About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.
You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for LWD.
Nexus of the Week: Literally hundreds of posts are reviewed each week, and when the finalists are tabulated, it becomes very clear that certain sources provide a goldmine of material, whether it is original or in summary form. Some are notable web/print media outlets, like HBR.org & Fast Company, but the intent here is to identify those less widely recognized. This week it is the Six Disciplines Blog, which has “over 1,500 blog posts about strategy execution, business coaching, leadership development, and business process improvement”. Much like LWD, Six Disciplines helps to gather the best of the web! Some of their great stuff from the past week:
- The Shocking Stats on Why Strategy Execution Fails
- Leading Successful, Sustainable Change Initiatives
- Leadership Lessons For The Small Business CEO
What’s Driving Dawn’s Commitment to Oiled Bird Rescue? Profit, Purpose, Product and Authenticity by CV Harquail
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts can be a great way to improve engagement in an organization. In many businesses, the way that they contribute to society aren’t readily apparent, even if it is only in the corporate and income tax paid to the communities they inhabit. Getting organizations involved in supporting charities & education initiatives can build a stronger bond between companies and the communities they service, as well as between the employees themselves, who end up collaborating to help society.
In this post, CV illustrates a great example of a very visible CSR effort (oil spill wildlife rescue), and helps us understand a framework on which to evaluate potential CSR initiatives, to strike a balance on:
- Profit Motivations: “The expectation that these efforts will be noticed, create good reputation and goodwill, and that good reputation will contribute to the organization’s financial success.” [Customer engagement fits here, if you can avoid cynicism illustrated in CV's article.]
- Purpose Motivations: “Businesses and their members actually do care about social issues and they find meaning and inspiration in their corporate efforts to make a contribution beyond their business through their business.” [This is where employee engagement comes in.]
- Product Motivations: This link invites the organization to get involved and make a commitment, because they uniquely can contribute. They either have the product that’s needed or the process skills that will make a difference. [Both employee and customer engagement fits here: When employees see how their product/service can uniquely provide help, and customers see how the product/service they buy excels in the role.]
By discussing P&G’s (manufacturer of Dove soap) efforts to save oil-soaked wildlife, in the context of all the recent attention drawn by the gulf oil spill, she provides an excellent case study to consider in your own CSR efforts. If one of your main goals in launching CSR initiatives is employee engagement, focusing on purpose and product motivations will net the best results.
Delivering Happiness: Zappos and Positive Psychology (Book Review) by Jeremy McCarthy
Zappos must be on a big marketing push this week, because they seem to be popping up on the radar everywhere! The good news, is that the coverage has brought to light some interesting ideas from Zappos on leadership, employee engagement, and the linkage to building a brand.
One consistent theme, as discussed in this post, is the very open approach that Zappos has with its employees, suppliers, customers and even competitors. For example, if you are curious about the guiding principles that drive the business, they will send you their ‘Zappos Family 2009 Culture Book‘ for free! If you think this sounds loopy (if you are a Nordstrom employee, you probably won’t), the description Mr. McCarthy’s provides of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s perspective on business may clinch it:
For him, the company is not about shoes at all: it is about a culture of happiness and the very best in customer service. His hope is that one day, no one will even remember that Zappos started as a shoe company. It will simply be the place to go to get whatever you need, efficiently, and in a way that brings a little more joy into peoples’ lives.
You might imagine some dreamer wearing Birkenstocks and a peace t-shirt, but this is a serial entrepreneur who has sold one company to Microsoft for $265M, and later, sold one to Amazon for $1.2B! It seems that Hseih’s approach is –in part– based on principles of positive psychology (a focus on what makes people succeed, not on what causes mental illness):
Hsieh devotes the last chapter to his own studies of positive psychology and how they have informed a lot of his decisions. By including that chapter, Hsieh makes this the most prominent public example of the application of positive psychology to a business.
This review definitely sold me on reading ‘Delivering Happiness’ for some ideas on how to “create a workplace that is fun and engaging and brings meaning to employees and customers”.
What the A-Team Can Teach Companies About Building Highly Functioning Teams by Shawn Graham
In this fun and educational post, Mr. Graham illustrates how the composition of the ‘A-Team’ –a fictitious paramilitary team that has been the subject of a successful 80′s TV series and is now a feature film– can help us understand how to build effective teams.
He characterizes each of the roles as follows:
- John ‘Hannibal’ Smith – The Leader, “calm under pressure and instilled confidence in those around him.”
- Templeton ‘Face’ Peck – The Glue, “the team member who was always able to find creative ways to address their challenges.”
- Bosco “B.A.” Baracus – The Muscle, “the person with the raw horsepower to get the job done even if they don’t have the requisite experience.”
- “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock -Â The Specialist, “someone who can excel in a specific area or who possess a certain skill set”.
A great example of how, by understanding the unique talents of each team member, you can assemble your own ‘A-Team’. What wasn’t obvious in the post, but what was clear if you saw the series, is that each team member seemed to enjoy the role they played in the team, or as Hannibal said: “I love it when a plan comes together.” In closing, Mr. Graham provides some sage advice that certainly resonates with us:
If you don’t have a chance to chose your team, work with your staff to make sure they’re in the roles that allow them to flourish. If you have the chance to hire new team members, think about the roles mentioned above and how they might fit with your current needs.
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