What Smart Entrepreneurs Know about Leveraging Their Limitations

I’m tired of people telling me that there are no limits.

Yes, there are.

Everybody has them. And to ignore your limits is to deny your truth.

HERE’S THE REAL SECRET: Instead of running from your limits – or, worse yet, pretending they don’t exist – try leveraging them.

Leverage, as you may recall from previous posts, is, “To increasing the rate of return on an investment.”

But leverage isn’t a word. Or a strategy. Or something you do to make money.

Leverage is a lifestyle. A way of thinking. An approach to doing business.

I like to think of it as killing to two stones with one bird.

Take it from a guy with no background, no job experience and no credentials – who turned a simple idea like wearing a nametag everyday into a successful enterprise.

Twelve books later, if that’s not leverage, I don’t know what is.

Today we’re going to explore a collection of ideas to help you leverage your limitations: 1. Objectivity is equity. In the past eight years, I’ve delivered over six hundred presentations for corporations worldwide. And typically, I’m the outsider. The freak. The only person in the room who doesn’t know the inner workings of the industry.

Initially, I viewed this as threat to my credibility. A disconnect between the speaker and the audience. But then it occurred to be: People need fresh air. A new perspective from an unbiased source that has no stake in the organization. That’s when I began leveraging my outsiderness as a strength – not a limitation.

If you find yourself in a similar position, ask yourself a few questions:

*What limitations enable you to be more objective than your competitors?
*What assumptions can you explore that most people never think of or take for granted?
*What thinking patterns can you deliver as a result of your ability to detach from the outcome?

Remember: It’s a lot easier to break the limit when you don’t know the limit exists. And the less you know, the more likely you are to come up with an original idea. Are you willing to tell people you know nothing in order to change everything?

2. Magnify your unhideables. With the exception of plastic surgery and cryogenic freezing, age isn’t something you can hide. However, that can work to your advantage if you position yourself strategically.

For example, let’s say you just graduated college. And you’re the youngest person in your office by twenty years. Instead of viewing your youth a sign of immaturity and lack of experience – consider it an asset that enables you to offer a continuous flow of vitality and perspective to your organization.

If you’re proactive and powerful – without coming off as arrogant and annoying – people will notice.

Or, maybe you’re the company veteran. And you’ve been around longer than most of the interns have been alive. Instead of seeing yourself as a dusty monument of irrelevance, position yourself as a reservoir of diverse experience and wisdom who can predict forthcoming industry trends.

If you’re inspiring and visionary – but without coming off as condescending and entitled – people will notice.

Remember: A chicken ain’t nothing but a bird, and age ain’t nothing but a number. Are you focusing on the years or the mileage?

3. Limited palettes make for stronger expressions. In Alan Fletcher’s inspiring book, The Art of Looking Sideways, he explains that the first move in any creative process is to introduce constraints.

Which sounds counterintuitive, as art is an expression of freedom. But having boundaries is what forces you to tap into – and trust – your inner resources in creative ways.

What’s more, limitation is inspiration. When you use it to fuel your creative fire, it enables you to create something that surprises yourself. And that’s where genius lives.

Take the recession, for example. I don’t know about you, but the devastating economy was the best thing that ever happened to my business. Sure, profits aren’t as high the used to be. But the pendulum will swing back eventually.

Meanwhile, in light of shrinking client budgets, I’ve been forced to evolve my service line, expand my role repertoire and provide new value to accommodate my markets. Now, with multiple profit centers, my company has evolved into a more robust, more diverse and more equitable enterprise.

And as a result, my client positioning shifted into that of a resource – not just a writer. And that’s worth money. All by virtue of the economy sucking big time. How could you put yourself in a position that would force your to renew your resourcefulness?

4. Know what you aren’t. This spring, I’m releasing a series of customized, limited edition art prints for my clients. They’re extremely scarce, very expensive and highly unorthodox. But the product is worthwhile because it assures one thing: Their mission becomes more than a statement.

The problem was: I couldn’t draw a straight line if I tried. I’m an artist of the verbal – not the visual. And as much as my ego wanted me to be responsible for every part of the process, I eventually made the decision to surrender.

Thanks to the suggestion of my friend Matt, I hired out the artwork to a brilliant letterpress shop called Firecracker Press. And to my delight, their craftsmanship was a million times better than anything I could have ever attempted.

Lesson learned: It’s a beautiful moment when you realize what you can’t do. After all, sometimes that’s the only way to free yourself to focus on what’s left. Like the boxer with a broken arm, you realize you have no choice but to develop your speed. Or, in my case, pay someone to punch for you. What are you afraid to let go of?

5. Limitations are the doorways to your deepest value. In Hugh Macleod’s bestselling book Ignore Everybody, he shares a fascinating theory about circumventing limitations:

“Picasso was a terrible colorist. Saul Steinberg’s formal drafting skills were appalling. Henry Miller was a wildly uneven writer. Bob Dylan couldn’t sing or play guitar. But that didn’t stop them, right? And why should it?”

Lesson learned: Don’t be stopped by not knowing how. In fact, not knowing how might be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Think about it: If you don’t know where you’re going, nobody can stop you – not even you.

Instead of berating yourself for limited proficiency, use the absence of know-how to activate the excavation of know-why. Tap into the truest motives behind your work. How will come in time.

Until then, just start. You don’t need lessons. You don’t need a degree. And you certainly don’t need anybody’s permission. Just start. As George Carlin once said, “It’s not enough to play the right notes – you have to know why the notes need to be played.” What will sucking make available to you?

REMEMBER: Limits are a beautiful thing.

They expose value.
They galvanize focus.
They renew resourcefulness.

Learn to leverage them, and you’ll kill two stones with one bird every time.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you ignoring, avoiding or leveraging your limits?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “50 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask,” send an email to me, and I’ll send you the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Too many ideas?

Tune in to The Entrepreneur Channel on NametagTV.com.

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6 Ways to Make People Feel Essential

Congratulations. You remember names. You celebrate birthdays. You memorize preferences.

But that’s not what makes people stay.

Making people feel valued, important, special, needed – or whatever other simplistic leadership instructions you read in How to Win Friends and Influence People – is pretty much expected at this point. It’s the baseline requirement of being a leader.

But that’s not what makes people stay.

If you want the people who matter most to show up in full voice, work their hearts out for you spread the organizational love like a fever, you have to make them feel essential.

Essential meaning, “Your work matters.”
Essential meaning, “We would crumble without you.”
Essential meaning, “If you were gone, people would notice.”

Are you a practitioner of essentialism? If not, try these ideas:1. What do you see when you see people? That’s the question approachability hinges upon. For example, last week I met a woman whose specialty was securing venture capital funding. Neat lady. She was sharp, aggressive and energizing. But when she learned about my work, she confessed that her clients and colleagues historically perceived her as being unapproachable.

“The problem is, only one out of a hundred people I meet are ideal clients. And my default programming is to uncover – as quickly as possible – whether or not they’re one of the ninety-nine. Otherwise I lose interest.”

Which makes total sense. Especially from a prospecting point of view: You don’t want to burn your days chasing non-economic buyers. But while it’s one thing to qualify – it’s another things to compartmentalize everyone you meet into convenient little boxes.

Turns out, if you approach people as unique individuals – as human beings – they remember feeling essential. But if you exploit them as a means to an end – as integers – they remember feeling small. Are you memorable for the right reasons?

2. Decide how you want to leave people. Approachability is about how people experience themselves in relation to you. And while you can’t control people’s emotions – outside of manipulation, punishment and coercion – what you can do is be more intentional in how you walk away from them.

For example:

Want to leave people laughing? Help them evoke the humor in their own lives.

Want to leave people inspired? Enable them to give birth to their own realizations.

Want to leave people heard? Reflect their reality by taking.

Your challenge is twofold: First, to identify the baseline emotion you want to leave people with. Second: To remind yourself of that emotion on a daily basis. Because in the end, it’s not about being the life of the party – it’s about bringing other people to life at the party. And it’s not who you know – it’s whose life is better because they know you. When you walk out of a room how does it change?

3. The speed of the response is the response. Marshall McLuhan was right: The medium is the message. And when you hold a leadership position, that principle seeps its way into everything you do – especially now.

Because culturally, “good, fast and cheap” has been replaced by “perfect, now and free.” How are you adapting to that shift?

Here are three examples: First, questions. Because it’s not just about being askable – it’s about how quickly you let people know that you’re searching for an answer. Second, responses. Because it’s not just what you say – it’s about how long you make people wait before they hear it.

Third, troubles. Because it’s not just about fixing the problem – it’s about how well you communicate to people as you fix it. Without that kind of “speed sensibility,” your people end up suffering in silence. And instead feeling essential – they feel evaded. Do you return calls faster than your competitors?

4. Preserve people’s fingerprints. As an artist, I make a conscious effort to alert people when they’ve inspired my work. Not with a thank you note. Not with a one-word text message. And not with some insincere compliment they forget by lunch. I physically gift them a copy of the finished product they helped created.

Whether it’s a book, an article or a limited edition art piece, I want them to own it. Forever. Because it wouldn’t have come into existence without them, and they deserve to see it live.

Notice I said gift – not give. Huge difference.

If you want to make people feel essential, don’t gift expecting reciprocation – gift to let people to know their words have weight. Gift to keep your art in motion. Gift to bring yourself closer to the recipient. Gift to help people remember that their existence matters.

Remember: Success never comes unassisted. Learn how to thank or get out. How do you pay homage to the voices that shape you?

5. Recognition is the mainspring of motivation. People crave recognition. It’s a universal human need. And it’s one of the chief determinants of employee engagement. But, whether or not people satisfy that need depends on if they can answer, “yes” to the following question:

Is my voice heard here?

My friend Derek is a master of this. His marketing agency, goBRANDgo, has a “Win Wall” in their office. Every time an employee achieves a victory of any kind – from landing a new client to delivering ahead of schedule to killing that pesky mosquito that’s been buzzing around since August – they write it on a sticky note.

And the cool part is, each employee has his or her own color. Then, at the end of the week, they aggregate all the wins onto a blog post for the entire world to see. Totally awesome.

And the lesson: It’s not about just praising people publicly – it’s about being a stand for people’s greatness. It’s about giving them a front row seat to their own brilliance – while inviting the rest of the world to sit in the audience with them.

That’s the secret to recognition: Isn’t corporate initiative – it’s a constitutional ingredient. How are you making gratitude palpable and recurrent?

6. Increase your mental flexibility. Have you ever worked with somebody who went out of their way to pretend like they cared? Like the boss who thoroughly listens to your input, thanks you for your suggestion, and then goes back to doing exactly what he planned all along. Geh.

Nothing makes people feel smaller. I’m reminded of a classic Scott Adams cartoon in which Dilbert undergoes a performance evaluation. Sitting across the table in complete silence, his manager says, “I’m not going to comment – I’ll just look at you until you agree with me.”

If you want people to feel essential, let them experience that they can change your mind. Be quick to ask for their opinion, and be slow to interrupt when they give it. This shows them that you can bend. That you’re vulnerable enough to admit that your perceptions might be misguided. And that you’re willing to shelf your ego and approach everyone as your mentor. Do you treat people like vestigial parts, helpful additions or vital components?

REMEMBER: Making people feel important isn’t that important.

What matters is that they feel essential.

That you honor their essence as a human being.

And that’s something you’ll never learn from a Dale Carnegie book.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How committed are your people?

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For the list called, “10 Unmistakable Motivators of Human Engagement,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Never the same speech twice.

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How to Make Your Company Smaller

If size mattered, dinosaurs would still be around.

Truth is, the corporate veil of bigness and anonymity no longer works.

If you want to be approachable, be less.

This is a topic I’ve been addressing a lot lately.

First, with a post called 21 Reasons to Stay Small.
Second, with a post called 6 Ways to Stay Small and Win Big.

And this week, my client at American Express Open Forum ran the latest piece called How to Keep Your Company Small.

Here’s how your company can embrace that possibility:1. Plan is a four-letter word. Big companies love to plan because planning preserves their sense of control. It underwrites the illusion that they know what they’re doing. The problem is, planning is a big decision. And big decisions cause you to prematurely commit to a trajectory that (might) later prove to be unprofitable.

What’s more, over time, the more you plan, the harder it becomes to invite healthy derailments. That’s how you miss unlabeled opportunities to grow: When you’re too busy managing the stress of planning to experience the benefits of executing. Don’t close yourself off by making gods out of your plans. Have your long-term plans turned into anchors?

2. Cut down to the bone. Enough to make the bone nervous. Here’s how to trim as much fat from your process as possible: Remove redundant procedures. Axe inactive people. Delete stupid expenses that drain organizational resources. And instead of wasting time tinkering with broken processes, invent a new way to do it, jettison outdated procedures and get on with your life.

Ultimately, it’s about excising as much fat from your process as possible. That’s how you become lean, trim and nimble. Are you yielding gracefully to necessity or kneeling obediently to mediocrity?

3. Sweat the small stuff. That’s what big companies do: They sacrifice experience for expense. And as a result, the hallmark of their size is providing impersonal, emotionless non-service.

On the other hand, if you’re small enough to care, you can make a conscious decision to put the experience above all else. You can move beyond the mechanical and transactional and into the emotional and transformational.

That’s what customers are coming back for anyway: How interacting with you makes them feel. What small action might make a big difference?

4. Capitalize on the momentum. Big companies are quick to think – but small companies are quick to act. That’s the best part about keeping your size down: Speed.

No standing by for approval before tweeting.
No waiting for legal to clear a customer service complaint.
No lingering three days for human resources to sign off on your blog post.
No spending a year in meetings trying to calculate earning potential and assess how to mitigate risk.

You just go. You just try things. And you execute with all your might – not all your policies. How impatient are you willing to be?

5. Never overlook the profitability of accessibility. According to a recent survey by eMarketer, small businesses are not only keeping up with large companies, they’re actually beating them when it comes to acquiring customers via social media.

The report found that nearly half of small businesses around the world have acquired a customer via social media, as compared to twenty-eight percent of larger businesses with larger budgets.

As small business educator Josh Kauffman writes, “Large companies move slowly and good ideas often die on the vine because they had to be approved by too many people.” How many of your big ideas were jailed last month?

6. Learn to delete the average. Average inhibits your ability to flourish. Average chokes your ability to matter. Average numbs your ability to contribute. And priding yourself on average means programming yourself for irrelevancy. Try saying no to the mediocre work.

In so doing, you preserve your ability to choose how much to grow. What’s more, saying no to the good makes room to say yes to the best. If you want to stay small, you have to set standards for rejecting opportunities. You have to develop a policy for saying no. Otherwise you wind up getting so big that you have to give up the parts you value most.

Remember: You are what you reject. Differentiate yourself by saying no. Are you big and average or small and awesome?

7. Lose the posture of pretense. Ditch the pomp. Erase superficial distinctions. And speak with a casual voice. That’s how you make communication between employees and customers unexpectedly personal.

Otherwise, if you’re too busy defending past decisions, massaging executive egos and destroying evidence of your shortcomings, you’ll never carve out the time to be human. And that’s when your customers will stop listening to you.

Think of it this way: If clothing conveys class, hierarchy and status, your organization is too big. Are your messages sending people scurrying for dictionaries?

8. End the editing. Most big organizations are designed to restrict individual expression, mitigate dissent and preserve the status quo. There’s simply too much red tape to be honest.

My suggestion: You don’t need more procedures – you need more philosophy. Policies are restrictive devices that keep people from doing something; philosophies are enabling devices that empower people to do something.

In a beautifully small organization, your employees should be able to express themselves without resorting to code, take action with asking for permission, take a piss without submitting a requisition form and make adjustments without having to go through the chain of command. When does the feeling of formality keep you from communicating freely?

9. Make your mission more than a statement. The bigger the company, the less likely people are to feel essential. For example: Employee’s inboxes don’t need another boring, overextended piece of corporate communication that they delete immediately or (at best) peruse passively.

If your words don’t speak directly to what’s important to them, you’re nothing but spam. That’s another problem with big companies: Their sense of mission easily fades. And under the weight of irrelevant action, they perish spending time on the wrong priorities.

Your mission is to stay in touch with your own story. Are the messages that deliver that story notably professional or dubiously slick?

REMEMBER: Getting as big as possible, as fast as possible, isn’t the only goal that matters.

You don’t always have to take it to the moon. Resist the pressure to expand.

Seek greatness – not bigness.

It’s more manageable, more flexible more approachable and, most importantly, profitable.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Where do you need to be smaller?

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
For the list called, “8 Ways to Out Question the Competition,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

“I’ve been a supporter of the approach that mentoring should not be a paid activity as this has the potential to change the dynamics of the relationship and create a power imbalance. But I have to be honest and say that after Scott’s first mentoring response to me, the fact that I had paid something to be working with him left my mind – as far as I was concerned, the value of that (and subsequent) exchange of wisdom and knowledge, far outweighed any payment.”

–Gilly Johnson The Australian Mentoring Center

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How to Focus Your Face Off

Here’s the biggest challenge my mentoring clients bring to me:

“I have so many good ideas, but I don’t know which ones to execute.”

Ah, creative paralysis. Tough problem. And as an entrepreneur myself, I’ve certainly struggled with this issue over the years.

HERE’S THE BOTTOM LINE: Eventually, you have to stop brainstorming and start executing.

Because you don’t need another idea – you need an “I did.”

But.

This isn’t about time management.
This isn’t about getting things done.
This isn’t about streamlining the quality of your process so you can maximize the efficiency of strategic productivity.

This is about creating a filter for your life.

That way, you can strain the impurities out of your life and free yourself to execute what matters most.

I like to call it, “focusing your face off.”

Here’s how to do it:1. Look at yourself with unquestioning eyes. Focus is the fireplace. It’s the point of convergence, the center of activity and energy. And if you want that flame to burn white hot, begin by fueling your fire with an inexorable sense of why.

That’s the epiphany I keep having: Whether it’s discipline, execution, commitment or focus – knowing why changes everything. I don’t care how distracted you are, if you educate yourself on why something matters to you, you’ll focus on it. And if you keep visual reminders of that why in front of your face all day, you’ll focus on it.

Otherwise priority dilution will rob you blind. And you’ll continue to whine about how you can’t ever seem to hunker down and make anything happen.

Bottom line: Constancy of purpose cannot be penetrated by distraction. Ever. Filter your focus against your values and reap the rewards. Are you justifying your existence by generating activity, or validating your existence by executing what matters?

2. Delete the noise. It’s surprisingly easy to find focus when you enter through the back door. That’s what I’ve learned as an entrepreneur: Deciding what to do through the process of elimination is way less threatening and intimidating.

Try this: Make a list of every useless, inbound interruption that doesn’t matter and diffuses your focus. Read the list out loud three times. Then, when you’re sufficiently disgusted by how trapped you are in those trivialities; delete those distractions from your life forever. By embracing the essential and banishing the bullshit, you free yourself up to commit to a few things and win there.

Without cancelling out that noise, you’ll never discern between the necessary and the superfluous. And you’ll fall victim to the erosion of your time, the decay of your focus and the meaninglessness of your work. What can you eliminate so you’re left with so few moving parts that important work actually gets done?

3. Environments either champion or choke focus. When I deliver training programs on employee engagement, here’s my favorite statistic to share: Three hundred billion dollars. Within the U.S. workforce, Gallup estimates that this is the cost in lost productivity alone, according to their thirty-year Employee Engagement Index.

And it just occurred to me: I wonder what percentage of that number is related to a lack of focus?

Answer: Too much. After all, focus is a function of environment. And I don’t mean feng shui – I mean the emotional environment of your workspace. For example: It’s easy to focus when you don’t feel edited. It’s easy to focus when you don’t feel policed. It’s easy to focus when passion is embedded into the pavement. It’s easy to focus when work is a gateway and not a grind. And it’s easy to focus when you can count on the emotional release of consistent public recognition.

Remember: If you’re having trouble concentrating on the work that matters, maybe it’s because you’re not engaged in the first place. What environmental energy keeps you from keeping focused?

4. You’re defined by what you decline. About once a week, someone emails me with a potential business opportunity. Or a joint venture. Or some new project they want me to be involved in. And I respectfully reject (nearly) every one of them.

Not to be rude. And not to suggest the ideas or the people behind them are flawed. But I’m a firm believer in saying no to the good to make room to say yes to the best. Interestingly, the more distance I get from the opportunities I’ve said no to over the years, the more thankful I become that I held out.

In a recent interview with Fortune, Steve Jobs made a similar distinction:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’re focusd on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

Remember: Not close-minded. Not inflexible. Not stiff. Just focused. And when you focus yourself, you free yourself. What doors will saying no open for you?

5. Let the light shine on the obvious path. Comfortable people rarely take focused action. Their complacency is simply too convenient to be killed. On the other hand, the people who execute are the ones who disturb themselves into discomfort. They fan the flames of focus by creating unacceptable consequences of failing.

In my experience, the most effective process for doing so is through repetitive self-questioning. Trying asking yourself:

*Is what I’m doing – right now – reinforcing my why?
*Is what I’m doing – right now – supporting my empire?
*Is what I’m doing – right now – consistent with my number one goal?

It’s confrontational, it’s creative and it’s guaranteed to give you the kick in the ass you need to focus your face off. I ask these questions to myself all day, every day, and rarely ever have any problems staying focused. How much of your life are you wasting by (not) focusing on your priorities?

6. Give yourself permission to get lost. Inasmuch as focus is a virtue, you can’t stay focused all the time. Nobody can. Humans aren’t wired that way. Besides, if all you ever do is focus – you’ll never have any fun. And nobody will want to be around you.

The secret is to book blank time. I learned this from a classic study conducted at Kansas State University’s Counseling Services Department. Their researchers found that because focusing can be such hard work, you should reward yourself when you hit the mark.

Personally, I do this each morning: It’s called a daily appointment with myself. It galvanizes my entire day, keeps me from going insane and instills a renewing and reenergizing spirit that helps me return with strength.

My suggestion: You need this block of time in your life. Because it’s impossible to gauge progress if you never come up for air. But, when you stay committed to your own personal reflection needs, you’ll have no trouble staying focused when it’s time to get back to work. When was the last time you sat uninterrupted and quiet for at least fifteen minutes?

REMEMBER: Focusing frees you.

Not just from the irrelevant – but for the important.

Learn to filter your life.

That way, you take action on what matters most.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you ready to focus your face off?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “50 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask,” send an email to me, and I’ll send you the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Too many ideas?

Tune in to The Entrepreneur Channel on NametagTV.com.

Watch video lessons on executing what matters.

6 Ways to Stay Small and (Still) Win Big

Scalability is overrated.

Getting as big as possible, as fast as possible, isn’t the only goal that matters.

THE REALITY IS: Small is an acceptable destination.

In fact, it’s not just acceptable – it’s admirable, manageable, flexible, approachable and, most importantly, profitable.

Last week I shared a list called 21 Reasons to Keep Your Company Small.

Way to stay that way? Consider these suggestions:1. Stop delegating and start deleting. Clients, readers and audience members frequently ask me how many employees I have. At which point I usually start laughing. And I’m not trying to be rude, it’s just that the day I wake up and realize I’m a manager of people – and not a creator of ideas – is the day I slit my wrists with a rusty hunting knife.

I’m a writer. I’m a thinker. And I’ve worked very hard to evolve my publishing company into an exceptionally trim operation. For the past nine years, I’ve created my own personal nirvana that enables me to focus solely on activities that leverage my talents, reach the people who matter – while still earning enough revenue to underwrite my addictions and support my lifestyle.

Everything else is deleted. Not delegated – deleted. That’s what I’ve learned from staying small: The best way to delegate something is to eliminate the need for it in the first place. After all, the less you own, the greater your mobility. The less you have, the less you have to worry about. Are you inventing things to outsource to preserve the illusion of productivity?

2. Indulge in your humanity. Regardless of size, here’s the current marketplace reality: Everything matters, everybody’s watching and everything’s a performance. The difference is, when you’re small, you can hang out in the lobby after the show and shake people’s hands.

But when you’re a hulking beast of a company, it becomes increasingly difficult to get out of the bubble and get into the grind. What organizations need to learn is, success comes when you’re willing to be bold, to be seen, and to try things.

My suggestion: Stamp out anonymity. Accept your humanness. Stop hiding behind the mask of a role or title. And for the love of God, stop sending surrogates. Because if you have to resort to some gimmick to let people know you’re there, you’re not really there.

Big provides people with convenient places to cower. Small means exposing the place where you really live and being brave enough to tell people you don’t know everything. Are you small enough to surrender your emotional hiding places?

3. Remove the posture of pretense. In Jason Jennings’s book, Think Big, Act Small, he profiled a collection of thriving organizations that are winning the size game. And what struck me most about the book’s featured organizations was the long list of things they consciously chose not to champion:

No bloated hierarchy. No committees to go in front of to get permission. No building monuments to indulge in the executive’s ego. No corner offices protected by layers of assistants. No impenetrable walls to separate leaders from their people. No expansion for the sake of expansion. No doing unnatural things just to gain marketshare.

Lesson learned: Become a master of letting go. Make a conscious decision to scale back by abandoning things whose time has passed. Because when you delete what is no longer working, you can grow judiciously where it makes the most sense. What are you keeping around just to make you feel like you’re bigger than you really are?

4. Pick a lane. A brand without focus is a brand forgotten. Try to make everybody happy, and you lose. Try to make everybody like you, and you lose. Try to make everybody want you, and you lose. That’s what big companies do. Which means success, therefore, is a process of elimination. It’s learning what your brand can live without.

Before growing any bigger, remember to ask yourself questions like:

*Will this choice add to my life force or rob me of my energy?
*Does this choice add wood to my internal fire or sprinkle water on it?
*Will this choice propel me toward an inspiring future or will it keep me stuck in the past?
*Will this choice bring me long-term fulfillment or will it bring me short-term gratification?

In short: Stop your driving your brand all over the interstate. You’ll either get pulled over, cause an accident or piss off the other drivers. Plus, it’ll take forever to get to your destination.

Remember: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Doesn’t it make sense to just pick a lane and stay there?

5. Teamwork is nice, but not always necessary. Since day one of preschool, we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that teamwork is the secret. Truth is, the efficacy of teams is largely a myth. But we’ve been romanced and seduced into believing that teams are so wonderful, when in fact their power works in reverse.

The question becomes: Is the romantic notion of the value of teams is shooting you in the foot? In a 2009 issue of Machine Design, editorialist Leland E. Teschler explained it perfectly:

“Development teams are often an obstacle to creativity rather than a vehicle for truly elegant solutions. Many team members work at cross-purposes. That’s why throwing more people at a project frequently slows it down rather than speeds its completion.”

Consider asking the following questions before your organizational chart gets too bloated:

*How much money are you losing by waiting for somebody you don’t even like?
*Who in your business is helping you build a future that you’re going to feel obligated to be a part of?
*Are you making conscious choices about the individuals you allow to participate in your enterprise?

Ultimately, no man is an island. You still have to breathe in help. At the same time, individual productivity declines as teams expand. Might be more of a hindrance than help. Will the inevitable problems with coordination and motivation of a large team chip away at your organization’s capacity to thrive?

6. Stick yourself out there. The bigger you get, the fewer risks you take. There’s just too much pressure to be predictable. And you wind up becoming a victim of your own consistency.

Or, if you do take a risk – and make a big mistake – everybody notices. When you’re small, you can make mistakes quickly, quietly – even largely – then hide the ashes before the fire engines come. And when you’re small, failure doesn’t signify weakness and hemorrhage profits – it enables innovation, and growth.

That’s what happens when you’re not afraid of the consequences of falling short: You give yourself permission to do something great. Are you failing forward?

REMEMBER: The corporate veil of bigness and anonymity no longer matters.

I challenge you to reject the pressure of endless growth and embrace the possibility of staying small.

Seek greatness – not bigness.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How will you stay small?

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For the list called, “99 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

–Gilly Johnson The Australian Mentoring Center

Rent Scott’s Brain today!

How to Set the Stage for Employee Commitment

I recently struck up a conversation with an Apple employee in the food court.

He was clearly on lunch break, but didn’t mind talking shop.

“Actually, I wear my blue Apple shirt even when I’m off the clock,” he said.

That’s rare. Usually employees throw on a jacket the minute the step out of the store to avoid any work-related conversation during break time.

Not this guy. Matt told me that strangers still came up to him all the time with their computer questions – even when he’s not in the store.

“Doesn’t that get annoying?” I asked.

“I love it. And I’m happy to answer customer questions because this stuff is my life. That’s the best part about working for Apple: They make me feel like a walking genius bar!”

HERE’S MY QUESTION: Are your people that committed?

If not, consider these suggestions to set the stage for commitment at your organization:1. Hold up a mirror to yourself. People fundamentally disconnect from their work for a variety of reasons: When they’ve done the exact same thing for too long, when they feel like they can’t succeed no matter how hard they try, when they’re forced to conform to what you want them to be and when their effort is no longer worth the reward.

How many of those issues run rampant in your office? My suggestion: Tell the truth about your organization’s current level of commitment:

*Are your people grudgingly conceding or gratefully crusading?
*Are you telling people what your demands are or asking people what their dreams are?
*And do your employees come to work every day because they love it, or because you’ve degraded them into obedient soul dead conformist worker bees?

When you begin wakening to these truths, you’ll gain a greater understanding what it’s going to take to get all of your people singing off the same page. How many people on your team willingly provide discretionary effort on a consistent basis?

2. Intrinsic pride creates emotional commitment. People who work for Google don’t tell their friends they’re computer programmers. They say they work for Google. And why wouldn’t they? They work for Google – the coolest company on the planet. Of course they take pride in their job.

That’s the lesson: If people answer the question, “What do you do?” with the name of the organization, that means their self-esteem and identity is connected to the sense of belonging of that organization. It’s a vital part of their sense of self. They’re committed and involved. Their affiliation to the company reinstates their sense of pride.

And, because their identity is intimately connected to – and invested in – the organization itself, they’ll commit to doing whatever it takes to make that organization succeed. Even down to the most basic level.

That’s what a worldwide survey from Towers Perrin proved: Organizational symbols or logo are visible manifestations of pride. Think it’s an accident that all those geeks in Palo Alto wear Google hoodies? Nope. And you would do the same. How much company pride do your people have?

3. Don’t dismiss your organizational heritage. To set the stage for commitment, the leaders of your organization need to help the people connect their actions to a larger story. Otherwise employees will continue to wonder, “Is this effort worth the effort?”

As David Armstrong wrote in Managing by Storying Around, “Storytelling is the primary medium for passing along corporate traditions and recognize leaders within the organization.”

There’s only one problem: Company leaders usually confuse “knowing the company story” with “memorizing tired, flat language on laminated mission cards.”

What matters is that every employee absorbs the organizational why. What matters is that every employee freely talks about company roots. Otherwise emotional attachment remains remarkably low. And it becomes harder and harder for people’s work to invoke a sense of gratification in their company history. When was the last time you waiter at Olive Garden spent ten minutes telling your table about the origins of authentic Italian food?

4. Update your theory of motivation. You can’t motivate anybody to do anything – ever. Motivation is intrinsic. As such, there are two approaches: Either you hire motivated people and then inspire them to motivate themselves; or you rid the environment of demotivators and then let people access their natural motivation.

Either way, you still have to tune into their frequency. You have to deliver messages that resonate with their emotional reality. And you have to give them room to express commitment in their own unique way. Otherwise their level of engagement will remain at noncommittal cautiousness at best.

Look: People are bound by emotion to the things and behaviors they love. As much as your ego wants to think otherwise, they’re not showing up for you – they’re showing up for themselves.

Remember: People comply with what you want– but they commit to what they want. How are you helping people fall in love with themselves?

5. Set your own stage first. If you truly want commitment to cascade down from the top, you have to be over the top yourself. We’re talking pathologically and unquestionable committed. As in, “I have the company logo tattooed on my ass” committed. That’s what shows people you truly believe what you say, and that’s what inspires people to rethink their own commitment.

The cool part is, the moment you definitely commit yourself with both feet – and, more importantly, communicate that you’re fully committed – the people who matter most follow suit. It all depends on whether you’re courageous enough to wear your instrument of commitment proudly.

The point is: What you are communicates everything people need to know. The question is: What do they think when they hear your life speak?

REMEMBER: You don’t need to work for Apple to be committed.

If you want to set the stage for commitment at your organization, start treating it as a lifestyle – not a policy.

Maybe then your employees won’t mind answering customer questions when they’re off the clock.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How committed are your people?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “10 Unmistakable Motivators of Human Engagement,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Never the same speech twice.

Now booking for 2011!

Watch The Nametag Guy in action here!

26 Ways to Keep Your People Engaged Without Resorting to Shock Therapy

The word “engage” comes from the French engagier, which means, “to make a pledge.”

That’s the big question: Why do people pledge themselves to you?

IN SHORT: Why do people engage?

Last year, I shared a collection of answers to this question in a popular piece called, Twenty Secrets Smart Leaders Know About Engaging Their People.

The response was overwhelming. I received more emails, tweets and reprints than usual. Apparently that list struck a nerve with a lot of my readers. And as a result, knowing I’d merely scratched the surface, I’ve continued to research the topic of why people engage.

Here are my latest findings. Please feel free to add your ideas to the list:1. People engage when power decentralizes. Have you given them the ability to influence their work environment?

2. People engage when the babysitting stops. How are you allowing them to establish their own structures to maintain focus?

3. People engage when they’ve been given permission to flex the muscle of why. Do you give them room to express commitment in their own unique way?

4. People engage when your words speak directly to what’s important to them. Does their inbox need another boring, overextended piece of corporate communication that people delete immediately or – at best – peruse passively?

5. People engage when they can invest in things they truly admire. What if dollars aren’t the defining factor of your people’s commitment?

6. People engage when they’re treated according to their own unique values. Are you discerning and testing how each of your people want to be treated, or trying to save time by treating everybody the exact same way?

7. People engage when they experience a real and regular connection between the duty of today and the dream of tomorrow. Are you telling people what your demands are or asking people what their dreams are?

8. People engage when they view their role as a stepping-stone, not a sinking ship. How long ago did your team give up on the possibly of meaningful work?

9. People engage when gratitude is palpable and recurrent. Are you trying to make recognition a corporate initiative or a constitutional ingredient?

10. People engage when they’re given permission to pursue their dreams. Are you still operating from the old paradigm that people come to work to make money?

11. People engage when they can express themselves without resorting to code. At your organization, do ideas flow in an open and unrestricted environment?

12. People engage when you stop asking them to edit themselves. What system can you install to remove the restriction of individual expression?

13. People engage when their internal compasses are honored. How will you liberate them from being in conflict with their own values?

14. People engage when they’re allowed to lead the kind of life they want. Do people view your company an economic mechanism and little more?

15. People engage when they don’t need to ask permission to let their personal brand shine. Do you work for a human organization or an indoctrination center that strips people of their individuality on a daily basis?

16. People engage when the feeling of formality doesn’t keep them from communicating freely. Do your employees come to work every day because they love it, or because you’ve degraded them into obedient soul dead conformist worker bees?

17. People engage when they don’t have to meet compliance just to take a piss. Are you empowering people to execute with all their might or restricting people to make excuse with all your policies?

18. People engage when they’re not bullied into to delivering impersonal, emotionless non-service. Is your work experience mechanical and transactional or emotional and transformational?

19. People engage when they’re not forced to adhere to rigid plans created through manipulation, punishment and coercion. Are your people innately committed or fearfully complying?

20. People engage when individual expression isn’t restricted. How are you petitioning people to inject their personality into everything they do?

21. People engage when they can dress how they want. Why is your organization still using dress code to convey class, hierarchy and status?

22. People engage when their leaders end the lip service. How are you making your mission more than a statement?

23. People engage when their big ideas aren’t jailed. How is your corporate veil of bigness and anonymity thwarting creativity?

24. People engage when they’re given wide discretion to spend company resources on the people who matter. Where is your organization sacrificing customer experience for corporate expense?

25. People engage when they’re given a safe place where individity creativity can shine. Who are you trying to make just like you?

26. People engage when they’re motivated intrinsically. How can you enable them to activate their own internal generators?

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How will you avoid bombing your next employee engagement survey?

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For the list called, “35 Things You Simply Can’t Do,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Never the same speech twice.

Now booking for 2011!

Watch The Nametag Guy in action here!

If I Ever Had to Get a Real Job (Which I Won’t) This Is the Kind of Company I’d Want to Work For

Since I started my publishing company eight years ago, I’ve had the honor and privilege of working with some of the finest organizations around the world:

Like Sendouts.
They say, “Today is the day,” to their corporate recruiters.

Like Brains on Fire.
They say, “I love you” to their clients.

Like Optimists International.
They say, “Yes” to their members.

Like Million Dollar Roundtable.
They say, “Kamsahamnida,” to their buyers.

Like Australian Institute of Management.
They say, “No worries” to their followers.

THE REALITY IS: If I ever had to get a real job – which I won’t – these organizations are the types of companies I’d want to work for.

It’s time to learn from the masters. Today we’re going to explore a collection of ideas to help you make your organization more human, more approachable and more engaged:1. Create an atmosphere of approachability. Too many organizations are trapped in outdated hierarchical patterns of mistrust. Their leaders ignore people’s words, shrug off their suggestions or, worse yet, hijack the conversation and turn it into a one-way update.

Ultimately, this leaves people hesitant to speak up for fear of being labeled as a squeaky wheel. Not exactly an approachable environment. If you want to inspire deeper commitment, try this:

When people walk in the room, create a loving space where they feel comfortable sharing.

When people are gathered around, ask them to contribute if they see something you don’t see.

When people ask for feedback, you reflect their thoughts back to them in a way that makes them feel understood, not mindlessly repeated.

And when people bring you their ideas, respond with a fundamentally affirmative attitude by looking them in the eye and telling them how great their ideas are – no matter how big or small.

That’s how to make people feel heard. And the cool part is, when trust and belonging become the very oxygen your people breathe, the communication process shifts. For better and for always. How will you create a workplace that encourages the generation and execution of its best ideas?

2. Gratitude is the great gravitator. Gratitude isn’t a thing you do – it’s a virtue you embody. And it’s not something you do once a year. You shouldn’t need a calendar to tell you when to care. The goal is to make gratitude a non-negotiable. Like exercise or meditation, it needs to be something you just do, everyday.

However, because recognition is an emotional release humans crave, you can’t bastardize gratitude into to some empty, contrived corporate initiative. It has to be a constitutional. It has to be a way of life at your organization. Otherwise you’re just kissing ass.

The reality is: People engage when they’re applauded for their strengths and not berated for their weaknesses. And people engage when they’re allowed to publicly display their successes.

My suggestion: Stop trying to make them fall in love with you – start helping them fall in love with themselves. Stop trying to be life of the party – start bringing other people to life at the party. That’s how you make people feel essential. Not valued. Not important. Not special. Essential.

As in: “Janet, your role has a direct impact on something that matters. The value of your contribution is calculable. You’re more than just a helpful addition to our organization – you’re a vital component. Thank you, thank you.” How does your organization make gratitude and recognition a palpable, recurrent practice?

3. Tap into the reservoir of whypower. People who see their job as a grind, a sinking ship, quickly give up on the possibility of meaningful work. On the other hand, when people who see work as a gateway to something bigger, their jobs become stepping-stones to personal fulfillment.

The secret is to give people permission to flex their why muscle. To offer them room to express their commitment in their own unique way. And then, once you’ve found out what fuels them – you embed that passion into the organizational pavement. That’s what gives people the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment they seek, as opposed to feeling like they’re being used.

The best part is: Constancy of purpose can’t be penetrated by distraction. When work is rooted in passion and fire, productivity is a non-issue. And that’s when you realize that hard work isn’t the problem – it’s meaningless work that kills people. Do your employees feel like they’re being used for something pointless, or prepared for something purposeful?

4. Give people permission to pursue their dreams. Your organization needs to be a place where people can lead fulfilling lives. Working for you needs to help people get where they want to go. Otherwise you team is destined for mediocrity.

My suggestion: Your people need to experience a real (and regular) connection between the duty of today and the dream of tomorrow. Otherwise it’s just a job. It’s just a paycheck. And your organization is viewed as an economic mechanism and little more.

On the other hand, when people start to see the connection between their dream and their work, loyalty skyrockets. After all, people are grateful to whoever helps them achieve their dream. And don’t get me started on their spouses. Can you imagine how good it feels to wake up next to someone who has dreams to chase?

Maybe it’s time to stop telling employees what your demands are and start asking employees what their dreams are. As long as you remember: Your job is to be the spark. Because you can give people permission to pursue their dream – but you can’t take responsibility for them achieving it. How long ago did your people stop dreaming?

5. Identify the real currency. Too many organizations are operating from the obsolete paradigm that people come to work to make money. Nice try, Gordon Gecko. But throwing more money at people isn’t the answer – throwing more meaning at them is.

Truth is, people care less about the check and more about signed card the check came in. They hunger for the validation of being known, seen and heard. And they crave a work environment that allows them to express their creativity as loudly as possible.

Now, make no mistake: Money motivates. But dollars aren’t the only defining factor of human engagement. People invest themselves in things they truly admire. People commit when they’re allowed to lead the kind of life they want.

Your challenge is to figure out what each employee’s personal currency is, and then pay them with that every week. Because “equality,” while nice in theory, isn’t always the best polity. Sure, treating everybody the exact same way saves times – but it costs commitment. The reality is: People engage when they’re treated according to their own unique values. Are you discerning and testing how each of your people wants to be treated?

6. Stop asking people to edit themselves. Most organizational structures are designed to restrict individual expression, mitigate dissent and preserve the status quo. Which is great for the leaders, but makes the employees want to shoot themselves with a staple gun.

Instead, leave the policing to the cops. You don’t need more procedures – you need more philosophy. And note the distinction: Policies are restrictive devices that keep people from doing something; philosophies are enabling devices that empower people to do something.

Trust people to establish their own structures to maintain focus. Give people free reign design their own workplace nirvana. By enabling people’s ability to influence their work environment – and by being vulnerable and trusting enough to decentralize some of the power – they will work better, harder and smarter.

Remember: It’s awfully hard to engage in work that conflicts with your internal compass. Can your people express themselves without have to meet code?

REMEMBER: Your employees will always get what they want – it just might not be from you.

To make sure your organization stays human, approachable and engaged, reconsider the above suggestions. Keep them in mind. Take them to heart. Put them to practice.

Your people will stick around.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
If they can’t come up to you, how will they ever get behind you?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “205 States of Being That Matter Most,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Never the same speech twice.

Now booking for 2011!

Watch The Nametag Guy in action here!

21 Reasons to Keep Your Company Small

“Yeah, but it wasn’t worth it.”

That’s what the guy next to me at the bar said.

“When I started my company, I was this laid-back, low key guy. Not anymore. Since then I’ve gained eighty pounds, I’m constantly on the run, I wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety attacks and my health is terrible.”

“But there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t quit or stop now. It’s too late. I’m too deep. I’ve got twenty employees who are depending on me for their livelihoods, their paychecks and their healthcare.”

Bummer.

“What about your healthcare?” I asked.

He smiled reluctantly.“Look man, let tell you something: I don’t want to be busy all the time. I don’t want to wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night. But that’s just the way it is. When it comes to owning your own business, you simply don’t have a choice.”

“Ever?”

“No. It’s just what happens to entrepreneurs. Even if you’re not a high strung person when you start, you’ll become one eventually.”

Interesting.

Then I asked, “Well, then here’s my question: What would happen if, in the beginning, you removed the threat of having to support stakeholders? And as you built your company, you educated yourself about how to avoid these kinds of small business undertows?”

He listened.

“For example, let’s say somebody owned his own company, was the only employee and ran a one-man show. Wouldn’t that delete some of the variables in the equation and ultimately give that person the choice to avoid becoming the type of person you’re talking about?”

He replied almost immediately.

“No. It doesn’t work that way. As a small business owner, you want your company to grow. And you can’t grow when you’re the only employee. It’s inevitable.”

Interesting.

“But if I had to do it all over again,” he warned, “I would have stayed small.”

LESSON LEARNED: Bigger isn’t better – better is better.

And more often than not, better is the fruit of smaller.

Here’s a list of twenty-one reasons why:

1. Small means you can be honest.

2. Small means you can delete meetings.

3. Small means you can respond quicker.

4. Small means you can reinvent in real time.

5. Small means you can enable greater mobility.

6. Small means you can foster deeper commitment.

7. Small means you can have the freedom to innovate.

8. Small means you can make decisions that matter sooner.

9. Small means you can implement new ideas immediately.

10. Small means you can make mistakes quickly and quietly.

11. Small means you can actually execute your brilliant ideas.

12. Small means you can take action with asking for permission.

13. Small means you can interact with customers directly and personally.

14. Small means you can take a piss without meeting compliance.

15. Small means you can delete useless planning of things that don’t matter.

16. Small means you respond to changing customer or employee needs immediately.

17. Small means you can take risks without the pressure to remain excessively predictable.

18. Small means you can focus on shipping the most value because you’re not bogged down.

19. Small means you can quickly make adjustments without having to go thru the chain of command.

20. Small means you can have a higher awareness of everything and everyone within the
company.

21. Small means you can preserve the charm and intimacy of connecting personally with the people who matters most.

The choice is yours: Go for greatness or go for bigness.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How will you stay small?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “99 Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Never the same speech twice.

Now booking for 2011!

Watch The Nametag Guy in action here!

How to Inspire Employee Commitment, Even When You’re Convinced They’re Playing Solitaire All Day

Not compliance – commitment.

Huge difference.

As I learned from The Power of Strategic Commitment:

“Commitment is the innate willingness of people to follow and contribute; compliance is the forced adherence to plans created through manipulation, punishment and coercion.”

That’s the difference between doing the job a delivering the brand.

THE PROBLEM IS: Zero commitment means zero engagement, and zero engagement means zero profits.

Today we’re going to explore seven strategies to help you inspire commitment in the hearts of the people who matter most:1. Start at the top. The reason commitment is improperly installed in most organizations is because it’s treated as policy, not a lifestyle. Unfortunately, that’s not the way commitment works. It’s not something you do – it’s something you embody. And unless it’s a robust strand of the leader’s genetic makeup, people won’t be inspired to follow suit.

That’s what I’ve learned after ten years of wearing a nametag: Commitment is the offspring of values. You really think I’d still be wearing this stupid sticker every day if it weren’t directly glued to my personal constitution? Hell no. But that’s the whole point: When it’s your heart, you don’t need to prove to anyone that you can’t live without it. They simply take the cue from your life.

Therefore, if you want to inspire commitment from the people who matter most, begin by expressing your own. Find your commitment device. And wear it proudly for all to see. Otherwise you may as well be winking in the dark.

Remember: The problem isn’t a fear of commitment – but a failure to communicate that you’re fully committed. How are you cascading your commitment through every level of the organization?

2. Worthwhile trumps importance. Any work can be important. Think about the most meaningless job you ever had in your life – it was probably important to someone. Worthwhile work, on the other hand, covers more emotional territory. It doesn’t just hold importance – it’s has impact. And the fruit of your worthwhile labor becomes a gift to your people.

To achieve that kind of result in your organization, try this: Give people work that demands the best, highest version of themselves. Tap into the wellspring of their unique capability. I promise: They’ll have no choice but to thrust themselves into uncharted waters – remaining fully engaged the whole time. Otherwise, the work you ask them to do becomes nothing more than another line item on their task list.

And I’m not suggesting your company tries to spin people’s work experience into something it’s not. Instead, I challenge you to excavate the worthwhileness of what your people do. Because if you dig deep enough and come up with nothing but “important,” then it’s probably not work that matters in the first place. Do your people see their work as a daily grind to or daring gateway?

3. People are craving for transcendence. If you want your people to show up when they’re exhausted – not just expected – you have to appeal to their fundamental desire for work that has meaning. After all, people engage when they’ve been given permission to flex the muscle of why. And by actively cultivating the purpose driven nature of their work, you provide deeper context for all their effort.

The question you have to ask yourself every day: To what extent are your people anchored in purpose? Because if they’re not, you can expect about as much commitment a kamikaze pilot on his thirty-ninth mission. And I’m not saying purpose is a panacea. But life’s heaviest burden is having nothing to carry.

Look: People want to be in love. Nobody wants to spend a third of her life in an activity that has no meaning. Work should be a place of fulfillment – not sacrifice. Is working for you something to be endured or enjoyed?

4. Flush out the fear. Chronically fearful people don’t commit. And people withdraw allegiance when they feel afraid. According to Dr. Judith Bardwick, author of One Foot Out The Door, fearful people can’t perform at their best because fear destroys the wherewithal to do their best work.

That’s the danger in being known as an emotional time bomb: The people around you disengage, walk on eggshells and burn all their time looking over their shoulder – instead of executing what matters.

If you want your people to stop complying and start committing, begin by taking radical responsibility for your attitude. I’m not suggesting you suppress or ignore your emotions – but stepping away from some of the stress might make communicating with you a more relaxing experience.

Remember: Comfort precedes intimacy and intimacy strengthens commitment. Stop wearing your anger as an accessory. You’re scaring people. What can you control that your people are afraid of?

5. Payment isn’t the panacea. It’s easy to scapegoat lack of commitment on lack of compensation. But as I learned from aforementioned Power of Strategic Commitment, “Giving people more money does nothing but make them wealthier unhappy people.”

Think of it like a bottle of Febreeze: You spray it on smoky clothing when you get home from the bar. The only problem is, the next day all you have is a shirt that smells like Febreeze – and smoke. You didn’t change the fundamental nature of anything; you just put a layer of chemicals over it.

The same goes for inspiring commitment: It’s not for sale. If you really want people to engage wholeheartedly, enable authorship – not just readership. After all, people always commit to what they help create. And they’re always willing to invest in what they truly admire.

But they’ll never experience emotional fulfillment until you enable their passions to remain an integral part of their worklife. That’s the other distinction between compliance and commitment: One is taking a job – the other is undertaking a crusade. Are your people receiving a substantial return on their emotional investment?

6. Understand motivation in today’s workplace. As a leader, you can’t motive people to do anything – all you can do is find people who are already motivated and inspire them to motivate themselves. My suggestion is to delete people’s demotivators first. A few examples come to mind:

Delivering constant criticism, raising your voice, magnifying their mistakes, exhibiting lack of trust, prohibiting any shred of playfulness, making people feel powerless, refusing to recognize success and compensating less for working more.

Then, once you’ve cleared away the crap, here’s the next step: Pinpoint people’s passion and embed that passion into the pavement that leads the way. By finding out what fuels people – you know what to fill the tank with when they start puttering along.

Remember: All motivation is self-motivation. People don’t change just because you want them to – they change because they want to. And because the pain of staying the same outweighs the cost of modifying their behavior. Are your people comfortable exploring their own opportunities for development?

7. Anonymity is bankruptcy. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder – it makes the mind start to wonder. That’s what happens when you leave people in the dark: They engage in worse case thinking.

Take my parents, for example. If they haven’t heard from me in a few days, they freak out. And a barrage of texts, emails and instant messages come pouring in, asking me if I’m okay. Which I am. But you’ve got to think about it from a parent’s perspective: The way they see it, no news is bad news. And as a son, that’s something I’ve had to work on. Fortunately, I’m learning to be more proactive in volunteering information.

My question is: Are you prolific in your communication?

If not, try this: Instead of hoping people will read your mind and then recommend the decision you’ve already decided on, stop restricting the flow of information. Just talk to people. You’ll turn awkward moments of silence into opportunities for honest conversation.

Also, quicken your response time. And remember that the medium is the message. Because it’s not just what you say, it’s not just how you say it – it’s how quickly you get back to people, and how they feel when they hear it.

That’s the holistic way to look at communication: Content, context, delivery and reception. All four must be attended to. Because in the absence of communication, people will make up their own. Is your anonymity alienating the people who matter most?

REMEMBER: When you inspire commitment to the brand inside the organization, you inspire belief in the brand outside the organization.

That’s when you stop making money and start making history.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How much engagement is your organization hemorrhaging due to weak commitment?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “68 Things Employees Never Want to Hear You Say,” send an email to me, and I’ll send you the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

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Tag: employee engagement

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