About a month ago, I bought my wife a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.  By that point, the media had me convinced that everyone woman (and some men) in America was reading this book.  A few of her close friends had been reading the book and talking to her about it, but she hadn’t bought it yet.  So, I bought it for her.  I told her that I thought she deserved to know what everyone else was talking about.  Admittedly, I had other selfish motives, but this is a professional blog so we’ll not get into that.

I have to admit that I’ve been fascinated by the widespread popularity of this book, mainly because is so centrally about sex.  It doesn’t surprise me that it’s so popular.  What is interesting to me is how widely and openly people are willing to discuss the book.  I’m not reading the book now.  Not because I wouldn’t read it, but because I don’t have time to read it at this point.  I have however, been asking my wife about the story lines (she’s now read the first two books of the trilogy).  As she’s told me about the book and I’ve finally started to realize why this book is so popular.

Permission.

This book gives it’s readers the permission to think about, fantasize about and even (gasp) talk about things that a lot of people keep bottled up most of the time.  I know from personal experience that my wife and I have had more conversations about sex in the past month than we’d had in a very long time.  I don’t know that we felt that we couldn’t have those conversations, but rather we just weren’t.  The book has provided us the permission and the catalyst for the conversations.  It’s been very healthy for our relationship.  I’m glad I picked up that book.

Permissions are powerful.  My friend and colleague, Jeffrey Cufaude, originally got me thinking about permissions.  We have a tendency to get wrapped up in permissions.  What are we allowed to do?  What aren’t we allowed to do?  The need for permissions are drilled into us at very early ages by our parents and school teachers.  When we are younger, we learn where we need permissions after we did something we probably weren’t supposed to do.  Children constantly test their boundaries.  As adults, though, too many of us wait for permission.  And worse, we’ve started to assume we have barriers that don’t even exist.  We don’t explore our boundaries.  We stay in the “safe zone,” waiting for someone to come along and tell us that we have permission to move along.

When we look to our organizations and we talk about things like culture change and transformation, I think it’s easy to overlook the inertia created by “waiting for permission.”  If you want to change a group’s dynamics or behaviors, sometimes you have to find a way to grant permission to people to take the next steps.  Here are some ways I’ve found effective to grant employees permission to change their behaviors:

• Visible actions by executive leadership.  If you want more transparency or candor, find a way to show your top executives demonstrating it.  If you want people to take more risks, show an executive taking a personal risk.  If the big kahunas are doing it, that gives those of us on the front lines permission to try the same thing.
• Introduce a book or training session that lays out a new concept or language.  Creativity or communication can sometimes be kick started by giving key team members a new framework to use in talking about it.  The book/training implies an expectation to do something different.
• Specific, significant and visible recognition of the new behavior.  We do what is rewarded, even at times when it goes contrary to our own best interests.  Find someone doing what you are looking for and make a big deal of it.  Then, do it again and again until there are too many people to recognize.

People generally have the energy and desire to do something cool, they just don’t think they have permission.  Until we can figure out how to deprogram them from the need for permission, think about how you can creatively give them more permission to to do exceptional things.

Yesterday, TLNT.com published an interesting piece about swearing (cussing, using foul language, etc.) in the workplace.  Here are the cliff’s notes as I read it: half of employees say they swear at work, the other look down their nose in judgement on them for doing it.

While I’m not sure what the point of the research was or why Careerbuilder.com is doing this kind of research (beyond an attempt at snagging free PR that has little to do with their core business), it did remind me of a topic I’ve always love to talk about: swearing.

First, let’s put it on the table that I am a skilled and long time cusser.  I grew up on a farm, have worked on construction crews, and played sports at one point or another in my life.  All places where you learn the fine art of swearing.  I have, over the years. learned to self-censor in appropriate circumstances like around small children and while working at a bank (you’ll note that I rarely swear in my posts).  But, I still swear a fair amount.  And, I’m good at it.

That being said, I have found that a lot of people swear.  When you get people in the right situation, a large number of them cuss, even using the feared, “f-word” with ease.  Accountants, school teachers, stay at home moms, and even human resources professionals can all be overheard cussing from time to time.

So, it is with some amusement that I wonder how these particular words have become villainized.  Why these words over some other set of words (in my house, I’d rather hear my kids utter the word “crap” than “hate”)?  And, why do some people get their knickers in such a bunch when they hear swear words?

In my experience, the expert use of swear words can be an extremely powerful tool.  It can signal a more informal tone and get the person you are with to let their guard down.  It can provide emphasis and act as a signal to the other person that you are serious.  As a sales guy years ago, one of my executive clients who happened to swear quite a bit, said to me one day, “If you ain’t swearin’, you ain’t carin’.”  He saw swearing as a sign of passion and engagement.

I think the fact that so many people make such a big deal of swearing is another sign that we need to step by and take a collective deep breath.  Who cares if someone is swearing?  It’s just words.  Granted, the situation and context is important, but that’s true for a lot of things in our lives.  Whereas saying, “F***ing A, Padre, that was a great sermon,” is probably inappropriate in most churches, it might be absolutely appropriate to say in your next staff meeting, “It seems to me we keep recycling the same bulls**t and I think we should look at this in a new way.”

Swearing is part of our language.  And, it’s a part of our language that is almost universally understood.  Most everyone can spell and pronounce swear words correctly.  They can generally use them correctly.  And, they are rarely misunderstood by the receipt of the communication.  That sounds pretty effective to me.  If only all of our communication was so clear.

So, the next time you want to get all tied up on knots about someone who swears too much, ask yourself two questions:

• Did I understand clearly what they were trying to communicate?
• What legitimate harm did the use of swear words cause?

If the answer to first question is “yes,” and the answer to the second question is “none,” then you need to chill out.  The problem isn’t the swear words–it’s your judgement of the person using them that’s causing the problems.

Let it go.

I don’t remember when I first heard the phrase, “Your have to put your heart into it.”  It was probably when I was a kid growing up–likely something to do with sports.  We encourage kids to throw themselves into whatever it is they are doing.  We try to teach them that the only way to really be exceptional is to put everything you have into everything you do.  As a child, putting your heart into it means giving 110% effort and focus.

As we get older, this becomes more complicated.  We become masters of effort.  School teaches us how to put in effort, even when we could care less about the thing we are working on (hello history class).  Somewhere, as we transition to adulthood, putting your heart into something becomes about passion and belief.  It’s no longer about giving effort, because we all know how to do that even with our brains and hearts turned off.  Heart becomes about inspired effort–doing things that are remarkable.

I have learned personally that I am capable of doing some really great work if I’m inspired.  When I am in love with my work and believe that it matters, some magic can happen.  That’s what having my heart in it looks like for me.  When my heart isn’t in it, I get twitchy, distracted, and increasingly frustrated over time.  The heart is a pretty important part of the equation.

It’s been my experience that this true for most people.  And if that is true, then the role of a leader seems to be all about heart–helping others put their heart into their work.  That sounds awesome, powerful and like a bunch of touchy-feely nonsense all at the same time.  I think that when most organizations talk about employee engagement, this is really what they are hoping for.  Almost any leader worth his or her salt is at least privately wishing that everyone in their organization would put their heart into their work.  We intuitively know that our heart leads us to do good and to BE good (at least more times than not).

But, what does this mean to help others put their heart into their work.  I’ll say again what I said before, I think it’s about belief and passion.  Do people believe in their organization, their ability to contribute, their leaders, and their co-workers?  If not, then that’s a place to start.

Belief leads to passion.  In my first job out of college, I sold copy machines.  It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had.  But, I believed in our product.  I was convinced that I was selling THE best copiers on the market.  I also believed in my sales manager and as a result I trusted the process he had taught me to sell.  So, every day, I would get up and get dressed and head out to make 20 or more face to face cold calls every day.  And, when I got home from doing that, I would bore my family and friends to tears talking about the copier business.  I was filled with belief-fueled passion.   But, then my organization lost my belief by treating me poorly and losing my trust.  No belief.  No passion.  No heart.  Everything changed.

Belief is fragile.  I don’t claim to have all the answers when it comes to belief, but here are a few elements that I think are critical to creating a team who has their hearts in their work:

• Trust.  Belief can’t exist without trust.  If you don’t trust your leaders and colleagues, it’s nearly impossible to believe in them–particularly when times are tough.  Not only that, I’m not going to put my heart into the care of someone who I don’t trust to take good care of it.
• Purpose.  We all want to do work that matters.  This is the most consistent thing I hear from people when we talk about their work.  Organizations and teams need to be crystal clear on their purpose.  And I’m not talking about “maximizing shareholder value.”  No one cares about that except the shareholders.  I’m talking about a purpose that is worthy of my heart.  Why does our work matter?  No purpose, no belief.
• Transparency.  There are no secrets anymore.  There are only truths that are not yet known.  The days of smoke and mirrors are gone.  For me to put my heart into your organization or in you as a leader, I need to know that you’ll tell me the truth in good times and bad.  Transparency is how you show me you trust and care about me.
• Integrity.  This is closely linked to trust, but goes a little further.  Do you do what you say you will do?   Can I trust you to walk in alignment with your stated values and mission?  Are you consistent?  These are important questions to answer correctly if you expect to be entrusted with a person’s heart.

Are your employees putting their heart into their work?  Are you?

Here’s the thing about hearts.  Where our hearts go, the rest of us follows.  So, becoming a leader or building an organization that is heart-worthy might be the most powerful competitive advantage you can create.

Based on all the evidence I’ve seen both quantitatively and qualitatively, we have a real epidemic of bad management.  This may be an obvious and almost cliché thing to say.  It seems that everyone is feeling the pain.  Employees complain about lack of leadership, recognition and coaching–not to mention just plain bad behavior of our managers.  Our HR departments are about twice as big as they need to be in an effort to protect our companies from the liabilities that bad management creates.  Research on employee engagement continually reports that over half of our employees are disengaged and at least some of those people passionately hate their employers.  All of these signs seem to point, at least in part, to really bad management.

It’s no mystery how this happened.  We promote our top performers (who love to perform) to managerment (something they have no skill at or interest in doing) because in most cases that’s the only path they have to increase their salary due to our compensation beliefs.  Once promoted, if they are lucky, they get a little supervisory training.  This is the same training that all of the other bad managers have been getting for the past 40 years that clearly doesn’t help managers become good at managing.  There’s not a lot of coaching available because the more senior managers are just the bad managers who have been managing poorly for a longer period of time.  So, how would they know how to coach a new manager on the skills they need?  It’s an incestuous and vicious cycle.

But, here’s the real question, why do we tolerate bad management?  It seems like we’ve all come to accept bad management as a part of doing business, despite the obvious damage and suffering it’s causing.  Enough is enough.  At some point, we’ve got to draw a line in the sand and take a stand.

Here are some thoughts about what that means.

• Confront it.  Whether you are an HR manager, employee or a manager of managers, when you experience bad management, it needs to be confronted.  Most bad managers aren’t bad or evil people, they are just incompetent at managing in part because they never get any real feedback (it’s likely their managers aren’t great managers either).  When you confront bad management behavior by sharing with the perpetrator how their bad behavior impacted you or others, it gives them the opportunity to learn.  I was fortunate enough to manage people through my career who would tell me when I was being an idiot.  There isn’t a much faster way to learn management.
• Get clear on what it means to be a manager.  We need to be crystal clear that management is a profession, a role that is critically important.  That’s why the title is called “Manager.”  You don’t have to be a genius to figure out the root word of manager.  Management within your organization should come with a clear set of expectations.  When you hear from a manager that they don’t have time to perform these expectations (“I don’t have time to meet with all of my people each week”), then they aren’t delegating or managing.  And that’s not okay (proceed to next bullet point).
• Zero tolerance.  When managers don’t or won’t meet the expectations of being a manager, they should be relieved of the title and the additional income they accepted when they took the job.  Period.  We are quick to hold front line employees to this type of standard (performing the expectations of your role), but we continue to overlook repeated failures of managers to manage.  This has to stop.  Unless there are real consequences for bad or absent management, the cycle will never end.
• Reward great managers richly.  There are great managers–those that cultivate talent, build up people, create loyalty, and get great results.  We need to make sure these managers are celebrated like heroes within our cultures.  They should be overpaid, and rewarded handsomely.  By putting the spotlight (and the love) on these managers, it sends a pretty clear message to the rest of the organization of what kind of management is expected.  One caveat here.  This will only have true impact if you are doing the first three things on this list effectively at the same time.

Bad management needs to stop.  It’s not okay.  And we need to stop acting like is.

Early in my career, I used to get really wrapped up in getting credit for every idea and every bit of work I did.  I desperately wanted to be recognized for my contributions and my “brilliant” ideas.  I got so angry when a manager or coworker would take “my idea” and claim it as their own.

Here’s the thing about getting credit.  Credit doesn’t matter unless things get done.  I’ve seen too many times where people get so wrapped up in arguing over who gets credit that they forget that none of it matters unless the results happen.

My trajectory in my career changed for the better when I quit worrying about getting credit.  Here’s what I discovered.

1. Your brilliant idea is more likely to become a brilliant reality when a group of people all feel like it’s their idea.  So, if you really want to get things done, be generous about giving away your ideas.
2. Yes, it sucks when someone else steals your idea.  But, idea stealers know where their best “sources” of ideas come from.  So, realize that when your boss claims your idea as his own, it’s a weird sort of job security and shake it off.
3. People get promoted based on what they can get done, not on how many great ideas they have.  Everyone has ideas, it’s the ability to turn ideas (yours and others) into results that is truly valuable.

Getting credit is about validation and recognition for most people.  The faster path to both of these things isn’t to fight over credit for ideas, it’s to get important stuff done.  Let go of credit and commit your energy to making things happen.  If you do, plenty of credit will come your way without you having to worry about it.

The curtain has closed on the Olympics and we can now return to our regularly scheduled programming.  For two weeks I resisted writing about the Olympics.  But, before I completely close the book on the Olympics, there are a few reflections that I want to share.

Olympics athletes are the poster children for mastery.  They practice extensively, prepare both mentally and physically, and focus for four years on being the best in the world in a very narrow set of abilities.  Every athlete has talent for their event, but these athletes take their talent and cultivate it through hard work into something truly exceptional.  When we think about our careers, when was the last time we put four weeks, let along four years, into becoming the very best at any part of what we do?  When was the last time you practiced some element of your job that is critical to your performance?  Or, do we just lean on our talent because that’s good enough to get us by when compared with those around us?  Perhaps that’s because we aren’t striving to be the best in the world (the company, the region, the industry) at what we do.  Achieving mastery is rare but the human desire to strive for mastery is part of our wiring according to Dan Pink’s research in Drive.  Striving for mastery is how you become exceptional at what you do in a way that sets you apart and puts you in control in your career.

I am always inspired by Olympic athletes because they are truly “all in.”  Can you image spending 4 years of your life (or perhaps most of your adult life) preparing to perform in a single moment to earn a gold medal?  Olympic athletes are committed completely and totally to doing everything they can to put their best performance forward at the right moment.  No hedging, no excuses.  I think that’s why we see so many athletes who appear to be disgusted with a silver medal.  I admire that commitment and focus on the end result.  Silver is not gold.  When you are completely committed to winning the gold, silver isn’t good enough.  But, when they get the silver, they know they ran their very best race and that someone just happened to be just a little better that day.  Again, as we try to put this in context of our professional life, maybe it’s time to consider again if you are “all in” on your current path.  If so, the next question is whether you are truly committed to do what it takes to compete for the gold.  Are you willing to find the courage to remove every excuse, to prepare yourself to put your very best effort forward in the moment that counts despite the possibility of failure?  That’s how the best of best become that way.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sit on a panel discussion about employee engagement at the Southwest Learning Summit hosted by the Dallas Chapter of ASTD (American Society for Training and Development).  The panel discussion was tuned to help training and development professionals understand the role they play in employee engagement.

The discussion touched a lot of different topics, but it kept coming back to two main themes: definition and business impact.

Definition

Employee engagement is an idea or a construct that we created somewhere along the line to have a common term to refer to a bunch of messy and intangible things that happen within our workforce.  While most people seem to have a sense that engagement is important and that it’s important to their organization, their definitions of what engagement actually is varies widely.  The first question posed to the panel involved sharing how we define employee engagement and, as you might guess, there were four different answers.

This illustrates one of the major challenges at the center of our work around employee engagement–we talk about it as if it is a clearly defined and universally understood thing.  It is not.  And it’s okay that engagement is defined differently by different people, but we have change how we talk about it and stop pretending like we all define it the same way.  One of the panelists, Todd Mitchem, challenged the audience to think about the word “love” as an example.  Everyone knows the word “love” and has a general sense of the word as describing a positive emotion, but everyone defines love in their own unique way through the lens of their own experiences.  Engagement is very similar in that every individual has a different understanding and experience of it.

This issue was brought to clarity by Tricia Danielsen from the Bellevue University Human Capital Lab when, rather than provide her own definition of employee engagement, she said that what’s really important is to have a clearly and universally  understood definition of engagement within your organization.  Amen.  Because here’s the thing, you can’t measure something you haven’t defined. Definition is the first step of measurement.   And one of the issues in the employee engagement business is that too many people chose an engagement survey vendor they like (often for varying reasons) and then that vendor’s definition of engagement is inadvertently thrust upon the organization as the default.  That’s putting the cart ahead of the horse.  The correct order is to define what engagement means to your organization, how you intend to cultivate it, and then go find or create the right way to measure it (vendor survey or not).

Business Impact

The other point that consistently came up throughout the panel conversation was that we need to keep in focus that the reason we work on engagement is to drive business outcomes that are mission critical to the organization.  It seems that there are a lot of organizations out there who are doing an annual survey and going through the motions of engagement to chase an improvemeegnnt in their “engagement score.”  Guess what?  The engagement score doesn’t mean anything unless you can provide evidence that the increase is linked to an impact on what matters to the organization (read CEO, CFO, etc.).  This could be financial, it could be innovation, it could be brand equity, it could be social good–whatever matters the most.  When this linkage isn’t clear, engagement loses it’s meaning and it’s credibility as a viable business consideration.

My advice is to start your engagement discussions by first talking about what outcomes truly matter to the organization.  Once clear on that, back your way into how employee behavior plays a key role in either achieving or derailing the creation of those outcomes.  Whatever ends up on that list becomes the foundation for your engagement definition.  Armed with this information, you can now build your strategy for how to measure, management and cultivate engagement within your organization.

Intentional Action is the Key

My own take away from the panel was that while there seems to be a lot of angst pointed broadly at “employee engagement” today, it’s not engagement that’s the problem.  Common sense tells us that employee engagement is good.  Why wouldn’t you want your employees engaged in their work and in your organization (however you define it)?  It’s not engagement that’s the problem.  The problem is how we are practicing and managing employee engagement.  Employee engagement isn’t a survey or a score.  A survey is a tool.  A score is number.  Engagement is neither of those things.

The key to cracking the code on engagement is in the execution.  We need to be much more intentional and deliberate about our work with engagement starting with getting clear on what we mean when we say engagement and how it impacts our business.  Once you have the foundation beneath your feet, the next steps will become more clear.  Let go of what you think engagement is about and instead commit to what it’s about at your company.  Then, engagement will start to really matter (and pay off).

Organizational fit (or cultural fit) is a topic that gets a lot of discussion, particularly in recruiting circles.  We strive to find people who will be a good fit for the organization–people who will quickly and naturally fall into the rhythm of the organization and how things get done around here.

This is no small issue.  As a person who has been in a couple of different organizations where I wasn’t a good “fit,” I can tell you that there is a high toll paid by the individual when working in a place they don’t fit.  The organization also pays a price and that price inceases the larger the role is where the misfit happens.

So, most organizations have decided that this is a recruiting issue.  The best way to achieve a fit is to hire the right people in the first place.  And I used to buy into this approach.  Hiring people who fit the culture and organization right out of the shoot definitely makes for happier hiring managers and less friction around new hires in the organization.

But here’s the problem.  It is easy to think of and practice cultural fit as meaning “walks, talks, thinks and acts like us.”  When we start selecting and hiring on this model, we are adding more of what we already have.  What we aren’t adding is diversity.  And the research of people like Scott Page and others is pretty convincing that if we care at all about innovation or problem solving, diversity is a critical component.  Hiring and managing for organizational fit feels a lot at times like hiring for homogeneity and that could actually be harming our organization’s future prospects.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

― Benjamin Franklin

What if, instead of working on the supply side of this equation, we started tackling the other side-the culture itself.  Organizational cultures operate like an immune system when left unchecked.  There are cultural antibodies that attack difference.  If you don’t fit, you feel it, often painfully.  Rather than trying to find more sameness, what if we conditioned our cultures instead to welcome variety and difference?  What if we started a program to vaccinate our culture so that it wouldn’t attack someone for not fitting in.

When I think about my own experiences where I was not a cultural fit, the friction and tension I felt  was rooted in the desire for acceptance and belonging.  The problem was lack of interest in these cultures to accept me as I was.  To belong, I was expected to change, to learn to fit in.  I think this is the norm based on the stories I hear from the people I meet.  And generally, the more we try to change who we are as individuals to fit in, the less happy and successful we are.  So, working to achieve cultural fit might actually be working directly against things we desire in our organizations like optimum performance.

So, as leaders and designers of organizations, I’d challenge you to step back from the conversation about cultural fit for a moment to consider what it means when we say that.  Granted, cultural fit achieves short term comfort, but I think it may be doing long term harm.  Perhaps what we truly need is not more cultural fit, but instead a different kind of culture that is welcoming, accepting, and creates feelings of belonging and inclusion for everyone who has the talents to help our company grow.  If you are ready to try on what this might mean in your organization, stop over to my colleague Joe Gerstandt’s blog and spend some time there reading about how to make this happen.

For the past week, Joe and I have been having a discussion on the Talent Anarchy blog that was prompted by a post written by Ted Coine that you can (and should) read here.  The conversation has revolved around the merits of collecting feedback on your job performance continually through a link at the bottom of your email and sharing that feedback transparently in real time.  We loved the idea (although we disagree about execution), particularly for leaders within an organization.

Somewhere within our discussion, the folks over at Coworkers.com dropped a comment on the discussion to let us know that they have a product that is available FOR FREE over at www.HowsMyWork.com.  I had to check out their product.  And, it turns out, it looks pretty cool.  And, it does pretty much what we had been discussion in our blog series.

So, it occurred to me that if I think this is such a good idea and would recommend it for others, than I should probably put it to use in my own work.  And, because I think it’s a really cool idea, I’m going to volunteer myself as a guinnea pig for all of you to see how this works (I’m a bit curious myself).

If you are interested in this idea or want to see how a tool like this might work, you can explore it by giving me some feedback on my writing, speaking or consulting–however you have experienced my work.

You can give me feedback by clicking here.  As people begin to provide me with feedback, you will be able to view the public results at  http://howsmywork.coworkers.com/JasonLauritsen.

I have added the link requesting feedback to my email signature as well and am looking forward to how it goes.  I am hoping to get some feedback both for my own development but also so that I can see how this tool works.  So, if you are curious and have a minute, please click through and give me some quick feedback.

And, let me know in the comments what you think of the tool.  My initial impression is positive.

Creating a strategy for your organization around talent starts with defining the what and how of talent for your organization.  Talent can be leveraged and managed very differently from one organization to the next.  So, one of the keys to doing effective work in managing talent is getting clear on exactly what talent means to your business.

To get this clarity is about discovering the answers to some key questions.  Here are some examples of important questions to answer.

• Do we hire for current competence (knowledge, skills and ability) or future potential (or some specific combination)?
• What role does behavioral style play in success here?
• How does behavioral style affect our hiring decisions?
• Is our default position to promote form within, hire externally, or to hire best available, internal or external?
• When promoting from within, how much of a gap are we willing to accept if the internal talent isn’t fully ready for the next role?
• What is our commitment (in time and investment) to developing talent?
• How does that commitment impact the type of talent we need to hire (ready now versus potential)?
• Are we committed to hiring top tier talent (regardless of availability or cost) or best available talent?
• How does our compensation philosophy align to support our desired talent philosophy?
• If our goal is to hire best in market talent, do we provide best in market compensation?
• If not, what is going to give (level of talent or compensation)?
• What role does organizational and cultural fit play in talent decisions?
• How do we measure for fit?
• How important is fit relative to competence?
• What role will science versus personal judgment play in our talent decisions?

These are just a few of the questions that a well-defined talent strategy would answer readily.  If you do your research, you can find evidence within your organization that points towards the current status quo on these questions.  Then, you can evaluate with your leadership if where you are today is where you intend to be and if it’s the right place to be to achieve your business goals.

The implied questions underneath all of these questions are “How do we ensure that we have the talent to execute on our business strategy?” and “How will we measure success?”  That is where it starts.  The questions above shape how your organization will approach making it happen.

Talent management work can get really complicated and diluted without a framework and definition to focus efforts and measure impact.

I grew up as a country boy on a farm in rural Iowa.  I was surrounded by farming everywhere I went.  I don’t know that I honestly paid a lot of attention to the business of farming growing up (other than the various unpleasant jobs I helped with during summer months to make money).  But, now that I think back on farming, there are some things that stand out  in my mind relative to what I would hear farmers talk about as I was growing up that I think might be relevant ideas for our work with talent.  Here are a few of those ideas:

• Farmers respect and acknowledge that they can’t actually make plants grow.  Plants grow because that’s what they do–it is naturally hard-wired into them.  So, farmers focus on the things they know they can control which create an environment that makes optimal growth most likely.

1. The seeds they plant.
2. The field in which they plant them.
3. The chemicals they choose to put on the crops to keep away harmful elements like weeds and bugs.
4. The fertilizer they spread on the fields to ensure the plants have the fuel they need to grow optimally.

It seems lately I’ve been referencing Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us.  It is a great book that presents some powerful conclusions that should challenge our thinking about how we design work and practice leadership.  If you either can’t seem to find time to read the book, or aren’t much of a reader, you are in luck.  The brilliant folks at RSA Animate created a great animation of Dan Pink talking about the concepts in the book.  This video has been around for a while, but it seems like I come back to it every few  months to get a refresher course.  It’s just shy of 11 minutes long and if you haven’t watched it before, do it now.  If you haven’t seen it in a while, watch it again.  It will probably be the most important 11 minutes you spend this week.

One of the blogs I follow that consistently provides me with new perspectives and ideas to chew on is Life in Perpetual Beta by Harold Jarache.  Harold has some great vision and ideas about how the organization is changing and what that means to how we learn and do work as part of that organization.

Yesterday, he shared a post that posited an idea that I think is worth some real reflection.  I grew up professionally in the world of recruiting.  And, recruiting as a discipline has been on a quest for years to apply more science and structure to the process, particularly the selection process where we choose who to hire and not hire.  One of these most broadly accepted structures or practices is behavioral interviewing.  If you have been in HR, recruiting or management for any period of time, you have probably been through a few training classes on this technique.

Behavioral interviewing essentially rests on the notion that past performance is the best predictor of future performance.   So, behavioral interviews use questions like, “Tell me about a time when you worked for a manager who you did not like.”  The technique is good and it works when applied skillfully to understand how a person is likely to behave when facing similar situations in the future.

But, what if the landscape we are facing is changing quickly and dramatically?  What if the problems we’ll solve in the near future aren’t problems that have existed in the past?  Does behavioral interviewing and other traditional structures of the selection process (like the resume) go far enough to help us find the right person?

Here’s the excerpt from Harold’s post that got me thinking:

One problem with a résumé is that it only looks backwards, on past achievements. Even behavioural interviews look at how we have dealt with past problems. What about how we prepare for new problems?

I think that asking, “What can you do for the organization today?”, would be a better way to start an interview. Considering that in complex, networked environments, where work is learning and learning is the work, would it not be better to find out how people are learning? Imagine an interview beginning with, “Good day, Mister Jones, please sit down and tell us about your PKM.” Other questions could follow:

• How do you keep your learning up to date?
• With whom do you learn?
• How do you capture your learning?
• How do you narrate your work? Please show us an example …
• How do you stay current in your field?
• How diverse is your network? Could you give us some examples?
• How would you begin to look at the following problem, which is out of your normal scope of work …

PKM is a concept from Harold’s work called Personal Knowledge Management.  It’s worth reading more about.

I’m not suggesting the we abandon or change our approach to behavioral interviewing.  But, I think that it’s time that we start considering expanding our approach to test how an applicant will deal with a future that is unknown and how he or she will solve problems that they’ve never seen before.  Behavioral interviewing probably doesn’t get us there.   I think the questions posed above might be a great place to start.

A lot of my work lately has been focused in the area of employee engagement.  In fact, I’m speaking at a number of conferences this fall, sharing my presentation, “Employee Engagement is Broken” with human resources professionals.  One of the things that is fundamentally broken about the practice of employee engagement is that lack of a clear definition of the concept.   Every employee engagement survey provider in the country has designed a tool that measures engagement in a different way based on their own definition.  That’s good business practice for engagement survey providers, but bad news for the leaders and HR professionals who want to do some meaningful work to leverage engagement within their organizations to drive results.

The most common phrase or concept you’ll hear when you start looking for definintions of engagement is “discretionary effort.”  A definition of engagement might suggest that the degree to which an employee is engaged is proportional to the amount of discretionary effort they put forth in their job.  This might be a new term to you if you don’t work in HR, so here is a pretty straight-forward definition of discretionary effort that I found at www.BusinessDictionary.com:

Difference in the level of effort one is capable of bringing to an activity or a task, and the effort required only to get by or make do.

On the surface, discretionary effort probably seems like a reasonable way to measure engagement.  I know that for years, I thought that this made plenty of sense.  But now, I’m not as sure.  Here’s why.

Discretionary effort is less a matter of engagement than it is of performance.  When you look at the definition above, discretionary effort assumes that a baseline exists that allows for someone to “get by or make do” and that level of effort is somewhere less than what the individual is capable of.  Based on some conversations I’ve had recently with people who manage teams and run companies, most of them hire people with the expectation that they will give their best every day.  They hire people with the expectation that they will be committed to the organization and their job, that they will do their best, that they will do what is asked of them to help the company succeed.  They only tolerate job descriptions because HR forces them to, but they don’t consider a job description anything more than a document.  The manager expects the individual to give all they have to give to make the company better.  And, then they know it’s there job to incent and reward them for doing so.

So, if a leader’s expectation is for you to give your best, what then is discretionary effort?  What is more than your best?  If a leader’s expectation is that you give your all and do your best, and yet we still find that there is a need to talk about and measure for discretionary effort, then I think that points to poor management skills rather than poor engagement.  If a manager has high expectations but lacks the skills to invite their teams to live up to those expectations and hold them accountable to doing so, then a gap develops.

In engagement terms, here’s how we describe this gap:

• Engaged – Someone who voluntarily meets expectations to be their best.
• Disengaged – Someone who is allowed to perform at less than what is expected

Voluntary employee effort applied to make up the negative performance gap created by either lack of management ability or chronically low expectations.

It bothers me that we’ve gotten so comfortable talking about discretionary effort as the holy grail of engagement.  I think it’s time to take a step back and reconsider this notion.  If you do, you may just find that rather than spending so much time trying to improve your employee engagement survey score, you should be putting those effort towards fixing your broken performance management systems and building leaders who invite people to be their best, create accountability, and reward people for meeting their expectations.

If there’s one lesson my children learn from me, I want it to be that life is a series of choices.  Every moment represents a choice or a set of choices and every choice has consequences, good or bad.  There is always a choice.  Throw the toy or not.  Eat your dinner or not.  Study an extra hour or watch TV.  Cave into peer pressure, say no, or remove yourself from the situation.   Choices.

My goal with my children is simply to help them keep their choices and the associated consequences visible so that the practice will become second nature to them as they grow up.   The hope is that this awareness and discipline will help my kids make better choices that will serve them well in their life.  The realization in all of this for me, as a parent, is that my kids are in control of their own choices.  No matter how hard I work as a parent, I can’t make their choices for them.  I can try, but that doesn’t generally work out too well.

As leaders, our role isn’t all that different.  Those who we lead make their own choices.  They chose to follow or not.  They choose to give you their all or do the bare minimum they can get away with.  They chose to believe in you or they chose to doubt you.  They chose to complain or they choose to take action to fix the issue.  All choices, all made by the individual.

It’s when we start thinking as leaders that we can make choices for others that things start to go wrong.  No one likes it when someone else makes a choice for them, particularly when they feel it’s their choice.  Leadership isn’t about making choices for others, it’s about helping others to be clear about the choices they make, the consequences involved with those choices and then coaching them on how to make choices that help them get the consequences they desire.

I have a friend who started a new job recently.  She was pretty excited about the opportunity and was particularly excited about the company she was joining.  The company, while relatively small, has a reputation of being progressive and innovative within their field.

My friend had even done work with the company on a contract basis in the past, so she knew the people and was pretty clear on the kind of work she would be doing when she joined full time.  All signs pointed towards this being a great fit for her.

But, then came day 1 on the job.  After the customary orientation and welcomes, my friend was shown to her new desk.   As she sat down at her desk the first time, she made a terrible discovery–she didn’t fit.  Her desk was literally and physically too small for her to sit at.  She expressed her frustration to one of the management team there, but was asked to make it work for the time being.  In addition to this, she’s quickly realized that the office is kept at a pretty cool temperature.  While this might be great for some people, for her it means that even while it is 100 degrees outside, she is sitting at her tiny desk wrapped in a blanket while she does her work each day.

As a result, she hates her new job.  It isn’t the work she’s doing, the people she works with, the clients she serves or any of the other things we typically think of for why people dislike their jobs.  For her, it’s about the physical environment.  She’s so uncomfortable each day, that none of the rest matters to her.  And, I suspect that it won’t be long before she’ll move on because she’s good at what she does and she has options.  It’s a shame.

This story was a reminder to me of how important the physical environment can be to our individual performance.  Granted, we can overcome a lot of physical space limitations to perform.  But when we think about trying to the get best out of people consistently it’s good to pay attention to  space.  I still have memories a decade later of an office space I was given that had modular walls that essentially blocked no sound.  It was like having an office with no walls.  In HR, this presented some challenges and I felt as though those walls were a constant issue that I had to compensate for in my work.  Compensation means expending extra effort and that means less than optimal performance.

Over the years, I have also overlooked that fact several of my staff kept space heaters under their desk in their office or cube (despite it being against company policy) because maintenance couldn’t figure out how to regulate temperature to make it tolerable.

Physical discomfort is distracting.  I”m currently recovering from a ailment on ball of my right foot.  When I stand or walk, it’s impossible not to know that my foot isn’t healthy.  Certainly, I can ignore it for periods of time when needed, but that takes energy.   I’m not suggesting that as a leader, you should try to give everyone the perfect work space because that’s a losing proposition.  But, I am suggesting that you should pay close attention to the physical environment when designing work spaces.

You don’t want people expending energy compensating for your poor work environment.  At best, they won’t perform at their best.  At worst, they’ll find a new place to work.

So, when one of your best performers (or new hires) comes to you with a concern about the physical space, you should pay attention.

Here’s a thought to consider on a Friday.  In your work with people, do you continually strive to make things simpler, or do you unwittingly make things more complex?

People love simple.  It’s why Google thrives and Yahoo dies.  It’s why Apple is king and Blackberry is a punchline.

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”  ~Hans Hofmann

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”  ~E.F. Schumacher

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” ~Albert Einstein

To embrace the practice of making things simple involves approaching situation using these five steps:

1. Get clear on your objective.  What are you trying to accomplish, specifically?  And how will you know that you’ve succeeded?
2. Identify the key components of what you are trying to influence.  This part of the process can be time consuming.  If you are designing a performance incentive, you need to study the science of human motivation, different incentive structures and types, etc.  Only once you have studied and understand the components are you ready for the final step.
3. Ask yourself, based on what I’ve learned, what would be the easiest and most straight-forward solution to achieving the objective.  Repeat until you have a list of at least 3 possible solutions.
4. Chose the simplest of the solutions.  Consider if you can simplify any further.  If you can, do it.
5. Implement.  Measure impact and if it doesn’t achieve your objective, only then do you introduce a more complex solution.

The reason simplicity isn’t common is that it requires hard work.  The simplicity of Google and Apple products is the product of enormous energy, investment and discipline.  You must fight for simplicity.  But, it appears to be worth the fight.

Rarely do I share a blog post referencing a video clip or blog post without attaching some commentary on the lesson specific to leadership, talent or HR that I took away from what I am sharing.  Today, is the exception.

Yesterday, in the midst of immersing myself in the bliss of the first Sunday of the new NFL season, I happened to stumble upon 60 minutes on CBS.  Last night, they were running an episode titled “Killing bin Laden” where they spend the entire episode interviewing the former member of SEAL team 6 who wrote the much talked about book detailing the mission where they successfully went into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden.

If you didn’t see the episode, I would highly recommend finding some time to watch it.  You can find the links here: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/04/politics/seals-bin-laden-book/index.html

I was captivated.  The title of this post says it all.  I was inspired by the risk and sacrifice this group of soldiers demonstrated and the precision with which they executed their mission, despite some significant obstacles and setbacks.  I am in awe of the US Armed Forces.  And, I was overcome by a sense of patriotism.  This story brought a flood of emotion as it invoked memories of 9/11 and what the death of bin Laden represented.  It was a really well done interview and it’s incredibly interesting to watch.

I’ll return to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Can you do for others that which you have not done for yourself?

This is a critical question when we think about the health of our organizations and cultures.

As a leader or manager:

• if you aren’t living up to your own potential and working in a job that is deeply satisfying to you, can you credibly help others to do it?
• if you aren’t invested in your own development, can you convince others that they should be?
• if you aren’t living your values, can you expect others to align to any values?
• if you don’t embrace difference and diversity, can you open other’s minds to the value of difference?
• if you won’t speak truth to power, can you expect those you lead to tell you the truth?
• if you don’t hold yourself accountable, can you hold others accountable and be taken seriously?

As a leader, if you aren’t getting the result you expect from your people, look in the mirror and start there.

It’s that simple.

On May 16, 2010, I launched this blog.  Over the past 2 years and 4 months, I’ve posted 220 blog posts.  In the past year, I’ve been committed to writing at least 3 blog posts per week.  That means I’m constantly thinking about topics to write about, trying to find an angle to explore that might be a compelling read.

As a result of all this blogging, my blog has readership has grown.  My posts get retweeted more all the time.  I get positive feedback on my writing.  People reach out on occasion and want me to write with them or to write about them.  Recently, I even made a list due to my blog and how I promote it.  All of that feels good.

But, there’s a problem.

When I launched this blog, I was a corporate human resources executive.  I launched the blog as a place to outlet some of my ideas and thoughts about HR and leadership because it wasn’t healthy to unleash all of that creative energy at work.  The blog was therapeutic for me.  It reminded me that even on the days that I was meeting great resistance at work, there was an audience for big ideas in the HR community.  My blog helped keep me sane when I was in corporate HR.

The other reason I began blogging was to improve my writing skills.  I wanted to learn to write more effectively and efficiently.  And, the only way to get better at anything involves practice–lots of it.  So, I blogged.

Along the way, my reality changed.

Life has changed a lot for me since May 16, 2010.  I’m no longer in corporate HR.  In late May 2011, I made a leap of faith in my career.  I went all in on my calling and become a full time consultant and speaker.  I no longer need an outlet for my progressive ideas because my business is built around helping people and organizations do the very things I once blogged about.   In terms of writing, I feel as though I’ve refined my skills a lot.  I even published a book earlier this year, so I think I can consider the writing skill development box checked (at least for my expectations).

Last week, I had a realization as a result of a conversation with a mentor.  Blogging isn’t my business.   In fact,  blogging is getting in the way of my actual business.  Every day, I spend time cultivating ideas for the blog.  I scan the world looking for blog post ideas rather than noticing opportunities to create a business opportunity or conversation that might lead to a new client.

As an entrepreneur, my time is the most important resource I have to invest.  And my family is depending on me to use my time in the best possible way to earn business to pay the bills and create our future.  While my blog has brought me some great new relationships and some very nice recognition over time, I have never gotten an inquiry about either my consulting or speaking as a direct result of a blog post.  It’s time for an adjustment.

Why write this blog post?  

First, I really appreciate and respect you for taking the time to read my blog.  Some of you read regularly and I am humbled by that.  Since I’m a believer in transparency and authenticity, I wanted to share up front why there will be less posting going on here.  I enjoy writing and blogging, but I have to be more disciplined about my time which means less blogging.  I am not going to stop entirely, but it boils down to less quantity, more quality.  And that means more time focused on my current and future clients.   No more blog posting goals for me.

Second, it could be that the reason people haven’t inquired about doing business with me because I haven’t offered up a good invitation to do so.  Well, here it is.  In terms of consulting, I help organizations make the strategic side of HR work better.  My specific expertise is talent strategy.  I am great at helping assess and design processes that have the most significant impact on how to get people aligned around producing great results.  I’m also a damn good speaker and facilitator.  Team building, leadership retreats, decision making or strategic planning meetings are all areas where I can help.  If nothing else, I’d love to have a conversation with you about what I do so that I might be able to earn your business (or partnership) when the opportunity arises.  If you are interested, let’s talk.  My email is jason.lauritsen@gmail.com and my cell number is 402.651.4148.

So, it’s time for me to get to work.  Thanks for your support as I live out my entrepreneurial dreams.