Commit to your own work.
And think about how it affects others. What others expect from it, how others can make it better, why others should care.
Since this is extremely difficult to do in abstraction, the surest way you have to make it happen is to actually interact with those who have a stake in your work. Do it frequently, do it methodically, do it with your ears and mind wide open.
The best work happens in the dialogue with others.
Engagement is a pledge.
The deal though is no longer safety, money, and certainty in exchange for work, compliance, and loyalty.
We understand well enough that workers nowadays need to put in something more than mere hours, textbook task completion, checkbox performance. We ask them to be creative, innovative, collaborative, personal, candid, proactive.
What we struggle to understand, instead, is that the way to incentivize that has changed as well.
So, the next time you lead a project, a change, an enterprise ask yourself what your side of the pledge is.
Is it keeping everyone in the dark until the big reveal? Is it making all of the key decisions? Is it allocating five minutes at the end of the next meeting for everyone to share what they think? Is it distributing information to create hierarchies and factions?
Probably not.
If you want people in your team to truly work as a team, help each other, keep each other accountable, and achieve common goals, then stop leveraging your position of power to get things done.
When you do that, people will think that the only way for them to get ahead is to take from their peers.
Dominance does not set a good example.
Not every cause leads to an effect. Not every effect can be immediately linked to a cause.
The fact is, we are not rational beings and we merely use reason to find an explanation to things that have already happened, to decisions that have already been made.
That’s why brands and stories have so much power. They don’t engage with reason and they leverage the most tribal and innate of our insticts.
Belonging.
If your company wants to measure brands and stories, if they want to find the thread that links brands and stories to material results, they are probably missing the whole point. And the opportunity to establish relationships with employees, customers, stakeholders that can determine long-term competitive advantage.
You got to have faith not to miss this opportunity.
There are two ways organizations promote employees.
One is by tenure. The employee has been in one role for long enough that they kind of outgrew it. The promotion is often formal and comes at the end of a process. It is about dues and achievement.
The other is by stretch. The employee is given enough space that they can grow into it. The promotion is often informal and comes at the beginning of a process. It is about responsibility and potential.
The way your organization does this has much to do with whether the general belief is that trust should be earned or that trust should be given. And it says a lot about many other aspects of the culture.
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