Then, everything changed. Academics and business authors suggest that we get rid of them. But, the need for mid-managers is stronger than ever. It is the role of the manager that must be changed, transformed, and reimagined. Just be prepared for the pushback when you suggest this to a mid-manager. Most likely, their response will be, “I’m too busy.”

“But, the very future of your workers depends on your reinvention.”

“I’ll pencil it in over lunch…at my desk.”

Advancing technology is like a tornado from Oz blowing task work away. In its aftermath, we find entire categories of workers who need to change. This is why our managers must change, transform and reimagine their careers. As for employers, this is the time to carefully question if laying off the very people who know the most about your frontline is such a good idea. In reality, the mid-managers ought to be the first target for learning how to change and learning how to show others how to change as well.

As technology accelerates it is giving us freedom. The most cynical or contempt-filled reader will respond, “What, freedom from having an income?” But, it is giving us freedom from monotonous tasks, quotas, and other forms of mind-numbing work. The kinds of new work that is coming towards us are more interesting, visionary, and impactful in the world. The greatest social entrepreneurs are using technology to change the world. For example, Peter Diamandis says, “The best way to become a billionaire is to help a billion people.” Consider how lame that statement would have been just 20 years ago.

As the value of task work and its workers plummet, the work to be done is radically different. Instead of tasks, an endless stream of new jobs and roles is emerging. The new workplace will reward those with any or a group of these skills: Creativity, narrative, accountability, empathy, engagement, solving problems, influencing others, sales, and managing the “big picture.”

Robotics and software have been game-changers with blue-collar work. De-monetized services such as LinkedIn and Facebook are impacting millions of white-collar workers. But, Artificial Intelligence will cause disruption as we have never witnessed before. Wealth managers will need to become curators. Medical research will exponentially find more cures for disease. Higher education will be available without paying a cent.

The most valued middle managers will be the ones that are only too happy to let go of tasks so they can develop their employer’s greatest asset, its people. They will be responsible for helping others to embrace active learning, develop new life skills, and to use new forms of technology that exponentially grow personal productivity.

Don’t trust the senior executives, the academics, and the authors of self-help books to propose a solution. Even the Harvard Business Review, characterizes mid-managers as the most disengaged of all workers. They are overworked, undervalued, and the most at-risk during layoffs.

The rock stars are quite different. We recently finished an executive development project with one of the most brilliant scientists in the world. Until we met, his value as an individual contributor had received global recognition. But, in one promotion, he was responsible for hundreds of his company’s best and brightest scientists.

During our first meeting, I said,

“Up until today, you have been judged and promoted because you are a brilliant scientist. But, from this moment forward, your value will be measured in how you inspire hundreds of brilliant scientists to change the world.”

His eyes lit up. The new mission became the centerpiece in how he wanted to grow. Now, he engages with his direct reports with the central mission of rewarding high personal performance with breakthroughs in their careers. He is teaching his direct reports to harness the needs and expectations of their workers with growth, progress and other forms of success.

The greatest managers know the needs and expectations of every person that reports to them. They take the time to harness those needs into energy and action. A great manager will conspire to create a culture that people love because love pushes us to perform way outside of our comfort zones. Great managers teach active learning, influence, and help their highest performers connect with game-changing mentors. They not only make it safe to ask for help, they often reward employees who do.

Unfortunately, frenzy breeds thoughtlessness. In so many organizations, the CEO doesn’t think of the impact that disengaged managers have on their profits and customers. Many don’t realize that disengaged managers are actually dooming the CEOs future.

How do we get started? We begin by elevating the value of our time. After we deliver an engagement program to an intact team, most everyone wants to sustain the transformation. That happens when they use small rituals that produce mindfulness.

One of them is to answer a few questions at the beginning of each morning. Instead of reading e-mails and listening to voicemails, they take 5-minutes to answer a few questions that organizes their priorities.

Here is an example:

• Who most needs my attention and inspiration?
• What is the most valuable problem to solve today?
• Describe today’s ideal blend of tactical and strategic work.
• How can I best sell our ideas and solutions?
• How can I best take care of myself?
• What can I do to create greater engagement and effectiveness with our team?
• Describe one really valuable action that might require your courage.

It takes five minutes.

What is the point?

In the years ahead, technology isn’t taking away our value. It is up to us to make the kind of practical and visionary changes that elevate our value, the allow us to change the world, and to help the people around us.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2019, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post Mid-Managment, Engagements Final Frontier! appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

According to David Harder, author of The Workplace Engagement Solution(Career Press), here’s why:

“The tech industry is filled with both employers and employees committed to rapid growth and change. Tech companies routinely displace talent as business models change. On the other hand, if an organization isn’t keeping up with a particularly talented employee’s growth, they are gone in a second. Collectively, these dynamics create the volatile turnover and by extension, can lead to significant engagement challenges.”

In the book’s chapter, What is an Engagement CEO?, David and his colleague Mary Campbell interviewed Adam Miller, CEO of Cornerstone on Demand. They discussed what it means to be an engagement CEO, a particular challenge in leading a fast-growing tech company in Southern California. Cornerstone on Demand’s culture grew out of an unusual dynamic. Los Angeles had no technology industry to speak of. So, Adam made a series of decisions that have contributed to cultural and business success.

David: In an earlier interview you said that by starting in LA, you were put in the position of having to hire potential rather than experience.

Adam: Absolutely true.

David: Is it the same today?

Adam: It is a little less true today because tech has grown in LA. But when we began, B2B marketing and software development were extremely difficult to find in LA. We found it was better to find the people with the right com­petencies and build their technical skills. We did this by only hiring people that were active learners. You describe this need throughout the world. Well, it is truer in a tech company. It is exponentially truer in a hyper-growth company where we have to find people who are capable of moving up from the baseline. Most tech companies don’t operate that way. In hyper-growth, they regular­ly pull out the individuals that are not keeping up with the growth. The way we did it here, the reason we have had such stable and high retention is that we hired people that required the same characteristics of active learning and an interest in personal growth. We hire the ones who demonstrate they want to learn and are ambitious. As a result, they have grown with us.

Mary: I bet you had some casualties.

Adam: Very few. It could be said that we defy the odds because, in so many organizations, only one to two will make it because they are exceptional. I am saying the opposite. Only one or two did not make it because everyone had the attributes. Our people make it because they are continuous learners when they arrive as well as in the parochial process because these are the people that get promoted.

Cornerstone on Demand’s success reminds me of Germany where talent isn’t discarded due to change. Talent is constantly being trained to stay ahead of change as it happens. Consequently, the country has the lowest unemployment in developed countries and underemployment is virtually unknown. For example, the country’s automobile industry makes full use of robotics but has not had any mass layoffs. As technology moves forward workers are trained to solve solutions rather than engaged in repetitive work.

The Workplace Engagement Solution includes a central premise that if we want to build engagement in the modern world, we need to build active learners. Consider that Cornerstone on Demand was founded in 1999. By identifying the need for workers filled with potential, Mr. Miller also had to build an organization that accommodates that potential. The results? Today, not only is Cornerstone a category leader, it has one of the lowest turnover rates in the technology industry.

David Harder’s new book, The Workplace Engagement Solution (Career Press) offers an entire “crack-the-code” approach to engagement. Order your copy by clicking here.

Brought to you by David Harder – Founder & President, Inspired Work, Inc.

(C) Copyright, 2018, David Harder – (All Rights Reserved)

Get your copy of The Workplace Engagement Solution (Career Press) (Here)

Hear David Harder talk about The Inspired Work Program:

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For many years, organizations have literally protected sexual harassment through settlements and non-disclosure agreements. Consider the message this sends to everyone. Time and time again, we have indicated that money is more important than human dignity or “doing the right thing.” It is time to shatter this practice and for any organization that is reluctant to do so, take a look at how quickly the entire public learns of illegal behavior. But, this is also the time for many women to stop participating in the old system of hiding the crime. I think of the many human resources executives and labor attorneys, all women, who have negotiated these agreements only to have the same executive become emboldened to continue. When we protect revenue generation over protecting our own people, it is time for everyone to know. That is not a threat, it is a simple outcome of modern living. Transparency will only grow. Technology has turned most everyone into a reporter.

I know how the old game works from personal experience. In my early 20’s, I came out of as a gay man. Coming of age in the 80s led to the realization that gays and lesbians had to make themselves visible if we were ever to have equal rights. I shielded myself from getting fired or picked on by always becoming the top revenue generator. But, while I was going down that road to fight for equality, other revenue generators have used that profitability cloak to protect themselves from getting fired or going to jail after a sexual assault. Consider for just a moment how perverse it is for any organization to behave like that. But, we have done this with well-thought-out risk management routines.

I praise the Board of Directors of Comcast for firing Matt Lauer on-the-spot. That one act perhaps signals a shift in how all studios respond to what is in essence, a crime. If we want all women and men to be protected from assault, we must end the practice of paying people off rather than showing perpetrators the door. And, with rapidly growing transparency throughout our culture, this is the time for human capital executives, labor attorneys, CEOs, business owners and board members to re-examine their values. At the beginning, ending all attempts to sweep challenges like this under the rug might feel a bit conflicted. But, consider the probability that we no longer have a choice.

In the last few years, so many women, who signed non-disclosure agreements that were foisted on them to keep their mouths shut have stepped forward to speak out. Think of the courage it takes to do that when they have been they have been warned of financial ruin. All too often, they are taking that stand because the perpetrator has done it again, sometimes with greater violence and harm. The days of protecting a bit of profit by hiding illicit behavior as more and more organization suffer staggering losses in reputation and shareholder value are coming to an end.

Live and work with nothing to hide.

A transparent world sees that.

We are better than we used to be.

Let everyone know that.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

(C) Copyright, 2018, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

To discuss your workplace or your career with David Harder, schedule fifteen-minutes, Here.

The post Shattering the Business of Sexual Harassment appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

I work with individuals on their careers and organizations that want to become better places to work. Here are a few practical suggestions about sexual harrassment. If it happens, document everything. Write down the circumstances, what was said and done. Establish context around what triggered the event. Inform several people near you and outside of work. Contact human resources. Document their response. If it continues, or escalates, contact an attorney. Be sure to research and find an attorney with a track record of plaintiff employment law and positive results. If the harassment has escalated to assault, call the police at once. Remember that predators seek out people they feel are easier to pick off. This statement isn’t about blaming the victim. However, I suggest that if you are the target of harrassment, this could be the ideal time to evaluate how you can shed any hint of being a victim.

On a bigger scale, here is what I propose. I am prepared to take flack for it. Our culture seduces many of us into becoming victims. One of the fundamental reasons people negatively reacted to my jokiness about being sexually harrassed is that we are given no room to smile when someone responds to harrassment with creativity and a sense of power.

When I became involved with civil rights in the 80’s and 90’s, the most homophobic people that I met were gays and lesbians. If you question my linkage to internalized homophobia to this topic, remember that quite a few women voted a sexual predator into national office. I invite women to stop embracing any form of victimhood because that is essentially voting against yourself. But, no one is going to do that for you. We are at a tipping point and the final “tip” will come out of women responding to harrassment, when it happens, with power and dignity. Call it for what it is on the spot. Recognize that if someone like Harvey Weinstein can have the world turn against him so quickly, that the world around women is much more aware and supportive of just how wrong it is.

This is the time to shed the last vestage of victimhood. But first, let us recognize there are payoffs in our culture for being victims. Many of those payoffs are shielded with righteousness. Perhaps this is the time to shed that weakness because there is no longer a reason to settle for anything less than great. If we wait for more evidence, we slow down the equality that everyone has earned. Many of my readers expect my articles to be linked to sound research. But, tipping points rarely offer up research. No, this narrative is coming from my own history and my gut. Civil rights, employement law, culture, attitudes amongst men, diversity and access to information are offering us a turning point for women. Enough of us are in your corner.

The rest, is up to you.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work Services Inc.

(C) Copyright, 2017, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

If you would like to discuss your workplace or your career with David Harder, schedule fifteen-minutes Here.

The post Is This Man A Tipping Point for All of Us? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

David Harder’s new book, The Workplace Engagement Solution, points out how disengagement often begins when we attempt shortcuts in how we build our talent. Instead of developing a robust employer brand, some organizations hire for expedience. Many spend loads of money locating talent only to turn them over to hiring managers that have never been trained to conduct an effective interview.

CEOs in category leading organizations increase the probability of success by examining and “owning” every aspect of their culture. This past year, David interviewed Adam Miller, CEO, and Founder of Cornerstone on Demand, the fast-rising tech giant that helps many of the world’s largest companies recruit, train, and manage their people. More than 27 million users in 191 countries and in 42 languages engage with its software and services. Over a 12-year-period their employees have retained 95% of the company’s customers. David Harder finds Adam Miller is a case study in how talent and culture is a fundamental pillar of success. In other words, when facing explosive growth, Adam took no shortcuts:

“When we had 30 people, we knew we had a culture but it hadn’t been defined. There was a turning point when we had 50 and would triple that number by the year-end. New people would outweigh us 2 to 1. We formalized the culture. That began with the kind of people who work here who are smart, cool, dependable, and visionary. We believe in teamwork and client success.”

David:

You were directly involved in all of the early hires.

Adam:

Yes. I hired the first 250 people. I personally hired all of them. After 250, it became impossible. My job became entirely interviewing.

I stopped hiring the individual contributors and hired the managers…we have over 2,000 employees, so it just isn’t feasible to continue hiring employees. I do the final interview for people that are critical for representing the company in certain ways.

David:

How do you hire people that are going to protect your culture DNA?

Adam:

Early on, I hired the managers. I selected the ones that would hire others. I loosened up when they proved themselves. For a while, I was the last interview. By the time they got to me, they were already meeting performance and technical requirements. But, I rejected quite a few candidates, almost always on culture fit. Periodically fights brewed about that because it was so hard to find someone. But that persistence built the standards.

Adam Miller developed and grew a clear vision, mission, and purpose for talent by taking no shortcuts. At a certain point, he had to pass that vision on to others with laser-like clarity. This is one of the key reasons Cornerstone on Demand is a success story and also happens to be a place people love to work.

What is our takeaway? It is difficult for a CEO to articulate an employer brand without getting one’s hands a bit dirty with being an employer. Hands-on interviewing, visiting the front lines, talking to workers, observing how the talent engages with customers, are all aspects of what it takes to lead an engaged organization. Adam Miller’s direct experience of the talent acquisition process has led to a strong employer brand as well as treating candidates like customers – all contributors to terrific word-of-mouth. Compare that to the norm.

Is there a norm?

David Harder’s new book, The Workplace Engagement Solution (Career Press) offers an entire “crack-the-code” approach to engagement. Get your copy at Amazon.

Brought to you by David Harder – Founder & President, Inspired Work, Inc.

(C) Copyright, 2017, David Harder – (All Rights Reserved)

The post No Shortcuts – Adam Miller’s Road to Talent Success appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

The turn of the century (2000) delivered an unprecedented number of angry, disillusioned, and unmotivated workers to America’s organizations. In 24 years, most businesses had adopted the philosophies of the Meckling / Jensen Paper, Theory of the Firm – Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs, and Ownership.” Shareholder value and market volatility had dominated business choices and we were witnessing a landmark change in the attitudes of America’s workers. With the promise of stability shattered, disloyalty was rampant, on both sides of the fence. The press railed on about the inequity of millions of workers being displaced as the coffers of the investment bankers grew exponentially. Human resource professionals complained about the “broken employment contract” and many of us continued to fixate on the loss of predictability and survival promised by the 300-year-old industrial revolution.

But, a much larger wave grew on the horizon. The technology wave would hit our shores and advance so quickly that it would wipe out work as we knew it. In our programs, I observed that when participants reinvented themselves professionally and made decisions to pursue new lives, many of them made a remark about change. “I’m glad that’s over,” they would say. It was a disquieting remark. Consider how much the wave of change keeps speeding up. Let’s examine how much we have to change to be effective and competitive in today’s landscape of work. Consider how rare the following topics were just five years ago:

Active Learning

We used to get a degree, get a job and retire. Now, the way we communicate, live, work, do business and compete changes every day. Active learners own the future of work. Continuous learning has a big payoff – growth! But, many employees continue to show up to learning sessions resentful for being taken away from their tasks. Without active learning, more of us fall into the scourge of underemployment every day.

Continuous Reinvention

In Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable (Viking Press), he talks about how technological acceleration is pushing us to change so quickly that we no longer have end-points (goals), we are in a constant state of “becoming.” When I launched Inspired Work in 1990, I simply wanted people to be happy with their work. Participants used our curriculum once. After watching thousands of people change, I predicted that in the near future, we would derive much of our joy from growing and changing. Today, many of our participants use our curriculum every day. We live in the world of becoming. As we move from awkwardness in adopting this characteristic to understanding how to benefit from it, we transform – regularly. How exciting!

Flexible Platforms

Technology has untethered much of the world of work from a geographic location. Last week, I was interviewing one of the world’s most prominent coaches. In a matter of just a few years, she had moved from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara to a rural area in central California. She serves clients throughout the world and only leaves home to give keynote speeches or engage in work that requires a physical presence.

My literary agent works and lives on a farm.

Today, more and more people are questioning the validity of giving their lives up to hours of daily commuting. Organizations are questioning the value of housing all of their workers under one roof.

Clearly, there are opportunities for anyone who wants to look. But here’s the rub:

According to Gallup’s latest global engagement survey, 87% of the world’s workers, to varying degrees, are disengaged. The trance of disengagement shows up in horrific ways within our culture. We have parents telling their children they will not have as much opportunity as they did, a death sentence to one’s imagination. A significant part of people displaced by layoffs don’t really get back to full employment, they step into underemployment. Many employers operate under the delusion they are going to create engagement by competing for that 13% pool of fully engaged workers. That mindset happens to be an example of disengagement!

I assert that approximately 87% of today’s workers, to varying degrees, don’t know how to change, would like to change but don’t believe they can, or, they are contemptuous of the whole idea. Unless an organization is a category leader, most will have to build engaged workers. We need to teach people how to change through positive self-inquiry and learning the very life skills our schools did not teach us. We need to teach people how to look at the world around them and redefine themselves. We need to instill constant learning as a way of life. We need to show people how to connect with others, build effective support systems, draw healthy attention to themselves and give that attention to others. We need to look each other in the eyes…and learn how to smile.

Our political leadership is so behind on this topic that we are still fueling the notion that old jobs will come back. One senator said that we ought to be, “teaching steel workers to become truck drivers.” Truck driving! America’s #1 job for men is about to be upended by self-driving technology so accurate that insurance companies and truck owners already see the writing on the wall. As 3D printing upends assembly lines, warehousing, and shipping, instead of telling people to stand in line with 1,000 other workers for one job, why don’t we show them how to become entrepreneurs manufacturing their own goods with 3-D printing?

This is why we must be at war with disengagement and why we must step out of the trance. Based on how we were equipped from the industrial revolution, our capacity to absorb change was outstripped years ago. They need our help, not our damnation, or worse, our inaction.

How can we possibly expect full engagement if we don’t teach ourselves and the people around us to change?

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

P: (310) 277-4850 / E: david@inspiredworkservices.com

(C) Copyright, Inspired Work, Inc. (2017) – All Rights Reserved

The post The History of Disengagement – (Final Chapter) – What the Bleep Happened? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

John W. Gardner

In 1975, America had a relatively stable workforce that clocked-in & clocked-out. We were living the dream spawned almost 300 years before during the birth of the industrial revolution. The words employee engagement or disengagement were meaningless. Why? The “revolution” conditioned most workers to seek predictability and survival throughout our lives. What happened to that way of life?

In 1976 two famed economists Michael Jensen and William Meckling published the now legendary paper, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure. In it, they argue that corporations needed to align the interests of management and shareholders. This new model changed how the corporate world conducts its business. For corporate executives, stock-based compensation became the alignment mechanism of choice. Consequently, their incomes skyrocketed. In the 1970s CEOs of large, publicly traded companies earned less than $1million in today’s dollars. Today, that average has grown to $11.4 million. The new model motivates CEOs to focus incessantly on stock value over enhancing the real, longer-term performance of the company.

Also during the past thirty years, the entire investment market shifted from long-term investment in building organizations and markets to getting as much out of stock value in as short a period of time as possible. Investment banking turned into a multi-trillion dollar industry. CEOs and hedge fund leaders became the foundation for how we dealt with workers in large organizations. With stock value becoming the number one pursuit, American businesses and CEOs traded the long view for volatility, thus shifting the dynamic interests between capital and labor. As providers of capital push CEOs for greater and greater returns, cutting back on labor is the easiest way to signal they are addressing corporate financial performance.

Many workers are quite supportive of the American dream. But over the last thirty years, the average income has stagnated while hourly compensation has dropped. Workers witness venture capitalists taking advantage of financial deregulation to buy companies, take out loans on the assets and pay huge dividends to themselves. Many of these acquisitions went bankrupt as employees lost their jobs, health insurance and pensions. These financial barons are often celebrated and admired, but it has also resulted in mass income inequality at an alarming trend.

America’s workers have watched their job and financial security go up in smoke. Anger, contempt, and cynicism turned into a raging fire as they read stories of greedy CEOs backdating stock options and pushing the envelope to immoral, and sometimes illegal degrees. But perhaps it was the amorality that angered them the most. In many organizations, the underlying message was that when needed, workers mattered. However, the cycles of hiring and laying people off reached such dizzying heights that we now have a labor force that basically understands that work has become more of a temporary assignment.

September 15th and 16th of 1990 represented the dawn of my professional life as President of Inspired Work. I walked into a hotel ballroom and delivered The Inspired Work Program for the first time to thirty-six participants. The program has the magic of getting people to break with their past and design an ideal relationship with their work. For two days I watched these remarkable souls dive into the process and emerge with dramatic shifts and new visions. I watched some of them walk in the door with a deep justification for their pain only to loosen the grip of that pain because a new and personalized vision pulled them forward. I related personally to everything happening with the participants because it was also happening to me. In that first program, all of us found at least the beginnings of the lives we were meant to have. It also became clear to me that once we truly experience the truth, there is no going back.

About a year after we launched Inspired Work, one of the nation’s largest banks became a client. After decades of success and stability, the CEO was looking for ways to generate more value for the shareholders. The plan backfired. Over the next five years, waves of employees were laid-off as the bank struggled to survive. They offered outplacement for those who wanted in finding another job and they offered Inspired Work to those who wanted a new life. It was an amazing experience because they were individuals who came from the old world with “jobs for life” with the courage to elevate this event into a turning point. Many came of them came in wearing blue suits and stickpins with the bank’s logo. In 1996, the bank merged with another financial institution and disappeared. Our graduates moved forward with unexpectedly diverse choices from art leadership, farm ownership, education, new jobs in emerging industries and yes, some returned to banking.

Career changes of the magnitude demonstrated by many of our participants were not “the norm” in the 90’s. In the many people I encountered, was a growing anger fueled by cynicism and contempt, a sense that something had been taken away from us. In our programs, when I explained the standards of predictability and survival, many realized that is what they had lost. But, it also became clear these were standards that had hemmed them into lives “by the book.” As many stepped outside of that line and used our process to define themselves, they found lives they wanted and possibly were meant to have.

Everywhere that I visited, I found a workforce angered by the breakdown of the industrial revolution and its promises. America had built the world’s most premium workforce and then turned much of it upside down. It had taken 25 years and many could not swallow that it happened for money. But, isn’t that human nature? We are always looking for a deal and the CEOs and shareholders had discovered one. That no longer works today.

Remember the turn of the century? Y2K seems like a long-ago and quaint memory. But, what was most alarming about the year 2000 is that we delivered our greatest asset, the talent living in the United States of America into the new millennium in a state of anger, cynicism, aimlessness, resignation, and disillusionment.

Then, we threw the Book of Change at them.

Tune in tomorrow for the final chapter.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

P: (310) 277-4850 / E: david@inspiredworkservices.com

(C) Copyright, Inspired Work, Inc. (2017) – All Rights Reserved

The post The History Behind the World’s Most Disengaged Workforce (Part Two) appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

It is a fact that about 87% of the global workforce is disengaged. There are a series of historic events that created our present challenges. And, there is value in studying what happened that created so much cynicism, contempt, aimlessness & resignation in a big portion of today’s talent.

Prior to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, change took place at a glacial pace. We could visit a village in 800 AD and return in 1400 AD. Pretty much, things were the same. People spent most of their time growing or working to buy food. Education was for landowners, nobility and the religious elite. The Industrial Revolution began in 1733 when an English watchmaker named John Kay invented The Flying Shuttle, a weaving machine that did the work of three people. Within a hundred years, this model of increasing productivity led to rails being laid, the mass production of steel, a move from scarcity of food to abundance, and a complete reinvention of how most of the world worked.

The Industrial Revolution represented an intoxicating leap forward in the evolution of civilization. The architecture behind this revolution introduced goods and services that were previously available to only the wealthy. In a parallel to today’s work landscape, the Industrial Revolution resulted in the handing out of pink slips to virtually every worker from the previous era, but work didn’t go away, it simply changed. This phenomenon is also taking place today. As old structures and dynamics go away, we need to become more fluent in seeing where new structures and dynamics emerge because emerge, it always does. The difference? Three hundred years ago, it often took decades to change. Today, it can happen in a matter of days.

The old revolution also developed an unquenchable thirst for workers. Industrialists developed a recruitment pitch filled with standards and beliefs that haunt us today:

“If you come to work for us, we will give you survival and predictability.”

To most of those working on farms, hunting for food, or dealing with the day-to-day uncertainty of keeping that cobbler shop in business, the pitch sounded really good. Human capital nourished the machine, which took center stage in our work. Parents, schools, organized religion and governments prepared a new labor force that fit into the assembly lines, plugging bolts into holes. A new economy grew based on making large quantities of stuff. This worked for several hundred years. And, as with all personal or cultural advancements, there was also a price.

Predictability and survival didn’t just become two in a series of standards. They became the standard. While these standards made perfect sense at the time, consider how outdated they are now within our modern times. The fixation on predictability and survival dismisses joy, creativity, passion, engagement, full living and connectedness to others. It often keeps us from new learning. Most profoundly, the old standards obscure the birthright of every man, woman, and child, which is to find and pursue what we were born to do. The growing awareness of this is also one of the seeds fueling today’s discord with work. But, there was another great price we paid.

On the shadow side, our ability to build stuff also fueled the bloodiest wars in the history of humankind. We leveraged wars with new technology and powerful capability to snuff out life in dramatic fashion. This led to the most awesome victories, but at a terrible price. As we returned from world wars, manufacturing supremacy led to jobs for life, a comfortable middle-class living and what was, for many, a steady routine. We worked, we saved and we retired. The Industrial Revolution had successfully disrupted and transformed a culture that had stayed relatively the same for thousands of prior years.

In 1943, England dropped its next disruptive bomb on the world of work. A British engineer named Tommy Flowers demonstrated the first programmable computer to a stunned, skeptical room of military leaders. He developed this machine to decrypt German military code. It worked amazingly well. Ten of these “Colossi” were completed and used to gather intelligence. On June 5, 1944, a courier handed Eisenhower a note summarizing a Colossus decrypt. It confirmed that Hitler wanted no additional troops moved to Normandy. Moments later, he announced, “We go in tomorrow.” The rest is history. The first computer may have actually played a bigger role in ending World War II than the first atomic bomb.

Surprisingly, British leaders had the Colossi dismantled after the war. But, word of its power had gotten out. By 1946, the Eniac was invented and completed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania. The world’s first digital computer occupied 1,800 square feet, used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighed almost 50 tons and had less than half the power of a smartphone.

In 1975, the majority of American families fit into a term called “the middle-class.” Work was spelled out for most of us. Our lives were categorized in a school system designed to serve the industrial revolution. An average performance led to work in the trades. Above average meant white collar work. The best students became executives, doctors, lawyers or business owners. Much of America clocked in and clocked out. Life was fairly predictable. The conditioning and modeling prepared us for a bright future and it worked.

What happened during the next 25 years would break the ideals of that entire era.

Today’s point? The quest for predictability and survival haunts the workplace today. And, in its place is a far bigger game. We cannot see it if we continue looking back.

Tune in tomorrow.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

P: (310) 277-4850 / E: david@inspiredworkservices.com

(C) Copyright, Inspired Work, Inc. (2017) – All Rights Reserved

The post The History Behind The World’s Most Disengaged Workforce (Part One) appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

It has become clear that full employee engagement is elusive due to two critical missing pieces:

Engagement Only Works as a Democratic Process.

It is futile to expect an awakening when we use the old hierarchical model of pushing leaders to become skilled at drawing engagement out of talent. Impolitely, they call that manipulation. Most need and crave personal involvement and individual transformation.

An awakened organization requires that everyone’s involvement. In a democracy, everyone is responsible for the end result. It is a mistake to assume that the leaders are more engaged than the rest of the population. Indeed, I have met line workers who are more engaged than some of the leaders in charge of engagement programs. We all have much to learn from anyone, no matter the level, who shines in the area of self-driven change and engagement with their work.

In a true democracy, everyone is responsible in the process of learning how to change and engage. The leaders and managers can provide the right conditions, but they are not ultimately responsible.

We have built an entire consulting industry on the dysfunctional model of blaming management and the culture for the breakdown of employee engagement. When everyone becomes responsible everyone also adopts the courage that is required to be awake, present, and engaged. That said, the CEO and the line workers become equals in the game of being engaged.

How do we move forward?

·     We need to provide our people the skills to break out of the trance.

For years, academics, management consultants and human resource professionals have discussed the “broken employment contract.” But, as we lost the promises and assurances of the Industrial Revolution, organizations have typically failed in defining what it is that we need to do in order to thrive within the rapid, disruptive and transformative change we find ourselves in. By extension, much of today’s talent has obsolete work skills and no new life skills. Consequently, they become overwhelmed in simply trying to keep up with change. We need to help them close these gaps.

Consider this, today’s average college graduate will change careers four to six times. As we speed up the cycles of change, skills such as selling oneself, building networks, finding mentors, and becoming gifted active learners are critical in remaining valued within a modern talent pool.

If 13% of the world’s talent is engaged it is delusional and costly to expect that all of us are going to recruit enough people to build an engaged culture.

The new winning game is to not only build engaged talent but to do it in a way that produces confidence, goodwill, and pride.

For example, Trader Joe’s is one of our country’s great examples of an engaged culture. The average tenure of a cashier is eighteen years. Last weekend, I was asking one of them what it is like to work there. She was praising her team and added, “Every once in a while we get someone who doesn’t belong here. A few of us make sure they are gone quickly. We protect what we have.”

Democracy means the CEO is just as responsible in being engaged as the cashier. And, that person on the frontline? Let’s stop giving up on them. Let’s help them, support them and hold them responsible for self-change.

Skill Building recognizes that most workers are ill-equipped in dealing with rapidly increasing change. Give everyone those skills and we are not only building engaged cultures, we are changing the national labor pool.

Until we do that, engagement will be as elusive as Big Foot.

Please note:

One of my recent readers put up a note that my points on an aspect of engagement were “spot-on” but rather than offering a solution, we offered a seminar in a hotel. Well, first of all, it’s a really good seminar. Secondly, I write one page at a time. This is a reflection of today’s reading habits. So, please keep reading the blogs and I commit to offering you a full picture. Or, get a copy of my upcoming book The Workplace Engagement Solution, or reach out!

Thank you to all of my readers for your generous feedback, sharing and support.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

P: (310) 277-4850 / E: david@inspiredworkservices.com

(C) Copyright, Inspired Work, Inc. (2017) – All Rights Reserved

The post Why Must Employee Engagement Have a Democratic Solution? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

Engaged CEOs lead their cultures. The very word “engagement” implies connectedness and transparency. As I have already pointed out, the failure of most engagement programs begins when the CEO turns the initiative over to someone else. Make no mistake about it, engagement includes an emotional component and many CEOs are uncomfortable with the feelings generated by the human side of business. Others are so absorbed in dealing with market and shareholder expectations that they believe they cannot add culture concerns to their crowded plates. Nothing could be more wrongheaded.

It might still seem counterintuitive for CEOs to feel they should be saddled with culture development, but developing awakened cultures is what makes the job of the CEO much easier. In fact, as I coach and consult with many chief human resources officers while they navigate themselves into new careers I always ask the question, “Is the CEO leading the culture?” If the answer is no, I tell the client to “keep their bags packed.” I also tell them that it will not be worthwhile to do an engagement program because regardless of the circumstances the results will be the same, mediocrity or outright failure. Bottom line? Wasted time, effort, and dollars.

When a CEO tells human resources to take over engagement, the CEO is now disengaged. As we explore in my new book The Workplace Engagement Solution, the process of waking up, of engaging, and of snapping out of the trance requires personal change. About 87% of today’s workers don’t know how to do that, don’t believe they can do it or are not changing fast enough. How can we possibly expect talent to wake-up if they look to the CEO and see business as usual?

This challenge becomes even clearer when we accept that engagement and personal change is challenging for all of us. The journey from disengagement to engagement requires deep personal change and some new life skills. Unfortunately, too many of us still fear the predictable discomfort of personal change and avoid it at all costs. We do not even understand that we are working against our own best interests. We lack the insight because we simply don’t know what we don’t know.

Therefore, it is critically important for the CEO or business owner to “wise up” to this cause and effect relationship within a culture. She or he needs to become the first to put their feet to the fire and embrace the life-altering possibility of becoming a deep personal change role model.

Now, this is something to get excited about.

Will it happen?

I believe it will. I’m an optimist. I’ve watched over 42,000 people awaken and change.

You see, I would prefer the casualties are our cynicism, contempt, aimlessness, resignation and frenzy.

I want everyone to love what they are doing with their lives.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

P: (310) 277-4850 / E: david@inspiredworkservices.com

(C) Copyright, Inspired Work, Inc. (2017) – All Rights Reserved

The post Why the CEO Must be the First to Engage appeared first on Inspired Work Services.