We know that a fully engaged workforce is the differentiator for organizational performance. More men and women need to show up at the beginning of the day with an owner’s mind (intent upon doing what is right and possible), rather than heading home at the end of the day after they’ve completed only what is necessary and required.
Engaged men and women produce competitiveness, excellence, innovation, speed, accuracy, and profitability, not to mention that hard-to-define “zing” that sets the best apart from the rest. Outperforming organizations magnetically attract, effectively awaken, and irresistibly retain highly engaged workers. It’s a virtuous cycle. For the leader who is suffering that vicious backward cycle of dullard workers and organizational lethargy, this flywheel of engagement and results can look like a fantastical merry-go-round with no place to jump on.
We know a few additional things about worker engagement:
- Testing engagement levels, however necessary this is, doesn’t fix what’s wrong. Often, organizations figure out how to get better engagement scores, but their improved test scores aren’t always reflected in more engagement.
- Fixing an organization’s struggles with low engagement isn’t a small organizational or leadership tweak. There are, in fact, five interrelated must-do’s that need attention. (I’ll touch upon each of these in the coming weeks, starting with the “why question,” below.)
- Leadership must own this challenge.
Leaders Must Effectively Answer the Why Question
An entire movement has grown up around “finding purpose” and “answering the why question,” perhaps best illustrated by Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life and Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. This movement exists for good reason. Human beings are wired for purposefulness; failing to provide workers with a link between their daily tasks and a great and compelling purpose is tantamount to managerial malpractice.
A few points are important to make, and they often are missed by the “purpose movement:”
- A Great Purpose Statement (your company’s compelling “why,” or your “vision,” if you prefer) must tap into the deep requirement human beings have to contribute their lives and labors into the valuable service of others. We were “born to make a difference,” but a “big, hairy, audacious goal” (to use one of Peter F. Drucker’s favorite expressions) won’t automatically tap into the need of the human person to serve others. As you rethink your organization’s “why,” test it, not in terms of its audaciousness (which I’m in favor of), but in terms of its usefulness to others, to the world, to the care and service of people. Ask your workers to give their very best, because the object of their labors deserves nothing less.
- If you have a big, hairy, audacious vision statement that doesn’t speak to serving, that’s fine. Just slide it over into your set of goals. Let’s say you believe you can and should double revenue in the next quarter, then press into that goal. What a fantastic goal that may be! However, it fails the “effective purpose” test, because no one on earth will look back at such an accomplishment from the age of 75 and say, “That was my life’s most meaningful moment!” Just as importantly, such a goal, however bold, won’t roll your workers out of bed each morning with passion and drive.
- When you become clear about your “Great Purpose Statement,” translate it into every daily work assignment. Tell stories of people doing the everyday things you ask them to do and how those tasks brought true good to the world. Help your workers see what you see through stories and continuous encouragement. No job is menial when we understand why!
Leaders who are committed to cultivate an exciting and fully engaged workforce will take the time to effectively answer the “why question.” And, to underscore, “effectively” means “by linking purpose to the great cause of serving others and the world.” Such leaders continuously draw the links between the work done every day and the results that matter so very much in the world.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to take time to touch upon four additional must-do’s for worker engagement. I’ll take my time, not because they are particularly difficult to understand – they aren’t – but rather because time is exactly what is needed. We must be highly intentional and patient in this work of engaging our workers. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a highly performing, fully engaged workforce won’t be either. Anxiousness or false urgency won’t help at all. We must take time, and we must be attentive as we proceed!