The Three Signs of a Miserable Job


Book Description

A bestselling author and business guru tells how to improve your job satisfaction and performance. In his sixth fable, bestselling author Patrick Lencioni takes on a topic that almost everyone can relate to: the causes of a miserable job. Millions of workers, even those who have carefully chosen careers based on true passions and interests, dread going to work, suffering each day as they trudge to jobs that make them cynical, weary, and frustrated. It is a simple fact of business life that any job, from investment banker to dishwasher, can become miserable. Through the story of a CEO turned pizzeria manager, Lencioni reveals the three elements that make work miserable -- irrelevance, immeasurability, and anonymity -- and gives managers and their employees the keys to make any job more fulfilling. As with all of Lencioni?s books, this one is filled with actionable advice you can put into effect immediately. In addition to the fable, the book includes a detailed model examining the three signs of job misery and how they can be remedied. It covers the benefits of managing for job fulfillment within organizations -- increased productivity, greater retention, and competitive advantage -- and offers examples of how managers can use the applications in the book to deal with specific jobs and situations. Patrick Lencioni (San Francisco, CA) is President of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health. As a consultant and keynote speaker, he has worked with thousands of senior executives and executive teams in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to high-tech startups to universities and nonprofits. His clients include AT&T, Bechtel, Boeing, Cisco, Sam?s Club, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Allstate, Visa, FedEx, New York Life, Sprint, Novell, Sybase, The Make-A-Wish Foundation, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Lencioni is the author of six bestselling books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He previously worked for Oracle, Sybase, and the management consulting firm Bain & Company.




The Enemy of Engagement


Book Description

Includes bibliographical reference and index.







The Future Workplace Experience: 10 Rules For Mastering Disruption in Recruiting and Engaging Employees


Book Description

Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medal Winner DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES. THE GIG ECONOMY. BREADWINNER MOMS. DATA-DRIVEN RECRUITING. PERSONALIZED LEARNING. In a business landscape rocked by constant change and turmoil, companies like Airbnb, Cisco, GE Digital, Google, IBM, and Microsoft are reinventing the future of work. What is it that makes these companies so different? They’re strategic, they’re agile, and they’re customer-focused. But, most important, they’re game changers. And their workplace practices reflect this. The Future Workplace Experience presents an actionable framework for meeting today’s toughest business disruptions head-on. It guides you step-by-step through the process of recruiting top employees and building an engaged culture—one that will drive your company to long-term success. Two of today’s leading voices on the future of work, provide 10 rules for rethinking, reimagining, and reinventing your organization, including: • MAKE THE WORKPLACE AN EXPERIENCE • BE AN AGILE LEADER • CONSIDER TECHNOLOGY AN ENABLER AND DISTRUPTOR • EMBRACE ON-DEMAND LEARNING • TAP THE POWER OF MULTIPLE GENERATIONS • PLAN FOR MORE GIG ECONOMY WORKERS Everything we took for granted in the past—from what we expect from our jobs to whom we work with and how—is changing before our eyes. The strongest organizations today are “learning machines.” New challenges require new solutions—and these organizations are finding them. If you want to compete in the years to come, you have to meet the future now. The Future Workplace Experience is your playbook for taking your organization to the top of your industry.




Great Leaders Have No Rules


Book Description

As a serial entrepreneur, Kevin Kruse has seen time and again that the leadership practices that actually work are the opposite of what is commonly taught and implemented. Close Your Open Door Policy shows how a contrarian approach can be a better, faster, and easier way to succeed as a leader. Chapter by chapter, Kruse focuses on a piece of popular wisdom, then shows with real-world case studies and quantitative research that the opposite approach will lead to better results, encouraging leaders to play favorites, stay out of meetings, and, of course, close their open doors.




Service Profit Chain


Book Description

In this pathbreaking book, world-renowned Harvard Business School service firm experts James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Leonard A. Schlesinger reveal that leading companies stay on top by managing the service profit chain. Why are a select few service firms better at what they do -- year in and year out -- than their competitors? For most senior managers, the profusion of anecdotal "service excellence" books fails to address this key question. Based on five years of painstaking research, the authors show how managers at American Express, Southwest Airlines, Banc One, Waste Management, USAA, MBNA, Intuit, British Airways, Taco Bell, Fairfield Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Merry Maids subsidiary of ServiceMaster employ a quantifiable set of relationships that directly links profit and growth to not only customer loyalty and satisfaction, but to employee loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity. The strongest relationships the authors discovered are those between (1) profit and customer loyalty; (2) employee loyalty and customer loyalty; and (3) employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Moreover, these relationships are mutually reinforcing; that is, satisfied customers contribute to employee satisfaction and vice versa. Here, finally, is the foundation for a powerful strategic service vision, a model on which any manager can build more focused operations and marketing capabilities. For example, the authors demonstrate how, in Banc One's operating divisions, a direct relationship between customer loyalty measured by the "depth" of a relationship, the number of banking services a customer utilizes, and profitability led the bank to encourage existing customers to further extend the bank services they use. Taco Bell has found that their stores in the top quadrant of customer satisfaction ratings outperform their other stores on all measures. At American Express Travel Services, offices that ticket quickly and accurately are more profitable than those which don't. With hundreds of examples like these, the authors show how to manage the customer-employee "satisfaction mirror" and the customer value equation to achieve a "customer's eye view" of goods and services. They describe how companies in any service industry can (1) measure service profit chain relationships across operating units; (2) communicate the resulting self-appraisal; (3) develop a "balanced scorecard" of performance; (4) develop a recognitions and rewards system tied to established measures; (5) communicate results company-wide; (6) develop an internal "best practice" information exchange; and (7) improve overall service profit chain performance. What difference can service profit chain management make? A lot. Between 1986 and 1995, the common stock prices of the companies studied by the authors increased 147%, nearly twice as fast as the price of the stocks of their closest competitors. The proven success and high-yielding results from these high-achieving companies will make The Service Profit Chain required reading for senior, division, and business unit managers in all service companies, as well as for students of service management.




State of The Global Workplace


Book Description

Only 15% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. This represents a major barrier to productivity for organizations everywhere – and suggests a staggering waste of human potential. Why is this engagement number so low? There are many reasons — but resistance to rapid change is a big one, Gallup’s research and experience have discovered. In particular, organizations have been slow to adapt to breakneck changes produced by information technology, globalization of markets for products and labor, the rise of the gig economy, and younger workers’ unique demands. Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace offers analytics and advice for organizational leaders in countries and regions around the globe who are trying to manage amid this rapid change. Grounded in decades of Gallup research and consulting worldwide -- and millions of interviews -- the report advises that leaders improve productivity by becoming far more employee-centered; build strengths-based organizations to unleash workers’ potential; and hire great managers to implement the positive change their organizations need not only to survive – but to thrive.




Management Practices for Engaging a Diverse Workforce


Book Description

This unique volume shows how to tackle the challenges of diversity in the workplace. It addresses the need to keep the workforce engaged while taking into consideration the diverse backgrounds of employees. The book explores 12 themes of workforce diversity and culture, including differences of race, religion, gender, sexuality, income class, education level, marital status, generation/age, physical ability, and more. Focusing on the benefits of engaging a diverse workforce, the volume considers the issue through the different stages of the human resource process, including recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, demand forecasting, supply forecasting, job description and specification, job analysis and evaluation, training and development, career planning and development, succession planning, etc. Employing an abundance of case studies, the volume enables readers to comprehend what it means to have a diverse workforce and how to engage such a workforce for the betterment of the employees as well as the employer. The volume acts as a textbook for courses on diversity in human resource management as well as a valuable resource for HRM and other management professionals. The discussions and questions sections will be useful for faculty, and the short case studies are designed to keep students interested and engaged.




Building a Magnetic Culture: How to Attract and Retain Top Talent to Create an Engaged, Productive Workforce


Book Description

Attract top talent and energize your workforce with a MAGNETIC CULTURE “Sheridan outlines simple but powerful steps to take in creating and maintaining an organization that fosters an environment with similar attraction.” —Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D., international bestselling author of MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There “A compelling case for and guide to the creation of a high engagement/high performance workforce.” —Douglas R. Conant, retired president and CEO, Campbell Soup Company; New York Times bestselling author of TouchPoints “It’s impossible for any company to have a monopoly on talent. But it is possible to have the best culture. Sheridan shares insights and best practices for creating an engaging culture where associates can grow and thrive.” —Frits van Paassche n, president and CEO, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. “A long time ago I discovered that when employees are passionate about their work, customers are passionate about the company. Kevin Sheridan knows that secret too. His insights on finding the right people and getting them engaged can change your culture forever.” —Quint Studer, founder of Studer Group, 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient “This book is filled with practical ideas, illuminating case stories, and fresh perspectives to stir employee engagement in any organization.” —Pamela Meyer, Ph.D., author of From Workplace to Playspace: Innovating, Learning and Changing through Dynamic Engagement About the Book: The perils of a disengaged workforce are well known—low productivity, high employee turnover, and failure to meet organization-wide goals. Less well known is what to do about it. How do you create a workforce that is always ready, able, and eager to take the organization to the next level? You have to create a MAGNETIC CULTURE. As CEO of leading employee survey and HR consulting firm HR Solutions, Inc., Kevin Sheridan knows how it’s done—and in Building a Magnetic Culture, he shares all his secrets. Building a Magnetic Culture explains what engages and motivates employees and how to create an environment in which employees can thrive. Drawing on years of research and real-world examples from his consulting experience, Sheridan gives you the strategies and tactics you need to transform your company by creating and sustaining a Magnetic Culture. Providing benchmarking and best practices, as well as interviews with executives and HR professionals at companies that boast the highest levels of employee engagement, Sheridan outlines an easy-to-follow plan that: Attracts the most talented people—and retains them Makes employees feel they are part of the value that their organization creates Increases Employee Engagement and drives productivity Boosts creativity and problem solving According to HR Solutions’ own employee survey results, actively engaged employees show four times more satisfaction in their work and are four times less likely to leave than disengaged employees are. Is there a reason not to make building a Magnetic Culture your top priority? Simply put, organizations that place a high value on actively cultivating a culture of engagement stand apart from their competition and enjoy superior business results.




Gamification at Work


Book Description

Gamification is becoming a common buzzword in business these days. In its November 2012 press release, Gartner predicts that "by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations." In the same report, they also predict that "by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives, primarily due to poor design." What is gamification? Does it belong in the workplace? Are there design best practices that can increase the efficacy of enterprise gamification efforts? Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger answer these questions and more in this book Gamification @ Work. They caution against taking a "chocolate covered broccoli" approach of simply adding points and badges to business applications and calling them gamified. They outline a methodology called Player Centered Design which is a practical guide for user experience designers, product managers and developers to incorporate the principles of gamification into their business software. Player Centered Design involves the following five steps: 1. Know your player 2. Identify the mission 3. Understand human motivation 4. Apply mechanics 5. Manage, monitor and measure Kumar and Herger provide examples of enterprise gamification, introduce legal and ethical considerations, and provide pointers to other resources to continue your journey in designing gamification that works! Keywords: Gamification, Enterprise Gamification, Gamification of business software, enterprise software, business software, User experience design, UX, Design, Engagement, Motivation.