Fuel Shortage Hits Workplace

The sign should read: Park your passion at the door; self-sacrifice required. Corporations are killing their employees at the same time they cry for talent, wrap their minds around employee engagement and dream of innovation. Human energy drives performance. No energy no sustainable performance.

Unlike a light bulb or USB, human talent does not just plug in and play when told to. Once upon a time that was true. The deal was you traded personal satisfaction for financial security. If you were lucky you got both. The belief was that was how it was done and what you were expected to do. Not anymore.

Talent is working for companies who have not noticed and is leaving companies who have not absorbed why. Talent exists in different forms: culturally, age, values, and gender. Unless you have created the cultural and working climate to receive and utilize capability in all forms, the pressure will increase and employees and potential employees will continue to vote with their feet. Burn out, stress leave and absenteeism will continue to wave red flags warning that there is a need to re-calibrate and remodel the economic motor. The new fuel source is made up of empowered, inspired, employees of all ages, gender, and culture, who value meaningful work, seek to create a future with hope and want some sense of control over the quality of their lives.

One Smart World, a personal assessment tool, measures personal spirit as a driver of personal, professional and organizational performance. Personal spirit is broken down into three components: sense of control, initiative and outlook. Sense of control is nurtured when rigid authoritarian power structures are replaced by trust in talent. It requires letting go of control, but it is absolutely necessary in order to allow people to contribute positive energy. Initiative is also freed when there is flexibility in the thinking and recognition that the only failure is the failure to learn.

Outlook is probably the most complex aspect of the personal spirit profile. Outlook refers to the lens you see the world through and it is made of your belief system: conscious and sub-surface along with a long history of personal experience in the workplace and how you have rationalized or made sense out of it all. All of that will be encoded in your beliefs about the world and seen through your mindset: fossilized or flexible depending on how you have nurtured it. The best way to test the waters on personal outlook is to notice how employees identify with being victimized or empowered by the idea of early retirement.

Burn out and task fatigue is a simple sign that the motor is running out of fuel with no attention given to the need to refuel. Everyone knows that if you do not refuel a car you have a limited amount of kilometres to go before you are pushing the car. Business has been pushing the car for a long time. Work must return as much energy invested as it draws or there will be a fuel shortage. Burn out is a direct result of caring too much and giving well beyond the point of renewal. You can not give what you do not have.

When Jim Collins wrote The Secret Life of a CEO in 2002, he noted that 'If a company focuses on making creative contributions that fall in the middle of three intersecting circles ... doing what it is passionate about, what it can be the best in the world at, and what best drives a sustainable, profitable engine ... then growth will likely follow.'

Passion has been repressed. This is why people have to leave their jobs to do work they truly care about. There is something seriously wrong with that picture. Being best at what you do is a direct result of natural innovation which is totally powered by passion and purpose. Sustainable profitable engines need remodeling along with the whole definition of profit. It is expanding to mean giving back. The engine remodel is best done by the same creative genius in employees who know how much or little structure is required to make things happen; not just circle the wagons and hope for the best.

It is time for a whole scale redesign.

©2007 From InSight to Action Publications - Dawna H. Jones – Evolutionary Provocateur. To access other information at no charge visit http://FromINsightToAction.com Dawna H. Jones has spent 25 years helping companies and their employees expand insight and foresight to achieve higher levels of performance. Committed to doing whatever it takes to spark profound, lasting change in teams, organizations – or within oneself – she constantly pushes the edge to merge science, metaphysics, human and physical dynamics to optimal advantage. She can be reached at 1.866.605.0880.

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