What are the Chances for "Amazing" to Show Up in Your Workplace?
I arrived at our office extra early one morning a few years back to find one of our employees sleeping on the couch in the reception area. As she heard the door unlock she awoke, stretched and said “Good Morning” as I put down my briefcase. “Did you sleep here all night?” I asked. “Yes” was her short answer, blushing like she thought maybe she had done something wrong. So I asked, “What’s up with that?”
“Well I sort of got a bit behind on the preparation for that big workshop that kicks off at noon today and I know you guys like to get there well ahead of time so I figured you’d want to be leaving from here early today. Guess I was right because here you are bright and even earlier than usual. I’m glad I decided to stay last night to get things ready!”
Amazing!
In the twenty plus years I was the founding partner in our small consulting business behavior like this was not uncommon. People taking the initiative to cause extraordinary action and producing unpredictable results seemed to be the norm. Rather than opting for reasonable explanations for failures to deliver people stepped up. I had to remind myself frequently that the environment we had created was in many ways an ideal. And no one was ever criticized for taking the initiative. If a mess was made we cleaned it up together.
Please understand that we were by no means perfect. We were not strong in new business development, our products were mostly one-off creations that made administrative preparation chaotic, some of our decisions didn't work well and proved costly, we retained some people too long and not everyone we hired wanted as much freedom to operate as we offered nor the accountability we expected. So not everyone we hired worked out,but enough did!
- When we moved to our new offices about fifteen years ago I wanted a great looking place to come to work. I knew that would not come if I was involved (I’d work in a cardboard box!) so I asked a couple of our administrators, who I knew had great taste, if they wanted to take it on. Amazing!...fabulous colors, great art pieces and inexpensive too which was important.
- We needed a new copier. (“What do I know about copiers?”) I asked one of the administrators what she thought a suitable copier would cost. She said maybe $5000. So I said “OK, you can spend up to $5000 on a new copier, pick the one you think will work best for us.” She was twenty two years old and had never spent $5000 at one time in her entire life. She did a terrific job. Amazing!...and she came in well under budget.
- Ten years ago we were in the late stages of a merger when I was approached by two members of our administrative staff and asked to meet privately. When we got together it turned out that the purpose of the meeting was to let me know that they felt the merger would be a big mistake. They expressed their desire to preserve the working climate we had established and had serious concerns about the principals of the firm we were planning to merge with. They shared their experience of being treated in a dismissive manner by both the owners of the other firm when we had hosted a meeting in our office the week before as well as on other occasions. My partner and I listened sincerely to their concerns. Two days later we called off the merger, the two employees had caused us to face an uneasy feeling we had both been having for some time but not talked about. Amazing!...I have continued to this day to be grateful to those employees.
- Four other businesses have spun off from ours in the past twenty years, two of them started by people who came to us as office assistants, got intrigued with the consulting, asked for the opportunity and eventually became sufficiently qualified to want to do something on their own. Amazing!...and we still collaborate with all four.
It had been a while since I reflected back on these examples. I was reminded of these and other similar occurrences last week when I was reading Seth Godin’s most recent book ‘Poke the Box’. (This link will take you to an Amazon page, scroll down and read the guest review by Daniel Pink) This is not so much a book as a long diatribe and he says as much himself several times, he calls it a manifesto to initiative. In one place in particular he points to the infrequently addressed truth that much of the work we offer employees is not all that exciting or naturally engaging.
And they trade their most precious resource, the time of their lives, to work in our organizations.
Seth says:
“…In many instances the nature of the work is inherently unremarkable. If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low.”
From this remark I took the point that if your place of work didn’t hold the possibility of amazing for the employees why would the customer, clients, call them what you will, ever be amazed?
Oh yes, that employee who spent the night in the office. I asked her to not ever do that again. After that I never checked up on her. I wonder how that worked out?
- I challenge you to read Seth Godin’s ‘Poke the Box’ sometime soon and not get upset with yourself.
