Evolutionary Provocateur

Handing Over the Keys to Employee Retention and Engagement

With all the fuss about how to retain and engage employees it must be hard for companies to know what to do next. If you ask an employee, better life-balance will be top of mind. If you ask an entrepreneur, who set their own hours, they would probably say the same thing. Better life-work balance really translates into having a greater sense of control over how to juggle work, home and family demands.

What lies at the core of the dilemma is seeing how the undercurrent of change propels top level issues to the surface. Work-life balance then becomes a symptom of something deeper.

The Center for Creative Leadership recently completed a study on the Top Ten Trends with CEOs world-wide. Here are five of those trends along with what they might mean to leaders. Underneath these trends lie the indicators of what it takes to keep and inspire contribution.

The rise of complex challenges: as the breadth and intensity of change rapidly increases leaders must respond faster.

The innovation revolution: revealed room to grow culturally and stragically and signals the need for a profound understanding of how to build and manage a performance and innovation culture.

The art of virtual leadership: requires senior leaders to be more aware of their presence over their capacity to direct and control. These skills touch who you are over what you do.

Collaboration as the way of getting things done merges the shared purpose and intention of group endeavors with the supporting technologies that replace more traditional processes and practices. These amount to both faciltative and the need to let go of control and fear of losing it.

The World of Interruption: Working at the speed of thought can easily create overwhelm. With interruptions and information overload virtually inseparable, coping strategies emerge, some effective and some not so much. The sensation of looking calm on the surface while paddling like mad underneath, (think duck) betrays the stress of trying to hold it all together without being able to hold it all together. Shifts of consciousness and the capacity to retain heart coherence (www.heartmath.org) are the only real ways to bring peace and capacity to surf successfully.

All in all, the call is to ‘Be’ the change you wish to see, where you become not only the agent but the provocateur of change. Fulfillment lies within.

2008-Shift in Action

I apologize for my absence. I got highjacked by Christmas holidays, a series of family events, and meetings in the U.S. which took me away from reflection and writing. Here we all are at the start of the new year well in motion along with the reminder that shifts in consciousness, in the evolution of humanity, in how we support and enable performance and people to contribute are at a tipping point.

Each one of you reading this is a part of that shift, otherwise you would not have been drawn to this site.

To start off the New Year's entries I have the permission of Richard Wilson, a brilliant poet/librarian and individual, to reproduce a poem he offered those in attendance at the Knowledge and innovation network meeting held at the Rex Ranch near Tucson, Arizona this past week.

Creating Community

We have an opportunity to create community
find a place for every age, religion, and race.
Humans individually searching for identity
collectively gathered here by design or fate.

Facing an alien future where
imagination dumbs
stagnation comes
abominations numb
sensations succumb.

Each person is vulnerable.
All children are valuable.
How does the future you want feel?
Do you wish for the pursuit of purpose to be real?

Risk your significance
to evoke emotion
provoke potential
give voice to vision.

Heart guides mission
memories teach
dreams reach,
and expectations become.

If it is believable,
then it is conceivable
for sustainable co-existence
to be achievable.

Posted by Richard Wilson Sat. January 19th, 2008

The Meaning of Meaning

How much value does meaning have for employee retention? A lot! Much of the mechanistic focus on incentives, the superficial business of talking about meaning, purpose with the large gap in living it, creates working environments where people have to leave their true identity at home and become more chameleon-like to survive at the office. While older generations were trained to 'suck it up' younger generations have zero tolerance for incongruence and simply won't work with artificial sincerity. They leave.

So what is meaning anyway?

Gurnek Bains, one of the authors of Meaning Inc., talks about creating meaning that is real, is felt, sensed by employees. Companies that fit that profile are characterized by:

1. an invigorating sense of purpose that goes beyond business success to serve society, the environment and community;
2. set stretching goals and are not afraid to tread uncharted territory to fulfill purpose;
3. have an innovative approach to benefits which connects to the individuality of each employee.

Given that the majority of people want to know that what they are doing truly makes a difference, it makes perfect sense that being in touch with your purpose organizationally means also knowing when you are not. This takes a level of awareness that is not found in fancy rationale. It is found in a core connection with value placed on relationship which is not driven by 'what is in it for me'.

Intrinsically, there is a knowing that an interconnection exists between all things. Business has largely ignored that. It cannot be ignored any longer and there are many business which fully grasp the advantage that comes with understanding how to connect with employees and then expand that connection to purpose and contribution.

Self awareness is valuable to individuals. It is a strategic asset for companies.

Deeper Learning-Self Awareness-Being Effective

Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace has posted another astute observation on self-awareness and performance.  "The numbers just might be exponentially better if you began looking at the deeper issues in life that impact one's total ability to lead, follow, and "perform".

Truer words could not be spoken. The invisible forces that impact performance are embedded in the beliefs, habits, and patterns of the company culture. They show up in the interpersonal dyanmics. One person can have a huge impact as his posting illustrates which points to the importance of being aware of what kind of impact you are having on others.

Peter Legge in his speeches on leadership would point out that no one wants to brighten the room by leaving it. That kind of impact is incredibly obvious. Being effective is far more subtle and means being not just self-aware but having brought the skill set up to a level of sophistication where you can discern, can tell the difference between fear and intuition and know when speed is use of the intuitive/adaptive consciousness Malcolm Gladwell refers to or when it is just being in a hurry. The latter means all the subtle subterranean cues get missed.

Effectiveness comes from developing mastery of the invisible forces within the self that impact the REST of communication (not just the 7% which is words). All of that is energy; emotional energy. Which takes us back to the cellular biology and the power of belief.

I find it fascinating that as humans we are quite prepared to do things over or do them again, rather than understand what is driving the result and focus on that. Cellular biology gives us huge insights into the power of the invisible. Dr. Bruce Lipton's site or listening to the interviews with him at www.FromInsightToAction.com explain the relationship to the self and the organization.

Self-awareness is the portal for increasing and expanding knowledge. Why do we continually dodge it or dismiss it as touchy feely?

Music Moves Brain to Pay Attention

We spend a lot of time talking about how to make workplaces work when some of the answers lie in the simplest of solutions. Take music. A Stanford School of Medicine report documents the effect of baroque music on the area of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating events in history. In short, musical techniques that go back 200 years are effective in helping the brain organize incoming information.

If you have heard of brainwave entrainment then you would easily recognize that the effect of baroque music is to harmonize the brainwaves to the state and place where peak functioning occurs. This is a handy bit of understanding for workplaces where managers, employees are inundated with information and struggle to sort it out.

I am not saying that playing Baroque music will resolve the information overwhelm issue but there is no doubt that it can help much more than hurt. This tempts the idea to pipe Baroque music into workplaces and see the effect on productivity and well-being. Are any workplaces out there doing this?

Personal Growth and Butterflies

A comment on David Maister's blog mentions the need for courage and conviction with reference to doing what you know you need to when it comes to organizational or personal change. Too right. But when people are not able to follow through does this mean that they did not have the courage or conviction. Usually not. In my facilitation experience i have seen teams formulate actions that would choke a snake,dir whose mouth can open pretty wide. When the actions did not get followed up on, blame abounds when really, it was the size of the task in relationship to the energy required to complete it that was mismatched.

To assume that the mismatch is a conscious one is pretty misleading. Lots of times the intentions are good, the logic is sound, but the one element that gets forgotten is the deeper level of growth and readiness that drives forward movement. In companies where initiative has been stifled, why take the risk. Most of this sits beneath the surface, well concealed.

The level of leadership required now demands a high level of attunement and conscious awareness into detecting the incongruencies as signals and then connecting the signals into a larger dynamic. The courage and conviction is applied then to developing increased personal and organizational awareness which, as Steve Roesler, points out no one wants to do alone. Nor should they. These are times when the collective efforts are the only way to forge hope for the future as another species bites the dust.

What signals do you see and what do you see as the larger dynamic that allows a collective shift of direction? Stay tuned for the butterflies in the next post.

Careers at the Crossroads - Personal Journeys Drive Organizational Achievement

For a long time careers were careers, nothing to get excited about. Everyone just did what they had to do. It was expected. For some, doing work you actually enjoyed was a bonus. For many, work was work and you made the best out of what was presented to you.

That formula for coming to terms with your career path is no longer functional. People have career paths with not one but many optional places to contribute their talent, particularly creative talent. Secondly, personal growth has become one of the most important values to employees. Your purpose in life, how it contributes, makes a difference to others through the expression of your creative gift unique to you is THE driving force behind employee engagement, behind the spirit of a business endeavor ... the energy that exudes from the company, which in turn, attracts customers and clients.

Which brings us to the crossroad.

Cellular biology explains that the limitations we hold in our subconscious belief system, drive our results 90-99% of the time. (A six segment audio interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton is posted previously). As you grow, remove your limiting notions about how the world works, you drive corporate or organizational achievement. It is as simple as that.

Would inventors have invented if they were convinced what they came up with would not work? Not so much. Companies are expressions of the talent AND the spiritual or energetic fuel that drives them. Companies who see themselves as victims of the marketplace tend to create that reality by missing all the signals. Companies who see themselves as survivors - doing what ever it takes to survive create ethical breaches left, right and center as that focus and message ripples through the communication channels. Companies who accept responsibility for who they are, what they produce, their relationship with their employees, and their relationship to the customers, community, society and the environment they function are powered by employees who have at minimum, accepted responsibility for creating the results in their life.

For people whose career is at the crossroads, this is the opportunity to ask: What gives me the most satisfaction in my work? What would i do if there were no limits? No yabbuts? To really assess the situation, head over to The Occupational Adventure and take the Career Quiz.

For the companies who pay these employees, this is the time to recognize that there is no such thing as talent management, IF management means control. This is the time to release that talent and support it in achieving more through collective endeavors. Much like a symphony where every note played creates a harmonic expression, companies who understand how to co-create with the talent and growth of their employees will create beautiful music.

The rest...well I am guessing that some of you have heard a symphony warming up? It is every instrument for themselves.

Perception - Perception: Take off the lens cap!

Over at www.management-issues.com blog section there are a ton of references to websites set up to complain, winge, whine or air out legitimate complaints about employers or the companies. Some actually provide insight into how corporations are killling the initiative of their employees; others reveal more about the individual. The lens you see the world through is the lens that creates the perception. See the world as a victim and no matter what you do someone will have you labelled as a bully without anything being based in reality at all. The flip side is to be seen with the utmost contempt....that goes with someone whose reference point wobbles between higher than thou and zero to minimal self-esteem. Either way, the capacity to flipflop creates an untenable working relationship.

Business research demonstrates that employee performance and engagement is driven by passion and high values around social responsibility. No doubt as research continues the rest of what is obvious will be established until notice is taken. But unless the individual's are ready to take charge of creating a reality that is far more expansive, no matter what opportunities are placed in front, they will be missed.

There is a dynamic distinction between how you see yourself and how you see reality. The capacity to contribute and to navigate without being confused is all in the desire to clear the fog off the lens and see clearly.

On Purpose-On destiny

There was a time when you could show up to work, leave your brain somewhere else and go through the motions. There are still some people who are locked into that time. It just does not work anymore. Key to health and happiness is doing work that makes your heart sing or at least hum. It is not a good thing to see senior professionals retire disillusioned about what the incoming generation hold as values with both groups convinced that it is impossible to communicate to the other yet that is the case in many organizations and is especially critical at the leadership level.

Bridging the gap means letting go of the notion that you have to 'suck it up' , 'it' presumably being your desire to do meaningful work. Change you must or get sick trying to fight off the happiness that is yours for the creating. Making the change demands recognizing the impact on your relationship with others, particularly your #1 life partner or mate. It is easy to forget that if you are not happy in what you are doing, unless you are an actor, it will have an impact on your relationship. The conversation starts with your heart's desire and then moves to sharing what is important to quality of life with your significant other. These are tricky times and made less tricky by being true to your self. All hands on deck to support Please!

How the Unseen Creates Limits to Achievement

The fifth of a six part interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton explores how beliefs or perceptions stored at the subconscious level drives achievement of both individuals and organizations.