What comes next?

The quiz. Can you answer this questions for yourself 25 times in a row? Try it right now.

The answers.

1. Perhaps you start with I get up and go to work. (what comes next?)
2. I finish off the team project report. (what comes next?)
3. I talk with my boss about future projects (what comes next?)

The key. Now here is the key. I don’t want you to create a listless list of what comes next?, I want you to feel happy with your 25 responses. You need to feel engaged with the answer to what comes next?

Start over. If you are not engaged you need to start again at the point where you didn’t like or feel engaged with your response to what comes next? If you don’t feel engaged with getting up and going to work (the very first one in our sample list) you need to determine what has to change so that you will be pleased with what comes next?

Keith Johnstone’s teaching. I first learned the power of this question working with Keith Johnstone for 10 days in Calgary. Keith is one of the most influential contributors to improvisation. He had us do this exercise countless times over the 10 days and insisted that we should be pleased with what comes next and if we are not pleased with it, we should say no. Although this was used as an approach to improvisation and involved work with partners or groups, I realized it was a great tool to improvise and plan your own career and life.

On course or off course? If you can answer the question 25 times in a row and feel engaged with each answer, I suggest you have an excellent career and work direction and I would encourage you to stay on the path. If you struggle with the response to the very first question I encourage you to get busy working on your career development.

Do it now? Eventually, in life, there will be a time when we cannot answer what comes next? Don’t wait until it is too late to ensure you are on the right path or to make changes during your last moments. Do it now, while you can enhance, change, foster, or transform your responses and your level of engagement in your own career.

An organization employee engagement tool. In addition, organizations should think of the people in the organization always asking that question and do whatever it can to ensure employees have a positive response to what comes next at work.

Don’t be listless start your list of 25. So with no more delay, sit down now and see if you can create 25 positive responses in a row to what comes next in your life.

Here is a simple and wonderful drawing – Key by Elizabeth Perry:

Key hording. I have added one of the lines Elizabeth added to her drawing: Why do we feel compelled to save keys to things we don’t have any more? I know we have a drawer of keys in our kitchen and most of the keys I have no ideas what they unlock.

Make sure your keys have a purpose. In the field of employee engagement are you as an individual or organization hanging on to keys that no longer work or keys that are no longer valid to foster engagement? This is an ideal time to reflect on your keys, ensure they still have a purpose, and throw out the old ones that no longer unlock anything and simply act as dead weight for you or the organization.

I want to thank everyone who has visited this site and made www.davidzinger.com a destination site for employee engagement. There have been over 970,000 page views in 2008 and I predict it will be over a million before the end of the year. It thrills me that there would be such a strong interest in employee engagement. Thank you for visiting and encouraging me to keep producing articles that you find so helpful.

Thanks a Million!

Is employee engagement a noun or a verb?

If you see it as a noun, it becomes static. It becomes something we can measure once a year and know that we captured it. It is something we have versus something we are doing? It is less likely to change and more likely to remain fixed.

If engage is a verb, it is an action. It is something we do — not something we have. It is dynamic and changing. We are skeptical of a once a year measure of engagement because we know it can change daily within the same person.

I believe we need to see and work with engagement as a verb. When we do this we change our approaches to the topic at an individual, leadership, and organizational level.

• The individual is more open to change and to change actions to engage.
• Leaders realize the important of engaging with their staff continually.
• Organizations become more fluid in their engagement measurements and interventions.

Are you ready to go beyond a static noun to a dynamic interaction of individuals, leaders, and organizations with work.

Engage!

Photo Credit: London in movement #13 by http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabbriciuse/2092867849/

The last 5 members to join the 640 member Employee Engagement Network are from Chicago, Hanoi, Vancouver, Cambridge, and Melbourne. We are worldwide. If you have not joined us, where in the world are you? Join us now, click here.

Going the distance has at least two meaning.

The first meaning is in completing the race…going the full distance. Another meaning, for me today, is to take a distant view of close things. A wise person once said, “we need to take a close view of distant things and a distant view of close things.”

Because of snowy weather delays I am spending extra time in a uranium mine in Northern Saskatchewan above the 58th parallel. This is giving me the opportunity to take a little more “distant” view of employee engagement.

Here are 4 things that have caught me eye about engagement:

Community, community, community. Engagement grows stronger through authentic community and organizations will need to capture more of a community approach to organization if they are to thrive in 2009.  I have had it with the old pyramid model of organizations. If someone is on top of me don’t expect me to be engaged. If we are in community, and different roles and functions are needed, I am much more likely to engage in the community because I am a part of the community and the community is a part of me.

Engagement is not a fluffy extra. Because of the economic mayhem I think employee engagement is vulnerable to being dismissed as a fluffy extra just when we will need it the most. As companies cast employees off their payrolls those who remain may be cajoled into working harder and being engaged by threat…if you can’t do it we can find someone who can. If engagement is to sustain itself if must be of benefit to all. If you threaten me, don’t expect engagement. At the most, I will give you begrudging compliance.

Engagement occurs through disengagement. Full engagement requires periods of disengagement. Perhaps you don’t have to travel to a uranium mine in Northern Saskatchewan but how do you develop perspective on yourself and your work. Without perspective it can be difficult to see what changes we can make. Without disengagement we can approach higher levels of work exhaustion or even burnout.

A community of practice. I have been inspired and enlivened by how many people have joined The Employee Engagement Network within the first year. I hope we move from a social  and information network to a true community of practice that makes a significant difference in employee engagement not only for the members but everyone each member of the network touches in their work. I hope we will make use of each other’s services and let other organizations know about the services we offer.

Engage along with me, the best is yet to be.