Catlette Bill - Contented cows still give better milk: the plain truth about employee engagement and your bottom line

CONTENTS

Copyright 2012 by Contented Cow Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN 978-1-118-29273-0 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-33401-0 (ebk);

ISBN 978-1-118-33180-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-33510-9 (ebk)

To William Catlette, Bills dad, who taught him a lifetime of lessons about determination, frugality, respect for others, having high standards, and how to fish. Only one of those courses was altogether fun, but they all made their mark. We miss him.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been written at all were it not for an introduction made by Jeb Blount, of Sales Gravy, and the encouragement of Lauren Murphy, our acquisitions editor at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., or nearly as well without a lot of helpful wordsmithing by development editor Christine Moore. All three are consummate professionals, and we thoroughly enjoy working with them.

We are indebted to Brad Ziemba and Mark McCranie, who once again helped with the financial research associated with the Contented Cow companies. A very special shout out goes to Jermia Jerdine, a graduating senior at the University of Memphis who also holds a full-time job and still volunteered to assist us with research and number crunching. This young lady is going to go places.

Thanks, too, to the representatives of Plantronics Mexico, Marriott, Incepture, and Zappos, whom we peppered with questions during our site visits, and to Joyce Folk of the Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway, who served up career insights along with strong coffee and a mean plate of eggs. Through her gracious hospitality, Rebekah Stewart, owner of Brigadoon Lodge and Flyline Wine, helped make the writing venue quieter, more scenic, and enjoyable.

For their time on the phone and over e-mail, we thank those we talked to from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Bazaarvoice, Hanmer MSL, LaRosas Restaurants, the City of Lakeway, Consolidated Health Systems, Dow Chemical, and Chick-fil-A. You brought to life for us what it means to be a distinguished workplace.

We are eternally thankful to the folks at Nestl for their support, without which this book would have a very different title.

We are grateful to our spouses for their unflinching support; no, its more than thatfor putting up with our single-minded obsession with this project for better than three months. Christine, Mary, were fortunate to have you in our lives.

INTRODUCTION

How Do the Best Get Better?

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

John Buchan

Since the original publication of this book in 1998, the workspaceindeed, much of the worldhas been stood on its head. Oh, people (most of us, anyhow) still have jobs that produce income that allows us to sustain ourselves. But nearly all the terms of the deal have changed.

The old Protestant work ethic to which our parents and grandparents subscribedthe maxim that suggested that good things will happen to you if you keep your nose to the grindstone and your mouth closedbusted. The notion that, by definition, all work occurs within the confines of an employers workplacegone. Loyalty and obedience to the organizationvamoose, along with job security and defined pension benefits. The bright line between personal and professional time and activitiescompletely blurred. The assumption that there must be something wrong with you if you are unemployed for more than a few weeksforget it. The expectation that workers would receive training before starting a new job functionoutsourced, eliminated, or relegated to do-it-yourself status.

In a nutshell, the game has changed in material ways. The rules are different, the field is bigger, the pace exponentially quicker, the goalposts narrower, shareholders less forgiving, and the talent is more elusive, cynical, and mercenary. An entire project or career can be launched or terminated with 138 characters and an RT.

One aspect of workspace physics remains rock solid, however: the precept that focused, fully engaged workers produce more and better stuff, yielding better outcomes. Motivated people move faster; they always have and always will. When you view this through the other end of the telescope, it is obvious that no onerepeat, no onedespite repeated attempts by a number of commercial airlines, can achieve success by foisting disgruntled, disenfranchised workers upon paying customers. Its a simple, relatively understood and accepted conceptat least in theory.

Its another thing altogether in practice, however. We tend to lose sight of what motivates people to want to contribute more, become weak-kneed at the prospect of actually doing those things, or arrogantly (and mistakenly) conclude that a weak labor market overrides the need to be concerned about them.

Our purpose is to once again bring front and center the very real, tangible benefits of treating people right in the workplace and to clearly define just what right means. ( Hint: It may not be what you think.)

How does one organization achieve unprecedented levels of success over a substantial period of time while a nearly identical competitor strugglesor goes down the tubes completely? Is the formers success the result of better mousetraps, dumb luck, or maybe just better execution? Consider, for example: