If You Design It, They Will Engage. Executive Leadership and Requisite Organization Design
By Michelle Malay Carter on January 1, 2010
Trees and flowers don’t strive to grow.??It’s built right into their DNA to grow and to bountifully produce.
Executives Should Take a Page from Farmers
Executive leadership?should be concerned about creating the conditions necessary for employees to flourish.? People are wired to work.? They want to produce and produce bountifully.
Farmers don’t spend their days tending to individual plants.? They prepare the soil, monitor water levels, and keep the pests away.? When they do this, the plants do the “work”.
What Causes Poor Engagement? Not Poor Employees
I daresay that lack of engagement stems from lack of collective understanding of executive level work – designing and tending to the system, the environment, within which their employees work.
Looking for?a Leadership Design Blueprint?
Elliott Jaques’ Requisite Organization is a managerial leadership system that creates conditions under which all but the most disturbed employees can be successful.? Employees and managers don’t have to spend their days compensating for poor system design, instead,?they can do what they were naturally designed to do – to work and use their gifts for both the good of the organization and for a personal sense of satisfaction.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
What will you spend your days this year doing – creating or coping?
Filed Under Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management
Comments
8 Responses to “If You Design It, They Will Engage. Executive Leadership and Requisite Organization Design”
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Hi, Michelle,
Thank you for reminding us that Requisite Organization is built on the natural order of things in the world. Not some guru-meta-model, but the way things actually work in the real world.
-Tom Foster
Hi Tom,
Thanks for stopping by and for the comment. I appreciate all you do to keep the up the fight for systems design, not employee fix-up. Hope 2010 is prosperous for you.
Regards,
Michelle
just discovered your blog Michelle. appreciate the plain language. will twitter the links and hope you can introduce others to RO/SST concepts.
Welcome Alison,
Thank you for stopping by and for your encouragement. I appreciate your spreading the word. It is my BHAG to facilitate a global, collective understanding of the incredible improvements that can be made in engagement and productivity through Requisite system design. I’m thrilled to have you partner with me in this endeavor!
Regards,
Michelle
I really love the analogy of taking care of the plants compared to people. So true that the best work is done when employers simply create a fruitful environment and let the workers do their jobs.
Micromanagement = bad
Quote: “People are wired to work.? They want to produce and produce bountifully.” – Michelle – This couldn’t be more true. In our corporation I see constant reminders of how much good peoples self-esteem is related to their work productivity. Harnessing this “dna” respectfully can give a company a huge edge over it’s competition. Brent M
“Farmers don’t spend their days tending to individual plants.? They prepare the soil, monitor water levels, and keep the pests away.? When they do this, the plants do the “work”.”
That is a fantastic analogy. Too often, as managers, we try to force the individual employee to fit the organization, rather than simply providing a productive environment and the proper tools, then standing back and letting the employee grow and flower.
Most employees want nothing more than to do that anyway. The “weeds” can be dealt with on an individual basis, but most employees need not be.
“People are wired to work” that is a shame that in today’s struggling economy company so seem to have forgotten this, it is to bed that corporations today large and small have forgotten about the importance of their employees and show no loyalty towards them anymore. even though people are wired to work they will work much harder and be more productive if they feel a loyalty to and from the company they work for.