Welcome
Welcome to the latest issue of
Bringing Work to Life. In recent issues (www.elsdon.com/newsletters.htm)
we explored the topics of:
o
Ethics and leadership (Year End 2004)
o
Linking workforce development to value creation (November December 2004)
o
How to decide if an organization will be a good fit for you (October
November 2004)
o
Confronting one of our fears as leaders - the fear of public speaking
(September October 2004)
o
Bringing meaning to our work lives (August September 2004)
o
Seven key aspects of the organizational and business drivers for
workforce development (July 2004)
This month we continue our
exploration of personal leadership with “Searching for Success.”
Searching for Success
“When 1000 working adults were asked whether they
would rather earn high salaries or earn "enough" doing work that makes
the world a better place, 86% chose the latter” (Izzo and Withers,
Values Shift, 2000, p.79). Was there something wrong with the sample?
After all isn’t there a simple yardstick for success – money. Let’s
explore the myth of money first for each of us as individuals and then
for our organizations.
There’s an apocryphal comment from John D.
Rockefeller, who at the time was the richest man in the world, when
asked “How much more money do you need?” replied “Just a little more.”
Aptly demonstrating the observation that there is enough for our need
but not our greed. Rockefeller went on to observe that money had
brought him no happiness. After he died his accountant was asked how
much he left, to which the accountant replied “All of it.”
So the people that Izzo and Withers surveyed are
reflecting a belief that money is neither an end nor a measure of
success. What does this mean in terms of our lives and our work?
Pamela was a vice president in a technology-based
organization. She was outwardly successful and well compensated for her
business unit responsibility. But there was something missing. She
questioned the connection of her contributions at work to her
aspirations. She wondered about her ability to communicate effectively
with her peers. She wondered about her future with the organization and
how to both experience greater meaning and contribute more effectively
at a senior level. Success in her case was exploring and finding deeper
meaning in her work life bringing her closer to her full potential.
Through a re-evaluation of her role and priorities she was able to find
greater alignment with her needs and bring more to her organization.
Viewed from another perspective, that of our
relationship with our work, Betsy Brewer framed the question of why we
work in the context of the interior processes of discovering meaning
(what), being (who) and doing (how), and identified four work
relationships to the external world:
• A job: based on material rewards, a transaction
• An occupation: involving greater meaning, but
doing dominates
• A career: requiring personal initiative, but
needing collective approval
• A vocation: calling in the service of a greater
good
I frequently ask clients in career counseling where
they wish to be in this continuum and invariably it is the search for a
vocation or call in the service of a greater good. This is the search
that confronted Pamela. Success, then, is complex and highly individual.
Increasingly throughout our lives it involves movement from taking and
receiving external approval, to giving and expressing internal
preferences. This is the generativity of Erikson, and it represents a
wealth of human potential. Indeed in our recent surveys people
estimated that on average they are operating only at about 60% of their
full potential. We have so much more to give.
How about the organizational perspective. What is
success for an organization? On one level an answer to this question is
that success is a tangible increase in organizational value, which is
reflected in shareholder value. However, shareholder value does not
address the purpose of nonprofit organizations and there are other
aspects in a for-profit organization that need to be included.
Considering the organization as part of a broad social network,
impacting the lives of employees, the communities in which it operates,
and the destinies of partner, customer and supplier organizations, it is
reasonable to conclude that factors other than short-term shareholder
value are also critically important. One pre-eminent factor is the
social contribution of the organization. This means the extent to which
the organization enhances the quality of life for those in its
constituent communities. Indeed this social impact is the essence of the
long-term contribution of the organization. Value creation in financial
terms, particularly related to shareholder value, is simply a subset of
this larger contribution. The organization makes this larger
contribution by being a key link in the chain between individuals and
the broader constituent communities in which it operates. It is not
surprising that, just as we conclude for individuals success is not just
about money, we must also conclude that for organizations. So as we
move forward in this turbulent world, success in organizations becomes a
complex tapestry with the expression of human potential at its center.
In weaving this tapestry let me suggest that we ask ourselves these
questions:
• What is the nature of the relationship that
should be built with people in organizations? Is it based on growing
capabilities and accomplishments over time, or is it based only on
short-term transactions?
• How can environments be crafted that enable each
person to reach his or her full potential?
• How is the creation of value in our organizations
maximized while respecting the needs of each person?
• What is the appropriate role of the organization
in supporting community well-being?
• How is success defined both individually and for
the organization?
• How can we ensure that our own life is an
expression of who we are?
In asking and answering these questions we can
fashion our own lives and our organizations so that we invigorate our
communities, our organizations and ourselves.
(Some elements of this article were extracted from
Affiliation in the Workplace by Ron Elsdon, (Praeger, 2003)).
Our Evolving Society
For many of those who are disadvantaged in our U.S.
society, financial concerns speak not to self-actualization but to
survival. In the September October newsletter we saw that income and
wealth inequity has grown in the U.S. since the early 80s. In the
November December newsletter we saw how this is creating a U.S. income
distribution that is moving closer to that of some third world
countries. Let’s look at some other key points from trends reported by
the Census Bureau in an August 2004 study (Income, Poverty, and Health
Insurance Coverage in the United States, Current Population Reports
P60-226).
The following figure shows the number of people in
poverty, and the poverty rate from 1959 to 2003 in the U.S.. Poverty is
defined as having an annual income below a defined and very low level,
for example below an annual income of $9,573 for a single person under
65 years of age. Both the number of people in poverty and the
percentage decreased substantially in the 1960s, then held steady in the
1970s. It then increased in the 1980s, and fell in the 1990s.
Particularly disturbing is the recent increase since 2000 in both the
absolute number (35.9 million people in 2003) of people and the
percentage of people (12.5% in 2003) in poverty. For children under 18
years of age that percentage increased to 17.6% in 2003.
Poverty rates vary greatly by state as shown in the
following figure with Arkansas and New Mexico at the high end and New
Hampshire and Minnesota at the low end.
Similarly disturbing is the increase since 2000 in
the number of people without healthcare insurance (either private or
government) in the U.S. as shown in the following figure. Today there
are 45 million people without any healthcare coverage in the wealthiest
nation in the world, 15.6% of our population.
This also varies greatly by State as shown in the
following figure. Texas is a particular concern with almost 25% of its
population not covered by healthcare insurance. This is much greater
than any other state and about three times the rate in Minnesota, which
has the lowest percentage of uninsured people.
Quote
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be
and you help them become what they are capable of being."
Johann W. von Goethe (Peter’s Quotations, 1979, p.
409)
Upcoming Elsdon Organizational Renewal (EOR) Events
·
Presentations for UC Berkeley
Haas School of Business on interviewing, resumes and cover letters, and
salary negotiations
o
Saturday, January 8, 2005
·
“Career Fitness in Turbulent
Times: Maintaining Job Search Readiness.” Presentation for UCLA
Anderson School of Management Alumni
o
http://hrms.net/conferences/01152005/
o
Saturday, January 15, 2005 UCLA Anderson School of Management
·
“Affiliation in the Workplace.”
Presentation for ASTD Mount Diablo Chapter
o
Mount Diablo Chapter of ASTD - Evening Program (http://www.mtdiabloastd.org/meetings/calendar/2005/01/18/1730)
o
Tuesday, January 18, 2005, Crow Canyon Country Club, Danville/San Ramon
·
Presentation for HR Connection,
Silicon Valley
o
Friday, February 11, 2005
·
“Create a Business Case for
Workforce Development.” NCHRA workshop, San Francisco
o
Thursday, May 26, 2005
·
“Becoming Career Fit in
Turbulent Times” for PMI-ISSIG PDS’05 Symposium, San Francisco
o
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
·
“Building the Organizational
Bridge for Career Development” Professional Development Institute for
NCDA Global Conference, Orlando
o
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
About EOR: Our Value Contribution
We enhance your workforce,
leadership and organization by:
·
Using proprietary approaches to
understand workforce and leadership challenges
·
Creating tailored action plans
and solutions to strengthen workforce and leadership practices
·
Building individual capabilities
and contributions
We enable you to focus on
external results and building value, confident that your organization
and leadership are operating at peak effectiveness.
Our Mission
To support your organization by
enhancing performance, productivity and effectiveness through
revitalized workforce relationships and leadership practices.
Our Approach and Values
We tailor our engagements
to the needs of each organization with a process designed to surface
critical issues, identify root causes, build effective solutions,
monitor progress and implement.
With a scope that ranges
from system and organizational interventions to work with individuals,
our focus is on the heart of the relationship among the individual, the
organization and the community. We believe that organizational and
community prosperity are built on enabling each person to fulfill his or
her potential.
Our Services
We work with individuals and
groups in your organization to drive performance and development for
both the short and long term. As a result people will choose to work in
your organization and will prosper there.
We bring solutions when you need
to:
·
Reverse declining revenues and
performance
·
Revitalize your workforce
·
Stem the loss of key talent
·
Redirect your organization to
new areas
·
Stop losing customers or market
share
·
Penetrate new markets
·
Combat aggressive competitors
·
Handle major change
·
Break down communication
barriers
·
Energize your leadership team
·
Successfully build on an
acquisition or merger
Our proprietary services
include:
·
State-of-the-art tools to take
the pulse of your organization and then move to action
o
Web enabled systems
o
Experts to gather and analyze information, moving your organization to
action
·
Individual leadership coaching
to give you world class leadership capabilities
o
Leaders who know themselves and their aspirations, build their
capabilities and become catalysts developing others
·
Workshops to build interpersonal
skills in your organization so that:
o
Communication is timely, concise, accurate and personal
o
People listen to each other
o
Negotiations are quick and effective
o
Differences create rather than destroy value
o
Teams move forward, get results and quickly commercialize new products
and services
o
People understand and link their motivations to your organizational
needs
o
Your teams understand what it takes to create a committed, energized
workforce
o
People use their time well
·
Systems that make it easy to
drive performance and build capabilities by:
o
Linking objectives throughout the organization
o
Strengthening key competencies
o
Making sure you have the bench strength where and when you need it
o
Giving people tools to take charge of their own careers, development and
have a major long term influence on your organization
·
Proprietary simulation and
modeling techniques that let you explore how to maximize the value of
your workforce
o
Move from guessing what might happen to looking in depth at the
financial impact of different approaches
