How much do you take things for granted?
Something that helps keeps me on guard against this is an unforgettable experience I had when in the army. For safety reasons we had to move a powerful sangoma (witch-doctor) from his rural village in Zimbabwe to the nearest town. The situation had been explained to him and agreed and we were sent in a helicopter to fetch him. This man left his grass-and-mud hut and climbed into the helicopter with no hesitation whatsoever, as if it was an everyday occurrence. Yet, once we got him to town, we had to explain to him how to use a tap (faucet) to get water, and he then spent the entire remainder of the day simply turning the tap on and off – absolutely fascinated.
Perhaps you have something that affects you like that? For me it remains the fax – putting a piece of paper in a machine at one side of the world and knowing someone at the other side of the world is printing it out. (And this despite the fact it is already outdated technology!)
The thing is, taking things for granted is entirely natural. Often there is no harm in it. The problem comes when we start to take people for granted. That’s not so good, but, regrettably, we all tend to do it. So we constantly need reminders not to. Like the one in a TED Talk I watched this week.
The speaker was photographer Louie Schwartzberg and I thoroughly recommend that you invest the time to watch him yourself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V57cuwQR8II. Describing his fascination with nature he talks about butterflies and bees and their vital roles in our survival which we take too much for granted. He then says, “It’s the little guys, who we often take for granted, who are the pollinators of life.”
What a great analogy! As someone who champions the appreciation and valuation of people in organisations, I just find it so powerful. It illustrates beautifully my mantra that “success is never an individual achievement.” It is the little guys doing their job who ensure your organisation survives. To date I have illustrated the point using the ground staff at major football stadia: If they don’t do their job properly, we would not enjoy the spectacle to the same extent while an uneven field could lead to a bad bounce that could cost their side the league and many millions of pounds. This is so much more poetic, powerful and profound!
Think about how you feel when you are taken for granted. You certainly do not feel engaged. Yet how often do you take your people for granted? Lack of employee engagement is almost certainly a sign of people feeling they are being taken for granted. People who are noticed, appreciated and thanked are never disengaged.
So, before you do anything else – before you take any further action – on your employee engagement programme, ensure that you have a system or structure in place to ensure that your people feel valued. And, for your people to feel valued, you have to treat them as though they are valued. My human asset accounting methodology ensures this.