Ducks in a Row: Supporting Progress
by Miki Saxon
Tony Hsieh Has been beating the drum that happy employees provide the best customer experience and help assure success and sharing his wisdom on how to do it.
The other question I keep getting asked is how do you do it when you
- aren’t the CEO or even a senior manager;
- don’t have the budget for great perks; or
- aren’t the touchy-feely rah-rah type (direct quote).
The short answer is in five words, you take time to care.
Why should you care?
The how is nicely summed up in this article about new research from Harvard Business School.
Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually.
$300 billion is a number that should get anyone’s attention.
The engagement issue is relatively simple and definitely cheap to solve.
The problem is that, as usual, employees and managers aren’t on the same page.
The research shows that for employees “the single most important [event] — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.”
Managers are another story.
“When we asked 669 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.”
What constitutes supporting progress isn’t rocket science, either.
- Autonomy, meaning no micromanagement;
- sufficient resources, meaning valid scheduling and enough of whatever to get the job done without having to beg or being left to fail without them; and
- learning from problems, meaning understanding the why and how, not just the what.
If you find any of the three difficult to provide you need to look in the mirror.
The problem isn’t about having time to support progress; the problem is that your MAP doesn’t support the concept.
Flickr image credit: ZedBee | Zoë Power
October 2nd, 2011 at 8:44 am
Leadership Development Carnival: October 2011 Edition…
Reading time: < 1 minute It is with great pleasure that I am able to host the Leadership Development Carnival (October 2011). Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership is the master host of the Leadership Development Carnival. He’s taken the month off ……