What happens to employee engagement when there’s no urgency?

Disney employee culture author Jeff Noel writing at Disney Springs entrance
Smile, it’s a nice reflection on you. Especially when there are writing deadlines to be met.

What happens to employee engagement when there’s no urgency?

What happens to you when there’s no employee engagement urgency?

Recall what you accomplished when you had something super urgent?

Write it down now: What was it, why was it urgent, what was the outcome and why?

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Trapped in our employee culture comfort?

unique map of Magic Kingdom's location
Lower right construction area is Golden Oak and The Four Seasons Orlando at Walt Disney World.

Trapped in our employee culture comfort?

The employee culture we could create will always be a barrier to what we are unwilling to give up.

The barriers revolve around the effort we will need to summon. This universally feels like too much energy, time, money, and discomfort.

So we don’t do anything.

Even when we choose not to decide, we still have made a choice.

What kind of organizational employee culture do you long to become?

What’s missing from making that happening?

What are you willing to change?

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

It doesn’t matter what employees look at

small alligator on drain
Three, maybe four-footer.

It doesn’t matter what employees look at, what matters is what employees see

When we focus on the surface, we risk missing everything else.

Imagine that for a moment.

You may marvel at Disney’s world-famous grooming guidelines and completely miss the fact that grooming guidelines aren’t the insight.

The insight is Disney’s uncompromising focus on delivering what the Guest wants.

The Guest wants something Magical, something no one else in the world provides.

And prior to Disneyland, the American standard for a Family outing was an Amusement Park, a Circus, a State Fair, a Carnival.

The American Carnival was a traveling show. Descending on a town, the Carnival would quickly set up in a vacant field or empty parking lot.

The mechanical rides never won awards for passenger safety.

The Carnival workers, known as “Carnies”, had a reputation for being unkempt.

Walt Disney ruptured the negative stereotypes and reinvented the industry, including the workers, becoming a category of one.

Why?

Because the Public would pay for quality, return often, and tell their friends.

Is there an employee you know who wouldn’t want that?

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

Make an uncommon employee culture book

Disney Institute consulting model
Disney Institute consulting model.

One of the ideas was making an uncommon book

Make an employee engagement book that flies in the face of what normal books look like?

Are you crazy?

  • What if people shun it?
  • What if it doesn’t work?

You can feel the logic in those questions because they’re no-brainer questions, questions every smart leader would ask.

But what about these.

  • What if people love it?
  • What if it works better than your wildest dreams?

Of course, there’s no guarantee either way.

This is why most people, and most organizations, stay on the tried and true path of good and very good.

The commitment to make excellence the only goal is scary for most.

Why?

Because it requires risk.

Risk scares people and organizations.

This is fundamental, elementary even.

And true.

But what if instead of being scary, risk was embraced as essential to your health and the health of your organization?

Not until leaders, and organizations, desire to make employee engagement risk-taking mandatory will cultural transformation start spreading its wings.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.

Employee Engagement Next Steps activity

Classic Jungle Cruise Skipper humor
Get it? Jingle Cruise.

Employee Engagement Next Steps activity

Strike while the iron is hot. Iron is easily malleable when hot, and impossible to shape when not.

Now (yes, right now) is the time to write down some important, top-of-mind  employee engagement thoughts.

Make a few lists and don’t fuss over minute details – this is high-level, very rough-draft thinking. Have fun, and don’t over-analyze. This should be quick:

Who (whom should you involve):

What (what needs to be done):

Where (where will the work occur):

When (when will the work happen):

How (how will the work be accomplished):

Why (why is this important; what’s to be gained by doing it, what’s to be lost by doing nothing):

How’d that feel?

Have you perceived what’s happened in the past few minutes?

You’ve just started planting, on paper, the seeds of intentional employee culture behavior that will facilitate the slow and steady path forward to employee engagement transformation.

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This website is about our BODY. To read today’s post about our SPIRIT, click here.