My phone rang a little while ago. Much to my surprise, it was a guy I had recently stopped doing business with. He wanted to know why I had stopped doing business with him.
"Service," I said.
"Whadda ya mean," he asked?
"When was the last time you called me?" I shot back.
"I'm not sure," he said.
"I am," I said. "It was 17 years ago."
I had been buying insurance from this guy for about 25 years. The last time I laid eyes on him was 19 years ago when I moved into a new home. And other than the annual Christmas card with the signature printed in red, I hadn't heard from him in 17 years. Over that time I wrote checks totaling well north of $100,000.
He didn't care about me, but based on the timing of his call, he sure did care about the checks I wrote. I'm left with less than a warm and fuzzy feeling.
What's your approach to compensation? Do you generally pay as little as possible to get and keep the people you want? If you do, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. According to 12 The Elements of Great Managing:
"While money itself does not buy engagement, it appears an employee's perception that the company is aggressively looking out for his financial interest leads to productive reciprocation."
Do your people feel you're agressively looking out for their financial interests? If not, I wonder what THAT costs?
Let me start by saying that I'm a regular reader of Kathy's blog, Creating Passionate Users. Most of what I read there is thougthful and insightful. But her post, Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company is just plain wrong and borderline ignorant (ignorant, as in "lacking knowledge, information or awareness). In her post she says:
People ask me, "How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?" Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial.
Companies (at least the good ones), and the managers and leaders in those companies, play a pivotal role in the well-being of employees. First of all, companies make it possible for employees to do the work they're passionate about. Without those companies, many (probably most) of those people flat wouldn't be able to do the work they're passionate about.
Second, please remember the work of a single person seldom (if ever) "creates a passionate user". Passionate users emanate from the cummulative work of many people, from the work of the company. It's the end product of the company that changes the life of the user. Why is that important to the well-being of the employee? Because human beings yearn to be a part of something larger than themselves - that's one of the critical ways they find meaning. Sometimes there isn't much meaning in the laying of a single brick - but there is immense meaning in the building of the cathedral. Companies give employees an opportunity to be part of something larger than themselves - and that is worthy of passion!
Finally (although I COULD go on for days), companies and managers (again, the good ones) provide emotional support and physical resources employees need to learn and grow. And to feel cared about. Most human beings thrive on praise and recognition - managers provide that recognition and praise. Most human beings thrive when they have an opportunity to learn and grow - companies regularly provide those opportunities. Most human beings thrive through social contact - and that is the essence of a company.
Kathy is wrong. There is little that is more relevant than how passionate employees are about their company, their leaders and their managers. If some significant segment of a company's employees aren't passionate about the company, one of two circumstances exist: leadership is deficient or employees are blindly narcissistic.
Last night I finished my first read of 12 The Elements of Great Managing. This book is in the running for greatest management book of all time. I'll be keeping it close at hand.
The authors, Rodd Wagner and James Harter, are with the Gallup Organization, so they have access to the data from 10,000,000 workplace interviews. That's a lot of ammunition. But there are also great anecdotes and Aha! insights and plenty of references to the work of other experts.
Anyone serious about management should read this book.
