Help Your People Do a Better Job

By: Nick Tasler

Disengagement happens. Contrary to what most of us think, however, poor management isn’t always the cause. The fact is that being an inspiring, emotionally intelligent leader and an excellent coach isn’t always enough to keep your people fully focused and productive. Sometimes they need a change to their job more than they need a change to their manager.

A team of researchers led by Justin Berg, now a graduate student at the Wharton school, developed an innovative tool called the Job Crafting Exercise. Based on more than a decade of research, the tool helps guide employees through a process of reorganizing their current job tasks into new self-defined “roles.” It not only helps employees see their jobs differently, it helps them do their jobs differently. The result is a more engaged and ultimately, more productive employee.

Five Steps to Reinvigorating Your Team With Job Crafting:
1. Clarify the Business Objectives of their Job. Before allowing employees to begin the Job Crafting Exercise, it’s vital for managers to clearly state the outcomes that an employee’s job needs to produce for the organization. After all, the exercise is futile if employees become fully engaged in a job that fails to produce results.

2. Allow Employees to Complete the Job Crafting Exercise. The tool instructs employees to list their current job tasks, and then their strengths—what the employee is good at doing; their passions—what types of tasks the employ enjoys doing; and motives—what outcomes the employee wishes to achieve from their work, such as pay or recognition. Employees then arrange their strengths, passions and motives into clusters with certain job tasks. These clusters become the new self-defined roles of their job. Berg emphasizes that employees don’t actually eliminate any of their essential job tasks when completing the exercise. They simply reorganize their job tasks in a way that is more personally satisfying.

3. Don’t Interfere. “Managers have to let go of the prison guard tendency,” Amy Wrzesniewski says. Wrzesniewski, a professor at the Yale School of Management and one of the tools co-creators explains that as long as managers have properly clarified the job’s required outcomes and provided adequate reasoning for why these objectives are necessary, the manager must let her people go through the exercise on their own. This key distinction is what makes the tool so much more effective than traditional “job design” techniques in which managers or HR departments designed an employee’s job for them.

4. Create a Plan with the Employee. Once the employee completes the exercise, managers should sit down with employees to discuss how they can help the put that new job role into action. This isn’t a managerial sign-off ritual as much as it is a short working session (30-40 minutes) to make sure that both manager and employee are working toward the same ends. It’s also a learning opportunity for the manager. Co-creator and distinguished professor at the University of Michigan, Jane Dutton points out that one of the bonuses of job crafting is that management often learns about more effective ways of working that they can apply to other areas of the organization.

5. Craft in Teams. “In a team environment,” Wrzesniewski says “it’s often beneficial for employees to do a little job-swapping.” Inevitably, the Job Crafting Exercise will reveal necessary tasks that an individual employee doesn’t care much for doing. Some employees like more social tasks such as making phone calls or attending meetings, while others love digging into more solitary problem-solving tasks. Both sets of tasks need to be completed by the team, but it usually doesn’t matter which individual performs which task.

While it’s undoubtedly true that disengagement happens, nobody says it has to happen for long.

Questions from Seth

By: Karen Rulifson

I just read this on Seth Godin's blog (great blog by the way), and it really resonated with me. Take a minute to ask these questions to yourself, and most importanty, ask the question, 'why?' after each one. This is a great quick way to help you prioritize.

Who are you trying to please?
What are you promising?
How much money are you trying to make?
How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?
What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?
Which people?

(and after each answer, ask 'why?')

Gary Hamel: Three Challenges Facing Organizations

By: Karen Rulifson

I just read this blog and couldn't say it better myself:

Published by Michael Lee Stallard on October 11, 2009

Last week I was invited to attend the World Business Forum in NYC with 50 other leading bloggers. The presentation that resonated the most with me was Gary Hamel’s. In it, he outlined three challenges facing today’s organizations:

1. How do we build an organization that can change as fast as change itself? Change is accelerating at this time in history and organizations need to act faster to deal with opportunities and threats. Consider the changes in the last century including in healthcare, microprocesssors, transportation, computing power, the internet, telephony, gene sequencing, biotech, etc.

2. How do we build an organization where innovation is everyone’s job? The accelerated pace of change makes this a necessity. Do employees understand their organizations innovation insights? Is every employee’s contribution to innovation measured?

3. How do we build an organization that actually inspires extraordinary accomplishment? This is the most important of the three challenges facing today’s organizations. On average, seventy-five percent of employees are not engaged in their jobs. We need employees who regard their jobs as the way to bring their passion in the world. Our job as managers is to build a work climate, a sense of purpose that inspires initiative because obedience, diligence and intellect are mere table stakes in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace.

These ideas are from Hamel’s book, The Future of Management.

Tips for Today's Leaders

A new year. A recession and a new set of workplace challenges. Anxious employees. Needed is a new set of behaviors from leaders.

Out are the days of leading from the top and ordering the team to follow your ideas. Today's employees need and value collaboration, diverse ideas, providing input and inspiring and challenging assignments. In a recent Harvard Business Publishing article, "10 Mantras for Emerging Leaders in '09," Vineet Nayar lists guidelines for leaders. What especially resonated with me are the following:

• Accountability - Now more than ever, leaders need to model the way and walk the talk. They need to say what they mean, be transparent and follow through. This builds trust amongst the team.
  
• Lead from the front line - Know what's going on, understand the pain points of the employees and customers. This will help you make better decisions.
  
• Collaborate and ask questions - Utilize the talented team you have, gain additional ideas and insight, challenge processes. This will lead to innovation.
  
• Be nimble - Now more than ever, change is a constant. To be and stay competitive, one must adapt and be a leader of change.
  
• Be positive - People look to you for inspiration and motivation. Be the positive force that keeps them excited about the vision and purpose of what they do everyday.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

Karen Rulifson