I was caught by this headline of an article in the McKinsey Quarterly: How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work. The authors, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, have written a book called The Progress Principle. They found, based on a multi-year research project they undertook involving hundreds of companies, that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.
The McKinsey article outlines four ways in which top executives keep this from happening - four organization-wide impediments that make it difficult for employees to accomplish results that seem meaningful to them. Simply put, the four 'executive traps' are: 1) focusing excessively on controlling costs or managing risk; 2) randomly or frequenting switching strategy or goals; 3) creating unnecessarily burdensome or badly coordinated processes; and 4) declaring grandiose and unreachable goals.
As I read through their paragraphs giving examples of these four problems, I couldn't help thinking of the movie Office Space. And most other movies that make fun of corporate life depict these problems as well: people caught in loops of complicated busywork, or having to justify buying staples, or listening to white-toothed CEOs exhort them to "swing for the fences" or "pull together to double our profits" -- when people know that payroll is barely being covered.
And it seems to me that the core failing behind all these problems is that too many executives don't recognize that most people can see through BS and want to do good work.
It's really that simple. As I've spoken with thousands of employees in my consulting, coaching and training work over the past 30 years, I've realized that most people who work in corporations are pretty smart and - at least at the beginning - pretty motivated. Over time, though, if executives don't tell them the truth, and if they see that their company's systems and processes actually make it hard to accomplish meaningful results...they start to disengage.
And I see that when senior leaders remember, on a daily basis, that their people are smart and motivated - those leaders tend to create organizations that take best advantage of and respond to that intelligence and motivation.
So, as a leader, think about this: if your people are smart, and if they do want to get great results, how can you engage them in creating an organization where they can do good, meaningful work every day?
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Erika’s latest book, Leading So People Will Follow, is available everywhere books are sold. Booklist called it “a book to read more than once and to consult many times.”
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