business book review

Have you been to Paris and quickly glanced at the Mona Lisa or raced around the Arc de Triomphe? Dan Pontefract encourages us to slow down and notice the world not only when we are in Paris but to notice how our organizations have changed or need to change. How do we create a connected and engaged organization? Dan is the Head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS. He encourages us to create, join, and sustain a flat army. A flat army is people within an organization moving together as a collective one. Flat Army is a detailed book offering a powerful model and set of practices to change how we engage with each other and our work — taking us from command and control to organizational cultivation and coordination.

Here are 5 zingers from Dan’s book:

Current state of engagement. Dan offers the evidence and history of how our organizations are disconnected in the age of connection and how employees are disengaged when we need high levels of engagement. Our leadership models are incongruent with today’s workplace. Organizational leadership needs to embrace a more open and collaborative workplace. They need to build a Flat Army
Being a connected leader. Dan outlines the characteristics and competencies for leadership from becoming to being and beyond. In being a connected leader the characteristics range from delivering to clowning. New leadership can deliver with a results orientation while also connecting with a sense of humor and playfulness. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Organizational examples of Flat Army in Action. The book offers the reader a variety of profiles of flat armies in action. From Zappos and HCL Technologies to the flat army at TELUS.
Tools for the Flat Army leader. Leaders need to build their social media competencies, dimensions and skills. Dan offers snapshots of social media tools ranging from micro-blogging and wikis to webjams and tagging.
Mintzberg and McGill. Dan is from Canada and so am I. Certainly one of our leadership/management treasures is Henry Mintzberg from McGill. I appreciate Dan’s quotation from Mintzberg, who believes in a mosh pit of leadership and management, “no one wants to be led by someone that is not a manager and no one wants to be managed by someone that is not a leader.”

I encourage you to read Flat Army to receive your “marching orders” to meaningfully advance leadership and engagement as we approach 2020.

David Zinger is the leading global independent employee engagement expert who recently worked on engagement in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Berlin, Prague, Chicago and New York. David worked for 3 summers engaging and working with very small flat armies: honeybees. David has convened honeybees and humans together through office objects and technologies so that we may learn valuable lessons in leadership from their practices. To access Mr. Zinger’s services email him at: david@davidzinger.com.

The Engagement Equation: Leadership Strategies for an Inspired Workforce by Christoper Rice, Fraswer Marlow and Mary Ann Masarech

Three authors from Blessing White have worked together to produce The Engagement Equation. This a comprehensive book on employee engagement and leadership/organizational actions to promote engagement.

It is not an ideal book for the casual reader or person looking to have a general understanding of engagement because of how much is covered from the X model of engagement to measuring ROI but it is an ideal book for a VP, Director, or Manager responsible for developing, organizing and coordinating an organization’s employee engagement approach and program.

Here were 6 snippets that caught my eye:

N=1. Engagement is fundamentally an individual equation yet everyone owns a part of the equation.

Daily. To work, engagement must become a daily priority at work

Plates. We can feel like plate spinners at work but this will exhaust everyone and the plates will eventually spin out of control so we must learn to spin our own plate

Max. Full engagement represents an alignment of maximum satisfaction fo the individual with maximum contribution for the organization.

Talk. Dialogue is a key to work towards fuller employee engagement as we hold ongoing conversations with all employees about results, alignment, and engagement.

CARE. Coach, Align, Recognize and Engage.

This is a fine book for a comprehensive understanding of employee engagement. It would make a helpful contribution to an employee engagement library.

David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert who uses the 10 block pyramid of employee engagement as a practical and tactical approach to enhancing and increasing employee engagement for both individuals and organizations.