Strategy #48: Give people work that is real

If you want to find and keep great people, you have to challenge them with work that gives them a true sense of purpose and meaning. And that often comes less from the work itself than from the way you frame that work. A carpenter working on a Habitat for Humanity house is not merely a carpenter. That is actually a pretty good metaphor for the dilemma facing our organizations today – everyone is a volunteer.

I mean that in the most real sense of the word. In years past, men went to work in the factory or the mine because that’s what their fathers had done. In years past, women became nurses or teacher or clerks because that was usually all that was open to them. Today, however, people have many more options. They do not have to work in the mines or become nurses; they can start their own businesses. In that sense, everyone who works at your organization is really a volunteer who happens to be paid for having volunteered. And the best way to keep a volunteer on the job is to give them work that has meaning, work that makes them proud, work that they can go home and crow about.

The acid test of leadership is the ability to imbue the work, whatever it is, with the spirit of the quest (Quest is the Fourth Cornerstone of Core Action Value #12, Leadership). Consider these self-explanatory lines from the poem “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy (included in Bill Moyers’ book Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft):

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight…
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Interlude: Make sure you’ve got the right bus and that it’s going to the right place

I’m sure that by now you have noticed a glaring omission in this special report. It has said almost nothing about using classified advertising, web-based recruiting sites, executive search firms, temporary help agencies, or any of the other conventional recruiting methods. Nor has it mentioned pay and benefits, working conditions, and the other traditional factors that are supposed to keep employees satisfied on the job. That does not mean these things aren’t important or that you shouldn’t use them. Just recognize that everyone else is doing the same thing, so their deployment creates no cultural differentiation, no competitive advantage, when it comes to finding and keeping great people.

If you have read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins (or even if you haven’t actually read the book but have heard other people talking about it) you probably know that Collins says the starting point on the road to Great is getting the right people on the bus. That’s well and good, but insufficient. If you want to attract those people onto your bus in the first place, and then make sure that they keep their seats on your bus, you must make sure that:

1. Your bus stands out in the parking lot, and the custom interior promises an exhilarating ride with little boredom en route.
2. People are not only on the right bus, they’re also sitting in the right seat on that bus, a seat that allows them to express their individuality, utilize their strengths, and follow their passions.
3. Your bus will take riders to exciting locations – and even to some places they didn’t know they wanted to go to when they boarded. (One of my favorite definitions of a leader is that it’s someone who takes you to a place to which you didn’t know you wanted to go – that implies both the vision, and the drive to pursue the vision.)

Most of the strategies included in this special report have to do with these three things: customizing your bus so it stands out in the parking lot, equipping it with lots of different seats to accommodate the needs and desires of individual riders, and then making sure that the driver has some exciting, and surprising, destinations in mind.

Someone with a job…
is never secure.
Someone with a calling…
is never unemployed.

McZen (for more of McZen’s little nuggets of wisdom, go to www.McZenpoems.com)

Next >