22 Keys to Creating a Meaningful Workplace -- Part 3
The People Keys
| Respect |
| Equality |
| Informality |
| Flexibility |
| Ownership |
Respect
In a meaningful workplace, everyone holds everyone in high regard.
When there's conflict it's worked out in a way that keeps everyone's esteem intact.
First, Look in the Mirror
Some pointed questions:
| Are you ever selective with your hellos? |
| Do you ever engage in watercooler gossip? |
| When something goes wrong in your workplace, do you immediately look for someone to blame? |
| Do you make judgments abut people based on what they're wearing or how they look. |
| do you tend to go forward single-handedly and do things to people or for them? |
| Have you ever given one of your colleagues a disrespectful piece of your mind? |
To Me, Respect Is...
Once you have an introspective conversation with yourself, you can take another leap forward by organizing an conversation with colleagues:
| What does respect mean to each of you? |
| How do you know when it's thriving? |
| What are the warning signs when respect is waning? |
Is Respect a Stated Priority?
A Little Empathy goes a Long Way
Assume the Best
When in doubt, give the benefit of the doubt.
Making Decisions with People
The next time you make a decision, give fuller thought to who might be affected. Ask for their input.
Take a Stand
When it comes to creating a respect-filled workplace, very often what you need
are good old-fashioned guts.
Becoming Part of the Solution
Respect needs care and feeding, and true to its reciprocal nature, the care and
feeding need to start with you.
Equality
Equality tends to be organizational. In a meaningful workplace, there's no class system driving wedges between people.
The Danger of Manageable Pieces
Manageable pieces start to turn on themselves, making the sum of those pieces
anything but manageable.
The Power of Words
You just might hear inequality in a few key phrases:
| John and Mary work under (over) Jennifer. |
| I oversee people in accounting. |
| Frank works for me. |
| I'm the boss. |
| Share this with your subordinates. |
| Frank is one of my direct reports. |
| Make sure this gets to the lower levels. |
| Tell your people about the changes. |
Using the Right Words
Rethink Those Job Titles
Reinvent Your Get-Togethers
Haves and Have-Nots
Resources are another battleground where equality often loses:
| Which employees can tap into learning opportunities? |
| Which have email or web access? |
| Who has computers? |
| Who has old computers and who had the newest, fastest loaded-to-the-teeth models? |
| Who gets free uniforms or reserved parking spaces or company cars? |
Trading in Layers for Projects
One powerful alternative to traditional hierarchy is to adopt a project mindset.
A Fair Day's Pay for a Fair Day's Work
Informality
Informality is evident in the way people personalize their work areas.
Why is This Important?
Where formality reigns, you also often find excessive hierarchy.
Don't Take My Word for it
Look at the formality within your organization.
The Small Stuff Can Be Big Stuff
Start small, and begin with the one person you can always count on: yourself.
A change of Scenery
To Whom It May concern: Please Lighten Up
Is Your Policy Manual Full of Formal Decrees?
Flexibility
Extensive written procedures that dictate exactly how to do one's work:
| Do all these rules help employees? Do they help customers? |
| If not, why do we keep them? |
| For that matter why do we want to populate the workplace with people who "play by the rules"? ("Play by the mission") |
In a meaningful workplace, mission and people come first and rules are there to the degree that they help.
Rules Will Fill the Mission Void
The Twin Traps of Efficiency and Consistency
Another culprit is our preoccupation with efficiency and consistency.
Make Flexibility Everyone's Business
Your first challenge in addressing all this is to make flexibility not just your concern, but everybody's business.
Prompts guaranteed to stir constructive dialogue:
| "Flexible workplace" can be open to wide interpretation. What does it mean to you? |
| When have rules hampered people's ability to carry out their mission? |
| When have rules interfered with things that are important to customers? |
| Do procedures suffer from inflexibility? |
Making the Most of "Test Cases"
Remain alert to situations in which organizational rules, policies, and procedures are put to the test.
Just Say No to New Rules
Get Creative with Schedules and Technology
Procedures As Fossils
When procedures are committed to paper as "our way of doing things", they have a way of getting fossilized.
Making Flexibility a Priority
Ownership
Empowerment is inherently paternalistic -- high-ups in the organization selectively giving things to other people.
It boils down to a bestowing of power, something that not only fits the old us-and-them model but also perpetuates it.
Keep the Other Keys in Mind
If it's simply dropped into a rule-driven, permission-seeking workplace, chaos will ensue.
Perhaps more than any other key, ownership needs to be pursued hand in hand with other meaning keys.
You can make ownership an integral part of your work life and workplace.
Asking Versus Taking
Helping Others Achieve Ownership
Get More Hands on the Clay
The Challenge for Managers
Issues and practical ideas for increasing ownership:
| What do you have to hide? Make everything accessible unless there's a persuasive reason to do otherwise. |
| Customer Info: A meaningful place to start |
| Do away with all those sign-offs Process speed bumps are a signal that people can't be trusted. |