Giving Purpose to Work

Companies across the globe are spending millions of dollars each year on this term we never really heard much about twenty years ago – “employee engagement.”

Why is all this cash being targeted toward employee engagement?  Because research done by The Gallup Organization and others has shown that engaged employees end up driving higher levels of profits.  Engagement = Revenue for a corporation and it leads to higher levels of Mission Impact for a nonprofit.

One aspect of employee engagement has been getting a lot of attention in recent years – the importance of people feeling that their work has a purpose.

*Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, argues that successful organizations today will seek to fulfill the intrinsic motivations of their workforce – what they care about.  You can read more about his approach in my blog of a number of months back.

*Martin Seligman, in his book Authentic Happiness, says that people who can connect their personal purpose to their organization’s purpose are more satisfied.  And that can make all the difference in motivation.  He says that we no longer live in a “money economy” where people are purely motivated by dollars, but that we are in a “satisfaction economy” where an individual’s satisfaction with their work is vital.

*The Gallup Organization has developed a twelve question tool called the Q-12 in which positive answers to the questions correlate with an engaged workforce.  You can learn more about the Q-12 here or even read a Gallup book that fully explains the tool.  All of the questions point to important issues, but I would like to focus on one of them:

“Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel that my job is important?”

As a leader in your organization, you need to do two things to put this lever of employee engagement into action.  First, you need to regularly remind everyone on your staff – and your volunteers – of the importance of your mission and the difference you make.  Do not assume that everyone keeps this in the forefront of their minds.  For example, spend a couple minutes at every staff meeting on a recent story about something your organization has done that exemplifies your Mission Impact.

Next, you need to make sure that each person can draw a direct line between what they do and attach it to the Mission Impact of your organization.  They need to see the direct causal link between their actions and making a difference.  This is easier for some jobs than for others, but it can be done for all.  You want people to point to your Mission Impact and say – “I help make that happen.”

Giving Purpose to Work will make work more fulfilling for everyone on your team and will help them make even more of a Mission Impact.

 

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

Leverage Your Talents & Soar!

For no commission whatsoever, I am recommending that you buy the book StrengthsFinder 2.0.  That is, if you have not already.  The book has been in the top ten in The Wall Street Journal list of top business books since it was published in 2007, and I recently saw it listed there in the #1 spot again.  Why so popular?  People are realizing that discovering and using our natural talents is the path to improved individual and organizational success.

Included with purchase of the book is a special, individual code that you can use to go on-line and take an assessment which will identify your top talents.  This instrument, The Clifton StrengthsFinder ™, is named for Dr. Donald O. Clifton, the former Chairman and CEO of The Gallup Organization who did pioneering work on the instrument and has been cited as a Grandfather of the Positive Psychology movement. 

Once the online assessment is completed, a computer generated report automatically produces a list of your top five natural talents -- in order of their strength.  There are a total of thirty-four talent themes that Gallup has identified that each person has, naturally, to one extent or another.  Once a person knows their top talents, they are encouraged to use them more to enhance their performance.

One way that a person can be even more successful in using their top talents is to purposely develop them -- to get even better at the things they are already good at.  This is what converts a natural talent into a strength.  By adding more knowledge and skill to a talent area, and then applying the knowledge and skills in practice, strength is developed.

Notice how this is practically the opposite of how people are typically developed according to the usual performance review and development plan processes.  Like the phys ed teacher in the Tiger Woods story from a couple blogs back, we typically spend time looking for weaknesses and how we can fix people.  While glaring weaknesses cannot be ignored, people will be much more successful if they are placed in roles where they can use and develop their natural talents into significant strengths.

Discover your natural talents and those of the people you work with.  Give yourself and others the opportunity to further develop those talents and to use them as often as you can in your jobs.  Using one’s natural talents is more fulfilling for individuals and more productive for organizations.

Dr. Clifton once said, use your natural talents and “soar!”  I wish productive soaring for all of you.

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

What Great Managers Do

According to research by The Gallup Organization, “Great Managers” do four things: 

1.  Select for Talent

2.  Define the Right Outcomes

3.  Focus on Strengths

4.  Find the Right Fit

All of this is covered in the book, First, Break All the Rules:

Is this you or do you aspire to be a truly Great Manager?

When Selecting for Talent, great managers interview candidates while looking for clues such as:  Yearning -- what a person is drawn to; Rapid Learning, Flow -- when steps come naturally to someone, Almost Unconscious Glimpses of Excellence, and Satisfaction in prior roles.  When designing interview questions, probe to uncover these clues.  “Tell me about one of your greatest successes and how it all played out.”  “What did you like best about the most favorite job you have ever had?”

Once in a role, a manager works with a direct report to Define the Right Outcomes for the role.  Once the outcomes are defined, then the manager lets the direct report use their natural talents to find their own way to the result.  Rather than prescribe the “one best way” to carry out a responsibility, the manager gives the person freedom to find their way.  Defining outcomes is not as easy for some roles as they are for others.  Another great book that has very good ideas for developing outcomes is Doug Smith’s, Make Success Measurable.

The manager allows the direct report to Focus on Strengths.  Where possible, the direct report is given more responsibilities in arenas where they show natural talent and fewer where they do not.  This requires treating people uniquely rather than as machines where every person in the same role has the exact same responsibilities.  If a person must perform a duty they are not ideally suited for, then they try to manage around that weakness.  For example, I have a friend who is poor at Excel, but great at making Power Point slides.  She partners with a colleague who is the exact opposite – that’s a win-win.

 The fourth function, Find the Right Fit, I think presents some of the greatest challenges to organizations.  This is because sometimes a person is in a job that is actually a wonderful fit for them and for their talents -- but we want to promote them so we can reward them with better pay.  This is the classic “Peter Principle” which suggests that people are promoted to their highest level of incompetence.  Rather than doing that, Gallup suggests that organizations reward achievement and consider increasing compensation for people in the role they are already in.  Finding the right fit also comes into play when working with them individually on their career development and the organization’s succession plans.  If we see that a person can use more of their natural talents in other roles in the organization, then we should guide them into those roles. 

Gallup’s award winning research demonstrates that when managers do these things well, it leads to more engaged employees, and that leads to higher levels of organization performance – enhanced Mission Impact for your nonprofit.

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

Break All the Rules

In their ground-breaking book, First Break All the Rules, authors from The Gallup Organization report the findings from their extensive research on what strong vibrant workplaces look like and what the world’s greatest managers do to find, focus, and keep talented employees.  Interestingly, they found that most managers follow incorrect assumptions about management, including:

*All behaviors can be learned

*The “best in role” all get there the same way

*Weakness-fixing leads to success

 

Gallup says that managers must break these so-called “rules” if they are going to be great.  These beliefs are pervasive.  Think about how many times you have been told, or you told someone else something like:  “If you try hard enough, you can do it” or “If you want it badly enough, you can do it” or “If you dream it, you can achieve it.”  Instead of these incorrect assumptions, Gallup suggests that great managers need to adopt the following assumptions:

*Some behaviors can be learned

*The “best in role” get the same outcomes using different behaviors

*Weakness-fixing prevents failure, while strength-building leads to success.  (This does not mean that “weaknesses” can be ignored)

The Gallup approach advocates the identification and deployment of each individual’s natural talents as the way for that person to achieve maximum performance.  Instead of obsessing over every weakness that a person may have, we need to provide them with opportunities to grow, develop, and perform in the arenas where they have natural talent.

With this in mind, imagine how things might have turned out for the great golfer Tiger Woods, if someone had obsessed over some of his possible weaknesses.  Imagine his junior high school physical education teacher fretting over his grade book and calling young Tiger into his office:  “Tiger, I have been looking over your grades on our different activities here in phys ed class.  And son, let me tell you, you have that golfing thing down perfectly.  However, I am a little concerned about your swimming.  You certainly swim well enough not to drown, but I would like to see some improvement there.  So, let’s take you off the golf course three days per week and give you extra swimming lessons.  I am sure that in time you will be as good a swimmer as you are a golfer.”

Fictional story?  Yes.  For all I know, Tiger Woods was and is a fabulous swimmer.  But is this not what we do to people in our performance reviews and development plans?  Does the Tiger in my example need to learn how to swim better?  Maybe -- if he wants to.  But his golf talent is going to soar if his teacher lets him out on the golf course as much as he wants to go.

So, while we cannot ignore weaknesses and we need to make sure they do not let us fail -- or drown, for example -- it is focusing on our natural talents that leads to high performance.  And when individuals perform in a superior fashion, so do their organizations.

Next blog we’ll look at what four things Gallup research tells us that Great Managers do. 

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

Save Time, Increase Energy, Focus Purpose

 “What time management tips do you have?”  I am asked this more and more often by consulting clients and our Smith School Executive MBAs.  The pace of work seems to get crazier all the time and email is totally out of control.

The issue is broader than “managing time” at work.  As I talk with people, what they are really interested in is how to have higher levels of performance and fulfillment in all areas of their life.  Here are my suggestions:

*Save Time.  The best book to read about saving time is Stephen Covey’s First Things First.  He shows how we often waste time on activities that are “not important.”  Read this and learn how to identify the “big rocks” that can help you manage your time better.

*Increase Energy.  Loehr & Schwartz argue that the key to being more productive is to manage our energy better.  Check out The Power of Full Engagement to learn how to increase your Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual domains of energy.

*Focus Purpose.  These first two suggestions will allow you to maximize time and energy.  But there is still only so much.  Increased fulfillment is the result of investing our time and energy in those endeavors which are most important to us.  In order to do this, we first need to choose what is most important to us.  I recommend that you use the exact same steps in my Mission Impact book to create a personal strategy for your personal success – in all areas of your life.

1.  Create a personal mission statement.  Why are you here?  What difference do you want to make?  What inspires you?

2.  Create a vision for your life of what it would look like if you could have it any way you wanted it.  Describe what every aspect of your life would be like, ideally. 

3.  Set goals for yourself that will take you toward that vision.  (Review my Goals Primer for details.)

4.  Do a SWOT analysis on yourself.  IMPORTANT:  Do a two week Time Study on how you spend every hour of your day.  This will be important data as you take on the next steps.

5.  Create a strategy for accomplishing your goals and pursuing your vision.  First, make sure to Block Threats and Fortify Weaknesses that may keep you from your goals and vision.  Then look for ways to Leverage Strengths and Seize Opportunities.

6.  Implement Your Strategy.  Take out the Time Study you created in Step 4 and make a new calendar for yourself that focuses your time on goals that are your priority.  You will need to make some important choices about your priorities and how you are going to invest your time & energy.  We can have more balanced and integrated lives, but ONLY if we make sure not to “over-subscribe” ourselves to various commitments that will require more time & energy than we have.  Making a “stop doing” list is as important as making your new “to do” list.

There is no magic wand to create infinite time for all we want to do, but by Saving Time, Increasing Energy, and Focusing Purpose we can have higher levels of performance and fulfillment in all areas of our lives – making more of a personal Mission Impact.

 

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.