It’s who you work with

Connection CultureMichael Stallard has written a beautiful ChangeThis manifesto called The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage.

Connections matter at work. A lot. From Michael’s manifesto:

An organization with a high degree of connection has employees who are more engaged, more productive in their jobs, and less likely to leave the organization for a competitor. Organizations with greater connection also have employees who share more information with their colleagues and, therefore, help decision-makers make better-informed decisions and help innovators innovate.

It starts with the story of Michael’s wife cancer treatment at the hands of people who get the value of connecting:

[Katie began] high dosage chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Our experience at Sloan-Kettering really surprised me. Every time we approached the front doors of the 53rd Street entrance in midtown Manhattan, the exuberant doormen locked their eyes on us and greeted us with big, warm smiles as if we were friends coming to visit. The receptionist and security people were equally friendly. During our first office visit with Katie’s oncologist, Dr. Martee Hensley, she spent an hour educating us, and, although the statistics she shared were sobering, Dr. Hensley’s warm disposition and optimistic attitude lifted our spirits and gave us hope. Simply put, we connected with the people at Sloan-Kettering, and it encouraged us and made us more optimistic.

I could not agree more. And these three point sum it up nicely:

Reflecting on these experiences made me realize three things:

  • First, connection is a powerful force that creates a positive bond between people based on both rational and emotional factors.
  • Second, connection contributes to bringing out the best in people—it energizes them, makes them more trusting and resilient to face life’s inevitable difficulties.
  • Third, connection can vary tremendously across organizations depending upon local culture and leadership.

Feeling connected to the people we work with is tremendously important. If for no other reason, then for the simple fact that we spend a lot of time with them!

Read Michael’s manifesto at ChangeThis.

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6 thoughts on “It’s who you work with”

  1. It looks great, but pity it is in pdf. You either need the eyesight of a hawk or the patience of a saint to read it. And the link from changeit.com didn’t work and then hung my machine – great irony.

    I will email him later to ask for a more readable format. If anyone knows him, maybe they could ask too?

    Have a good Easter weekend, it it is a holiday where you live. Four days off for us and family time. Good time for connecting.

  2. In an office, it may not be who you work for that matters, but who you work with. The ultimate goal, of course, is to make the boss happy. In past jobs I’ve found that it’s more about making your peers happy (teamwork, socially). It will make it’s way up to the boss eventually, but always starts with your peers.

  3. I think the people who choose to work in the health care industry are awesome. It’s nice to see the story in this pdf really express the love that these people have to give.

    Connections are very important within in an organization. I wish that companies did more to foster this attitude that comes so naturally to the health care industry. I’m not saying they all are great, but they seem to possess a caring attitude the other industries don’t.

    We all need to work together to make our companies better and it’s sometimes as easy as asking a co-worker how their day is going. You’ll be surprised by how much that matters to the person you ask.

  4. Good points, but: “A New Source of Competitive Advantage”
    What’s so new about this? Smart businessmen have known this for centuries. And wasn’t ‘connecting to the customer’ a major point in “In search of excellence”, way back in the 80s?

  5. Great manifesto, I don’t think the pdf format is so bad, it’s a lot better than most pdf’s I come across.

    A side point is that it might be better for strong connections with the few as opposed to lesser connections with the many. A lot of networking books have focused on making as many connections as possible rather than the strengths of those connections.

  6. Would love to hear your views on Climate Surveys(am grappling with making one right now) and the way they should be conducted in a happy democratic company.

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