Schlagwort-Archive: Enthusiasm

The flame – the ideal metaphor for enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is the fuel that propels the economy. Since 2001, the Gallup institute unfortunately determines in its Engagement Index that over two-thirds of employees have a low emotional engagement to their company. About 15% have none at all. Only 15% have a high emotional engagement to their company. The supervisors have a great influence on it. Gallup estimates that bad bosses are annually responsible for economic costs between 80 and 100 billion euros due to employee resignation. Obviously, they do not manage to ignite the enthusiasm of the employees. It would take not more than an appropriate matchstick. The rough surface of everyday life is already available. The inflammatory transmission of fire makes the flame the ideal metaphor for enthusiasm.

Technically, it is clear what to do.

  • Igniting
    Before people are able to get excited, you have to attract their attention. Unusual and surprising connections awaken them from their everyday lethargy. Now they need a personal advantage and the opportunity to contribute. The fire sparks off when the employees are part of the planning, development and decision-making. As soon as the highly flammable components, the employees’ need for appreciation and the appropriate attention of the bosses, rub against each other, a spark is ignited that jumps from one to another.
  • Flaring
    The power of enthusiasm is the tinder that leads into a self-reinforcing cycle – employees excite employees, who delight customers, who stimulate business that excite employees, etc. In order to use these self-reinforcing mechanisms, the employees need enough room, where they can meet autonomously, support each other and decide. It all starts with a small flame that is fed by flammable material in order to evolve into a big fire, until finally thick pieces of wood release the desired energy.
  • Warming
    For a pleasant working day of the employees, they need meaningful and diverse activities, decision-making independence, a pleasant working atmosphere, an appropriate salary and security. In addition to the simple components of compensation, the executive behavior plays a major role – attention, respectful treatment and employee appreciation. These aspects have a similarly warming effect, like the illustrative fireplace where people have been gathering around from time immemorial.
  • Enlightening
    At least, about 15% of the employees are fully committed. This may be the reason why, despite a tense mood, results are still generated for which customers are willing to pay. These successes captivate additional employees. This requires the appropriate role models that result from respectful treatment and executive appreciation. In order to illuminate the room with the fire, one should offer the employees a stage where they can shine.
  • Burning
    It would be naive to forget that enthusiasm consumes step by step the resources of the employees. If they lack recovery time, i.e. no refueling with combustibles, they become at the end of the day a pile of ashes, where nothing flammable remains. This results in depersonalization (indifference, cynicism, distance), emotional exhaustion (irritability and impotence), and suffered failures (meaningfulness, perceived ineffectiveness) or, in one word, Burnout. Employees who burn brightly without new fuel are also at risk of burning out. That’s the price of the fire. It does not stop eating.
  • Fading
    The results of the study show that about 15% of the employees have a high emotional attachment to their company. As long as the fire burns, the existing energy should be used to disseminate the enthusiasm in the company. The most important lever has the management level. The respectful interaction with employees has a significant impact on their well-being. Once the fire has completely disappeared, the only question left is whether the company has enough time to start all over again – or simply disappears.

Bottom line: The flame follows the same steps as the employees’ enthusiasm – starting with a fuze that ignites the fire; the tinder that flares up easily; the warmth that keeps you in a motivated state; the light that shows you the way; the refill that prevents everything from burning out; to the certainty that a fire eventually goes extinct, if you do not take care of it. These phases and the contagious nature of fire make the flame an ideal metaphor for enthusiasm.

The agility of the elders

Thinking about agility, we have in mind the everyday life of hundred-year old people, who live their life with good conditions. Or the Tai Chi master, who still makes his exercises later in life. Or the entrepreneur, who leads his enterprise far beyond the age of retirement. Or the concierge, who reads any desires from your lips for decades and does not feel too important to fulfil some errands by himself. Often older people are described as agile, when they keep certain fitness. Even enterprises want to become more and more agile. Can they learn anything from the agility of the elders?

Agility in business is above all defined by the agile manifesto.  Attentive readers recognize that the manifesto refers to software development. However, outside of the IT-department other basic conditions are valid – less development, more routine, more complex relationships. And nevertheless many new approaches get the new adjective agile – agile project management, agile organization, agile product development, agile HR development.

Young Start-ups are by nature dynamic. They act without the burden of over time developed structures and formalisms. Decisions are made, where the energy is and facts are created. Established organizations want to go back to the early years, when they engaged for the whole without bureaucracy – of course with their long-standing experience. What can these enterprises learn from the elderly?

  • The remaining abilities
    The craft to react in the existing context swift and clever makes the difference – try new things, question existing things, develop energy from within. The tayloristic task arrangement makes it no longer possible to become active outside of your own scope of responsibility. Enterprises want to have committed entrepreneurship and need to become agile for it.
  • The sprightly constitution
    After the purposefully created areas produce new rules, forms and procedures without interruption, without ever to abolishing outdated ones, the enterprises are at risk to become senile. The existing rules are like chunky knight armor with no elbow room. Debureaucratization fails because of the bureaucracy. One cannot negotiate with the frogs about the drainage of their pond. That way enterprises hinder themselves. They have to find open forms of regulations, e.g. value-based governance.
  • The robust structure
    The robustness can be seen in how resistant and steady the involved people are. Difficulties of the business tasks can be mastered safer, if you are well-trained and wiry. In order to do the right things right, the structures have to follow the results and the customers – and being adjusted again and again.
  • The boundless enthusiasm
    Agile teams are euphorically at work and are always on fire for their topic. Passion is the best fuel for the own stimulus. Boundless joy of activity carries also those away, who do not have much momentum at the time. This positive energy cannot be ordered. For this purpose adequate basic conditions have to be created and must leave the involved people room for decisions – for example temporal self-determination and functional participation.

The way to agility crosses the elements that let somebody normally become senile – rheumatoid structures, stubborn approaches, limited perception, and lost mobility. Disturbing are age-related bad habits – missing error tolerance, expected priority for elders and blunt compliance. In the interest of a lasting fitness of the enterprise the decision makers must dissolve the calcification in their areas, since otherwise it can come to lethal apoplexies, due to organizational thromboses.

Bottom line: As soon as a certain age is reached, also enterprises must worry about their fitness. Agility provides potentials. It is important to receive or even re-activate the survival abilities to detoxify out-of-date regulations, to make the structures resilient and to promote a positive mood among all involved people. That way agility becomes the way out of stagnation. That is, what enterprises can learn from the agility of the elders.