Henry Ford was famously quoted as saying, ‘Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, I get a brain attached.’ In the manually intensive industrial age, this was the thinking of managers and industrialists however; in the information age capturing the hearts and minds of our employees is much more important. The geek that did mundane clerical tasks in the 1970s office is now replaced with a similar technically savvy geek who can develop software, systems and technology that are used to create products and services generating vast revenues. Just ask Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Now it is critical that employers capture the hearts and minds of their employees, achieve maximum engagement and unlock massive potential in the organization.
The challenge for the employer, manager and team leader is to ensure 100% engagement. To motivate and drive their employees to perform their job better and deliver benefit for the company.
Employees will achieve 100% of their own personal objectives, perfectly, every time. It is the responsibility of the team leader to communicate the company vision, mission and strategy to the team and achieve maximum engagement.
Highly engaged employees are over 4 times more committed to making the company succeed. If you are a manger or a leader, how can you channel and focus this effort to ensure your team are working for you and the company objectives and not against you. Managers are the key. 35% of US workers would be willing to forego a substantial pay raise to see their direct supervisor fired! I have also heard of a company where co-workers would have agreed to give some of their vacation to an under performing and negative manager so that he would stay away from the office. He demoralized the team and they would rather he kept his negative attitude at home.
According to research in 2013, Employee Engagement.com, four out of ten employees are disengaged. Three out of ten are actively disengaged and working against the company! This is causing our companies millions of $’s in under-performing departments, business units and companies. Not to mention the lack of satisfaction for the 3 overworked employees left to do the work!
Tips to engagement and getting plugged into the workplace.

Understand the Vision and Mission statement of your company.
Understand the strategy that your business unit or department are following.
Ensure alignment of your departmental projects and tasks to this strategy.
Understand your strengths and passions and find work that aligns. It is unlikely you can have work you enjoy all the time but ensure you rotate the interesting work with the mundane to stay motivated.
Focus on your personal objectives and execute with passion. Play to win. For professional sportsmen there is no such thing as a ‘friendly game’. They want to win every game. Transfer this passion to the workplace.
Every day improve yourself and your company in some way.
Be an intrapreneur in your company. Be creative, come up with new ideas to improve your company’s products, services or processes, and then pitch your ideas to senior managers.

Your creativity and self-confidence will improve as you become much more valuable to the company. You will become more engaged and will never work a day in your life again – for living the dream is not work.

Stuart

Making Steps and Leaving Footprints…