The full diagnostic

It happened a few years back. I was very disappointed with my work environment. I had decided that I would be a positive change agent in my job, but the company I was working for had become impervious to my influence. As my partner Maurice would put it, I had woken up my organization’s immune system, and my attempts to make a difference were systematically falling apart. 

“Fair enough,” I said to myself, “I just have to find a job in a company that wants to do things differently and would be willing to pay me for it!“.

And quite honestly, it was much easier than I thought. In fact, the position presented itself to me, and I didn’t even have to look for it. I was lucky. Or rather, I simply happened to be visible and present at the right place, and at the right time.

For reasons out of my control (and also more or less out of the control of the company coveting me), it took a few weeks to receive an actual offer, but they told me it would be the case.

1st symptom : I knew I had to leave

I least, I knew I had to go. A lot of people are asking themselves questions very often, for far too long. 

Should I quit? Would I really be better off? What if I’m wrong? What if it doesn’t work? What if it’s the wrong choice? Will I have to start looking for another job again? Will I be able to come back to my old position? Will I really be happier? What if I suck at my new job?

All these questions are quite legitimate. Some people will try to over-rationalize to know if they should really change job (and I did it myself). Using comparative tables, we write down our criterias by order of importance, we give marks to our current job and potential jobs and compare totals, we weight the pros and cons… 

I think that doing these activities speaks volume. If you’ve gotten there, it means you are very doubtful. If you are doubtful, it means something is wrong. My partner once wrote, in an article on antifragility, that we rationalize when we try to convince ourselves of a course of action that we know isn’t good. If you’re trying to convince yourself of keeping your job, there’s a good chance that something, somewhere, is wrong. 

What I mean by that is if your current job was fully satisfying for you, you probably wouldn’t ask yourselves these questions. It doesn’t mean you can’t take a look what’s out there, but to seriously consider changing job, that doesn’t lie. You don’t have to jump on the first opportunity you see, but maybe you need to admit that something is missing. 

By the way, while your questions are totally legitimate, let’s be honest: nobody has the answers to your questions, not even your potential future employer. I recommend to simply invest this energy in other activities that are not related to trying to predict the future, or to control the chaos in your life. The only way you could get those answers would be to take the plunge. Better regret doing it than regret not taking the opportunity.

2nd symptom : The Emotional Earthquake

Once my decision was made, I kinda had to announce it to my employer. Since my first day at the new job wasn’t that close, I had a week or two to make the announcement.

Not an easy task. Really hard, actually. You see, I was leaving my job so that I could make a difference in the ways people are treated on a daily basis at work, and to do so, I had to abandon my two teams who were in a really unenviable position. They were really going through some rough patch. 

For readers who don’t know me personally, know that I have a very hard time to living in contradiction with my own values. It’s simply intolerable to me. As you’re about to see, it makes me sick, literally. 

So, you can imagine that the thought of abandoning my colleagues to their fate so that I can go and “change the world of work” created an intense clash of values of unequalled proportions. But my choice was made, and I had to announce it, and the more I waited, the more stressful it became. And the less I wanted to do it.

One night, which I remember as if it was yesterday, I was doing a puzzle with some Star Wars music in background. And all of a sudden : ouch! I felt a sharp pain in the sternum. Exactly the kind of pain you never want to deal with, ever. I drank a glass of water, and it went away. But I couldn’t really act like it didn’t happen…

At the hospital, I received an ECG test (electrocardiogram) and they took some blood samples. “Everything seems fine”. I’m sent back home, after promising to set an appointment with a cardiologist. 

The said cardiologist made me pass an ECG test as well, and sent me to the Montreal Heart Institute so that I can pass a stress test on a treadmill. Again, everything is fine. 

“Did you experienced periods of stress caused by emotional dilemmas, or did you have to make a really difficult decision, recently?”

I bet you can guess what my answer was.

All of this for… not much

I’m not going to say that my anxiety and my unrest wasn’t legitimate, far from it. But at the end of the day, announcing my departure to my employer and my colleagues was much less difficult that I thought it would be. “I’m not surprised!”, “At last!”, “Go and change the world!”, they told me. Except my boss. He didn’t see it coming at all… Surprisingly. 

In the end, in my new job, it was clear as day after 2 weeks : It was definitely worth it to accept this job opportunity. In my new position, I did what I had to do for a year, and then I announced, with much less anxiety and stress, that I was joining my friends in their adventures, and that from now on, I’d be a consultant and an entrepreneur.

On not doing the same mistakes

I’m not writing this just for the fun of talking about it. Well, I’m not really hiding this episode of my life, and I like to recount it to whoever wants to hear it. But I’m writing it here in hope that not too many people will follow my tracks in a similar adventure. 

I learned many things in this story : 

• No job or employer deserves that we make ourselves sick 
• If a company can’t survive without you, eh, maybe it doesn’t deserve to survive
• The more you do something, the less difficult and painful it becomes
• Of course, it can be sad and disappointing when an employee quits. But remember that these companies which you hesitate to leave, they wouldn’t end up on a treadmill at the Montreal Heart Institute for a stress test because of chest pain while they wonder if they should let you go or not. They call it a “business decision”. Well, announcing that you accepted a new opportunity is also a business decision, nothing more.

Are you in a similar situation?

One of the LinkedIn status that inspired me to write this article gives excellent tips to help you know if you are making the right choice. 

In the status, Annie-Claude Pineault, a coach in career transition, suggest a list of questions you can try answering if you are considering changing jobs. These questions will bring much more answers than the ones I listed earlier. In my own certainty, maybe I could have avoided so much stress if I had this list of questions handy. 

Here are those questions : 

1. How does this opportunity propels you towards your dream life?
2. How is it linked to your priorities?
3. Does it respect your values?
4. How does it harmonize with your environment and your lifestyle?
5. What need does this change serve?
6. How could you learn more on the tasks and opportunities offered?

Those are simple questions that might help you avoid over-rationalizing, or to try finding answers to questions to which nobody could ever answer. Or to try, in vain, to have a definitive control on your future (which is, let’s be honest, absolutely counterproductive, there are way too many variables in life to really have control on anything). 

I wish you the very best in your new job! Go get them, tiger!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

I recently spoke in a private event. A company created an internal initiative called The Innovation Week, and they wanted to ensure that the mindset of innovation kept going for the rest of the year. They hired us to give a speech on the matter. Here is a summary of our conference.

Soft skills at the service of innovation

Innovation is not an goal. It’s difficult to measure. “Our level of innovation has increased by 39% this quarter”, that does not exist. While teams can be dedicated to innovation, such as teams of intrapreneurs, for instance, it is also not an expertise you can find on a resume. There is no certificate in innovation, as far as I know.

Innovation is a mindset. It’s a set of reflexes that can be leveraged, using our hard skills, which is common practice, and our soft skills, which is a little less common. What I mean is that we often have the technical expertise to innovate, but not always the mental reflexes to stimulate innovation. There are technological tools for tangible innovations, we use them every day. There are also other tools – both practical and conceptual – to foster an innovation mindset.

Knowing this, we can say that innovation is a culture, or at least requires a certain culture to happen. We have identified 4 key points that are necessary to foster of an innovation mindset that will last over time: agency, intention-based leadership, our power of influence, and the ability to change intangible ideas into tangible projects by experimenting.

A culture that favors agency

Agency is one’s ability to deliberately affect their environment. Basically, it’s our power to act, to voluntary influence our surroundings. When people decide to wash the dishes because there are too many dirty dishes in their sink, they are being agentive. They take a deliberate action to improve their environment. It’s an innate behavior in humans. However, the workplace is one of the only places where this natural parameter is programmed to be disabled by default. At work, we ask permission to take action.

Agency is not the same as empowerment. Empowerment has its limits, and shows several differences with agency.

• Empowerment is a permission given by another person of higher hierarchical rank. Agency is innate, it is a mindset everybody is capable of, and it is deliberate.
• Empowerment can be withdrawn by your superior, by senior management, and anyone in between. Agency being a mindset, is permanent and can not be removed.
• Empowerment perpetuates the status of followers. Agency allows the creation of new leaders.
• Empowerment works as long as we respect the structure in place. Agency works as long as there is a will.

For more information on the subject, I wrote an article entitled Empowerment Is Not Enough, Go For Agency Instead.

A culture of intention-based leadership and leader-leader relationships

People behave according to the way they are treated. Have you ever heard a manager yell “This is a real kindergarten here!”? I guarantee you that this guy treats his peers like preschool kids.

David Marquet, from the US Navy, has tried the opposite. He had just received his rank of captain for the submarine USS Sante Fe. He had to deal with the worst crew of the US Navy. He stopped giving orders, and began telling his crew what he intended to do, and then let them decide how best to get there. This is called intentional leadership. In doing so, not only did he stop treating his peers as soldiers or executants, but he began to consider their expertise, their collective intelligence and their better judgment. He stopped treating them like followers, and began treating them like leaders.

In the end, his crew has collected the highest score of all armies combined in history. On average, in a submarine with a crew of 30, about 1 or 2 sailors eventually become captain. In the crew of Captain Marquet, 9 people became captains. Other captains began visiting her submarine to learn how to achieve such an accomplishment. This guy has managed to create a factory of leaders in a nuclear submarine, nothing less. This is the story I prefer to tell the most, having tried it myself in business, with very impressive results. I also wrote an article on the subject, titled The Colossal Impact of Leader-Leader Relationships.

Note that leader-leader relationships do not only go top down but also buttom up and horizontally. We can treat our boss the way we would like him to behave, and the same goes for co-workers.

A culture that leads people to develop their influence

Not everyone knows how to ask for something in a proper manner. In 16 years, my son will probably ask me for permission to use my car this way “Hey pops, give me the keys to your car”, and it will be with great pleasure that I will refuse him as a matter of principle because that is not a way to ask for something.

So my colleagues and I have devised a process in 3 simple steps that we like to call “How to convince anyone of anything“. This is often scary to managers, and in the end, they end up thanking us because it will save them 1 to 2 days of busy work a week.

If one has to innovate, one must be able to explain why he would do it. A company will not fund all the ideas that come to people’s mind. In fact, most companies will not be interested in people’s ideas until they can attach a dollar sign to it. So let’s see how we can improve that. It’s good for both managers and employees. There are 3 steps

1. Make sure your idea fits into their agenda

Everyone has an agenda, especially high-ranking people in businesses. They have goals to achieve, aspirations, and KPIs. They also have a gun to their head (figuratively speaking) that is brandished by someone higher than them. If you want to convince them of something, you will need to empathize and try to understand what THEY need to succeed. If you offer them something diametrically opposed to where they are going, it is almost guaranteed that you will have a no. So, basically, you have to see how the idea you are trying to sell helps your manager succeed.

2. Do the work for them

I know I know. It means having to work to get what you want. What we mean here is: give them all the information they need to make the right decision. If they do not have the information, they can not make that decision. They have things to do, they are busy, and have a gun to their head. Finding information to support your request is at the bottom of their to-do list.

There is plenty of information you can provide: costs, return on investment (tangible, like money or time saved, or less tangible, like other benefits such as increased retention, engagement, etc.), comparisons with what the competition does, etc.

A quick and efficient way to get this information is to fill out a Business Model Canvas. Here is a simplified version that we have created to gather important data when it comes to selling ideas. It takes 30 minutes to complete, you can do it with your colleagues, and it allows you to ask yourself the right questions, especially those we often forget.

Problem: What problem are you trying to fix?
Why? : Why does this problem need to be fixed?
Customer segment: For whom do you solve the problem? Who will this solution affect? (Customers, other departments, other teams, users)
Distribution channels: By what means will you set up your solution, communicate its value?
Solution: A summary of the solution you propose
Cost Structure: What will be the costs? What will cost what?
Key indicators: What should be measured to determine if the idea is successful? (Ex: Number of visits, number of users, traffic, customer satisfaction)
Return on Investment: A projection of the benefits you expect your idea to generate. (Ex: Increased customer satisfaction, increased sales, increased revenue by 3% to 6%, reduced workload, save 1 hour per day for employees).

Basically, when trying to convince someone of your idea, make sure that the only thing they have to do is accept and sign. Do not give them the burden of having to do the work for you. And even if your manager needs approval from above, you’ll have given him all the arguments he needs to convince his own boss.

3. Make it so that saying YES is easier than saying NO

Or, the alternative to this title: make it so that it becomes a bad idea, or completely stupid to say no. The goal is to put forward what it would cost NOT to say yes. Take every conceivable risk of not implementing your idea, make them visible, and known to everyone. You can even create a risk chart with your team or department. And when you make your request, with all your ROI information, give them all the risks it would represent not to go ahead with your idea. Risks that are known to all.

At this point, if the risks are higher than the costs, it is very likely that you will have a green light to move forward with your innovation or change. It is always possible for the answer to be no. But if one of the risks raised becomes reality, you can always tell your boss “We told you so”.

Encourage small controlled experiments

Most companies are allergic to chaos and uncertainty. They want to be CERTAIN, before making a decision, that it is the right decision. The problem is that no exhaustive analysis or study provides as much data as trying something out.

So, if you have almost convinced your boss to go with your idea, but that he’s is still hesitant, because it could be risky and we aren’t sure of anything (and also, gun to their head), offer him to do a small controlled experiment.

The two main advantages of these experiments are that they validate your hypotheses, and they test your riskiest assumptions.

SMALL: On a small scale. An experiment can be done on a small group of users, or by a small team. In technology, you can create a prototype on a local server with a partial database, for example.

CONTROLLED: An experiment is controlled when it has a time limit, success criteria, and a list of things you want to verify. You can even have a budget (in dollars or allotted time).

When the experiment is over and you have collected enough data, there are 3 possible paths:

1. Stop everything, we were wrong. It’s a good thing we did not continue, and we did not lose a ton of money on this idea.
2. Stop everything, and we move to the overall implementation because we were right and our assumptions were validated.
3. Another controlled experiment is required to collect additional data and or verify other or new assumptions.

Conclusion

A company that can gain and own these 4 mindsets has no excuse not to change, improve and innovate. A team mastering these 4 mindsets naturally has the necessary qualities to be a team of intrapreneurs. It could help you innovate where your competition does not. But hurry up. Your competition definitely is already innovating.

At GoPyrate!, we offer workshops to help teams acquire these reflexes and mindsets, and we offer practical tools to support them. Feel free to contact me if you want a conference on this topic in your organization!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

Employee empowerment has the wind in its sails, but it also has certain limitations. Agency, however, goes much further in the development of your employees.

Empowerment

Definition of “Empowerment“
In the sphere of management and organizational theory, “empowerment” often refers loosely to processes for giving subordinates (or workers generally) greater discretion and resources: distributing control in order to better serve both customers and the interests of employing organizations.

Empowerment, according to Wikipedia

The concept of empowerment is not new, but I have mainly heard about it in the last 5 years. Companies, seeing that the command and control approach is equivalent to accompanying each employee towards the door one performance review at the time, changed their mind and began to think that giving more room for decisions and responsibilities to their employees could have a positive impact on their motivation and therefore their performance.

None of this is false. If we trust Daniel H. Pink’s works, intrinsic motivation is composed of three aspects: mastery, meaning, autonomy. It is this autonomy that is aimed at when a company or a manager take initiatives towards the empowerment of their employees.

The problem with empowerment

The great problem with empowerment is that this increase in discretion and decision-making power is granted to employees by a hierarchically superior force. A manager can choose to move forward with the empowerment of his employees, usually with the goal of increasing motivation, growth, and performance. Corporate empowerment is often an initiative of management, which is spread across various departments via a management and training structure.

That being said, what happens if a manager who is a big fan of empowerment leaves and is replaced by someone who is quite less benevolent? No more empowerment. The organization decides that it does not work? No more empowerment. The organization is bought by a multinational corporation that “does not believe in these things”? No more empowerment. And the fallout from these change of minds will be dangerous. One does not take back the freedom of motivated people without suffering the consequences.

In short, empowerment exists in a relationship of power. And the name says it. “I elect to give you more power.” I empower you. Captain David Marquet explains this problem very well in his book “Turn the Ship Around”, but through leader-follower relationships.

He argues that many leaders have the reflex of empowering their collaborators, but the consequence is that this further strengthens their own leader status, as well as the follower’s status. If the leader must be there, and must voluntarily and consciously confer more power to his followers, their empowerment is directly dependent on the will of the leader.

So, basically, empowerment consolidates, strengthens and maintains the status of followers of your peers, because they can not give themselves these powers. It will never turn them into natural leaders. Here lies the limit of the concept of empowerment in businesses.

Agency

Definition of “Agency”
In the social sciences and philosophy, agency is the faculty of action of a being; his ability to act on the world, things, beings, to transform or influence them. In sociology, agency is the capacity to act, as opposed to what the structure imposes.

Structure and Agency
In social sciences, there is an ongoing debate about the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behavior. Structures are sets of devices that influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the ability of individuals to act independently of social structures and to freely make their own choice.

Agency and Structure and Agency, translated from French on Wikipedia

Agency is the ability of a person to make decisions and act on their free will, and to influence their immediate environment. It is more natural in some people, less in others, but it is something that one can work on and develop.

We can’t remove the agency of a person, unlike empowerment. You can certainly prevent someone from exercising agency, however, at our own peril, it would be like depriving a plant of air, water and sun. A person who takes a lot of initiatives and innovates shows agency. Limiting this person’s agency basically means turning him into a pawn, an executant.

Hierarchical and corporate structures are not always tolerant of people’s agency. As defined above, agency is the ability to act as opposed to a structure. But employees with a strong sense of agency will be those who stir good trouble. Those who question for the common good. Those who will go around or bend a few rules to create new ones, or bring value in a way no one would have ever imagined. Those who will take over part of the structure that does not work for them to improve or adapt it to their reality, resulting in the optimization of their team’s work and its efficiency. And all of this without asking permission.

Now, imagine an entire team that demonstrates an increased sense of agency, and that receives the research and development mandate in a company. The potential of such a team will be dangerous for the competition.

The advantages of agency according to GoPyrate

In our workshops, we like to tell the participants that we are there to help them develop their super powers. Because our goal is always to increase the agency of a team. The techniques taught are all meant to involve more the team in their own work as well as in business processes. 

This is also the reason why we push to use real cases that the team is (or has been) involved with. It helps ground the teachings their own realities. Every company is slightly different and, as trainers, we can’t cover every variant. But your own realities can. We don’t even adapt our teachings to your realities, but we help the team do it. That way they own what they learn a lot more, and their agency develops as their confidence with the material grows and as they can directly sees how all theses ideas relate to them in a very concrete fashion.

It’s all about growing their agency.

By capitalizing on agency development, teams become more autonomous, more engaged and more innovation-driven. They also learn to communicate more with management and become more involved with business goals instead of just executing orders.

You pay your experts quite a lot, better make sure that they can contribute to the best of their abilities.

Our training is very freeform. The first thing we’ll do will be a small retrospective: We look at what they tried so far and how did it go, what are the things that they’d like to improve at work, what are the greatest challenges. From that short session, we’ll have all the priorities of your team, and all the material we need to improve on what they learned as well as what new ideas to introduce.

That’s the key with our workshops : It’s all about you, your team, your company, your needs. 

It works well with engineers, but also with managers, salespeople, HR people, etc… Most of our clients are teams of managers.

Training a team takes time. In fact, it takes quite a lot of time outside the time we’re there. We’re just the tip of the iceberg. We aim to teach principles rather than hard techniques. We want people to understand how this work and what is the value for them, and then we let them experiment over weeks. That’s good for any company.

You need people that are curious, stimulated, and bent on improving. When the employees stop being alive, the company itself is moribund. Good training is stimulating and give them a jolt. 

If you’d like to know more about GoPyrate services, visit www.gopyrate.com

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

This short story, besides the fact that I’m one of its protagonists, really caught the attention, and inspired many in the room, to the point where quite a good amount of people have asked to meet me as a result of this event. And as a bonus, it is a tangible example of what it is to be an Everyman Leader, a leadership role that’s accessible to all and that you can explore further in the article Of the 3 Leader Roles, Which One Are You Perfect For?.

It happened a few months back…

While I was still a manager in a company, I received a LinkedIn connection request from a complete stranger. She explained to me, in private messages, that she just moved to Canada from India, where she was born. She was looking for a job as a business analyst and asked me if we needed her services in my workplace.

I told her that I couldn’t help her with such a position in my company, but that I would be pleased to put her in relation with some recruiters from Montreal who could help her a lot more than I could myself.

*badang*

Even though she lived in Toronto (she was ready to move anywhere in Canada), I almost heard her fall from her chair from where I was sitting.

“Why are you helping me?”, she asks.

She specifies : “I have more than 2000 people in my network, I have contacted dozens of recruiters and managers, and you are the first who one does not just answer me in the negative, but also offers to help me.”

I realized that I was simply acting the way I would like others to act with me if I were in her situation. It is not more complicated than that. I was surprised that she was surprised.

To answer her question …

“It’s five minutes in my day. But to you, right now, it means the world, and maybe even a career. Who am I to deprive you of this?”

She asked me what she could offer me in return. I simply told her to take 5 minutes, as soon as she could, to help someone in turn.

Being an Everyman Leader isn’t rocket science

Whenever people say they are not leaders, they are usually Everyman Leaders. You know, those people who will sometimes take a few minutes to help you, and who end up making your day? They are the ones. They are not always aware of their leadership.

It’s a leadership style that you can develop. I like to compare it to going to the gym or brushing your teeth. No one gets in shape by going to the gym a single day in the year, and you don’t avoid having cavities by brushing your teeth for 24 hours straight once a year. A few minutes a day are enough. The same goes to become an Everyman Leader.

The trick is pretty simple. It’s about being vigilant, and trying to find opportunities for helping someone. It can be anything: lend a book, send a video, help someone to do something, or, as in my story, introduce someone to people who could help them better than you could.

We become a good Everyman Leader the day we succeed in creating opportunities to help people before they ask for it. Sometimes even before they think they need help.

What if…

Can you imagine if everyone took 5 minutes a day, just 5 minutes, to help someone like that, what an impact we would have?

What’s stopping you from doing it?

PS: Today, this woman does not work in Montreal, but she got a new job 1 month later in Toronto.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

When I was asked (with a little too much enthusiasm) to make a speech, I started by saying “My departure is not bad news”. And it’s true for several reasons:

• I felt that I had done what I had to do for my department.
• I felt that I was bringing less and less value, having pushed the autonomy of my teams to its peak.
• The projects I had that were parallel to my work contributed more to my motivation and my fulfillment. I just decided to focus on what was bringing me the most value.
• This job helped to establish my Purpose and Meaning in life. It would have been absolutely counterproductive not to go all the way.

Having to explain this made me think a lot…

My problems with the turnover rate

As a manager, I was boasting that our department had an excellent turnover rate. And my departure was going to increase it. Yet my departure, as I said before my colleagues, was good news.

That’s when my thinking started and I discovered several problems with the age-old concept of turnover rate.

The turnover rate is reactive

It’s a bit of the same problem that I’ve already denounced with exit interviews. Although the turnover rate may be an interesting metric for many, it has little meaning over a short period of time, and requires people to leave their job for this metric to “work”.

But this metric provides no context. It is only an observation after the fact.

The turnover rate suggests that change is not welcome

It’s well known that you get what you measure. In this case, we measure the whether or not people stay in the company. It seems, at first glance, to be the right thing.

That being said, is the company moving forward? Are people progressing in their work? Have people had promotions? We do not know. But we know how many people have stayed.

We want people to stay in office. It is the objective. And that brings me to my biggest problem.

The turnover rate does not ensure that people are thriving

If the goal is for people to stay in office, what do we do with people who are miserable but still stay? And for whose who do not like their work? Who have aspirations? We tie them to their chair and cross our fingers?

Too often, I’ve seen companies keep people in a role they did not like, because they “didn’t want to lose them”, and guess what happened? They lost them much earlier then they thought.

For me, stagnation means death. The death of motivation, the death of self-fulfillment, and personal development. I’m the kind of person whose role is changing extremely fast. I need it. Can a company that optimizes for a good turnover rate help me in my journey?

Or, will the company try to keep me in a role I do not like, hoping that I bring as much value?

The turnover rate will soon be irrelevant

I have once stayed 8 years in the same company. Twenty years ago it was commonplace, nowadays, especially in IT, it’s almost unthinkable. And the trend will continue, and spread to other business domains.

People are increasingly looking for meaning in their work, and are now willing to make many sacrifices to fulfill their daily lives. Labor relations are expected to be shorter, or in another format. Companies that are very good (I will not even talk about companies of dubious morality) may have turnover rates of 60% in a few years, and it will be commonplace.

The question to ask is: are people leaving because of us businesses? Or do they leave because they no longer need us, to do things bigger than they could do with us?

When we’ll get there, I think the turnover rate will become irrelevant. People will grow, find meaning and achieve their dreams. The questions that companies will have to ask themselves will be:

• People who leave to do greater things, are they doing it in spite of us, or with us?
• How did we contribute to the emancipation of these people?
• Will these people be willing to refer people, or even find those who could replace them? Or have we broken this relationship by holding them back or preventing them from fulfulling their dreams?

In summary: Have we created an ambassador?

So I propose the emancipation rate

If I want to pretend to cultivate the awesomeness of people, I can not just keep people in office. I absolutely do not think this is beneficial. People with career aspirations will not all be able to develop in their role forever.

Isn’t it our job, we, the companies and their representatives, to make sure that our valued employees grow and thrive? Even if it’s in spite of us and our needs?

I know a ton and a half of companies that would rather have miserable employees in their jobs rather than help them grow, even if it could mean they might find work elsewhere. But I refuse their reality.

I sincerely believe that a happy person elsewhere is better than a miserable person who stays in office.

I sincerely believe that it is the duty of every manager and every company to raise people beyond their potential and their motivation to the risk of seeing them leave.

Will my recent departure bring a shadow on the company as it increases the turnover rate? I am one of those people who used his role as a stepping stone to accomplish important things for myself, for others, and for the world of work. I’m still talking about Marine Press saying “We”. I am still an ambassador for this company, I still refer candidates. It’s still my baby. I have elected myself as an ambassador for them. 

If I count myself among those who were under my responsibility, my emancipation rate is 75%. 75% of the people on my team who voluntarily left did it to flourish in other projects, and no longer needed the company for this to happen.

It’s a much more interesting metric for me. It proves that the company has done its part for happiness and fulfillment at work.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

This post is a follow-up to “How to turn Purpose and Meaning into happiness”. If you haven’t yet, go check it out!

Meaning is an essential part of our lives. We can’t stay sane without it.

And yet, these days we tend to drown ourselves in noise rather than looking at the dearth of meaning that surrounds us. We are surrounded by meaningless work, done for meaningless organizations, and listening to politicians who’s discourse is utterly devoid of meaning. As our existence seems all too often to be meaningless, we drown ourselves in meaningless entertainment, meaningless escapes. 

“But Maurice,” I was recently told, “I have a family to feed with my meaningless work. I have no time left to find your stupid meaning, and even if I did, I’m too bummed out to do it.” Yes, yes, that’s my point exactly. 

Human beings are social creatures. We first organized in tight tribes where everyone has a part to play for the survival and prosperity of the group. Being an active, productive and meaningful part of a group is an essential part of what makes us human. 

This social organization allowed to prosper beyond what most animals can achieve. It also gave us free time to explore our world, discover new techniques, and imagine ways to apply them to push back the upper limit of our tribal organization. 

As our societies became larger, individuals lost their impact on the big picture. We created processes to run our sizeable social organization, and we elected ourselves as those processes’ servants, to maintain them and make sure they stayed on track. Because of that scale, our leaders became so removed from people’s lives that they ended up seeing humans as resources and created more processes to manage them. See where I’m going? 

In the post “Why is changing a company so difficult?”, I explain organizations, such as companies or societies, are complex distributed systems. When there’s a power imbalance in favor of the central system (the brain, who favor high-level information) over the local systems (the appendages, who gather and analyze tons of minute local data), a lot of speed of reaction, initiative, and useful information is lost. This means that when you have a boss who says what to do and executants who have to shut up and obey orders, information is lost, and the expertise of people is wasted. To keep the body analogy, think of a brain who decide to shut off all of the body’s sense because he’s the one in charge. 

This brings us to another issue that has been reinforcing the problem: we have gotten used to sell our time to an employer, rather than to sell the value of our output. Essentially, we have accepted indentured servitude in exchange for a paycheck. Liberating ourselves from the 9 to 5 grind isn’t easy. After all, we all need to eat, pay the bills and support our families. Finding understanding within the organizations that employ us isn’t easy either, merely because they “paid good money” for your time. 

This isn’t a simple or easy problem to solve. 

There are a few ways to make it easier to turn our Purpose into tangible Meaning. 

Find a job that aligns with your Purpose. 

Having a job which Purpose align precisely with yours is by far the simplest way to reach Purpose/Meaning alignment as your workdays are dedicated to your Purpose.

Many people have to make do with a full-time job to makes ends meet. They look for Work/Life Balance, or work that will leave you enough time to live and that is ready to make a concession for your life’s responsibilities (like a bit of remote work for when the kids need to stay home). Work/Life balance however, is a fallacy. We have one life, not two. The idea that we need to suffer for part of it only to make the other bearable and that the secret is finding the right balance is ridiculous. It’s like arguing that torture is good because it will just make you appreciate more all those times where you aren’t being tortured! When work is necessary, we shouldn’t suffer through it, period! Take on jobs that align with your Purpose.

Finding such a job, however, is far easier said than done. Few workplaces put any thought at all about creating meaningful jobs (other than for marketing purposes). Finding one where you will be able to apply your Purpose meaningfully is mostly a matter of luck. 

This situation might seem only natural at first. I’ve heard many company owners say that their employees’ happiness or fulfillment is none of their concern. This show a lack of perspective: happy, fulfilled employees are shown to be more engaged, more productive, more loyal and an overall much better value for an employer. Arguing that they are paid to be engaged, as productive as possible, loyal to a fault and the best value possible at all time no matter how they are treated is delusional at best. You get what you give. 

An increasing number of companies do realize their own interest in providing meaningful employment and treating people with respect. They don’t necessarily do it for the goodness of their hart either (although some do): the benefits are measurable and tangible. We can argue all day about the importance of doing it for the right reasons, but societal change takes time, and I’ll take any improvement I can get. 

If you want to create a meaningful job for your organization, merely ask yourself: how does this job have a positive impact on the world. If it does, then make sure to specify it in the job posting to get applicants who will be motivated by that impact. If it doesn’t, then it’s not meaningful. If you can’t find meaning in the jobs you need to be done, maybe it’s time to ask yourself what is the purpose and meaning of your company. 

Stop selling your time. Sell the value you produce instead, and make that value a product of your Purpose. 

This is a path favored by self-employed people, even if I believe that this should be the way we all should earn our income. 

An excellent first step is starting to see ourselves as an independent product or service providers. It means that you need to offer something of value, such as expertise, rather than just selling your time. Even if you are not an expert this can work: I know several teens who get their first proper job on nothing else than being reliable or diligent. 

This attitude can help you better understand your own value and better position yourself by knowing what differentiator you bring to the conversation. Model your offer (and resume) around that value your offer. Keep in mind that this value will evolve or change with time. The critical thing to remember is that this value needs to be tied to your Purpose or, if you haven’t found it yet, to the path where you think your Purpose will lie.

When you have determined the value you offer, don’t compromise it. See any employer as a client, not an owner. Choose your clients carefully, as their actions and stances will reflect on you. 

Always ask yourself how you can turn your offer into something that will not tie you to a 9 to 5 job, how to compress the value you deliver. For some, it will be evident, and they will embrace the self-employed (or entrepreneur) life from the get-go. For others, it will require a bit more exploration. 

The whole idea is to take control of the value you deliver, and earn your income in a way that will increase the dedication to your Meaning rather than diminishing it. 

This is the path I’ve chosen for myself. I’m a practical researcher of sorts. I test new organizational ideas by using my own companies (I risk my own money first), and then turn that experience into training and coaching for other companies who want to try those approaches. This allows me to earn a living while billing clients only a few days every month, dedicating the remainder of my time to my purpose: how to help people, organizations and institutions evolve their outlooks and dynamics to prosper and find Meaning during the changes brought by our new industrial and social revolutions.

Learn to live with less and use your free time for Meaningful purposes. 

I feel this one is a bit of a cop-out. It requires little change from what you currently are doing, but it does need from you to make sacrifices. 

The idea of living with fewer wants in order to need less and have more time to dedicate to your meaning is kinda cool… when it’s actually a choice made possible by having few commitments and responsibilities. It’s a great path when you are 20 something and unattached. This, however, isn’t the case for the rest of us. 

For some, it isn’t really about choice. Many will always opt to take care for family members who need its: a sick person, children or an elderly relative. It’s a calling, not really a choice. They know that sacrifice will be part of the game, but some things are more important than any sacrifice they’ll have to make. As a society, it is a shame that we don’t give more consideration and support for this kind of dedication. 

There is no easy answer here. As a society, we need to ask ourselves why do we need to work that much to avoid abject poverty, and how can we change that. When we find those solutions, even if they are not perfect, we will give solid, decent options both for people reducing their work time to search for Meaning, and for those who have found it and are now required to free their time. 

Remove the need for an income and dedicate yourself to your Purpose. 

This is the easiest way to achieve Purpose/meaning alignment. Just become rich and do whatever you want. Simple enough, right? 

Jokes aside, this is not entirely out of the realm of the possible. Building passive income streams, with mostly automated and/or delegated effort, is doable after you took the time to create them in the first place. It still not a reasonable path for most. 

For those who can consider it, try to align your Purpose with your passive income generation. It will take time, and end up as a mixture all the approaches listed above. For example, turning your Purpose into a communicable experience and then write books or creating online classes about it will allow you to pursue your Meaning while gradually increase passive income. 

I wish I’d have more advice about this path, but I still need to explore it myself. There’s a lot of literature for that out there, usually written by people who haven’t made it yet so, you know, grain of salt and all that. 

New models are needed

All of the paths I mentioned here are little more than duct-taped solutions to allow us to look for Meaning in a society that uses models that don’t see the need for it.

I harbor no illusion on that, but it doesn’t mean I have to accept it. Someone needs to come up with a better plan.

Hivernité, one of my companies, has a workgroup dedicated to coming up with new organizational models that will offer alternatives to paying for people’s time, have built-in approaches on creating meaningful positions, betting on employees growth as an investment, and getting rid of bullshit jobs and shit jobs alike. 

But we can’t do it alone. Everyone of us needs to start the discussion and make sure it doesn’t die before we have forged a better path. The is tangible value to finding one’s Meaning, regardless if we’re talking about a person, an organization or an institution. 

If you want to get involved in the discussion, if you are looking at how to bring meaning to your organization or if you just want to spread those ideas, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

A friend of mine recently quit his job and mentioned that he had an exit interview. He said, “I doubt it’s going to change anything”. This discussion started a reflection, and here I am now, challenging my HR friends’ status quo!

Following my reflection and as an hors-d’oeuvre to this article, I wanted to test the waters on the matter. I created two small (and absolutely non-scientific) surveys on Primos Populi’s Facebook page. One was made for non-HR employees, others for people in Human Resources and managers. Here’s what I gathered:

The difference in perception is nothing too surprising. People who quit their job have much less visibility on what happens next. For my part, following my last voluntary departure, I know for a fact that some changes took place 3 months later or so, following the recommendations I made in my exit interview.

The current state of things.

I kinda have to hit the nail on the head concerning the exit interviews. I’ll do it a little further in the article, but let’s start by taking a look at the trends on the market.

Some companies don’t do exit interviews

There, that’s simple. I’m not sure if it’s very common. It happened to me once. The CEO asked me “Where are you going?” and that was it. What’s not representative of the market is the fact that, after kindly asking him to be discreet about the company I was leaving for, I went back to my place and saw that the CEO sent an email to the whole organization, letting them know I was leaving for Company X. Nice guy. That’ll also teach me not to be transparent.

It is not always a matter of nonchalance or bad faith. I once heard a manager say “People come and go, and that’s how the market works”. What an effective way to get rid of any kind of responsibility! People are going to leave anyway, why try to improve the place? It’s our destiny, we might as well embrace it. I’ll push this argument a little further: clients also leave companies, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Why then should we provide customer service?

I’m fairly certain that these companies generally see departures as such: it wasn’t a good fit, she had problems, he wasn’t really performing, she was a difficult person anyway, etc.

Aren’t you mesmerized by the fact that those who left by themselves were all part of the problem? But the company wasn’t. You know, I had a few ex-girlfriends who left me in the past. Do you know what they all had in common? ME. Just a little opportunity for some introspection here…

In sum, it’s not exactly far fetched to think that companies that don’t do exit interview just don’t care about their employees. Not for those who quit, and not for those who remain. 

I’m well aware that this last statement goes against the title of this post. But let’s continue, shall we?

Many companies do exit interviews

Now that’s a little better: companies that can put their ego aside and want to improve. Very well, and it’s much to their credit. Especially organizations that have a real will to change things.

According to the survey above (which isn’t representative) and knowing what I know about companies in general (which is a little more representative but also biased), a lot of companies will take note of the problems, but won’t do anything to change things.

It appears to be a common practice but that’s taken quite lightly. I don’t know if organizations have any idea of the impact it can have to ask people what needs to be changed and do nothing about it.

While everyone is different, if a problem is serious enough for someone to leave, it is likely that others are affected as well. Especially when it comes to a draconian manager, harassment, important problems with a client, important problems with a team member.

If we meet with people, that we acknowledge the problem and do nothing about it, the situation can and will easily turn into a cynicism generator.

The real problem with exit interviews

My real problem with exit interviews is the fact that problems are acknowledged only once someone announced he’s going to leave. Oh now, all of a sudden, we care about what this employee was going through!

And that is the problem. If you suddenly care about your employees only when they leave, you deserve your turnover rate. And since I might not have been clear, here it is, on a large image.

So, I have a few questions for you:

• What are your managers doing? It’s their role to care for people, way before HR should get involved.
• Do your managers get the necessary coaching so that they can take ownership of their employees’ well being?
• Is there a collaboration between managers and HR? Are the problem acknowledged in the exit interview already known by HR, or are they a surprise every time?
• Do your managers have the necessary power to fix those problems before they turn into a departure?

Aiming at making exit interviews useless

Even if the departure is for health reasons, diverging interests, career development, none of these should go unknown by a good manager who cares for his colleagues.

For my part, I try to develop a trusting relationship with my employees. I know their aspirations, their pain points, I make sure I know where they project themselves in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, I know their next step, and I do whatever I can to help them get there, even if their next step will get them out of the company.

The necessity for an exit interview will always represent a red flag for me, as it suggests that the relationships between managers and employees aren’t transparent, that the employees don’t receive the attention and the support they need in order to grow in the organization.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com