Mark Miller - Win the Heart: How to Create a Culture of Full Engagement

WIN THE
HEART

Other Titles by Mark Miller

The High Performance Series

Chess Not Checkers

Leaders Made Here

Talent Magnet

Other Books

The Heart of Leadership

The Secret of Teams

Coauthored
with Ken Blanchard

Great Leaders Grow

The Secret

Field Guides

The Heart of Leadership Field Guide

The Secret of Teams Field Guide

Field Guides Coauthored
with Randy Gravitt

The Secret Field Guide

Leaders Made Here Field Guide

Chess Not Checkers Field Guide

Talent Magnet Field Guide

Win the Heart Field Guide

HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE
OF FULL ENGAGEMENT

MARK MILLER

Win the Heart

Copyright 2019 by CFA Properties, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

Distributed to the U.S. trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publisher Services.

Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

First Edition

Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9987-0

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9988-7

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9989-4

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-9991-7

2019-1

Text designer: Marin Bookworks. Cover designer: Lindsay Miller. Horseshoe Heart: HammeredForge.com. Editing: PeopleSpeak.

T he life of a leader can be hectic. On most days, we have a dizzying array of problems screaming for our attentioninternal pressures such as staffing, quality, and capacity issues combined with external storm clouds propelling the war for talent, competitive pressures, and ever-changing governmental regulations, to name just a few.

In the midst of this cacophony is brewing a threat to our organizations, often unseen and unheard above the daily dinthe thief of sales, profits, customer satisfaction, and the pride in a job well done: low employee engagement.

The data on this topic is so consistently shocking, most leaders have become numb to the annual statistics. Some have even retreated into denial and chosen to stop thinking and talking about engagement. This is not the answer.

Engagement matters for several reasons.

First, there are the people. Their work life matters. As leaders, we have an opportunity to help people find meaning and purpose in their work. We can create a place where they can bring their best selves to work every day. The workplace we create determines, to a large extent, how engaged someone is at work. Do your people go home energized or disempowered at the end of a long day? We really do have the responsibility to decide.

Leaders should also care deeply about engagement because of the opportunity it presents. If we can harness the untapped potential buried deep within the hearts of our people, we can turn engagement from a liability into a real, sustainable competitive advantage and usher in gains in productivity unseen since the industrial revolution!

Finally, for many organizations, engagement is the final hurdle to becoming a high performance organization. I outlined this journey in my book Chess Not Checkers and have done a deep dive on some of the best practices in other recent books. For those who are not familiar with the concepts, here is a ten-second summary:

All high performance organizations have four things in common. They Bet on Leadership (Leaders Made Here), Act as One (Talent Magnet), and Win the Heart (covered in this book). These three moves enable them to Excel at Execution (to be covered in a book to be released in the spring of 2020).

Heres my encouragement to you: keep an open mind, check your assumptions about engagement at the door, and get ready to unleash the full potential of your people and your organization.

L ife was good: the kids were thriving, Megan was happy and involved in the community, and their income was better than it had ever been. And yet, at work, something wasnt rightand Blake was having trouble putting his finger on it.

He had read the reports, studied the financials, talked to customers, and listened intently to what his employees were saying about the state of the business. Blake was not merely listening to the music; he was attempting to hear the space between the notes, attempting to discern what was true but unspoken.

The best leaders all have the ability to see the unseen: changing trends, strategies that are coming to the end of their productive life, the untapped potential in people, and even threats just beyond the horizon. This leadership intuition compelled Blake to seek answers.

As he drove to work one morning, he considered the facts as he saw them: The organizations performance had plateaued. The competition was slowly gaining ground, but no one had even seemed to notice. People showed up, did their work, and went home.

He believed his people were just going through the motions. Now, their discontent was almost palpable; he sensed it in the shadows, avoiding for now the bright light of the monthly financials. Blake could imagine everyone in the organization calling out in silent desperation, I really dont care!

Thats it! he thought. That was the problem.

Blake didnt know what to do with this epiphany. However, once a problem was identified, even the faint outline of one, he wanted to move toward a solutionand fast.