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June 19 - June 23, 2019
demonstrating a combination of competence and unpretentiousness
simply treated people the way he would like to be treated.
She helped her get through a tough spot in her day. And while all situations aren't going to be that dramatic, I'd bet that we could find a way to help every customer, at least in some small way.”
Basically, a job is bound to be miserable if it doesn't involve measurement.”
if you couldn't measure what you were doing, then you'd lose interest in it.
objective evidence that tells you you're doing something right.
if you don't get a daily sense of measurable accomplishment, you go home at night wondering if your day was worthwhile.”
measure the right things. If you measure the wrong things, people still lose interest.”
“The second cause of misery at work is irrelevance, the feeling that what you do has no impact on the lives of others.”
Every human being that works has to know that what they do matters to another human being.
Check out this quote.
their work has to make a difference in someone else's life.”
if a manager has any responsibility in the world, it's to help people understand why their work matters.
“Immeasurement and irrelevance.
until someone teaches managers how to figure out what to measure and why their jobs matter, it's not going to make much difference.
People ought to think about measuring those things that make a difference to the person or people they serve.
We just treated people like human beings. Human beings who wanted to be needed, and wanted to be known.”
committed to taking an interest in his people and their lives.
“the program” around measurement and relevance,
During his trip, Brian spent hours with each GM, and plenty of time walking the floors of their stores talking to employees. And he personally surveyed more than a handful of customers as they were leaving each of the stores he visited. Wanting to separate problems unique to DMS from those in the industry at large, Brian also stopped by as many of his competitors' stores as possible, and he spoke to their customers too.
relevance and measurement and the anonymity thing.
it is my job to make sure that you feel like I know who you are, that you know how your job matters in someone's life, and that you have an effective way of measuring
management is an everyday thing. Strategy and financial reporting and planning are not.”
making people a little uncomfortable was exactly what the company needed.
a comfortable environment to a fair boss to the freedom to make their own decisions.
ridding the company of immeasurement, irrelevance, and anonymity,
That's the thing about misery at work. It makes little sense and knows no bounds. No one is immune.
Even the most emotionally mature, self-aware people cannot help but let work misery leak into the rest of their lives.
Anonymity People cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known. All human beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone in a position of authority.
Irrelevance Everyone needs to know that their job matters, to someone. Anyone. Without seeing a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an employee simply will not find lasting fulfillment. Even the most cynical employees need to know that their work matters to someone, even if it's just the boss.
Immeasurement Employees need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves. They cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends on the opinions or whims of another person, no matter how benevolent that person may be. Without a tangible means for assessing success or failure, motivation eventually deteriorates as people see themselves as unable to control their own fate.
Cultural differentiation, however, is more valuable than it's ever been, because it requires courage and discipline more than creativity or intelligence.
Employees often fail to find fulfillment in their work because they place too much emphasis on maximizing compensation or choosing the right career.
In order to be the kind of leader who demonstrates genuine interest in employees and who can help people discover the relevance of their work, a person must have a level of personal confidence and emotional vulnerability.
To manage another human being effectively requires some degree of empathy and curiosity about why that person gets out of bed in the morning, what is on their mind, and how you can contribute to them becoming a better person.
They get out of bed to live their lives, and their work tasks are only a part of their lives. People want to be managed as people, not as mere workers.
Human beings need to be needed, and they need to be reminded of this pretty much every day. They need to know that they are helping others, not merely serving themselves.
The first question people have to answer is, “Who am I helping?”
sometimes managers must help their employees understand that their work has a meaningful impact on them.
The next question that managers need to help employees answer is “how am I helping?”
If managers cannot see beyond what their employees are doing and help them understand who they are helping and how they are making a difference, then those jobs are bound to be miserable.
The difference is not the job itself. It is the management.
Immeasurement essentially is an employee's lack of a clear means of assessing his or her progress or success on the job.
Employees who can measure their own progress or contribution are going to develop a greater sense of personal responsibility and engagement than those who cannot.
The key to establishing effective measures for a job lies in identifying those areas that an employee can directly influence, and then ensuring that the specific measurements are connected to the person or people they are meant to serve.
honest self-assessment, asking a few obvious questions related to each of the three signs. Anonymity: “Do I really know my people? Their interests? How they spend their spare time? Where they are in their lives?” Irrelevance: “Do they know who their work impacts, and how?” Immeasurement: “Do they know how to assess their own progress or success?”
doing employee assessments, allowing people to provide information that will either confirm or deny the accuracy of the answers in each of the three areas.
For free tools and to learn about our products and services around employee engagement, visit www.tablegroup.com/employeeengagement.
By helping people find engagement in their work, and helping them succeed in whatever they're doing, a manager can have a profound impact on the emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual health of workers and their families.
