Bring Your Gifts to Work: My Maverick Hangout Experience
Unlocking human potential.
It's a manager’s most important task, but also the hardest to measure and understand. How can leaders empower employees to be free of bureaucracy and top-down management, while maintaining consistency and efficiency across the organization?
Gary Hamel, co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), and I discussed these issues and others during a Maverick Hangout on February 19. The MIX tackles many diverse management issues, including the Unlimited Human Potential Challenge which asks people to submit stories that emphasize the power of the individual.
I invite you to watch the video playback of our conversation. I've also highlighted what I thought were three key takeaways from the hangout.
- Think employee experience
There is an emerging parallel between how companies treat their customers and employees. In the past, there were customer relationship management tools, but this view was too centered on the organization. No one wants their “relationship managed.”
Similarly, there is no employee relationship management. There are individuals who bring unique talents and insights to a company in exchange for personal fulfillment (and yes, compensation). I’ll point to my own experience at SAP, where an internal survey shows the biggest motivator is how one’s work impacts the world beyond SAP. Don't focus on human capital management but on employee engagement. - It's O.K. to fail
This is a difficult pill to swallow for many managers. Empowering employees means more than providing the tools, information and capital to do their jobs. Leaders should encourage risk taking and innovating across the organization – if there are mistakes, it is better to correct them then to have never tried and stifle their creativity. As Demming said, drive fear from the workplace. - Deconstructing the Pyramids
People learn to protect the job that they have. Organizational pyramids and hierarchies exist for a reason, to provide structure and consistency. I’m not suggesting we move to a chaotic system of confusion, but there is something to be said for a networked system where individual employees can create their own relationship between the organization’s goals and their performance.
Company culture is everything, and as I've said before, culture eats strategy for breakfast. In a “new pyramid,” the most important qualities will be empathy, for your fellow employee and their skills and responsibilities; diversity, because who wants five workers who think, act and reason the same way; and collaboration, because in a networked economy, we are all interconnected. That means success, and failure, is a shared concept more now than ever before. It remains to be seen what this model will eventually resemble.
Employees today want more than climbing the corporate ladder. In a better run world, there may not be a corporate ladder to climb. As Gary put it, organizations must create an environment where employees willingly bring their gifts to work, for employers who truly appreciate it.
I’d to love you hear your thoughts on the Hangout, and how you unlock potential at work.
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Photo: www.bawgaj.eu / Flickr
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9 年Wowo
Engineering Leader | Ex-Engineering@Slang Labs | Ex-Founder@3E Software
11 年True. Also, it's not always about the getting the best of their 'listed' skills but sometimes you need to identify their 'unlisted' skills and get the best possible out from them. In other words, it's also 'identify and leverage their skills' than just 'leverage their skills'. Thanks for the crisp write-up.
Happy to be Creating New Opportunities...every day
11 年The key to unlocking human potential is to inspire, enable, and empower people to be creative. As a leader, in order to achieve this goal, we have to be willing to welcome with open arms the individuality that every member of our organization brings to us. Allowing, and actually encouraging, co-workers to bring this gift to us…is vital. Changing the face of business to this new model requires a degree of safe vulnerability on the part of employees. Many workers go into work each day guarded…”I have to put my game face on for work”. How many times have we either said this or heard it? I know I have. It takes a great deal of energy to play the role of who we think others want us to be rather than just being ourselves. That energy would be far better spent on improving our company culture, but far too many companies choose not to allow room for individuality like this. As for the pyramid, the above ideal that I’ve described must come from the top down because (in most companies) that river doesn’t flow upstream. It is up to the brass to understand the value and the potential of individuality. Once upon a time in America, companies took wonderful care of their employees…they were empathetic to employee needs, they understood that their strength and power was derived from the collective. This value stream lead to great success and we need to return to that ideal.
Experienced Architectural Designer/Drafter seeking great opportunities
11 年When you make an employee feel valued they will bend over backwards for you. Often the best way to do that is to find a way for them to use their best talents to grow the business or role they have. That might mean a long standing system needs overhauled or some rules changed. However, if it makes that employee happier and grows the business, than do it. A very good manager once told me until he was willing to let go and learn to trust his employees, the business didn't grow. He was failing to harness their potential in return for all the control. Sometimes the best way is to just let go.
worldwidewriting.org
11 年I hope some of the big wigs at the United Nations read this!