A summary of things you should know about Widgets according to Rodd Wagner: Introduction In this episode Rodd Wagner shares an in-depth preview of his book, Widgets, where he discussesRead More
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]]>In this episode Rodd Wagner shares an in-depth preview of his book, Widgets, where he discusses 12 rules for managing employees as if they’re real people.
In his book Wagner provides important and actionable insights into the behavioral drivers of employee engagement – what motivates them, how they think, how they learn, how they act. The goal of the book is to teach you how to use reciprocity as a key motivator in employee performance, adapt new employees to the work environment, and become the best manager you can be.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who want to run an organization with a determination to engage, motivate, and positively affect employees as well as people in general.
I think two things make Widgets different. One is that I questioned all the assumptions because so many things had changed. This is not just another engagement book, I really took stock using research, trends, friend’s research, and powerful stories to really help a leader, manager, or entrepreneur understand where we are right now. I think the other thing that makes it different is that I did begin my career as a police reporter so my writing style is not that of a typical business book. I call it as I see it.
I would suggest starting with the first two chapters that lay the foundation but from there if people want to jump around it’s not a problem at all. Actually, in the case of this book, at the very beginning we give the reader a web address where they can take the self-assessment that emerged from the research that was used to write the book.
The most important point that I tell leaders who I am advising is that your employees motivation is in your hands, not because you control them but because people are so reciprocal. I guarantee that if you follow the twelve new rules of engagement they will do for your company what you need them to do.
There are twelve central chapters, one about each of the new rules. And then there are two chapters at the beginning of those twelve rules and two chapters at the end. The first two chapters start by framing human nature and our current situation.
The number one rule is get inside their heads, individualize and understand that person to figure out where they are right now.
The second rule is to make them fearless, don’t freak them out or have them so consumed by what’s going to be happening with the business that they can’t do their job.
Third rule is to make money a non-issue. Make sure that you are paying them competitively and generously so that it takes money off the table and they can concentrate on their jobs.
The fourth rule is to help them thrive. Make sure that what you are doing at the company is not burning them out.
The fifth rule is to be cool. This is not a rule that would have come up ten years ago but people want to work for a cool company and have an enjoyable time at work.
Sixth rule is to be boldly transparent and tell people everything you can possibly tell them. We live in an age of social media and they are going to find out anyway so you should be the one to tell them.
Number seven is to not kill the meaning. People come to your company because there is something about your organization that they already find meaningful.
Number eight is to see their future. We are future oriented people and you need to be as deliberate about where your employees will be in five years as where you want your company to be in five years.
Rule number nine is to magnify their success. Help your employee know when they’ve done a good job. Rule ten is to unite them and set up the conditions where they can be a solid team. Number eleven is let them lead. And the last rule is to take it to extremes.
The second to the last chapter of the book is a cautionary tale about all the dumb things that get done in an employee engagement work and how they can backfire on you.
And the final chapter is about what I call the Profitable Pursuit of Happiness. There are a lot of people in the engagement industry that say don’t make your people happy, just make them engaged by which they really mean shut up and get back to work. This is something employees won’t put up with.
If you want people to work as hard as they can for the company they are going to expect happiness in the bargain. (highlight to share)
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:58
“It’s not that corporations are bad and people are good. Corporations are powerful and people are reciprocal. How an enterprise wields its power determines how its employees will deliver.” – Rodd Wagner
I began my career as a newspaper reporter covering police and the courts and so I developed a very direct business writing style. I was frustrated by the way I saw my newspaper at the time being managed and so I went to business school and got a MBA. From there I migrated to a couple research jobs on the business side of media companies and eventually joined Gallup where I was a principle for twelve years. I’ve been a practice leader at BI World Wide for the past three years during which my colleagues and I have been doing the research that lead to the book, Widgets.
The Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton
Buy Widgets by Rodd Wagner on Amazon today
Visit WidgetsTheBook.com to learn more about Rodd and his book
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Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
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Related books:
Make It Matter by Scott Mautz
Managing Whole People by Mark Herbert
The Hidden Leader by Scott Edinger
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of A Great Leader
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Happywork according to Chris Reimer: Introduction In this episode Chris Reimer takes a deep dive into his book, Happywork, where he sharesRead More
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]]>In this episode Chris Reimer takes a deep dive into his book, Happywork, where he shares a business parable about the journey to better teamwork, profit, and purpose.
In his book Reimer embraces the everyday unhappiness at work and provides real advice on how to transform any workplace into a motivationally positive environment. The goal of the book is to help you overcome workplace negativity, bring the best out of your employees, streamline your business processes, prioritize your employee tasks, and eliminate human emotions from the workplace.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who want to improve their management skills and ensure that their business workplace runs efficiently and effectively in the absence of negative attitudes.
My book is a story and I believe that is how we learn best.
This book is a front to back read.
We too often overlook our own fulfillment and our own happiness at work. I want to enjoy my job and what I do and I don’t think it’s too much to ask.
My story starts with a man named Dick Vunorri who is the second generation owner of a manufacturing company called Vunorri Inc. Dick learns that this company is on the ropes and 30 days away from foreclosure because they can’t pay their bills. And so Dick decides that he is going to call a turnaround specialist named Sam. Sam tells Dick that he needs to tear the place down to the studs to figure out what exactly is wrong with it. From there Sam meets a man named Charlie who is an older man who works in the mailroom but has some wisdom that’s beyond his job title. Charlie comes forth and really challenges Sam which is surprising to Sam. Sam then goes about studying the company and he first encounters the CFO named Neil who isn’t a lot of fun. Neil is not very good at his job but he’s found a way to proverbially lock himself in his office and not get a lot done. After meeting the rest of the team Sam gets to a point where he gets progressively more down each day. Each day he comes on this four week assignment he doesn’t want to be there. As he is interviewing each person in the company to figure out what’s going on he gets a chance to interview Charlie and its then that Charlie turns the table on him and challenges him on everything he knows about business. Sam starts to realize that the thing that this company is missing is team work, productivity, and very few employees that are fulfilling any of their human needs. Through his experience with Vunorri Sam realized that happiness in work is actually very important. Eventually Sam goes back to Dick and gives him the full rundown of why the company isn’t working and what needs to be done to fix it.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:19
“Why use fear and intimidation? Why do you have to scare us? This isn’t a haunted house.” – Chris Reimer
I am based in St. Louis Missouri and I am a Marketing Communication Strategist. Previous to that I spent a little over 15 years as a CPA and CFO of organizations around St. Louis.
This books inspiration came from my own work experiences. I’ve never had a job that was absolutely horrible but I’ve had some pretty colorful job experiences. The other inspiration would be my mother and what she went through working a 30 plus year career for the US government.
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
Buy Happywork by Chris Reimer on Amazon today
Visit HappyworkBook.com to learn more about the book
Visit ChrisReimer.com to learn more about Chris
Follow Chris Reimer on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman
The Culture Engine by Chris Edmonds
The Hidden Leader by Scott Edinger
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Steps To Promote Innovation At The Workplace
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Hidden Leader according to Scott Edinger: Introduction In this episode Scott Edinger takes a deep dive into his and Laurie Sain’sRead More
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]]>In this episode Scott Edinger takes a deep dive into his and Laurie Sain’s book, The Hidden Leader, where they reveal a unique way to develop greatness within a company.
In their book Edinger and Sain provide a systematic blueprint of a new style of leadership called Reverser Mentoring where senior leaders are mentored by their employees. The goal of the book is to show you how to recognize true leaders within your company, effectively utilize highly talented employees, and build valuable, long-lasting relationships with any employee.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who lead their organizations with a creative mindset and are looking for a way to effectively make the most of under-utilized employees.
There are thousands of books on leadership but the majority of them all seem directed at people who are in positions of leadership but there are very little directed at people who are your average citizen.
I designed the book to be read from front to back but if you want to cherry-pick information along the way you can do that too.
I want the reader to know that leadership has nothing to do with position or title; it’s what your actions are.
Hidden leaders look for what the outcome is or how success is defined in any given endeavor and then they figure out how they are going to do something. I am not saying they are renegades to the process but they are willing and able to look for the result that we are seeking and understand it. Another thing I see a lot of from hidden leaders is that they lead through relationships. They can’t boss anyone around or tell people what to do so they are really good at leading through relationships and that does not mean they are the popular person. Usually these hidden leaders have some kind of great technical expertise. They secondly understand the organization broadly and know way more than just their function and are able to knit teams together when they need to get things done. Thirdly, they are able to make a connection with people. The last thing that I wanted to share that I think is the heart of everything is the idea that hidden leaders demonstrate integrity.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:47
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, and become more you are a leader. “ – John Quincy Adams.
Companies like AT&T, Lenovo, and Los Angeles Times hire me to work with their senior leaders. I start with senior leaders because as the senior leaders go so goes the organization. I work with them on creating growth strategies and how to create differentiation in their business as well as how to lead effectively.
A few years ago I was talking with a former colleague of mine and he was telling me about a project he was working on called Reverse Mentoring. The notion here was that instead of senior partners mentoring, the associates would mentor the senior partners. And those senior partners learned a great deal not only about technology but also about client services and some new ways to approach that. I thought that was such an interesting idea and then the next day I read an article about reverse innovation. I ended up thinking about it all when the hidden leader concept was born and then I found my publisher.
High Performance Sales Organizations by Darlene Coker and Ed Gaizo
Buy The Hidden Leader by Scott Edinger and Laurie Sain on Amazon today
Visit EdingerGroup.com to learn more about Scott and his exclusive content
Visit TheHiddenLeader.com to learn more about the book
Follow Scott Edinger on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds
The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of A Great Leader
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Fairness is Overrated according to Tim Stevens: Introduction In this episode Tim Stevens takes a deep dive into his book, Fairness isRead More
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]]>In this episode Tim Stevens takes a deep dive into his book, Fairness is Overrated, where he shares over 50 leadership principles that will revolutionize any workplace.
In his book Stevens provides you with a manual of tools, practical lessons, real truths, and relevant case studies that discuss the effective pillars of leadership that very successful leaders display. The goal of the book is to teach you how to increase your integrity, surround yourself with successful people, effectively manage a crisis, and develop a culture of true leadership at your organization.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are building a public figure persona or manage a team of people at an organization and want to take their leadership to a stronger, empowering level.
One thing that makes this book different is that it’s highly practical. I tried to make this book very reachable and easy to implement.
This book can be read from front to back or you could use it as a reference.
It’s possible to be a leader of any kind and not be an ego driven narcissistic leader. It’s possible to be a humble leader and to be very effective.
I broke my book down into four big categories and these are big categories because they are the huge portions of what is involved in leadership.
The first section is Being a Leader Worth Following and to me that’s where it starts. Because if you don’t have a place of character of integrity from which you lead then good chances are it’s going to unravel. In this section I talk about living a life with margins, just making sure that you build space in. I talk about being a lifelong learner and not getting to a place where you stop learning and stop growing. I talk about guarding your family, paying attention to your marriage, and your children. I think great leaders are those who not can manage their work life but also have a great marriage and manage their family life.
The second section is about finding the right people. The first chapter in this section is called A Resume is Worthless, and I break down and talk about the fact that resumes contain very little of what is important to me when I am hiring staff. One thing I don’t think employers use enough is social media. This is where you take advantage of their ‘social media scrub’ and looking for things that are important that will determine their future productivity as an employee.
Section three goes into building a healthy culture. You can have the right people but if you don’t pay attention and keep your eye on culture it can become toxic very quickly. As so there are 10-14 topics on building a healthy culture that I think are really important. One is as a leader you have to make a commitment to believe the best about your employees. Another one is that you have to let your leaders lead. You can just give them responsibility; you have to give them authority too. A lot of times, as leaders, we want them to do the work but we don’t want them to make the decision, and that’s dis-empowering.
The final section in the book is called Leading Confidently Through a Crisis. How we lead in those times is going to make concrete how we are remembered as a leader and how people follow us. So in this section I talk about dealing with resignation and how to let people go when they aren’t right for the company. I talk about what to do when you have e-mails flying back and forth and you are upset and how to back down from that. I talk about the pain of growth and the stages of failure that we can go through.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:29
“The success of a leader will rise or fall on the decisions that he or she makes about the people around him or her.” – Tim Stevens
I spent my first nine years of my adult life working for a nonprofit organization and was able to stretch my leadership skills there. From there I went into a very small startup local church that had just began going and was meeting in rented space. I was able to jump on the team with five others and see it grow over the next 20 years. Most recently I have joined an organization called the Vanderbloemen Search Group and we get to come along side churches and nonprofit organizations and help them find staff.
One of the inspirations behind writing this book was my own leadership growth. Being able to pass along some principles that had served me well over the years that someone along the way passed to me. Secondly I wanted to help people address startups and adventures while maintaining their personal values and integrity. That is a tough thing to do and I don’t see a lot of people writing on that particular subject.
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown
Buy Fairness is Overrated by Tim Stevens on Amazon today
Visit FairnessIsOverrated.com to learn more about Tim and his book
Follow Tim Stevens on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Lead to Succeed by Chris Roebuck
The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
Winning The Long Game by Steven Krupp
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of a Great Leader
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>What are the characteristics of a great leader? Exceptional leaders should have exceptional qualities because ordinary traits are not going to help them achieve greatness in one way or theRead More
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]]>Exceptional leaders should have exceptional qualities because ordinary traits are not going to help them achieve greatness in one way or the other. You can easily find many competent leaders, but only few of them eventually qualify as exceptional leaders. Of course, there are leaders who seem to have great ideas, but when you ask them to execute them in real life, they fail miserably. One might look like a great leader in ordinary circumstances, but once you get them out of their comfort zone, you will get to see who they really are. When the going gets tough, when the money is tight or the stakes are high, it is only the great leaders that live up to the expectation; ordinary people just quit it.
So, if you want to separate great leaders from ordinary leaders, you need to have a detailed understanding of the qualities that a great leader possesses.
Sometimes, it just happens that we have great ideas in our head, but when we try to communicate those ideas to the people who are going to implement them, we face the inconvenient truth that they are not getting it. Most leaders met with a blank expression from people when they try to communicate their ideas.
The ideas may seem great on paper, but making people act on it depends much on how you are communicating it. So, if you wish to be a great leader, you need to have great communication skill. There is no way around it.
How on earth the team is going to achieve its goal if the leader fails to communicate his ideas in plain and simple English.
A great leader should encourage fun at workplace because nobody wants to work in a dull and boring environment. It is important to keep your head high even when things are going wrong. There will be times when things will go horribly wrong like the funds may run dry, the client may stop responding or the company may incur heavy loss; but you need to take them as challenges without pressing the panic button.
As a leader, you have to accept the challenges as they come along; try to use humor to inspire other people to face the challenges. People make mistakes, but rather than crying a river over those mistakes, you need to face them with a smile in your face. This will create a positive vibe in the workplace and all you have to do is to encourage it.
Honesty is certainly one of the main characteristics of a great leader. Since everybody around you follows your order blindly, you need to be honest and straightforward. A leader needs to accept his faults if there are any; blaming others for your fault can demoralize people working with your team. Moreover, you will lose all the love and respect of employees working with your team. You should not do anything that can make people doubt your integrity.
If you want every member of your team to work really hard, you need to set an example first. Preach what you practice. You simply can’t expect people, working under you, to arrive at the office early if you are a late comer on a regular basis. There is nothing in the world that motivates the workers than seeing their leader working hard alongside. By showing your commitment towards the company, you will be able to earn the respect of the team members and also will be able to encourage them to deliver their best.
Sometimes, you will have to deal with problems that demand a different kind of solution. No, not the usual approach is not going to help here anymore. You will need to take some drastically different decisions to deal with those problems. This is exactly where the importance of creative decision making comes into play. A great leader needs to think outside the box, otherwise he will never be able to offer cool and creative solutions to complex problems.
The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder | Click here for a detailed summary according to Chris Van Gorder
Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer | Click here for a detailed summary according to Bill Treasurer
MOXIE – The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership by John Baldoni | Click here for a detailed summary according to John Baldoni
The Best Place To Work by Ron Friedman | Click here for a detailed summary according to Ron Friedman
Lead To Succeed by Chris Roebuck | Click here for a detailed summary according to Chris Roebuck
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Culture Engine according to Chris Edmonds: Introduction In this episode Chris Edmonds shares his book, The Culture Engine, where he revealsRead More
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]]>In this episode Chris Edmonds shares his book, The Culture Engine, where he reveals a system for driving results, inspiring your employees, and transforming your workplace.
In his book Edmonds teaches you practical step-by-step lessons on how to define your company culture, delineate the behaviors that promote high performance, and create an employee policy that guides behavior towards an inspiring workplace. The goal of the book is to help you create the best workplace possible while molding your employees into productive rockstars.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who run an organization with 2 or more employees and are on a mission to help them become high performing leaders.
The reality is that organizations are still not very nice places to operate in or fun places to work in. I am trying to craft a step by step practical framework that anybody can do. Now it takes a while but the biggest differentiator is I tell you how.
My recommendation is to read all the way through to the end.
The piece that’s very fun about this is that by getting people clearer about values and having them hold values up as important as performance is the absolute switch. If I can get that switch in leader’s heads, heart and hands they will be able to make the move and inspire others.
The title of chapter one is What Is An Organizational Constitution and Why Do You Need One? An organizational constitution allows you to craft and formalize your team’s reason for being its purpose. It’s not about making money, although that is important, but it’s about who you are serving and why they should be attracted to the product services that your team provides. The second piece of organizational constitution is about values and the values piece is the biggest shift and more important foundation. This chapter is about making values and how we should agree to treat others within our organization as well as customers and potential customers. The third piece is about strategies. From a standpoint on what the market is looking for and what your customers need your strategies need to be crystal clear and very well understood. The last element of an organization constitution is goals.
Chapter two in the book allows the reader to do some reflecting. This chapter gives you as the reader a chance to formalize your personal purpose, formalize your values and behaviors, and formalize your philosophy of leadership.
Chapter three begins with the first of the four elements of an organizational constitution and it outlines how you clarify your organizations purpose. Part of the idea here is not just crafting a compelling inspiring purpose statement but also I go through a bit of a marketing instruction because you are going to need to do a marketing campaign with some of these ideas.
Chapter four is the meat of the organizational constitution and it’s about values and defining values in behavioral terms.
Chapter five we combine the strategies and goals. In this chapter I give you worksheets to help you formalize these strategies and goals.
Chapter six is titled Your Organizational Constitution Must Be Lived. This is the piece where you want to engage everyone in the implementation. You also want to describe the way, model the way, and then align the way as you start to look at how people embrace your valued behaviors.
In chapter seven there is a discussion about how to gather feedback around valued behaviors.
As we get in to chapter eight and nine we start to look at vitally important pieces. Chapter is titled Dealing with Resistance. As you begin to engage people in a culture change like this you will be messing with power structures that won’t be happy with you. This chapter explains how a leader should address resistance and be steady consistent with this change.
Chapter nine is about hiring. You put your culture at risk every time you hire a new leader or a new team player so I outline how to recruit, interview and assess players to make sure there is a culture fit.
Chapter ten is about implementing the organizational constitution. There are five questions in each of the 10 chapters and in this chapter you will score your culture effectiveness assessment which will show you where you are now and what you need to do to move your organization forward.
“I used to see my job as managing processes and results and now I see my job as managing people’s energy.” –Unknown
I am a speaker, blogger, podcaster and writer. I am also what I call an executive consultant. So I do executive coaching usually to help leaders align their corporate cultures so that they can lead better. I have also been affiliated with the Ken Blanchard Companies now for almost 20 years as a Senior Consultant.
It’s the core driver of my passions and my work with clients over the past 20 years. I’ve done a lot of work around facilitating skill building and consulting to leadership teams and the core opportunities are often that the culture that the business operates in doesn’t support these new skills. When I started 15 years ago very proactively in doing consulting around creating a more intentional culture I found that it was way more gratifying. So my primary inspiration was behind putting these proven practices and steps in to book form.
Leading At A Higher Level by Ken Blanchard
Buy The Culture Engine by Chris Edmonds on Amazon today
Visit TheCultureEngine.com to learn more about Chris’s book and get a free chapter
Visit DrivingResultsThroughCulture.com to learn more about Chris’s podcast and blog
Follow Chris Edmonds on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds | Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice The Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland | The Best Place To Work by Ron Friedman
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Steps to Promote Innovation in the Workplace
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Best Place To Work according to Ron Friedman: Introduction In this episode Ron Friedman shares his book, The Best Place toRead More
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]]>In this episode Ron Friedman shares his book, The Best Place to Work, where he offers game-changing advice for working smarter and turning any organization into an extraordinary workplace.
In his book, Friedman explains how to effectively diffuse a workplace argument, elevate your thinking, and reach smarter decisions. The goal of the book is to provide you with scientifically-proven techniques to help you promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs or business executives who are looking to turn an average, low performing work atmosphere into an effective and extraordinary environment.
I recognize what it’s like to be an entrepreneur because I’m an entrepreneur myself and I wanted to write a user’s guide for someone who is busy. I realize entrepreneurs need action items and this book is really stocked with action items both for managers and for employees.
Every chapter in the book is focused on a different aspect of the workplace. It’s a variety of different topics and not one that you have to read in a linear fashion.
One of the takeaways is that psychological needs are at the heart of employee engagement. If you are looking to create an engaged workforce you need to provide people with psychologically fulfilling experiences.
The second takeaway is that organizations are a lot more successful when they address rather than ignore the limits of both the mind and the body.
The third key takeaway is that rather than encouraging employees to find work life balance, organizations can be a lot more successful by allowing employees to integrate the two aspects of their life in an active way.
This book is a journey of different topics of the psychology of the workplace and summarizing all of this in a short amount of time can be a little bit of a challenge. I am going to explain the top three gaps that I saw in the workplace.
The first gap was how organizations hire. If you are looking to grow a business you are going to be during some hiring and regardless of how well you structure your workplace if you don’t get the right people in your organization it won’t be affective. One of the critical pieces of hiring is the in person interview. As it turns out there is plenty of research showing that these interviewers are not a very effective tool for predicting how good someone is going to be in a particular position. The reason is because we have all of these cognitive biases that prevent us from actually measuring someone’s effectiveness for the role we are looking to fill. I talk in the book about research showing that we tend to favor good looking people because we assume that they are also competent. Another biased is tall people because tall people tend to be viewed as having greater leadership potential. Deep voice candidates are viewed as more trustworthy. All of these impressions affect not just the way that we view that candidate but also the questions that we ask as a result. I talk about all the biases and then I talk about ways that entrepreneurs can correct those biases.
The second gap is how managers motivate. In the book I present a completely different frame for thinking about engagement in a section on what videogames teach us about creating an extraordinary workplace. If you think about your own experience playing videogames you get sucked in doing a whole host of behaviors that you would normally avoid. What’s fascinating about videogames is we spend so much of our personal time doing these activities that we aren’t getting paid for. I think the reason we find these games as enjoyable as we do is because they deliver the very experiences that we seek in our workplace. For examples we have a clear set of goals and we get recognized and rewarded for our work. The key takeaway here is that engagement is not about the actual job; it’s about the conditions that we build around it.
The third gap that I wanted to highlight is the gap in workplace design. Within the book I survey all the research on office design and the psychology of how our minds react differently to different environments and what I argue is that there is a connection between space and innovation. What I mean by that is where we are affects the way we think. There is research that I cover in the book looking at how the ceiling height of a room affects our ability to think abstractly. The rooms’ layout communicates the type of interaction that is expected. I discuss all the ways that companies can leverage a lot of these insights to deliver a better working environment.
“When your attempt rate is high each individual failure becomes a lot less significant.” – Ron Friedman
I am a social psychologist and I specialize in human motivation. I have taught at the University of Rochester, Nazareth College, Hobart and William Smith, and I write for the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Forbes. I’ve also founded a company called ignite80 that helps smart leaders build extraordinary work places and the way we do that is via speaking, workshops and occasionally consulting. If you are wondering about the name of that company it’s because 80% of employees worldwide have been found to be disengaged at work so we look to correct that.
One of the things I talk about in the book is that the book really happened by accident. I spent years in academics studying human motivation and teaching human psychology courses and my goal was to become a full-time professor. Eventually I achieved that goal and I got a full-time teaching job and when I got there I found myself itching for a new challenge. If you got in to academics for the reasons I did, it was to learn new things and as a professor you are covering the same material again and again.
I wanted that new challenge so I decided to go off into the corporate world where I was hired to work as a pollster. When I got to the corporate world I noticed a lot of the things that I took for granted as a professor. But when I got to the corporate world I witnessed a real disconnect from everything from the way that companies hire and the ways that managers motivate to the design and layout of the modern office. I got to meet a lot of these business owners and a lot of entrepreneurs who are really interested in building great workplaces but just don’t have the tools for doing that.
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry
Buy The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman on Amazon today
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Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer | Scrum – The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland | The Front-Line Leader by Chris Van Gorder
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Steps to Promote Innovation in the Workplace
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