Below is my first attempt to create quick look at stories, podcasts, and blogs that got my attention over the past couple of weeks regarding people intentionally working to create inspiring organizations. These first couple will probably be more collections and I hope to create a narrative that ties all of them together.
HOLOCRACY
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Great Fortune article written by Jennifer Reingold entitled “How a Radical Shift Left Zappos Reeling” about Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos and the topsy-turviness of the recent culture changes they’ve been undergoing over the past year or two. What I got from it was that all this culture stuff is important. It’s not necessarily the end all. We should work on it always, but our focus is sticking to our values and what we’re doing in the world. Culture is like healthy eating and physical exercise, and mental well-being. They all help us live the life we’re designed to live, but they aren’t the only thing. It’s about making us whole.
CULTURE AND BUSINESS SUCCESS
Dave Stachowiak from the Coaching For Leaders podcast talks to, Brian Robertson,founder of Holocracy. They discuss briefly moving from command and control to what may be a more human solution for running an organization. I’m still sketchy on the details, but I’m excited to learn more about this.
Dirk Beveridge talks with OneSource CEO, Mike Smith, about culture and employee engagement. He states that his goal with his culture is to:
- Purposely and intentionally break down silos
- Ensure everyone understands how the company solve the customers problems
- How they contribute to these solutions
Harvard Business Review has a story called, “Why People Quit Their Jobs“. It focuses on indicators that someone is about to leave their job. I have a little issue with a company tracking social media usage like this, but zooming out and using it for higher level research is interesting. There must be a better way to handle this.
RM2 reveals their results for the Top 50 Employee Owned companies in the UK. They outpaced the UK economy on growth, 10.2% vs 7.7%.
Harvard Business Review Ideacast with Moira Weigel and how work has changed love. This gets to issues of life work balance and some interesting history of love and work. There are also issues about socio-economic and class issues.
Lean Thinking podcast and Ron Pereira features Richard Sheridan from Menlo Innovations. You’ll be hearing interviews from several people from Menlo over the next few weeks.
YOUR VOICE
Finding your unique voice with Srini Rao and Janelle Hanchett on Unmistakeable Creative. Why is this relevant to creating an inspired and intentional office?
The importance of “alignment” with who we are inside and who were are with others. Janelle tells a great story about when she was a teenager and noticed her friends being someone else when they were with boys. And she realized this wasn’t sustainable…what amazing insight for a teen…some of us “mature” adults haven’t figured this out yet.
It seems many of our workplaces break that alignment. If we’re spending all day out of alignment with who we are and out of alignment with our agreed to company values we are going to grow disengaged.
The other thing, “the source for what we need is not external.” I wonder if we can apply this as an organization as well?
VISIONING and MINDSET
My fellow podcast junkie, Adam, listens to his podcasts as they come across his iPhone without censoring them. He simply lets it play them in order. Sometimes this will allow the universe to tell you something. What he picked up after listening to the following 3 shows had to do with vision. When I listened, I heard mindset. And this is the beauty of listening and reading. We’ll all get what we need to hear.
- Joe Rogan interviews Vinny Shoreman (“a mind coach, kickboxing & muay thai commentator and coach”), at one point they touch on the point of vision and the power of thinking on your performance. Changes in your thinking will take years of practice. Are you ready?
- He then heard the recent 10X Talk featuring Joe Polish and Shannon Waller on creating the entrepreneurial mindset in your team.
- The third show was the rebroadcast of the ZingTrain Webinar on Zingerman’s approach to Visioning. See the link below.
Be cool and join us in my efforts to make work…work.
Inspired and Intentional Podcast shows:
Kathryn Wagner gives a millennial’s perspective on working for Zingerman’s.
Learn to be intentionally energetic with your teams – complete Anese Cavanaugh interview. You can also find the transcript to the interview.
The final episode of the first set of ZingTrain webinar replays. This one covers Zingerman’s Approach to Visioning.
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