Role of Meaning-Makers in Employee Engagement (Shawn Murphy)

 

Engaging employees, motivating innovation, addressing occupational mental illness - all part and parcel of the same move forward, when you connect the dots.  With the right kind of leadership, who knows what we could achieve...

 

 

Role of Meaning-Makers in Employee Engagement

 

 

For the past month, Ted and I hosted some extraordinary thinkers who ruminated on the value, application and future of employee engagement. First we want to thank all who participated. We learn from you and are honored to share your voice on this important topic.

 

This brings me to a question I want to explore: why does employee engagement matter?

 

Engaged employees has eluded many organizations, often becoming another management fad or meaningless surveys of which the results become shelf-ware. If it’s so important why do organizations, managers and employees fail to see the ascribed benefits of engagement efforts?

Certainly the answers are varied. Yet perhaps the most likely culprit is engagement is treated as an event. Let me explain.

 

Engaged employees, hell human beings, will put forth their best effort when they see they are appreciated

 

Each year or every other year an employee engagement survey is delivered via email to all employees. It’s arrival is trumpeted by an email from the CEO explaining the survey’s importance. This is the event. It’s followed by survey results disseminated to managers and some messaging shared with employees. End of event. Now go about your work.

 

Engagement is treated as some check-the-box-exercise on management’s long list of to-dos. It’s squeezed in between budget meetings, project status reports, committee meetings, blah blah blah.

Truth is engagement is not something planned if its done intentionally. Engagement is a leadership act. Not a management task.

 

Engaged employees has eluded many organizations, often becoming another management fad or meaningless surveys of which the results become shelf-ware

 

Engagement exists in the interactions between managers and employees. It’s where managers take on the important role of meaning-makers: managers help employees uncover and exploit meaning in their work all the while knowing that they matter. That their work matters.

 

This isn’t some group-hug moment. It’s where management, business and humanity intersect. Engaged employees, hell human beings, will put forth their best effort when they see they are appreciated. When what employees believe that what they do has significance to those whom the organization serves.

 

The role of meaning-maker is one that is woven throughout a manager’s daily actions, both planned and spontaneous

 

This does not occur when engagement is treated as event. When it’s an event it becomes unauthentic. The event is awkward at first then becomes annoying. Hopes are raised and quickly dashed when the event passes. Such an approach is void of meaning.

 

The role of meaning-maker is one that is woven throughout a manager’s daily actions, both planned and spontaneous. It’s planned when managers make time to know their employees’ hopes, dreams, plans for the future. It’s spontaneous when managers see an important teaching moment presents itself when an employee fails.

 

Employee engagement matters because it reveres the innate human desire to do work that matters, to do work that is meaningful. Without employee engagement the spawns of hierarchy, bureaucracy, command-and-control, for example, dominate and suck the humanity out of our workplaces.

Employee engagement will not thrive when its handled like an event. But when it is vigilantly cultivated and purposefully spread through the interactions between managers and employees, it becomes a way of working. It becomes part of a company’s culture.

 

Graphic by Shawn Murphy

Shawn Murphy (100 Posts)

Change Leader | Speaker | Writer Owner and principal consultant at Achieved Strategies. Co-founder of Switch and Shift. Passionately explores the space where business & humanity intersect. Promoter of workplace optimism. Believes work can be a source of joy. Top ranked on Huffington Post and HR Examiner.

Is Your Workplace Ready for the Interconnected World? (Steelcase)

Can it handle the global, mobile, nonstop reality of business today? Because that’s the new reality for globally integrated enterprises. Business is increasingly a team sport that leverages technology to cross borders and time zones. Work is more interconnected and more complex than ever. Our work environment is the pivotal place for helping us navigate this new business world.

This new workplace must address the diverse ways people are working today. It must support enhanced collaboration, the essence of knowledge work. It needs to inspire and attract people to work at the office instead of the coffee shop. It should nurture personal wellbeing, and leverage organizational culture and the company’s brand. Overall, this workplace must make the most of every square inch of an organization’s real estate.

 

“There’s no company that isn’t struggling with this new business environment. Everywhere, resources are stretched thin from downsizing and a struggling economy. Business issues are more complex than just a few years ago, more organizations are working on a global platform, and every company needs its employees, along with every other corporate asset, to do more than ever,” says John Hughes, principal of Applied Research & Consulting, the global Steelcase consultancy on work and workplace.

 

The fact is, as companies wrestle with these issues, the workplace can be a key strategic tool: interconnected, collaborative, inspirational. A work environment designed to support people, and the flow of information and enhanced collaboration, can actually help a company solve tough business problems, build market share, and stay competitive. In other words, an interconnected workplace for an interconnected world.

An Interconnected Workplace will:

- Optimize every square foot of real estate
- Enhance collaboration as a natural way of working
- Attract, develop, and engage great talent; people really want to work there
- Build the company brand and culture
- Help improve a person’s wellbeing

 

What does an interconnected workplace look and feel like? Like the new, innovative headquarters building for Skype, the global Internet communications pioneer. Or the ultra-collaborative workplace for Infragistics, the world leader in user interface software development tools. And the new home for a blend of both resident and mobile workers at Steelcase’s global headquarters. On opposite sides of the United States, the two technology companies meet at the frontier of workplace reinvention fueled by a need to constantly innovate and attract the best talent in the industry. The new Steelcase space is not only a home for employees but also a laboratory to test and measure concepts and solutions designed for globally integrated enterprises. All three of these companies embrace the five characteristics of an interconnected workplace in ways that make them their own.

Attract, develop, and Engage

People really want to work here.

 

Imagine you’re a talented software engineer. You could find work in Silicon Valley, London, Amsterdam, anywhere really. Why choose a company in Cranbury, New Jersey?

 

Simple. The company has one of the most collaborative, welcoming, and energizing work environments in the business. With offices in the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Uruguay, Japan, and India, Infragistics is a globally integrated enterprise that must attract the very best talent everywhere in the world.

 

Going up against high-tech hotspots, “we needed the best workplace experience,” says Dean Guida, CEO of Infragistics, the software interface experience company. “A place that’s spacious, promotes collaboration, a place where you feel good. Along with the people and the projects we work on, the space is what’s exciting and part of the attraction. We wanted a place that creates a ’Wow!’ experience for everyone who enters the building.”

 

Skype vies for top technology talent, too — throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. Its new location in Palo Alto, California, is just down the street from major technology firms like HP, Google, and Cisco, all striving to attract and engage the best thinkers in the industry. Skype’s holistic approach recognizes the need for a workplace that’s as functional as it is friendly, and uses their own products to help staff work remotely to balance work and life as well as help them connect with colleagues all over the world.

 

Every day at lunchtime, Skype workers stream into the café for a catered lunch where engineers, marketers, public relations and IT staffers mix good food with conversation that shifts seamlessly from personal life to business and back. Perched on a stool at the central counter, one Skype engineer chatted over souvlaki about how collegial the company feels – almost like family. “I like coming to work here because it’s such a great atmosphere. But I also appreciate that I can work from home when I need to and use Skype for meetings or a quick chat. I used to work in a place where they expected you to be in the office all the time, but I have a wife and two kids and only one car, so that was really tough. I like this a lot better.”

 

A “wow factor” throughout Infragistic’s new workplace in Canbury, New Jersey, helps attract and keep top talent.

 

Skype’s facility manager for U.S. and Asia Pacific, Dena Quinn continually considers the company’s space and its relationship to the wellbeing of its employees. Shifting rapidly between tasks, Quinn represents a new breed of facility manager who think not only about the physical environment but the entire work experience, making sure employees are happy and productive.

 

Skype doesn’t do these things because they hope it will attract talent. They know it will. Their Living Workplace Survey, a recent poll of tech users and decision makers in the U.S., measured how companies are using workspace and technology to engage with highly sought-after tech pros:

 

- 62% of firms say about a third of their employees spend 40% of their time working remotely
- Decision makers say flexible and remote work options help them attract the best talent and keep them on staff
- The top three factors determining job satisfaction are salary (identified by 55% of respondents), the quality of the work environment (37%), and flexibility to work outside the office or at home (33%)

 

“We built a place that attracts and nurtures the kind of people we need. That includes a workplace that supports different ways of working, services that help people balance their work and personal lives, like remote work and free lunches, and enough flexibility in the furniture and systems to adapt to changes in business,” says Quinn. “People really like working here, and they can tell what kind of place it is within minutes of walking in. When potential recruits take a tour, they understand that we’re a global company driven by collaboration and innovation. We hear a lot of them say, ’Yup, I could definitely work here.’”

Collaborate

Group hug, maybe. Group work, definitely.

 

Team work is the essence of knowledge work, and, at its core, knowledge work is four activities: learning, socializing, collaborating, and focused work. Three of those involve two or more people in creating, evaluating, and building on knowledge to generate new ideas and creative solutions.

 

Innovation is the result of collaboration, but not just any kind of collaboration. Routine coordination, such as giving someone an update on a project, is an important bit of team work. But the kind of collaboration that gets you breakthrough ideas, comes from people working together specifically to solve problems, and develop new insights and solutions.

 

“Collaboration is an iterative, rolling, often very informal process,” says Julie Barnhart-Hoffman, design principal with WorkSpace Futures, the Steelcase research and design group. “Collaboration relies on social networks, informal connections, how many interactions you have during the day. The variety and type of spaces where you work — workstations, hallways, cafés, team spaces, lounge areas, etc. — have an impact on how well you collaborate.”

 

Collaboration is part of the design DNA of an interconnected workplace. For example, the Steelcase space originally had a building core of conference rooms and utility space that separated the two sides of the floor. “We removed a third of that core to open it up and eliminate the our side/their side feel,” says Barnhart-Hoffman. In its place went a community café with lounge, eating, and meeting spaces. “It’s a very social space that will create a lot of buzz, build community, and create a whole lot of collaboration.”

 

An analysis of the work and work styles of the three departments in the space (finance, sourcing, and quality) identified nomads (mobile workers), nomadic techs (mobile technical workers), and residents, and provided specific types of individual and collaborative spaces. The only employees with dedicated workstations, residents, also have a few unassigned workstations mixed in so visiting mobile workers can engage with them. Residents also have access to all the spaces, including the spaces designed for visitors. Nomads have “camps” of unassigned workspaces in different configurations, media:scape® collaborative worksettings, and a mix of other group work spaces. Benching workstations support teams who need to work together.

 

Forget one-size-fits-no-one standards: “If you want people to collaborate, you have to give them a range of workspace options,” says Barnhart-Hoffman.

 

Team spaces at Infragistics have a different spin on the same idea: 120-degree worksurfaces inside a Post and Beam frame create spaces called “pods.” Hanging whiteboards and curtains create a sense of enclosure for teams of four to six people. When workers want to expand a pod to include others, they simply draw back the curtains, move some whiteboards, and the space opens to the next pod, or two pods, or three…

 

Collaboration worksettings scattered throughout the Infragistics office take a variety of forms:

- Open meeting areas with different mixes of chairs, tables, and writing surfaces
- Three different media:scape collaborative worksettings
- A “now showing” room with lounge seating and a big screen for displaying company products
- A breakfast/refreshment bar with a pool table, lounge seating, and a railing that overlooks the first-floor dining area
- “Phone-booths” for private work
- Libraries, small huddle rooms for small groups, and a variety of outdoor work areas

 

Over at Skype, their “scrum development” work process depends on iterative idea generation through collaboration, so they offer open and enclosed spaces for group work as well as media:scape settings for distributed or local collaboration. “Different spaces let you collaborate in different ways,” says Quinn.

 

Distributed collaboration used to be one of those “different” ways. Now it’s increasingly common as companies enter new markets, offshore work, and operate around the globe. Videoconferencing has become as easy as making a phone conference call (thanks to companies such as Skype), and file sharing between distributed team members is now routine. To deal with the distance, the workplaces at Skype, Infragistics, and Steelcase each include wi-fi everywhere, small spaces for holding video chats so the noise doesn’t bleed into other parts of the office, and media:scape collaborative worksettings that allow multiple users to display content and work on it together. Distributed teams can work as effectively as co-located teams by using media:scape with high-definition videoconferencing or Skype videoconferencing.

 

Distributed collaboration not only connects workers in Denver with partners in Prague, it also supplements in-person collaboration and helps cement relationships. Our basic need to connect with the people we work with is fed by technology for texting and phoning, whether we’re separated by thousands of miles or just a few feet of carpet. Barnhart-Hoffman calls it “a quiet, collaborative backstage, a continual information flow that leads to more iterative and spontaneous collaboration.”

 

Spontaneous collaboration can sometimes be the best kind, so Infragistics provides plenty of spaces for it to happen throughout the workplace.

Wellbeing

The office can actually make you feel better.

 

For many, wellbeing in the workplace means physical health: ergonomic furniture, a fitness center, healthy choices in the cafeteria, etc. All good stuff. But now, many organizations are thinking about wellbeing more holistically, considering a range of dimensions such as cognitive, emotional, social, and financial, to name a few. That’s part of what Infragistics CEO Guida means by a “Wow!” experience. It’s why their new office is flooded with natural light (a boost for everyone’s wellbeing), includes green plant oases and aquariums, and has a pool table, pizza oven, and other amenities that help encourage interactions and, in turn, build an atmosphere of belonging and collegiality.

 

Just as people need a variety of different workspaces for collaboration, they also need the autonomy to select where and how they work best. Sometimes it’s a quiet place to concentrate, sometimes a place to meet, or just a more stimulating place to get through a lethargic afternoon. “Allowing people to choose how and where they work, and providing those options on site saves time, makes people more productive, and leads to a more satisfying work/life,” says Barnhart-Hoffman.

 

Research backs this up. A recent study conducted by Ohio State University and the National Institute of Mental Health in the U.S., shows that the physical work environment dramatically influences emotional and physical wellbeing. Workers in an old-style office space with low ceilings, rows of cubicles, limited natural light, noisy air handling, and unattractive views had significantly higher levels of stress hormones and heart-rate variability than workers in more open, spacious, well-lit offices. And these rates stayed high even when workers were at home. The researchers concluded that a bad work environment may actually be a risk factor for heart disease.

 

“Knowledge work is basically a self-directed process, and people want to choose how and where they work. Work environments where they can make those choices are more intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically fulfilling,” says Barnhart-Hoffman.

 

An overall view of wellbeing has become a recognized strategy for attracting and retaining people, helping them achieve better health and a better work/life balance. In fact, in a new study conducted by Steelcase together with CoreNet Global, an improved work/life balance is the top reason why companies offer alternative work strategies such as home offices, mobile work, and telecommuting. Nearly half (49%) said it’s the reason their company supports these alternative ways of working. Other reasons include reducing commute time (listed by 35% of respondents), supporting real estate compression (31%), reducing carbon footprint (29%), and supporting creative work (29%). About a third, 32%, said they do not support employees working in third places.

 

The study found that companies are using a range of alternative work strategies to support the predominance of mobile and collaborative work today. The most common are home offices, supporting mobile work from multiple workspaces, and shared or free-address workspaces. Over half of the survey’s respondents, 58%, say these arrangements are available to anyone in the organization if their manager agrees, and 16% say these work styles are open to anyone in their company.

Brand and Culture

The workplace is the company.

 

Nothing manifests a company’s brand and organizational culture like the workplace. “Go into any office in any part of the world and within minutes you can sense what that company is all about,” says Steelcase’s John Hughes. “Everyone who comes into the work environment — customers, vendors, board members, new recruits, the media — the people a company most wants to influence, get a clear impression about the company: what it holds dear, how it operates, what it celebrates. Do they come away with a clear understanding of your brand, how you deliver on your brand promise, and what this means to employees? If they don’t, you’re missing a huge opportunity and you’re not really leveraging your real estate.”

 

Enter the Skype headquarters and you can’t miss the value of space in communicating brand and culture. Here the message is clear: We’re a global company that collaborates constantly, regardless of time zones or locations. New ideas are our currency, our workstyle is informal but hardworking. This is a hip, forward-thinking workplace and company.

 

At Infragistics, their headquarters may be located in New Jersey, but this office says Silicon Valley entrepreneurism: it’s an energetic, cool space where collaboration rules, technology is readily available, and colleagues rub shoulders in person and over great distances, all day long.

 

Steelcase uses its new workplace to both build and communicate its brand and culture. On the eve of its 100th anniversary, the company wanted its headquarters to be a catalyst for reinventing how it uses space. “This is our culture and brand: understanding what it means to have a globally interconnected workplace, and acquiring the knowledge and insights we can share with our customers as they struggle with the same issues in their workplaces,” says Nancy Hickey, senior vice president and chief administrative officer.

 

In keeping with the company’s mission, the new space for the finance, sourcing, and quality departments is also a behavioral prototype, a testing ground for the latest thinking. “We’ve built an environment for this group based on what we’ve learned about the workplace, and it’s very different from what they’re used to,” says Barnhart-Hoffman. “But if you give people the same environment they’ve always known, you’ll get pretty much the same work behaviors, the same work processes. When you mix it up, give them new environments and tools and new ways to use them, you get change, and that leads to more insights.”

 

c:scape benches allow Skype employees to shift easily between focused work and collaboration, and the efficient footprint leaves plenty of space for group collaborative work.

Maximize Real Estate

Not just shrinking — rethinking.

 

The average workstation footprint has been getting smaller for a few years now, a response to the new world we work in: more mobility, more collective work, increasing use of group spaces. The trend shows no sign of slacking: according to a new survey about real estate utilization, conducted by Steelcase and CoreNet Global, 80% of those surveyed expect to contract their space per employee to some degree, most commonly a reduction of about 10%.

 

What happens to the real estate carved out of individual workstation footprints? Some is subleased or rented out. Other companies move to a smaller office. What’s important is to understand what the right balance is of individual work spaces and shared spaces. Creating the right spaces is about understanding the range of options that help people work most effectively. Simply shrinking your real estate footprint, like putting yourself on a crash diet, just makes you thinner, not better. “Compression alone has limited benefits. If you treat your real estate like an asset, you don’t just shrink, you rethink the space to help people work in an interconnected world,” says Hughes.

 

More companies seem to be catching the drift. In the CoreNet/Steelcase survey, 57% of companies say they reconfigure individual space to accommodate team spaces, and 41% say they create cafés, meeting spaces, and other alternative work-settings. Most companies take a variety of approaches (which accounts for the percentages totaling more than 100%).

 

Steelcase’s new workplace shrinks the average individual workspace, uses benching for on-demand worksettings, and creates more collaborative spaces: neighborhoods, team hubs, free-address work areas, media:scape settings, a library, as well as the café space that joins the two sides of the floor. The space accommodates more people than before and provides more options for where and how to work. Even employees with smaller dedicated workspaces (just 39 sq. ft./3.6 sq. m.) have more functional space; their worksurface, chair, and monitor arm adjust to individual comfort and preference.

 

Creating workplaces for an interconnected world allows companies to stop reacting to volatile and uncertain markets and instead focus on the connection, collaboration, and inspiration businesses need to innovate today.

 

At Skype’s Palo Alto location, 80% of the workforce is engineers, and they’re developing the company’s next generation products at open workbenches designed specifically to support serious technology use: extra-long worksurfaces with monitor arms that position big flat screens as needed, and adjustable screens so they can balance individual privacy, not to mention a bevy of collaboration spaces just past the end of their desk. “People came in on day one, sat down, and started to work. This space makes you take notice. It delights people. It supports our company’s expectations of high productivity. It has a fast feel to it,” says Quinn. At a company poised to grow, “this place is really attracting talent.”

 

The Infragistics space has even been featured in an IT trade publication as an “ideal workplace” because of the way it supports collaboration and the culture of the organization. Visitors get it right away. “From day one, employees couldn’t believe this place,” says Guida. “People are blown away. ‘There’s nothing like this!’ is something I hear all the time. Customers are more confident in doing business with us. Everyone — customers, vendors, partners — says they want to come to work here.” Ask your own staff and leadership: where do they want to work in the new, interconnected world?

 

 

Tags: Collaboration, Global, Infragistics, Interconnected Workplace, Skype, Technology
Filed under: 360 Magazine, Featured Articles  

3 Ways to Develop Creativity in the Workplace (by www.buzz.waspbarcode.com)

 

Motivating innovative labour through redesigning work and workspaces?  Sounds like a brilliant idea.

 

 

It doesn’t matter if you are a small marketing agency or an accounting firm; every work environment thrives on creative individuals. Sometimes getting those individuals to release their creative energy is easier said than done. Employees are often too focused on the task at hand, making those “ah-ha” moments few and far between. And when they do fall upon us, it’s often too late to make the appropriate action.

As a small business owner, it is your responsibility to harness this creative energy on a daily basis. Below, we’ve listed three simple ways to encourage creativity within your small business.

1. Participate in Social Networks

One of the best ways your employees can release their creative energy on a more regular basis is by participating within social networks. As an individual increases their social circle, they are more likely to be surrounded with diverse conversation, ultimately sparking new ideas from within. It’s important not to focus too heavily on social networks as it may have an inverse effect on the brain. Moderation is key.

2. Evaluate Your Office Décor

 

Sometimes all it takes is placing an individual in the right atmosphere. Unique office design is a major component to sparking creative ideas. However, you’ll want to make sure your office design is still on par with your overall brand image. Here are a few examples of creative workplaces. Who knows, they may spark a few ideas for your small business!

 

3. Create a Suggestion Box

 

This is a brilliant idea. Employees can be timid when it comes to voicing opinions. Why not make an anonymous suggestion box for employees to bring forth thought-provoking ideas?

The Politics of Memory: Mental Maps and Digital Government

Most of us think of memory as a chamber of the mind, and assume that our capacity to remember is only as good as our brain. But according to some architectural theorists, our memories are products of our body’s experience of physical space. Or, to consolidate the theorem: Our memories are only as good as our buildings.

Close your eyes and picture you're in your kitchen at home.  How do you get from there to the washroom?  What colour are the walls?  Where are the cupboards?  Could you draw a map from point A to B?  How many of the details along the way could you replicate with accuracy?  It's not as easy a process as you think; even the distances between rooms isn't as consistent in your memory as you think it is.

That, essentially, is the process that police walk witnesses through in describing suspects or recalling details from memory.  It's one we do very poorly.  If you're asked, however, how those spaces, faces or experiences make you feel, you're on much safer ground.  People who have touched your life deeply leave lasting impressions; you might look kindly at a cactus if, say, a favourite grandparent always had a cactus in their space.  You might mistrust all dogs, because you were terrified by one in your youth.  Emotional impacts are much more deeply ingrained in our memories. 

Marketing understands this, as does politics - the best messaging doesn't present information; it conveys emotional content.  Neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP relies on the manipulation of emotion to direct thought and is employed to some degree in the design of any tribal event, be it a religious service or a partisan rally.  Even Scientology incorporates some understanding of emotion's role in memory.  Ever heard the expression "number tell, but stories sell?"  How about this one - "a picture is worth a thousand words?"

"Syrian forces had killed 500 children."  It's pretty sickening.  Think you'll remember the number in an hour?  Click this link and tell me how soon you think that image will clear from your mind.

Now, think of government services; press 1 for this, press one for that.  Lists of hospitals, lists of doctors, forms and rote information.  Click on this link to 211 Toronto and tell me where your eyes gravitate.

I'm going to guess it wasn't the text on the left, but the pictures on the right.  Yet, our services aren't picture-based, they aren't designed for intuitive use; they're lists of terms that link to other lists of terms, or they're people on phones reading out "if A, then 1; if B, then 2" scripts.  The emotional resonance is missing; the map-like feature cues are entirely absent.  It's the dimensional equivalent to black-and-white, silent films; there is so much more detail that can be realized, if we have the right technology to map out that third dimension.

Of course, we're only now developing the digital tools that will allow for government services to be presented in a way that fosters maximum efficiency in public uptake.  The US has put together a roadmap for digital government that is doing just that - building a digital map that provides mental cue landmarks and will facilitate access.  This is where Wiki meets Googlemaps; the realization of what Don Tapscott calls Networked Intelligence or what I like to call The Conscious Society.

The future of government services, much as the future of work, is going to capitalize on this deeper understanding of what resonates with constituents/employees and how to design services, work spaces and work itself to promote maximum efficiency of use and maximum productivity.  The Henry Fords of the Cognitive Labour Revolution are busily designing the assembly mind lines that will propel the information economy forward.  The process will start in work and be picked up by labour, but where the most amazing transformations will occur when this trend hits our education system - where good teachers are already employing some degree of cognitive space design.

It's an exciting time to be alive; there's a whole new world of opportunity being opened up before us.  The challenge we face now is putting together the map.

Rethinking Work: The Impact of Occupational Mental Health on Productivity

  

Mental performance will drive corporate success in the information economy. Innovation, a mental function, is key to competitiveness.

Meanwhile, depression and stress disorders at work are driving disability rates – they are more than 30 per cent of all disability recorded at three of Canada’s best known corporations.

For instance, a company employing 1,000 people will have cases of depression but only 25 will be diagnosed and only six receive proper treatment.

Establish organizational and employee health as “twin priorities” among managers in business.

Survey employees to identify stress which threatens individual health.

Interrupt the treadmill effect plaguing employees with too many priorities and too much to do at once.

Combat distrust, disrespect, autocratic management styles and too-repetitive tasks – all contribute to stress-related health problems.

Of course, conventional wisdom tells us this is all nonsense. Depression and anxiety are excuses, not sicknesses - people just need to get over themselves. In fact, working through anxiety and depression makes you strong on the other end.

When it comes to micromanagement, hey; tough managers are effective managers; employees need close oversight, otherwise they'd be the bosses, wouldn't they? Life is tough; if you can't rise to the challenge then you're probably in the wrong environment. I went through the same thing - look how I turned out. Some folk are just in denial about the way the world really is.

And yet, study after study indicates we are facing a rise in work-related mental health concerns. You might even call it a global business mental health crisis. Countries around the world are trying to find reactive ways to tackle this elephant in the room; Canada has just released it's own plan for a national mental healthcare strategy. The question largely being ignored is this; iis there a correlation between the rise in workplace mental illness and the increasing amounts of cognitive work people are being given to do under increasingly tight deadlines? Is it the people or the nature of work that's the problem?

I once had a baffling conversation with a woman in business who's partner, also in business, was facing heart health concerns. This fellow works ridiculous hours and has an enormous set of expectations put on him. He also tends to drink excessively, but that's as much part of his work culture as anything else. This woman, wickedly smart, incredibly strategic and prone to making informed decisions told me she'd done her homework and found there was no significant correlation between stress and heart health.  She was worried about her partner's well-being, yet determined the stress of his (and her) lifestyle was not a factor.  I had looked at the exact same data she had and come to a completely different conclusion; she was going to take her counsel over mine, though, because she had a track record of success to fall back on.  When you're used to being right, you're not likely to consider the advice of someone with less related experience - if anything, you'll seek the advice of consultants (but might not necessarily follow it). 

 

 

Since then, I have done even more research (largely listed in the E-Library column to the left of this blog), stretching beyond mental illness and including cognitive processes, how and why the body reacts to physical stimuli and even mental health in other animals.  I wonder what my friend would have said if I had told her that zebras don't get ulcers?  It's kind of a human thing.


This is the piece that gets left out of the conversation - life, in general, is meant to be stressful, but only in short bursts.  Predators spend most of their time resting, conserving energy for the physical toll hunting takes on them.  The same holds true with prey; stress is a short-term burst of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that allows them to survive an encounter or not, after which they can either go back to relaxing or are dead.

The human world of work is increasingly moving away from that model.  In the Industrial Age, workers would clock in, do their shifts, take their breaks and then go home.  There was a clear divide between work and home life; work itself was more about one-off activities rather than complex, long-term commitments.  Writing a note or building a widget is one thing; seeking out new business opportunities, creating long-term strategies and maintaining networks is another beast completely.  Add to this gridlock, picking up the kids, making it to the grocery store, etc, etc; we have developed a work/life system of non-stop stress.  It's clearly not a sustainable model.

So, why are some people - say, 1% of the population - so willing to clinging to it?  To me, it seems to go back to biology.  In a survival-of-the-fittest model, we assume the environment isn't the problem; if you're tough, you'll manage and if not, you don't.  Until a tipping point gets reached where a sufficient proportion of the population falls below the cut, we can still keep telling ourselves that it's a success thing, not a culture thing.  Those at the top are comfortable in the model; like a lion resting after a full meal, they see no need to expend the necessary energy to change a system that is working for them just fine.  Sadly, it takes until the social unrest at the bottom is so severe that the people at the top will face enough disruption (cortisol) to look at alternatives, while still trying to preserve their relative positions.  Don Tapscott calls this the burning platform - personally, I like the metaphor of the boiling frog.

 

The fact is, the platform is burning and unrest is bubbling to the surface.  Worse, if you're in business, you're bottom line is being impacted.  There's only one way to get ahead of this problem; by rethinking work, revising the way we understand mental health and beginning to consciously consider the collective impact of our actions.

If you don't like it, too bad - you're just gonna have to get used to it.

Motivating Innovative Success

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out.  Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again.

Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear the sound of a helicopter.

Captain Ed Freeman is coming for you.

Even after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come.  He's coming anyway.

Occupy.  Davos.  Goldman Sachs.  ORNGE.  The Knowledge Economy.  Mental Health.  Public Health costs. 

Everyone I talk to is looking at individual, structural problems and wringing their hands in worry about what to do next.  Some of these folk are equally looking ahead at the emerging reality of the Knowledge Economy and wondering how we can get from here to there.

All these pieces are connected.  Like playing three-dimensional chess, we have to stop looking at individual social issues and see how they fit together into a holistic puzzle.  To do that, we need to revisit our understanding of how we can move our pieces and what strategies will help us get past our two-dimensional thought box.

The best place to start is with motivation.

“You eat what you kill” is a standard phrase in consulting land.  For employees in many a field, the rule tends to be that performance is rewarded by bonuses; if your colleagues get bonuses and you don’t, it’s because you’re a failure.  While financial reward might be good for pushing people to produce more, faster, or to be more aggressive in sales, it turns out financial reward is not the best motivator for innovative success. 

Many will say that statement flies in the phase of standard wisdom – money has always been success' reward.  For these people, I leave you two stories to consider; heliocentrism and evolution.  You can keep breaking down a pull door because you can’t push it open, but there might be an easier, more effective and less stressful way to get where you want to go – success in innovation, leadership in the Knowledge Economy.

“Money is like blood in that it has to circulate, otherwise it’s meaningless.”

     - Margaret Atwood

LEARNING

Nothing comes from nothing.  Creative ideas don’t magically pop into people’s heads, fully-formed.  If you want people to innovate, you have to provide them with raw material they can absorb and time to properly synthesize.  This can’t be a one-off affair; it has to be a life-long thing.

Fortunately, there are pretty good models out there to help make this happen in an affordable, accessible and efficient way.

MEANING

Bring meaning into work.  While we like to differentiate between what we think motivates people at different stages of their life and in different roles, that’s largely a social construction.  What really motivates, say, a volunteer to give 200% is the same thing that motivates employees.  You gotta give them some skin in the game.

Having done a lot of time recruiting and supporting volunteers in my time, there are three things that are proven to keep them coming back for more:

1)      Recognition.  They aren’t tools, they're people.  Engage them as such.  Get to know them, learn about why they're volunteering and what their other interests are.  You never know where a potential for cross-pollination will arise and you’ll surely never find it if you don’t ask.

2)      Food.  Volunteers should always have access to at least snacks and drinks, like juice, coffee and tea.  It’s not hard to add some crackers and fruit to the mix.  The less your team needs to think about what and when to eat, the more cognitive energy (and physical strength) they have to dedicate to your cause.  The same holds true for employees, and the best employers always have a coffee/tea machine, some snacks and definitely a microwave and fridge.

3)      Meaningful work.  People get frustrated when they feel they are digging and filling in holes for no purpose.  They need to understand what the point is.  Having said this, if you’re delivering something with meaning that every volunteer or employee can latch on to, people will spend hours stickering cards in support of that cause.  You still want to mix up the tasks a bit and allow people to be challenged; you also want to set the example by having the people at the top of the food chain sitting down and do the grunt-work with everyone else.

One of my favourite campaign memories involves a long, tired night of stickering U-Vote-Ats for a provincial by-election in the GTA.  The exhausted team was sitting around a table, beavering away when my boss of the time, the former MPP for Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry came in and sat down to sticker with us.  Jim Brownell sat there for hours, making silly jokes with the rest of us and just stickered.  It’s no wonder that people would travel across the province to support him, too.

LEGACY

Why do we have sex?  To leave progeny behind.  The same holds true for ideas; consciously or unconsciously, people who get engaged want to be leave something behind or be a part of something bigger than themselves that they feel has a good chance of enduring.  It’s the human equivalent, I think, of lekking behaviour.

If we can grasp this concept, consciously, we can build in legacy and meaning into work design.

My dad, a retired research historian, told me about a talk he was asked to give to one group or another.  He was asked what his fee was; my dad suggested to me that he didn’t have a fee and that the idea hadn’t occurred to him.  He enjoyed sharing his expertise on the subject; that was his motivation.  I told him he was missing an opportunity.  Iif he doesn’t need the extra cash and believes in his cause, why not has his fee be a donation to a charity or organization of his choice?

At the recent THINK2012 conference hosted by the amazing ORION Network, guest facilitators were paid in donations to causes they believed in.  It’s a good motivator; there’s no reason you can’t apply this in the workplace, too.

I would suggest that you want to give employees what they need to live, comfortably, and make sure salary always fits within that comfortable quality-of-life range.  Particularly if you’re a creative industry, though, tie success to meaning and legacy; give your workers public credit for what they accomplish, plus an opportunity (through donations-as-bonus) to build legacy by giving back to their community.  Remember, quality-of-life isn't about cash, it's about access and interaction.

If we’re all doing this proactively and benefiting from the process, that means government will have to spend less and charities will be able to spend less on marketing.

There’s really nothing new to the idea of proactively motivating your team to do what’s in your/your company’s best interest.  It’s been around since the days of Sun-Tzu.  All we need do now is make sure this wisdom is applied to the 21^st Century context:

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting.

Opportunity Knocking: How to Address Our Social Woes

“I’ve been on Treasury Board since we were elected, and I’ve been chair now for five years,” he said. “I just never got the feeling that we were systematically looking at things. And every year when the Auditor-General’s report comes out, I’d say to myself, ‘how is it this stuff doesn’t get picked up internally?’ ”

    - Dwight Duncan, Ontario's Finance Minister

Among the familiar challenges the government will face, as it seeks to get a better understanding of its programs, is reticence within the provincial bureaucracy.

I know I’m a broken record on this, but there’s a reason for that – the evidence is pointing us in one direction.  We just need to walk the path leading us to the bright future that lies ahead.

Where We Are

We’re looking to incite more from people – more critical thinking, more innovation, more proactive efforts to think outside the box and work with partners.  We have to, because we can no longer afford to implement familiar half-solutions to expanding social problems.

We have ballooning social service costs – those costs are part of our challenge, why we have to tighten our belts in the first place.  When time was, the latent inefficiencies in our existing systems didn’t matter, because there was enough dough to cover the ground regardless.  That is no longer the case.  History makes it abundantly clear why cutting those services isn’t the answer, either – less access to services means greater social problems, which has a multiplier effect on crime, productivity, etc.

Work isn’t fully harnessing the opportunities emerging through the Knowledge Economy – yet.  Like the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it’s going to take us a while to find the right balance between work and life to get there.  We need to rethink motivation , how we tease the best out of people, from an evidence-based perspective – which means reforms to work, education, the work/life balance, etc.  That’s a lot to think about; we back off answering the big questions because we’re intimidated by them.

Lastly – the mental health crisis.  Call it what you will; blame it on “weak individuals” or a lack of societal involvement if you must.  The fact is stress, anxiety, depression, etc. are on the rise, and our current model of institutional design is actually exacerbating the problem.  Oh, and there’s still that little-discussed correlation between mental illness and creativity.  The solutions we are looking for loop back nicely to one of the problems we’re uncertain how to address.

Where We Are Headed

When we look at the multitude of challenges and opportunities we face, it’s pretty daunting.  Where does one begin?  

The right place to start is in acknowledging these are all different aspects of the same creature.

Finding efficiencies and addressing the until-now missed systematic duplication, gaps and overlaps means motivating people in different ways – not through carrot and stick, but through meaning, being part of something larger than ourselves and touching legacy through the process.

By empowering people to be more engaged, giving them skin in the game, plus creating opportunities for collaboration – you help them become more self-dependent, or interdependent in a proactive (better workplace design, exercise clubs, volunteer activities, etc.) rather than reactive (social services, health care, legal services, justice system, etc.) way.  That’s what society is all about – we just need to recognize and embrace that concept fully.

The changes everyone says are needed in education, work design, essentially every field – these changes have to embrace technology, empower individuals through training and accommodation and create that level of meaning that incents them to be more than what they are.

All of this means spending more time understanding who we are, as people, how and why we interact and what motivates behaviour.  That leads us back to mental health.  As frightening a concept as it is, we have to break down the silos around mental health/cognitive development and understand our “selves” as being biological expressions impacted by environmental factors. Yes, this means revisiting notions of free will, self-control, etc., but it simply has to be done.  You can’t find a solution if you refuse to correctly identify the problem.

As a society of individuals, like an organism made up of cells, we truly are more than the sum of our parts.  Accepting this doesn’t need to be daunting – it can be empowering.

There really only one way we can get to where we're headed.