What makes a fun workplace?

3. Attempt to create the most fun workplace in the history of the world.

Bakke in Joy at Work says that in AES, the energy giant he co-founded, he discovered the key to a fun work place was decision-making. Getting to make decisions is great fun and under Bakke’s tutelage workers had great fun. Machine operators in AES power plants made the daily phone calls to invest the company’s short term investments.

His goal as CEO was to make one decision a year so that the employees of the organization could have all the fun.

Nonprofits and other organizations thrive on trust. When I worked for Horizon House of Illinois Valley Jim Monterastelli showed incredible trust in me. PR was part of my role and Jim trusted me. One day I managed to shoot a photo and do a story that landed on the front page of the local daily news paper. I was so used to Jim’s trust that I forgot to tell him that I had submitted to the paper. The next day he gently suggested that I let him know when I was submitting a story to the paper because he had been at a business event fielding congratulations on a story that he didn’t know anything about.

There’s one other key to a fun work place that Bakke doesn’t mention in his book--getting to use your talents. Gallup Organization defines talents as “recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.” Getting to do those things we do over and over again because their fun and getting to do them on the job definitely makes for fun workplace.

You can find Bakke’s Joy at Work Top Ten here.

Radical organizations 1

1. When given the opportunity to use our ability to reason, make decisions, and take responsibility for our actions, we experience joy at work. From here.

I grew up in a working class/farmer family whose attitude toward leaders was that they were the folks who didn't know how to do the actual work and made life miserable for those who did.

Now I'm quite sure the leaders of the factories that my people worked in didn't get up in the morning and say, "Now how can I make life miserable for the workers today."

No, the factory managers woke up knowing that it was their job to think and to make decisions and be responsible for the whole shebang while it was the role of my people to carry out the decisions. And then my people would come home and tell stories about the stupid decisions the bosses were making.

Radical organizations begin with the assumption that everyone has the ability to reason, everyone has the abilitiy to make decisions and people love to take responsibility for their actions.

The role of leaders and managers of thriving organizations is to create as many opportunities for people to
think, make decsions, and to be responsible for the results of their actions.

Before Bakke co-founded AES he worked for the US Energy Department, an experience that led him to hate staff positions. Staff people were supposed to do the thinking for the line people. In AES they tried to get by on as few staff people as possible and instead created task forces of workers who did the work ordinarily done by staff people.

One day Bakke's wife was at an AES recognition dinner when they asked everyone who had worked on the budgeting task force to stand up and be acknowledged. A man sitting near her stood up with the others who had been working on the task force.

When he sat down she asked him what his position was with the company. "Security guard," he said.

Now I can guarantee you that the working class people I grew up with would have loved to work for such a company.

My father has an 8th grade education. He would never have been given major thinking and decision-making responsibility in most organizations and yet he designed and oversaw the construction of one of the most advanced dairy barns in Minnesota in the early 1960s.

Are you giving everyone in your nonprofit the ability to think, make decisions, and experience the joy of being responsible?

People love working for radical organizations that give them the opportunity to be at their best.

Hire athletes

This issue of Sales Caffeine caught my attention because my two daughters and a son were college athletes--track and cross country, volleyball abd basketball.

Sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer walked around his office and asked each person if they ever played sports on a team or competitively. He was surprised to discover "that the people who had played sports were among my best employees."

"If you’re an employer," suggests Gitomer, "you may want to look past job experience, and read deeper into athletic experience. It will give you greater insight as to the life skills of a person, not just their job skills." Check out why athletes make better employees.

Being nonprofit and entrepreneurial

It's not online yet but the February issue of Inc. has an interesting interview with Second Life founder Phillip Rosedale. Second Life is the virtual reality world that became a phenomenon in 2006.

I'm still a little queasy about venturing onto Second Life but other businesses and nonprofits are so one of these days...

I was more interested in some of Rosedale's approaches to running Linden Lab, the company that created and runs Second Life. At first they simply told their engineers to e-mail everyone in the company what you are going to do that work, then work on it, and then e-mail everyone how you did it.

That system has evolved into a huge database of "stuff to do. You choose your own work from it."

"I am pretty critical of traditional business styles," Rosedale says. Me too.

Companies encourage their people to be entrepreneurial. "But the way you are really entrepreneurial," Rosedale says, "is that you have to set your own strategic direction. That's what entrerpeneurs do. You have to take risks and you have to be held accountable."

Even though Evergreen Leaders is a nonprofit I get to be very entrepreneurial. Each week I e-mail the board what I call Monday Morning Coffee and in it I describe what I am going to do that week and how my work went the previous week.

When you get to choose your own things to work on your naturally choose to do things that fit your talents.

Attracting great staff

While waiting for an open computer at a library I scanned old issues of BusinessWeek. The September 18, 2006 issue ranks the 50 best places to launch a career. The list includes two nonprofits, Peace Corps at #38nand Teach for America at #43.

For nonprofits to thrive they must attract talent and make it possible for that talent to thrive.

The best way to measure whether your workplace is a place where people with talent can thrive is to regulalry test your organization or department on the 12: The Elements of Great Managing . The book is a sequel to the 1999 runaway bestseller First, Break All the Rules.

I haven't read 12 yet but I have returned to First, Break All the Rules over and over again. I'll never forget doing a workshop and seeing Ed Sims, a direct service worker in a small group home, look at the 12 questions Gallup identified that distinguish a great work place. He picked them up and waved them and said, "They are exactly right. It's not about money. It's about these."

Fixing people

Stop trying to fix them.

That was a subhead in Yona Lunken's e-letter that I received this morning. He went on to say, "As a culture we keep thinking that if we just point out someone’s weakness and then give them training for that weakness, they will be fixed. This just doesn’t happen."

As an undergraduate I studied social work and then earned a Master's degree in counseling. You could say I was interesated in fixing people. I didn't think training would fix people but I was focused on people's weaknesses and I thought counseling would fix people.

I'm not against counseling. People close to me have benefitted greatly from therapy.

Yet on my own journey I have begun to appreciate how each of us is a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses. I don't spend a lot of time trying to fix my body so that I can walk long distances. Instead I hop in my wheelchair (well, not exactly hop--smile) and get busy doing the things I'm good at.

As Yona says, "Rather than trying to fix someone, find a way to diminish or ameliorate the effects of their weakness so that their talents can shine."

That's the wonder of families and workplaces. In groups our strengths and weaknesses fit together to create a beautiful mosaic.

I'm not talking about adultery or theft--those are mloral failures, not weaknesses. When I talk about weaknesses and strengths I'm talking about things like I am a pretty good writer and pretty lousy at keeping my office in order.

Our weaknesses naturally create space for other people's strengths.

You can subscribe to Yona's free ''Thinking Skills Seminars Newsletter'' by e-mailing him at thinking@a5.com.

(By the way, can anyone tell me how to create a link for an e-mail address in blogger so that the reader can click on the e-mail address and go directly to their e-mail program with the address inserted in the "To:" box?)

Living in a marketing world

Lately I've been meditating on Jesus of Nazareth's manifesto, aka the sermon on the mount. This morning a phrase caught my attention: "Where your treasure is, there your heart is also."

Where is my treasure?

Like most folks in the USA I live in a marketing world, a world that treasures things, experiences, security. etc. Looking around the room where I write this I can see well over 100 things that were made and marketed (lots of books).

At the moment I don't see what I treasure most--God and his people.

Yesterday after Plow Creek worship and our common lunch three little girls, Kora Behrens, Margret Moore, and Isa Newhouse climbed on me and my wheelchair and took a ride. I treasure the children of Plow Creek.

Lately I have been meeting with Bethany Davis, a young mother of three who moved to Plow Creek from Hawaii last August after her husband died. A stay-at-home Mom with a high school education, she is exploring where she fits in the world of work. I encouraged her to attend Evergreen Leaders recent workshop--The Listening Path--that helps people identify their talents.

During the Listening Path I ask particpants identify seven things there brain loves to do--recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior.

After the workshop I asked Bethany about her list of seven things her brain loves to do. Two themes emerged. Her brain loves facts and ideas and her brain loves to meet new people and to have new experiences. After we had talked a few minutes I asked her, "Have you ever considered doing marketing?" She was appalled at the idea. She saw marketing as equivalent to high pressure sales.

To give her a broader picture I gave her a couple of other examples of marketing. Kevin Behrens, a shy guy and the opposite of a high pressure, fast-talking salse person, does a great job of marketing Plow Creek Farm produce.

Kevin does everything from writing and producing the farm newsletter, taking photos, managing the farm website and during the growing season, he does the daily phone message updates. In the last couple years he has created a great relationship with Natural Direct, a new home delivery produce distributor in the western Chicago suburbs, making it possible for folks in the western suburbs to enjoy locally grown Plow Creek produce. He also creates the signs and the layout for our local self-service produce market.

Then I described to Bethany all the marketing I do for Evergreen Leaders, a nonprofit company I head that does leadership workshops and consulting to help nonprofits thrive in towns under 10,000.

As Bethany and I talked about the marketing I do for EGL Bethany kept coming up with ways to improve EGL's marketing.

"Bethany, you have a marketing brain," I said.

Last week Bethany committed to starting as a vounteer marketer for EGL. I've committed to spend time with her each week supplementing her raw talent for marketing with knowledge about how to market EGL. Also, she is going to take marketing classes at the local community college.

I treasure giving Bethany the opportunity to develop her marketing talent. One of the places I love to put my treasure is in helping people develop the talents God knit into them starting in the womb.

Talents and laughter

Among Rick Reha's talents is eclectic reading--science fiction, theology, art history, music instrument making publications, and much more.

Talent, according to the Gallup Organization research, is "a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied."

Here's how Rick recently applied his talent for reading. He recently read Holy Humor by Cal Samra. He passed the book along to Jim Fitz.

Jim, when he's not traveling as part of his peace-making ministry stays three night's a week with Jim and Donna Harnish, Plow Creek's most senior members. He brought ''Holy Humor'' with him to Harnishes'. He leaves the book there and each evening he stays with the Harnishes he reads to Jim.

Fitz has a talent for connecting with people. "It's more fun reading a humor book with someone. When I read the book to Jim he often has funny stories to tell," he says.

Getting old gracefully is not for the faint of heart. Donna had a stroke seven or eight years ago and has not been able to speak or walk since. Jim and others at Plow Creek have faithfully cared for her since her stroke. Now Jim H.'s health has deteriorated to the point where he can no longer drive and he mostly uses a wheelchair to get around their apartment.

Still he's a great conversationalist. He enjoys discussing the politics of hope for the poor, telling stories, and laughing at the occasional absurdity of life.

When I'm old and can't get out and about I'm looking forward to people sharing talents, moments of absurdity, and laughter with me.

Two brains

One evening when our son Jon was about eight he asked me to read him a story while he did his math problems. “Jon, you can’t do math and listen to a book at the same time,” said his all knowing father.

“I have two brains,” he explained. That caught my attention and I decided to experiment to see if he do math and listen to a story at the same time.

When he finished with the problems I stopped reading and checked his work. He had done the problems with 98% accuracy. Maybe he was right. Maybe he does have two brains.

When it comes to figuring out the next directions for Evergreen Leaders I am working with two brains--my spiritual brain and my other brain.

My spiritual brain has an ear cocked listening to the divine story, seeing where the story is heading and where EGL fits in with the divine story. My spiritual brain is listening to the good shepherd, knowing that he sees a much broader story than I do. My spiritual brain is listening to his voice, confident that it’s okay to wait until he reveals what’s next.

And then there’s my other brain that is checking out two paths. Yesterday I continued working on writing curriculum for a three-hour workshop for nonprofit boards. Several months ago a local nonprofit CEO with connections nationwide listened to my spiel about EGL and said that there’s a big hole in the field of board development and encouraged me to develop an EGL three hour board retreat for NPO on the role of boards and CEOs.

My other brain that loves a plan said, “Let’s go. If we develop a brief EGL workshop for boards that incorporates key EGL concepts it’ll open doors for our workshop series for managers and workers.”

And my spiritual brains, “That’s okay. You work on the EGL board workshop. I’m just going to sit here and listen to the divine story. God’s ways are mysterious, delightful, and full of twists. I can hardly wait for the next twist in the story. I bet he’ll incorporate EGL in a way I never could have dreamed of. I love him and a good story.”