Dave Bookbinder wrote an interesting blog on what comes first: happiness or success? Are successful people happy? Or are happy people successful? From a phase-wise development perspective both statements are true, but in different contexts. In the vocabulary of Spiral Dynamics, the first statement expresses the value system of the orange world, common to profit-driven organizations and the latter one is a typical truth in the green value system.
In his attempt to answer this question, Bookbinder assembled various sources showing the connectedness between happiness, productivity and success. Modern scientists have confirmed green-world-thinking, concluding that indeed happy people are more successful than people acting in the orange world achieving success and being satisfied with the outcome of their work. Professional organizations, as defined in the Cubrix, are indeed more successful, as shown in for instance “Firms of endearment” and “Great by choice.”
The basic factor underlying the connectedness between happiness, productivity and success is the individual mindset.
Clearly, a negative, disengaged mindset deteriorates success. When you are stressed, your heart beats chaotically, your hormones produces juices that support your will to survive but temporarily undermines your capacity to think, focus or be creative. That is why an organization that runs as a hyper zone is not successful. Swiss research by Heike Bruch clearly shows a significant drop in productivity. Another situation with likewise performance is when employees show an attachment to remain in their comfort zone, successful in turning down challenges and avoiding changes.
The key role of organizations is to support employees in a way that they become inspired to work together as in a productive zone: highly engaged and committed to their work and their purpose, while mastering their abilities as a professional.
This is why I do not agree with the phrase: Return on Individuals (the new ROI). A better phrase would be Return on Workforce (ROW), combined with an individualRelevance factor (R), indicating the individual’s contribution to this process.
RETURN on WORKFORCE (ROW)
Why am I against the idea of employee return?
I think there is a fair chance that a employee might not be successful due to the way an organization manages its processes. Success is a collective result, and should therefor be aligned with the workforce, a collective entity.
At the same time an individual employee can be held responsible for three specific capacities, three embodied qualities: vitality, motivation and competences. No one else can fulfill these qualities, except the individual itself. With this package an individual employee strives to be relevant for an organization, being engaged in the process of adding value to stakeholders. We come to that later.
Left: individual’s responsibility en Right: organization’s responsibility Both figures developed by M. van Marrewijk (2016)
It is in the benefit of an organization to support its employees in developing these qualities. Failing to do so, companies should be punished to pay a mobility fee whenever they want to fire employees, enabling them to raise their competence level and become relevant for new companies.
One can measure the level of the three themes,
as indicated in the figure.
The wider the surface of the blue dotted triangle,
the higher the Relevance factor.
The generic purpose of an organization is to create synergy out of a group of people. Through the process of organizing a company – or any organization – has to bring the qualities of individual people to a collective level. Evidently, it does something to the nature of the collective qualities. Creating a healthy organization is much more than hiring healthy people. ‘Having the right people on the bus’ – it is a prerequisite to have motivated and engaged employees, but they also need a common purpose, an inspiring vision and a dedicated support to bring out the best of their talents. So, the motivation of people transforms – through the process of organizing – into a common focus on enduring performance. The third angle, the collective competences of the employees, must be converted into added value towards the various stakeholders. Here effectiveness plays an important role in the value creation process. In short, it is the responsibility of an organization to generate a focus on enduring performance through (1) the creation of a healthy organization and (2) the value creation process of converting individual competences into added value for different stakeholders. This conclusions beautifully aligns with the outcome of Keller & Price’s research described in “Beyond Performance”
Engagement
Being engaged is the outcome of the interaction of an individual employee in its working environment. So, both employer and employee are responsible for the level of engagement. However, the low engagement scores, provided by the 2015 Gallup Survey is mainly a challenge for companies, as they are supporting the working environment and often demotivating people by micro-managing the work of professionals.
We now know that the way people feel at work profoundly influences how they perform. This does not mean we should place this responsibility to the employees to feel good.
On the other hand there are ways to practice reducing the feeling of stress and creating happiness at work. This remains entirely in the zone of influence of the employees’ themselves. So, support could include such practices and stimulate a culture in which people take initiative to apply these practices. The willingness to do so is preceded by the efforts of an organization to adequately support its employees.
Copyright
28 september 2016
Marcel van Marrewijk
Marcel van Marrewijk is a Dutch boardroom consultant and organization architect. He wrote The Cubrix, an integral framework for managing performance improvement and organizational development, in Dutch. The English version is forthcoming.