We currently act as if people are not inherently motivated, rather that they go to work each day and wait for someone else to light their fire. This belief is common among managers and employees alike…
It is right and human for managers to care about the motivation and morale of their people, it is just that they are not the cause of it. Managers should ask for feedback from employees about hot they could improve as managers, but they ask this out of their own interest and desire to learn, not for the sake of the employee. If we decide to view employees as free and accountable, then we stop fixing them.
– Peter Koestenbaum in Freedom and accountability at work.
Category: Leadership
Leadership is an insanely important discipline. Here you’ll find the thought, tools and tricks of the trade of great leaders.
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Getting it wrong
If you’re not having a fair degree of failures, you’re not exposing yourself to the upside of getting it dramatically right on dark horses. If you don’t like going home at night with a feeling of uncertainty, then you’re not cut out for it. If you try too hard to improve your failure rate, you become afraid of your inbox, terrified by the proposals made by authors and their agents. You end up having either no output or a book that is so bland that no one will want to read it. Discovering J.K. Rowling has reminded me of the sheer fun of knowing long before anyone else that you have something that will change the world.
– Nigel Newton, CEO of Bloomsbury, the publishing company who “discovered” Harry PotterThis underlines the importance of getting it wrong once in a while, and the utter stupidity of the old “Get it right the first time” maxim. From an article in Fast Company.
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Selling fish in Seattle – and having fun
I’ve never been to the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, but people who have describe it as a joyful chaos. The fishmongers throw the fish and crabs around, catch them one-handed, yell at and with the customers and generally have a great time.
But things weren’t always great. Yokoyama, the owner, describes himself as an ex-tyrant, who only recently learned to treat employees as peers in stead of peons. And the reward has been to see the company come to life, and the customers have followed.
Let me give you an example of what happens in a company, where people have this much fun.
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The importance of stories
Stories and storytelling have played a major part in three of the books that I’ve read lately.
It’s interesting to see the ancient art of telling stories used in such different settings as change management and child therapy.
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Values as clear goals?
I’m currently reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The book is about that state of consciousness where everything just flows. Where the gears mesh smoothly, there are no distractions, you loose track of time, and it feels really good.
You can achieve flow at work or in your free time. Concert violinists and mountain climbers can find flow, but so can school teachers and assembly line workers.
In one of the early chapters, he lists the requirements for flow, one of which is “clear goals and feedback”. It’s easier to enjoy what you do when you immediately know if you’re doing it right. Which is bad news for many people in the workplace, because quite often, the actions we take in the workplace does not have clear goals or fast feedback. Often we won’t know for days or month whether what we’re doing works.
But there’s a way around that, and I think it revolves around values.
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Book review: The customer comes second
The title of this book is a deliberate provocation. After endless messages about putting the customer first, Hal Rosenbluth, CEO of Rosenbluth International, says you should “put your people first and watch’em kick butt”. (Rosenbluth International is a world leader in corporate travel management, with over 5.000 people in more than 50 countries).
The same principle works so well for Southwest Airlines, as described in the book “Nuts!“. And indeed there seems to be many similarities between the approaches taken by Southwest and Rosenbluth, and the results they achieve.
Both companies enjoy huge financial success. They both lead their markets in quality of service and customer satisfaction. They both have a motivated, caring work force, willing to go very far for their customers, each other and the community. They both care deeply about people, and strive to make work a place where people learn, have fun and grow. They both hire people who have the right personality, and then train them to have the right skill.
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Book review: Nuts!
Nuts!, Southwest Airlines crazy recipe for business and personal success is the story of Southwest Airlines. Lars Pind told me about this book, and I have to agree: It’s a joy to read about a company that values freedom, creativity, people and, yes, love.
If your driving principles are love and fun, can you still make a profit in todays harsh business world? Well, here’s a few stats on Southwest:
- They’re the only airline in America who have had a profit every year since 1973
- They’ve grown from 3 planes and 250 employees in 1973 to 200 planes and 25.000 employees in 2002
- They service twice as many customers pr. employee as any other airline
- They have never mass-fired employees
- They have the highest customer ratings
So there!
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Rational structures of control inhibit creativity. Managing as if people had souls requires that we de-mechanize management and instill it with the diversity and depth of our own humanity. The point is to respect people and allow them to make the fullest contribution they can. We need more reflection in business not more strategizing. Meditation takes thinking even further because it allows for the wisdom of the heart to interweave with the knowledge of the head.
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Book review: The dance of change
Whew!
I’ve finally finished Peter Senge’s trilogy on learning organizations. After The fifth discipline and The fifth discipline fieldbook, comes The dance of change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in a Learning Organisation.
The first book lays the theoretical foundation, and introduces the five disciplines which Peter Senge believes are the key to creating learning organizations. They are personal mastery, systems thinking, shared vision, team learning and mental models. The second book contains practical tips on how to implement each of the five disciplines. By now we’re already past the 1000-page mark.
The dance of change brings the tally up another 550 pages, and deals with the challenges that all change initiatives in organizations meet. The link between change and learning permeates the book. You can’t turn an organization into a learning organization without changing. Conversely, any strategic change in a company, that doesn’t contain learning in some form is probably doomed. So change is learning and learning is change.
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Coping with paradox
I was net-researching the concept of paradox, when I discovered this article from the CEO Refresher, which describes how you can (and should) embrace paradox in business. Excellent stuff!
Teasers:
Living with paradox may not be comfortable or easy, but it reflects a significant understanding of how ?things? really work.
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Any over-determined behaviour produces its opposite… An awareness of the polarities and paradox can move the action forward positively.
