance Management-A Three Legged Stool
It’s that time of year again…buckets of frantic activity to beat performance management compliance deadlines set by HR.
I’m having a good exchange of ideas on performance management initiated by Leslie Allan on the Employee Engagement Network: CIPD Members Say Performance Management Systems Fail to Engage.
Just a couple of highlights here, and an invitation to join in the discussion, either here or via the link above.
When org strategy and operational goals is the singular focus, I totally agree with a point Les makes-big problem. If I am to take ownership of my plan, there had better be something in it for me. Smart PM systems strike a balance by including personal / career development and growth.
“Good” systems include behavioral attributes like the collaboration and cooperation that Les mentions in his post, and these are absolutely critical. Much more difficult to objectively assess than “did you / didn’t you get your projects done”. But essential reminders at the least.
Putting a number on people is one of the big objections Les raises…a tough one. There is the necessity of adding the objective element vs “Joe sure does good work”. To me the issue is the inconsistency in interpretation and application. How do you ensure that three is three among all managers and associates. The ideal: each associate has clear expectations on what must be achieved to “exceed expectations” and those expectations are measurable.
That sounds strangely like alignment, planning and measuring goal attainment. Hmmm…pretty important stuff.
Good system=three-legged stool:
- Operational goals, effectively cascaded to manage execution of the business plan
- Behavioral attributes, that help define cultural elements: this is how we behave when we are off attaining our goals
- Personal / career growth and development, not only to satisfy the individual’s craving to be all they can and want to be, but to build bench strength and support succession plans.
All of the above must rest on a solid foundation of collaboration between manager and associate. If it’s top-down directive forget about it. I may comply because I’m a good soldier but I won’t commit.
Head, hands, heart.
What’s Your “One Thing”?
City Slickers Dialogue: Metro Man Mitch (Billy Crystal) and Cowpoke Curly (Jack Palance)
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? This. [holds up one finger]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.
My personal vision, developed 15 years ago: leave a legacy, make an impact. I have a detailed strategy and ever-adapting action plan to support that vision but won’t bore you with it here, except to say that my strategic pyramid is based on personal values, a few attributes that have been my deepest drivers since at least junior high. A long time ago! I am certain these are deep, personality-anchored values, not just transitory or behavioral based on where I am at present.
I’ve given it a good deal of thought, in part through the work on this project. I am certain my “One Thing” is to connect. That is what my personal well-being and engagement is dependent upon, and connecting will allow me to become an effective enabler of engagement for those in my circle of influence….my ticket to leaving a legacy, making an impact.
There are many different connections, one being the connection among all I do in my life. It flies in the face of work-life balance, but I Am What I Do. Am I just lucky enough to be involved in something that allows me to attack the whole enchilada at once, with one focus, and not have to be overly concerned with maintaining that precious balance? Or maybe I’m deluding myself and I really am a workaholic headed for burnout?
There is a lot at stake. Those dynamics bear close watching, and I’m on it!
I teach at a local college now and then, most recently my personal favorite Total Quality Management: Performance Excellence. “Total quality” means just that: it encompasses everything we do at work, at home, in the community. Performance excellence in its broadest sense is meeting expectations first time, every time, on time–again at work, at home, in the community. So the class has a decidedly “big” flavor. Workplace-specific concepts and theories are applied to students’ private lives and vice versa.
Class exercises, discussions and projects are absolutely relevant to my day job. What applies in class applies to work, applies at home, applies socially. I research one and it applies directly to the other.
I get a lot of good out of reading and contributing to discussions on The Employee Engagement Network, a growing global social network of over 3,000 devotees of engagement (easy to find: Google it). What I read there, what I contribute there has everything to do with what I do at work, what I share in my college class, who I am at home, my role in the community.
I am what I do, I do who I am. I am connected.
Your Challenge: connect. It’s a good place.
Good System, Bad System
I work for a start-up manufacturing operation. “What?!” you say? Didn’t know there was such a thing anymore? We’re in the wind energy business, enough said.
Our location is 3 years old, we have recently ramped up to several hundred people and counting. We’ve had so much to learn with new design, processes, and equipment that we haven’t paid much attention to systems. That opens the debate for whether systems are a prerequisite to starting up (later!). Regardless, we’re playing catch-up on two systems critical to managing the people and process elements of the business: performance management and an ISO-based management system.
I’ve explored both systems in prior posts: see The Roadmap for a guide to primarily ISO –focused posts, also the Perf Mgmt category.
I’m drawn back to this subject by the immediate need to collect our thoughts and take a close look at how to attack both systems. And coincidentally, the college class I teach is currently exploring systems. Two birds with one boulder.
The way these systems are designed, implemented and maintained can be very good or very bad. I’ve seen both up-close. What makes the difference, in 50,000 words or less?
This started out looking like a two-part post, one for each system. But there are several common factors to target together. Specifics for each will follow, along with a few barrier-busters.
****************************
Reputation. Both ISO and performance management are a favorite foil for jokes and an easy target for Dilbert. Ask those who have experienced ISO or performance management. The balance of input you will hear is definitely skewed. Maybe it’s because people like to gripe more than praise, or maybe there are more bad experiences to share than good. Even those who have not personally experienced either system can offer “first-hand” accounts — legends shared around the campfire.
The bad rep these systems have earned have become a part of tribal folklore. And like it or not….
Image Is Everything. If a task is perceived as a waste of time, it is treated as low priority and there is only minimal effort directed at completing the task. Why is the company subjecting its associates to all this grief? Shamelessly sell the sizzle, and do it with substance not smoke! Make it personal, and make it personally rewarding for people to carve out a chunk of their limited time to work the system.
System Intent, Perceived Value There must be some value, some compelling business reason for the system, beyond earning the certificate of compliance (ISO) and providing input for merit increases (performance management). How does this system help me on the job, how does it help the company achieve its goals, how does the system help keep the doors open?
The Grindstone Effect. People are task-driven. Systems are out of sight, out of mind unless one of them gets in the way of getting the job done. How much on-task productive time is diverted to meeting system-demanded obligations? Two choices: either educate the workforce on systems thinking, interconnectedness, and the value of systems, or simply ensure that user-friendliness is a priority.
Occasional Afterthought (Under Duress). Little causes widespread panic like “ISO auditors coming next week.” People scurry about sweeping dust bunnies under the rug and otherwise cramming for the exam. Similarly, “performance reviews must be completed by end-of-month.” In both cases, attempts at fabricating an acceptable past kick in, in reckless pursuit of compliance.
To add value, both systems require constant, disciplined attention at a level commensurate with the importance of the system. Which, unfortunately, requires that the systems are perceived to be deserving of attention.
Ownership. The Kiss of Death for both systems: “performance management is an HR thing…ISO is a quality thing.” While HR and Quality are traditionally the guardians of their respective system, users must own their individual performance management plans, and must own their area’s piece of an ISO-based management system.
My performance management plan determines my individual success on the job, as well as the direction of my career. My area’s management system determines how well my area of accountability meets requirements and contributes toward achieving my company’s goals.
Ownership is fueled by broad involvement, at the highest and most frequent level leadership is capable of allowing. Leadership can either enable or inhibit.
Compliance vs Commitment
ISO is steeped in terms of compliance, from the language of the model itself to the ongoing post-certification cycle of audits and corrective action. Performance management is in some cases a check-box activity people are driven to complete only to comply with an HR mandate. Oh by the way, your merit increase, if any, is tied to timely completion of your assessment. So we gotcha…
What Next?
All of these issues get in the way of people fully buying into performance management and ISO.
So we’re up front, in the system design phase. Where do we start, to minimize the impact of these potential pitfalls?
The highest single priority: focus on those things that will elicit full commitment from associates. There is a world of difference between simple compliance to completing a task, and full commitment to executing the plan. One may win a battle or two, but the latter wins the war.
- Design for user-friendliness. The best way to ensure a user-friendly design is to involve the users in the design.
- Communicate and educate associates on the importance of the systems to the long-term success of the business, as well as the WIIFM elements.
- Train people on the mechanics of how to use the system. WHAT and WHY before HOW!
- Last, follow the formula for flawless execution: It Ain’t Rocket Science!
Four easy steps….I can’t wait for Monday to get it done!
Primers for Engaging Conversations
The following is posted at the 4,000-member Employee Engagement Network. It is an invitation to contribute to an e-book, topic described below. Go check it out and if you aren’t part of the EEN community, come on in! Sign up and contribute.
High on the list of a leader, manager, or supervisor’s daily work should be having meaningful conversations with others, beyond the regular small talk. Taking time to talk with a person goes a long way and is even more powerful if the conversation targets what matters most. This says to the other person I recognize you, I care about you, I am committed to your success, and I support you.
Our next e-book is Primers for Engaging Conversations: Questions or Conversational Primers to Help Others Engage.
What question or statement would you use with peers, reports, bosses or others as a conversation primer to help them engage more fully in work, relationships, customer service, organizational goals, results, etc?
Write your engaging conversation primer question in one sentence. The ideal question or statement should be written in a conversational style that reads the same way it sounds if it was voiced.
Submit one question or statement at a time.
This book will be co-edited by Craig Althof and David Zinger with design by John Junson.
Outside-the-Box Engagement
Engagement has everything to do with connecting, a couple of examples follow. This is relevant to “the Greater Good” to which I have a deep personal connection.
I play a little music on the side, with a couple of good friends. We’ve played anywhere from horse barns to islands to state fairs. Think (very) poor man’s Crosby, Stills and Nash only a little more eclectic. We take on anything from Prine to Motown, showing each the same level of disrespect as we spin them our own way. There and Back Again.
OK, I’ll admit we’re pretty good even though that’s being mildly prejudiced.
We’re thankfully past having to make a great deal of money playing music, so we do a lot of events that are along the “greater good” lines…nursing homes, benefits etc. This past Veterans Day we were part of a tribute that included some extremely engaging food. While we were enjoying our pay for the day afterwards, a Navy vet with a WW II hat came over to visit with us.
One of my music partners is involved in a project for which he informally video interviews veterans, capturing their raw recounts of their experiences and their lives in general on video. He mentioned the project to our new friend, who thought a moment before replying “well, I don’t have a whole lot to talk about.” Famous First Words. We spent the next 45 minutes connecting with this man who survived Pearl Harbor, saw several of his good friends go down, and in the process I hope we helped him connect back to his life.
We were all deeply humbled at this meek man’s greatness.
Same event, different story. My partner had finished a song that morning he called “I’ve Got Wheels” that he wanted to do as a tribute to vets. A quick synopsis….young boy gets his first tricyle, refrain “Look at me, dad…I’ve got wheels.” As a teenager he gets his first car, same refrain. A few years later the young man goes off to war, comes back and de-planes …his first words to his dad were, you guessed it.
I have a couple of songs that can really hit me as I’m singing them, and on occasion I’ve struggled to get through them. But my partner absolutely and completely choked up and had to stop halfway through the first verse, which was “only” the little boy taking his first spin on his new tricycle. Talking with him afterwards, he said he was so emotionally connected and the visual was so vivid he couldn’t continue. And this was not based on a personal experience, it was simply a story he wanted to tell.
This is an example of an external event or stimulus, magnified by an intense emotional connection. Maybe too intense to be relevant for workplace engagement? But how powerful would it be if we could be driven by even a small fraction of that level of connection, at work or any other activity, or in our lives?
