The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development, Management Education, Retreat Facilitation & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook : AMJ Group

Am I no longer young

and still not half-perfect?

Let me keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still

and learning to be astonished.

~ Mary Oliver

From the time I was about fourteen until the present “going to work” for me has always been about being with people. I should more accurately say being with people while in pursuit of some shared objective; that has been my passion for over fifty years. That has been my work; it really hasn’t mattered so much what I was doing as long as it was done in some sort of team or community structure.

Fifty years ago or thereabouts I was a freshman in high school. I went to a small school in a catholic parish in my hometown of Lansing, Michigan. Small catholic schools were plentiful in those days. In our town there were six that fielded athletic teams in three sports for boys, football, basketball and baseball. We all played each other, the catholic schools, and the rivalries were fierce. I played all three sports and while never a star athlete I gave it everything I had. In later years I have come to learn that it was less the sport I was interested in and more the opportunity to participate in those team environments.

Historically my school was the doormat of the catholic leagues. Through some convergence of the planets in that one school year, 1961-62, we assembled a group of student athletes that succeeded in winning the league championships in all three sports. It was the first time ever our school had won any championship much less all three in the same year. Given the history of our school I can only say that this was an astonishing outcome and that was my experience as well, astonishment. The events of that one year have shaped my life ever since, not in a nostalgic way but rather in the way of knowing the thrill of joining others in pursuit of a worthy objective and knowing the thrill of witnessing astonishing performances on the part of ordinary people.

I am sure it sounds corny but my pursuit of the surprise and pure joy of unexpected performance has become something of a positive addiction. As an adult I have recognized that life in time become much more complex, marriages, families, career goals and so on may and do in fact dilute the singular focus that I experienced for that year so long ago. However, on just enough occasions and when I have possibly least expected it people have proven to be worth the patience and produced in an astonishing fashion.

It may in fact be childlike to hold out for the unexpected but for me it is what makes tolerating the ordinary completely worthwhile and why I go to work…because that’s where the people are.

• When was the last time you allowed yourself to be astonished?

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Dear World:       

Please be advised…A major talent is being released into your care this week. My youngest son, Jackson Reed Cook, has launched himself and is ready and able to dazzle and amaze you with his “mad skills” and youthful self-confidence. Are you ready?

Jake called Monday to wish me a happy Father’s Day. When he called he was standing in front of the sublet apartment he had just rented in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, NY. There was plenty of street noise in evidence as proof of his surroundings as we talked. He had also called me Sunday but we didn’t connect so he was calling back to make sure he had the opportunity to share his affection and best wishes. He had initiated this process all on his own with no prompting from his mother … a rather new behavior pattern.

But there is a lot about Jake that is new, or more accurately, now just rounding into shape. He graduated in late May from SUNY Purchase with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree specializing in Graphic Design and he is eager to begin his career as a Design Professional. Like most young adults around his age he has had several “job” jobs as he worked his way through college but now it is time to begin his career and for a guy with his ambitions there is probably no better place than New York City. At least that is what he thinks and I am in no position to have an opinion on the matter.

He is taking this new beginning very seriously. He has a Linkedin page and has developed a website and you can also take a look at his portfolio if you are interested. Mainly I wanted to give you some advice about the care and handling of this package of opportunity (my son) that has become available. We talked for a while on Monday to establish some parameters and he is pretty clear about what he is looking for…

• He is looking for a place to contribute
• He wants to be listened to
• He wants coaching and constructive criticism of his work
• He prefers working with others to having individual projects
• He has a keen sense of integrity and fair treatment
• He has a finely tuned “baloney” detector
• He’d like a place where he can grow into more challenging assignments

Of course it should go without saying that he wants to make a decent living and I am not kidding about him being a major talent. This is not my assessment as it comes from his professors.

The main thing I want to stress is that along with his technical talent he brings a priceless package of “intangibles.” He will make your workplace more attractive to others; he is a natural collaborator; he will openly express appreciation of work done by his colleagues; he does not compete; he learns and develops from interchanges with others. Will you recognize and encourage these traits?

As his father I am of course interested in his welfare but I am not too concerned. He’ll find a place to work, probably several. What mainly interests me is how you will receive him. If you don’t offer a workplace that provides what he is looking for he won’t stay long. He has too much confidence in his ability and too much commitment to his vision to hang around where he is not appreciated, respected or allowed to make a difference. If he sees you treating employees with favoritism or what he considers unfairly you better 1) plan on hearing from him about what he sees 2) expect him to depart if you don’t listen or change your ways.

You see, he will arrive engaged. The question is will he be welcomed in kind?

• Do you handle your new employees like they are a precious commodity or simply a commodity?

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Back in the early 1990’s, when I was getting my company off the ground, the focus of our work was execution. We didn’t call it that; we called it implementation but whatever word we would eventually use the basic idea was to dramatically improve a client’s ability to get done what they intended. When our assignments were complete we often noted that not only could the clients reliably do what they set out to do, the people who worked there were also inspired, looking forward to the next project and openly proud of their work. Generally this state of being was a long way from where the group was when we arrived.

‘Execution’ is also the name of a still very highly regarded book by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. In the introduction to the book the authors state unequivocally that focusing on the discipline and practices of execution is the surest way to cause your business to survive in difficult times. Remember this was 2002, post 9/11 and everyone was thinking times were tough! In their words, “Any business leader, at any company or any level, needs to master the discipline of execution.” The authors also say that, “Leading for execution is not rocket science.”

From my reading of execution and my own experience I have a couple of questions:

•  If execution is really not rocket science and my experience indicates that an execution focus produces the conditions for engagement why isn’t this book a handbook for creating a culture of engagement?  
• Why do the authors define execution as a systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, questioning, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability, say it is stronger than culture and then go on the refer to “cultures of execution?”

Maybe because in 2002 they were distinguishing a set of pre-conditions for engagement, not only inventing some new management method or technology?

Here’s an example of a systematic process of rigorously questioning that has become pretty familiar to anyone working in the arena of employee engagement:

• Do you know what is expected of you at work?
• Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
•  At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
•  In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
• Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
• Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
• At work, do your opinions seem to count?
• Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
• Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
• Do you have a best friend at work?
•  In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
• In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

I am guessing that about three questions into this list you recognized these as the now well known Gallup Q12.

So here’s what I am thinking and you see what you think. Engagement and Execution are first cousins, maybe even siblings. These 12 questions or any others like them without the process to bring them alive and keep in existence the environment they intend is an exercise in futility. People go to work to produce results not post scores on an engagement survey. If work and the experience of working are meaningful, engagement will be a ripe possibility. I trust people in the presence of the possibility to make the choice to engage.

•  What makes you think you need some fancy tools to measure engagement when what you may be better off doing is focusing on execution? Try playing for keeps and see how that goes.

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Earlier this week I was talking with a friend about the idea of working smarter. I asked her how long we have been hearing the encouraging words, “You need to work smarter not harder!” She thought for a moment and offered that it seems like a phrase that has been around at least twenty years. We both agreed that we’ve heard these words used usually like a healing salve in certain contexts:

• Right after a layoff was announced
• Right after a budget reduction was announced
• Right after we had been informed of our newest “stretch objective”

As our conversation continued I realized that what had originally been offered as insight intended to enlighten had clearly become cliché, guaranteed to annoy!

After our call I began to wonder what others like me might have to say on this concept of smarter vs. harder so I ventured out into the rarified air of the blog-o-sphere yet one more time. Tips! Yikes…ten things to this…five ways to that; as rapidly as I could I waded through the obvious “advice” that proliferates around topics like this and eventually settled in on a piece written recently by Nate Moller on May 6^th this year titled ‘Why I Hate the Cliché Work Harder, Not Smarter.’ It turned out to be a bit of a rant on Nate’s part but he provided an interesting distinction that got me thinking further. Nate quoted Seth Godin , which these days seems a good idea when looking to establish credibility.

I’m not quite sure of the source Nate was using but Seth was making a distinction between Long Work, .i.e., hours for the sake of hours, and Hard Work, using innovative or creative thinking to come up with a novel solution to a problem. Nate’s point was that in this life there really is no escaping HARD WORK at times. OK, I get that but I wasn’t looking to wiggle out of hard work, unless it was yard work!

The messages from the piece Nate has written are valid;  1) Do not confuse long hours worked with value added, they may be the same thing but not likely.2) And for sure don't kid yourself into thinking there is any way out of hard work. But am I then to accept that HARD WORK and SMART WORK are interchangeable notions? That I do not!  Unless, by HARD WORK Nate meant to suggest, or maybe it was Seth Godin’s suggestion, that it takes HARD WORK to WORK SMARTER. Now maybe we are getting somewhere and now maybe the dilemma we’ve been facing becomes clear. It is actually easier, more comfortable, more familiar, safer etc. to work longer than it is to find another (smarter) way to work.

I wonder if all these years we have been looking in the wrong place for the answer to this seeming paradox that has been posed to us about working more productively without working longer hours.  

Almost for sure you know the joke about the guy looking around the street lamp for lost keys right? When asked what he’s doing he reports that while he lost his keys somewhere down the street he’s looking for them under the lamp because that’s where the light is. It seems silly and funny no matter how many times you hear it for the very reason that it is what we do. We come up against problems we don’t know how to solve and we look for solutions where we have always found them, under the metaphorical street lamp because that’s where the light is. So, we work harder and harder and harder, knowing we will not find the keys and hoping we get some credit for the hardness with which we are working and most certainly not asking for help from anyone else. If we are honest, at least with ourselves, we finally admit that left to our own resources we have no idea how to work smarter. In that moment of surrender the future opens up before us!

• Would you be willing to accept the possibility that working smarter might mean more frequent collaboration with others if it meant you’d have to share the credit for results achieved but you’d work less hours? Don’t answer too quickly.

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