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January 26 - January 27, 2019
“The second cause of misery at work is irrelevance, the feeling that what you do has no impact on the lives of others.”
Humans inherently want to help others. Once you know who you are helping and how it impacts them, it's easy to get motivated to keep doing it, and doing it well. It also wants you to get better at what you do, so you can keep helping people in better and more efficient ways.
Every human being that works has to know that what they do matters to another human being.
Purpose is an important driving force and a strong motivator. There are other books that talk about the "Why?". If you don't know why you are doing something, it's easy to get demoralized. Take weight loss for example. It's not just simple to say that you want to lose X lbs. It's important to know and really internalize why you wanna lose weight. In my case, it's to become a better sportsman, and a better father who has energy to play with his kids and participate in their activities.
People ought to think about measuring those things that make a difference to the person or people they serve.
Measure what you do and keep score of how much you are doing of what matters. If you are developer at a software company, perhaps your measure is Story Points per Sprint, number of Customer Reported Bugs fixed within SLA, and number of improvements/refactorings done on the existing codebase per Sprint, number of Unit Tests added, Code Coverage Improvements etc.
“These are people like you and me,” he explained to Leslie—and himself—as he got ready for work on Thursday afternoon. “And if I can't find it within myself to know them as human beings, then I'm a hypocrite for saying I care about being a manager.”
If you don't like working with people, you shouldn't be a manager. If you goal is to rise in the ranks of the organization and if you choose the manager route, you better develop the skills that are needed to connect with people, truly learn what it means to care for them, and be authentic in how you go about engaging with your employees.
management is an everyday thing. Strategy and financial reporting and planning are not.”
There's a famous saying that Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast. This is very true. Without a good culture, the wins that come with a strategic change are momentary and not permanent. To make and create a great company with highly engaged employee that care about what they do, bring their best, and drive to achieve results every single day, Culture is key!! That's what creates permanent and everlasting change.
culture of employee engagement cannot be overstated.
It's very obvious, but, everyone these days get stuck in the tactical day to day issues. Create ways to connect with people and create a fun and friendly work environment where people truly help each other and know each other beyond the work title and what they do for each other at work.
Cultural differentiation, however, is more valuable than it's ever been, because it requires courage and discipline more than creativity or intelligence.
Same concept... smart people can innovate and provide short term wins, but, culture is everlasting. It also requires consistent practice, and a willingness to always show empathy, compassion and authenticity.
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.
Be the same person at work and in your personal life. Do not put on a professional facade when you go to work. Be authentic and consistent with your values in every situation. There's a saying that people revert to their true selves during times of stress. Let's hope that that person one reverts to is a kind and authentic human who treats others the way he/she expects to be treated by others.
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.
Figure out what makes your people tick. You cannot use a broad paintbrush and do the same thing for everything. Remember... different strokes for different folks. Create unique 1 on 1s that are centered around the person. Make notes, remember the stuff they tell you about their personal lives, and remember to check in on their personal problems to add the human touch. Show empathy and compassion when needed. Create growth plans that are specific to the person and not a generic checklist based on some ladder level chart from the organization's requirements for people at different grade levels. Be a good listener and be authentic.
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.
Inherently, human beings yearn to do something impactful and help others. We need to make people understand who their target audience is and how they help them. Once they can see this, they'll do more to make the lives of those people better.
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.
Everyone likes to make a difference, and we need to identify who we help and how we are making their lives better. This is bound to give us enjoyment in our jobs.
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.
Measurements give us an idea of progress and it's important to see how we are getting better at what we are doing. Without this, it's very hard to know the true purpose of our actions.
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.
