Last week, a friend of mine dropped me an email tagged with a subject of “why to move”. He attached a long quote and a (seemed-to-be) book review on why that people leave a company. The guy, was before working with me, seems to be a little bit at the cross road of his career – or his current job to be precise.
One of the books mentioned caught my attention. First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, working for the Gallup Organization, published first in 1999 (?). The book is the culmination of over 80,000 interviews conducted by Gallup during the past 25 years. It definitely provides quite a solid reference. “What do the most talented employees need from their workplace?” Gallup surveyed over a million employees from a broad range of companies, industries, and countries. The most powerful discovery was this: Talented employees need great managers. The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.
I replied to my friend that it seems to be true. He responded back that it’s very true, not just seems to be true. OK, well noted. As it goes on saying, people resigns to leave the manager, not the company. Ironically, good guys most frequently end up with having bad bosses. A quoted survey from Fortune revealed that 75% of employees are suffering from difficult bosses.
In a war for talent, companies compete to find and keep the best employees. It goes beyond just monetary benefits. I realized that even having a good coach is not enough, although it’s quite a foundation before anything else. Years ago, I had a technically bright talented guy working for us. He resigned because of the job was mostly doing “technical housekeeping” dealing with old technologies. He wanted to pursue something more exciting in touch with “tomorrow technologies” as not to make his skill obsolete. Nowadays, with a new generation of bright young people coming from the market and schools, having been “living through daily routines with fancy technologies around”, it would becoming more apparent that technology-friendly workplace is a necessity to keep them stay and productive. A CEO once I was working for required me to ensure that all engineers, and virtually all employees, in the company get access to the Internet and just keep on monitoring its proper use. In contrast, in some other different environments of equal financially strong companies, the Internet is open only to those with very strong justifications.
Turning employees’ talent into lasting performance is still a big challenge for leaders. Numbers, targets, and bottom lines do communicate, but not enough to capture the heart as to get people moved to passionately work for excellence. A very long ago, as a manager I was drafting a memo for my Vice President to address some important issues to all VPs in the company. Once finished and OKed, I asked my boss as to who should broadcast the email distribution from, as I supposed that it would be issued from him to all VPs. He simply said that let it be issued from and by you, adding with a smile that “you are already at the same level with them”. It might be just a little from his part, yet had a psychologically profound positive impact to me considering his sincerity. In contrast, there was a case whereby a big boss drafted a memo ready for his manager to sign and issue. He might intend to help. But to a talented, senior people, it was discouraging.
The driving force behind great corporate performance is talented people working with passion for excellence with an engaged heart. Quoting Dr. Jim Harris in Getting Employees to Fall in Love with Your Company, today’s great managers capture the hearts of their employees thru focusing on three strategies: Live a compelling vision, Balance work and family, Celebrate and have fun.
High tech and high touch. A I-have-a-dream motivation meets with a platinum technology exposure.
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3 comments:
Long time ago, I've learned from my uncle about how the loyalty, love, taste, and all other of human reasons are like holding a thing with five arms. Its not only one reason that we used to make something be so mean. On the day that he told me this thing, he gave me an example on why he love his wife with 5 arms.
1. Thumb (Faith)
2. Index finger (Leadership)
3. Middle finger (Support)
4. Ring finger (Beauty)
5. Little finger (Heart)
Appearently......, on this topic the Manager is acting like index finger while thumb is (still acting as) faith, and middle finger as salary, ring finger as good workplace, and little finger as own will (freedom)
The interesting about our arms is fact that they have unique size of width and height..., in other word... the thumb must be bigger and lesser height than index.
The conclusion of my opinion : "The Secret to keep stable in our will is to make sure the meassure of all elements are in the right size"
Eldi,
A good, interesting advice from your uncle. Yap, we need to make things in right mix and proportion. Thank for your comment.
Pak Agus has hit the nail on the head by constructively linking personal attributes and business success.
He has an unparalleled track record of providing all of us with compelling yet practical advice on how to succeed in tumultuous business environments.
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