The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

Job satisfaction is on a steady decline in the U.S., according to a report released last week by the Conference Board, a non-profit global business research organization.

If these numbers don’t grab business leaders by the throat and compel them to take action, we don’t know what will. On top of a still-anemic economy and a near universal crisis of trust,  the very last thing employers need today is a bunch of disgruntled workers operating at well less than full power. But that’s exactly what most organizations are faced with.

Only 45% of workers in the CB survey say they’re satisfied in their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year the study was conducted. Unlike the economy, this downward trend has been constant, not cyclical. Just like gravity, job satisfaction has gone one way in both good times and bad… down.

So, what’s worker satisfaction at your outfit? And what difference does it make?

Second question first. If you’ve been following us for any part of the last 12 years, you know our research shows that it makes a HUGE difference – to the bottom line. Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Period.

First question: What’s worker satisfaction like  where you work? How do you know? Have you done a survey lately to find out where your company stands with respect to employee satisfaction? If not, why not? If so, what did you do with what you learned from the survey? If you want some help with this, click here.

So, if workers are less satisfied at work now than they once were, what are the reasons? What’s the remedy?

In keeping with the last-in-first-out nature of this article, we’ll start with a remedy:

Manage Yourself First: People aren’t going to follow, let alone be energized and engaged by a leader who is confused, conflicted, or depressed. If you can manage yourself on your own, go to it. If not, find a coach or counselor to help.

Now to the reasons. We’ll offer two in this article, and what to do about them; then a few more next month.

Reason #1:

Author Daniel Pink probably hit on the kernel of rising dissatisfaction when he tweeted last week, “Meager money + Zero meaning = Record low job satisfaction.”  Increase the value of either of the two variables on the left side of Pink’s equation, and satisfaction is likely to rebound.

What to do about it

If you put any more money into the equation, do it in a way that serves to better differentiate (and reward) better performers. If more money’s not in the cards, or even if it is, leaders could substantially improve employee satisfaction and engagement, and thereby organizational results, by investing more meaning in people’s work. That takes two forms:

Make less meaningful work more meaningful.

• Take all the senseless BS out of people’s jobs – unnecessary tasks, paperwork, and CYA-related nonsense.
• When you ask someone to do something, use what they’ve done, or quit asking them to do it.
• Ask people to develop their own best ways to accomplish results, hold them accountable, and reward them for hitting targets.
• On the premise that we all need to see the needle move once in a while, give them some opportunities for quick wins.

Shine a light on the meaning that’s already there. This is the more likely problem, and it’s easier to fix.

• Create a clear line of sight between their work and real paying customers. Bank tellers need to know how processing transactions makes money for the bank. Most don’t have a clue. Dishwashers and prep cooks – how does their work make diners want to come back and spend more money? And every assistant administrator in a state community college needs a firm grasp of how the decisions they make impact the quality of education in their state.
• Here’s an assignment for today. Yes, today. Ask each team member to describe how their work is felt, ultimately, by the people who pay for what you do – customers, clients, patients, taxpayers, students, whatever you call them – the people without whom the organization would not exist. If they can’t do it, see the above bullet point.

Reason #2:

While some leaders run around telling people they’re “empowered” (gag), sadly, most of us are actually micromanaging people into less and less satisfaction.

One way to start doing something about that:

Build in flexibility. If at all possible, let go of your concern with when people show up to do their work, and what they’re doing every minute they’re on the premises. Trust us. No one ever said “I hate my job. It gives me too much control over my life.” This one will get you MAJOR satisfaction points, if you manage it well.

If work times must, by the nature of your business, coincide with customers’ and/or co-workers’ patterns, then ask your workforce to figure out a way to meet the needs of the business while providing people with maximum flexibility.

In fields where customer coverage and colleague coordination matters less, incent people to accomplish results, not punch a clock, real or imaginary. If you employ adults, treat them as such. Hold them accountable – really accountable – for excellent results, and let them figure out the best way to manage their schedules while meeting business needs. If you’ve hired the right people, they’ll LOVE their jobs.

Next month, we’ll look at a few more reasons people aren’t feeling the job love as much these days, and some remedies for each.

Til then, Godspeed.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Halogen Software, a really cool Human Resources software company headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, has added a feature to their website called Raging Debates in HR. I spoke for their user’s conference in September, and they’ve been kind enough to include me on the Raging Debates panel, along with such worthies as former Southwest Airlines and Yahoo HR Chief Libby Sartain; Academic Ed Lawler; and blogger Kris Dunn.

We answer 10 questions, dealing with topics such as forced ranking, performance evaluations, generational differences, and even “weisure” – the mixing of work and leisure. I’ve enjoyed my fellow panelists’ responses, learning from their varying perspectives, and feeling really good on those occasions when we’re in agreement.

I really like the architecture of the Raging Debates site. You can easily see what every panelist has said on any topic, or what any panelist said about every topic.

Anyway, check it out. Comment. Interact with the site. Enjoy. And learn.

Thanks, Halogen!

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Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

Bill and I just returned from the World Business Forum in New York City, where about 5000 people from around the globe assembled in Radio City Music Hall to hear speakers the likes of economist Paul Krugman, Patrick Lencioni, Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld, George Lucas, and Bill Clinton, and a host of others. The event was excellent, and I’m glad I went. Most of the speakers were really good. Some of them were outstanding. Here are a few random conclusions and observations:

• Far from the apocalyptic feel of a year ago, the economy’s getting better, but it’s not better enough yet.
• If Manhattan hotel room rates are any indication, New York’s healing is well under way.
• Note to all speakers everywhere: make it about your audience, not you. Those at this event who did that, rocked; those who didn’t sank like a rock.
• Even the state-of-the-art A/V system at Radio City Music Hall can’t make a bad PowerPoint look good.
• Too many CEO’s are lousy speakers. There’s no excuse for that.
• Even Bill Clinton, an excellent speaker, can’t perform at the top of his game after an overnight flight from the west coast.
• Despite the homogenization of English speech patterns, owing to mass media, there’s still a New York accent, and I love it.
• The world has changed. The principles of leadership have not. But their application has. And that’s precisely the message behind our new book, due out next year, entitled “Rebooting Leadership”. Sorry for the plug, but it fits.
• George Lucas would be cool, even without his films.
• Those giant pretzels you get on the street corner in NY used to be better.
• Nothing has yet been devised that can adequately replace human beings coming together in the same room to hear a live speaker. Nothing.

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Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

We’ve recently witnessed a rash of boorish public behavior by people who should know better. Without naming names, let’s just say that athletes, actors, and politicians of every stripe have been well represented. Time will tell whether society is willing to accept this latest ratcheting up of coarse behavior as the new norm.

I wonder if perhaps we should adopt a color-coded “national civility index” to match the TSA’s threat meter. Think of the fun we could have with that. It would give tennis players and politicians alike something to shoot for. In the meantime, something more important is at stake, the afterwords from these outbursts – the eh hmm ‘apologies’.

Sadly, the ‘apologies’ that accompany these episodes seldom pass the smell test for authenticity. “Party leaders told me to call and say I was sorry” said one apologist. “I apologize to anyone who may have been offended” said another, whose offense involved getting off two f-bombs while describing what she would like to do with a tennis ball. Another issued an apology only after having twice denied the misbehavior. One had his agent issue an apology to his offended peeps. If anything is more offensive than the bad behavior, it just might be the apologies themselves.

This trend is bothersome not just because of its unpleasantness, but because in a lot of cases, impressionable children and young adults are viewing this as a template for acceptable behavior. The payoff isn’t pretty. In a recent survey of teens by the Josephson Institute, 64% admitted cheating on tests, 30% admitted stealing something from a store, 83% copped to lying about something significant to their parents, and, drumroll please… 93% said that they were okay with their own values. The notion that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you mumble something loosely construed to be an apology puts us way down a slippery slope.

I have gained some experience at making apologies. It’s nothing to brag about, just a by-product of screwing up on a pretty regular basis, and getting more practice. And more importantly, because I had parents who took the hard road and made certain that I got this lesson right. One summer when I was a kid, I subbed for a friend on his paper route. Everything was fine until early one Sunday morning when I launched a tightly rolled Charleston Daily Mail through two layers of glass in a customer’s front door. I quickly learned from my parents that “service recovery” consisted of more than a simple apology. At a reasonable hour when the homeowner was likely to be up and wanting his newspaper, my dad made sure that I returned to the scene to sweep up the broken glass, replace the original paper, and make a sincere apology. Then, I got the chance to “make it right” by paying for the installation of replacement glass in the storm door. As I recall, that wiped out my profits for the month, but left me with a valuable life lesson. Thanks, Dad.

Recovering from one’s mistakes isn’t just the right thing to do. On both a personal and institutional level, it’s also good for business. I was reminded of this recently by a client whose company had shipped some off-spec product to their customers. He remarked that several customers had actually called to commend them for their prompt and thorough handling of the matter. In each case, the customers expressed appreciation that his team had reacted quickly, apologized in person, and then taken action guided not by what was legally required, but what was right. Hmm.

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A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

This morning, as I watched TV coverage of the space shuttle Atlantis touching down at Edwards Air Force Base in California, I said a silent prayer of thanks for the safe return of the craft and crew. Today’s landing completed the 124th successful space shuttle flight (of 126 attempts). That’s an admirable success rate for something that is still a quite dangerous activity. But is it really successful? What exactly have we succeeded at? More to the point, what did we set out to do? What is the mission of our space program?

Full stop. I’m not, repeat NOT beating up on NASA. It’s just that their purpose, their raison d’etre isn’t so clear any more. When President Kennedy announced the moon mission in 1961, it was crystal clear. Today, not so much. Similarly, when we took military action against Iraq in the first Gulf War, our purpose was entirely clear. Today, not so much. So what’s the point? Simple…

When you ask a group of people to come together and really lean into an activity, any activity, the odds of getting selfless, truly committed, balls to the wall effort are entirely dependent on them having a clear sense of purpose and direction. That is especially the case when you’re asking them to sacrifice, to bleed for the cause, and continue doing it over a protracted period.

Today, owing to intense global competition, a sputtering economy, and a financial meltdown of epic proportion, we’re all asking workers to suck it up, expend copious amounts of their discretionary effort, and in general to TOFTT. That’s perfectly appropriate, but we must understand that motivating people to do something out of fear (of financial penalty, losing one’s job, extinction, what have you) is effective only in the short term. Not unlike the jolt one gets from a cup of coffee, the benefits quickly wear off. As leaders of the currently out of favor political party are figuring out, it is simply not sustainable. In a sprint, fear works. In a marathon, hope wins… every time. So what to do?

1. As leaders in the midst of a storm, we must redouble our efforts to explain and reinforce for all hands on deck what it is we’re about, what the organization stands for, and where it’s headed. Do not assume that people remember something that you think you made clear six months or even six days ago. There are simply too many other competing thoughts in their minds at present.

2. Make darned sure that your people understand, explicitly, where they fit in and why their work, their best effort, matters. Don’t just tell them, show them.

3. Once the mission and expected contribution are clear, advise your folks that they are at liberty, no, expected to discontinue any activities that do not support those purposes. You’ll be pleasantly amazed how much wasted effort comes to a screeching halt.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

Tom Bergeron, host of Dancing With the Stars has an excellent piece, Does Susan Boyle Know What’s Next, in today’s NY Times. The article posits that, despite a huge adrenalin rush brought on by her incredible performance on “Britain’s Got Talent”, Ms. Boyle will all too soon be dealing with a man-made headwind as we return to business and thinking as usual.

Mr. Bergeron then connects Ms. Boyle’s situation to our world at large, “After all, “Yes We Can!” communal euphoria is tough to sustain and even harder to market. We’re already grumbling about our president’s choice of puppy and asking whether his wife’s arms are too toned for national magazines. It’s always something, and it’s usually nonsense. But it sells newspapers. At least it used to. Now it sells Web sites and cable television.

“The real problem is that too often we don’t have the courage to sustain wonder. Susan Boyle walked onto that stage and faced down a sea of smug. We need that kind of courage nowadays, and not just on reality shows. We need the courage to believe that stirring voices can be found in unlikely places.” By all means, read the full article.

The piece reminds me of a story I occasionally use in keynote speeches about a Lakota chief who sat by the fire with his grandson one night and shared a story with the young boy about a fierce battle between two wolves. One wolf stood for evil, and it represented fear, envy, cynicism, and greed. The other wolf represented good… hope, courage, perseverance, and honesty.

Eager to learn the result of the ferocious struggle, the young boy interrupted his grandfather and asked, “which wolf wins?” The old man paused for a moment and then said simply, “the one you feed… the one you feed.”

Not unlike Ms. Boyle, the rest of us still have demons to deal with, in the form of the fear and cynicism which, for the last several years have played too big a part in our daily operating system. We, too must decide which wolf we’re going to feed.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

Chapter 22 of our latest book, Contented Cows MOOve Faster deals with the subject of motivation and rewards. A central tenet of the chapter is that organizations (and individuals) need to be very careful what they incentivize people to do, because, more often than not, that is exactly what they are going to do. While there is nothing new or remarkable about this precept (Psychologist, B.F. Skinner wrote and taught extensively about it in the mid-20th century), it seems that some of us have serious learning disabilities when it comes to our need to continually re-learn the lesson, often the hard way.

Witness the revelations over the weekend that insurance giant AIG planned to proceed with bonus payments ranging from $1,000 to $6.5-million ($US) to about 400 employees in its financial products division, the arm of the company that brought AIG, and the entire U.S. financial industry to the brink of collapse.

While word of these payments has led to a hue and cry about how a firm that recently posted one of the largest quarterly losses in the history of commerce, and has dined at the public trough to the tune of $170 billion can be paying bonuses to its employees, it should be of greater concern that company management, backed up by the board’s compensation committee, has evidently deemed the bonuses “earned”, consistent with established compensation plans, ‘er schemes. Yikes!

Before we get too sanctimonious, though, it would behoove all of us to revisit how pay and incentives work in our own organizations. How many of us, for example, are still paying people purely as a function of how long it takes them to do something? How many of us are incentivizing people who should be cooperating to compete against each other, and, how many of us, under the auspices of a poor economy have slashed or eliminated recognition and incentive programs altogether?

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

Read or listen to the news, and you’d think that virtually all commercial activity throughout the world has ceased. I’m not naive. I know that business volume is down in many sectors, and people are losing jobs in droves. And homes. And confidence in leadership.

So I’m struck by some of the things I’ve observed in the last few weeks. This is just my experience, and it doesn’t speak for what’s going on everywhere. Still it’s hard to ignore:

Just a few recent observations and experiences:

• My son and I went to see “Slumdog Millionaire“, before it won Best Picture. We arrived 5 minutes before showtime, figuring there wouldn’t be many people there. Bad move. We got tickets, but not very good seats. The place was packed.
• My family and I went to the 14th Annual Northeast Florida Scottish Highland Games on Feb. 28. My wife’s from Scotland, and we go to the Games every year. We figured the crowd would be light this year, you know, because of “the economy”. The crowd, estimated at nearly 20,000, was the biggest in the festival’s history. We waited in a 2-mile line of traffic to get into the venue, 50 miles from the primary population center of northeast Florida.
• That night, I drove my daughter to the Monster Truck Jam, held in the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. Sold out. 70,000 fans.
• A few days later, Billy Joel and Elton John kicked off their new 2-year performance tour in Jacksonville’s Veteran’s Memorial Arena. Billy Joel told the sold-out crowd, “A lot of people are having a hard time. We want to thank you for keeping us in business.”
• I’m writing this from the Delta Crown Room at the Salt Lake City Airport. I had to wait for a seat in the lounge, one of Delta’s largest. I’m looking around, and there are ZERO empty seats right now, and lots of people eyeing fellow travelers, hoping they’ll be vacating their seats soon. The security line here was a 40 minute wait.
• This trip to and from Salt Lake is a six-legger this time. So far, every leg has been at 100% capacity.
• Last night, I waited 20 minutes for a seat in a downtown Salt Lake restaurant. It was the shortest wait time offered at any of the more than a dozen restaurants in the area.
• The annual conference I spoke for yesterday in Salt Lake was expecting about half their usual attendance. It turned out to be closer to 75%.
• Last weekend, I accompanied my mother, who bought a new Hyundai, to replace a retiring Buick. We had to park in the grass near the new car lot, and we had to wait for a salesperson. They were all serving other customers. When it came time to sign the papers a few days later, we were third in line to get into the Business Manager’s office. He apologized, and said, “We’ve just been so busy. I’m sorry you had to wait.”

I don’t know what to make of all this,  and I’m not saying that it means the economy is back from the brink. Not by any stretch. But it does remind me of the classic line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail,  when the poor diseased man on the death cart protests, “I’m not dead yet!”

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

A couple months ago I did a post referencing a presentation to the Memphis Economics Club in which Bruce Scherr, the scary smart Chairman & CEO of Informa Economics made a compelling case for a “crisis of confidence” being at the core of our current economic difficulties.

With each passing day, I am ever more convinced that Dr. Scherr knows from whence he speaks. Granted, there are systemic moves that must accompany any return to economic normalcy, whatever that is, but one of the things that I absolutely know is that things will get better when we Believe (upper case “B” deliberate) that they are going to get better.

In a 2/20/09 WSJ piece, Peggy Noonan called to mind some of the downright remarkable things that we are capable of and have already done, with reference to folks like Thomas Edison, Nathan Myhrvold, and Steve Jobs. Then, as only she can do, Ms. Noonan transports the reader through the present turbulence to a place where they can again see what is indeed possible… “Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, but not from the human brain or heart. Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone’s garage, somebody’s kitchen, as it did in the case of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak. The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That’s where the magic will be. And no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts.”

Be part of that start… today.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

I love my work. I hope you do, too. And because I enjoy what I do, I am, quite frankly, really eager to get back to it on this first real work day of the new year.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays as much as the next person. We celebrate Christmas in our family, and I love Christmas, and all that comes with it. For the few days surrounding Christmas and New Year’s, I enjoy sleeping late, taking a little downtime, spending extra time with my family, and not having a lot of deadlines. But, it seems, in our business, the world pretty much goes away for about a month, between early December and early January. That’s more than 8% of the year. With a recession going on, who can afford that?

I’m not advocating workaholism. If you don’t believe me, check out this blog tomorrow, when I’ll be reviewing a book entitled The Daily Six, by John Chappelear. It’s all about life balance. And so am I. But, if we have to work (I do, and I suspect most of you reading this are in the same position), let’s get on with it! Enough of this holiday “parade rest”. I’m ready for folks to answer their phones, get things going, and to get fewer “Out of Office Reply” emails.

In our book, Contented Cows Moove Faster, Bill Catlette and I describe what it takes to get people to put more “Oomph!” into their work. While most of it comes from the quality of one’s leadership, a notable portion comes from the nature of the work we get to do. Notice I didn’t say have to do.

My hope for you this year is that you’ll get to do some really cool work. Work that makes a difference, and work that you enjoy.

I love what I do. And I can’t wait to get back to it!

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.