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Thinking different inside our hives

A bunch (or should that be swarm?) of people met up with David Zinger for a

workshop titled Think different inside our hives How to achieve exceptional

employee engagement. The event was generously sponsored by Berghind Joseph

and took place in London on July 5th. Ive corresponded with David for some time

now via email, blog posts and his Employee Engagement Network so I was very

keen to meet him in person.

We were intriguingly offered as much likelihood of puzzlement and muddlement,

as clarity. I was excited by the possibilities, and I will try to recall some snippets

of possibility for you now.

Invitational

Engagement is invitational. You cant make people do it, they have to want to.

Engagement as a program is a recipe for disaster.

Engagement is not a problem to solve; it is an experience to be lived

Davids a great story teller. Im not going to attempt to retell all his tales from

yesterday, but heres a stab at one for you. David comes across a guy unhappy in

his work. So unhappy that he is literally counting the days until he can retire.

David asks him, So is there anything you do like? Yeah, golf, comes the reply.

David remarks that given Canada only has about a three month golf season it

probably isnt the best country to have golf as your like. The guy retires. Some

time later David sees him in the street on a lovely sunny afternoon, looking as

miserable as ever. Did you play golf? he asks. yeah, and I hate it comes the

reply. From this encounter we learn that Engagement is not a problem to solve;it is an experience to be lived.

Small is the new significant

I often ask myself and others what is the least I can do today to make a

positive impact. David spoke about how engagement is less about a return on

investment, more about ensuring it is worth the risk. And a way to reduce risk is

to keep things small. Small is the new significant, as long as we stand for the

significant. Pilots are great; you often dont need permission for pilots (and if you

do its usually much quicker to obtain)

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Bees

David is conducting an interesting experiment with bees. Zinghive is dedicated to

co-creating organisations, businesses, and social networking through parallel play

and metaphoric understanding of honey bees and hives. The project will

culminate in the summer of 2012 with an interaction between bees, social media,

and computers. Following that there will be exhibits, presentations, and

implications for organisations as we learn to think differently inside the hive.

We learned that as the queen bee reaches the end of her useful life, other bees

cook the queen. They do this by crowding her and beating their wings to raise

the temperature around the queen until she dies. He suggests that employees do

this to projects they dont believe in. Maybe not by beating their wings, but if

theyre not engaged in the project, it will get cooked. David said that there are

bloggers in the audience today and for all he knows, he may get roasted after

today

Resisting change

Folks dont resist change, they resist coercion to change. It must be invitational,

and we must be mindful that the gravity of the familiar pulls you back.

Table talk

We spent some time discussing and maybe debunking, some engagement myths.

We did this in small groups which were regularly broken up and reformed. Here

are just a few thoughts which emerged from the conversations I was a part of:

Engagement is like water, you cant push it but you can create inclines and

receptacles into which it can flow.

We need more fools! (Just be careful not to make the queen too angry, you dont

want to hear off with his head!)

Is engagement love?

We own engagement individually. In the past companies had a quality

department. Nowadays everyone owns quality. Thats how it should be with

engagement.

Terminology

David said, I hate the term employee engagement, but its here and we work

with it. I dont like it either and as regular readers know Im up for simply

making work better. Choose your label.

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Energy

Engagement needs to return more energy than it demands or it is unsustainable.

The end of engagement

The concept will end. Hopefully because it becomes integrated, not because itwas the previous fad. Taskforces, add ons, programmes make extra work. There

is no way to engagement, it is the way.

What makes engagement?

Progress probably the biggest single factor. People need to know and see they

are making progress. David spoke about Albert (Stonewall) Johnson, who built

the great wall of Saskatchewan. After building it for ten years, Johnsons wife

declared him nuts. She left him, and five years later, he declared himself nuts

too. And he kept on going, making progress. What is your legacy, what will you

leave behind?

High quality connections choose to make contact, to say hello. David spoke

about Jane Dutton, whose research focuses on how organizational conditions

strengthen capabilities of individuals and firms. In particular, she examines how

high quality connections, positive meaning and emotions contribute to individual

and organizational strengths. David said that his observations of how many (or

how few) folks acknowledge and engage with a front desk in an organisation, tells

him a lot about their high quality connections, and how it is around here. My

friend Sukh Pabial wrote something about this which I consider to be

recommended reading you may want to take a look.

And it is important these connections arent all nicey nicey. Engagement means

being confident to hold people to account. Checking in with them, not checking up

on them.

Surveys

When was the last time you heard of a company which allowed the staff to ask

what should be in the staff survey?

Never do anything about me, without me.

What about an open creative commons survey? Companies are enslaved to

expensive surveys because they (wrongly in my opinion) look for comparative

data. Seeing this as valuable presumes that what works here, works there too. It

may, and it may not.

Anonymity is not an engagement problem it is a safety problem. When did it

become acceptable not to want to know who we are? When I used to work at BT I

used to plaster my name all over the verbatim comments. I figured if I had an

opinion and I wanted to help then how the hell was anyone going to progress

things if they didnt know who I was? BT then used to go through the

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data and religiously remove mine and others names. I found that offensive, and I

still do. Forced anonymity sucks!

Value

A value is a promise. Live it, be it, behave it and it becomes strong.

Essence

Community trumps organisation

Half of what I say is right, half is wrong and I dont know the difference

I reserve the right to change my mind

Progress

High quality connections

Invitations

A value is a promise

Bees are cool