Uomo in mare!

Engagement: hire it, do not try to create it

“Employee engagement” is a big buzz-word lately that I keep seeing in articles and blogs. It refers to how committed individuals are to the their work and organization. Researchers have often shown that engagement is related to productivity and quality of work. As a result, there is a big push for organizations to measure group engagement and seek to increase it through a variety of actions. 

I think this is misguided advice.

 I suggest that “engagement” stems from individual passion and optimism and drive. These come from within an individual. Yes, an organization can encourage  engagement by having opportunities for individual involvement and decision-making. It can fuel and focus existing passion; it can reward performance. But I seriously doubt any company can create engagement and work-related passion within any individual.

I suggest, instead, that passion, optimism, work engagement or drive must be assessed in the hiring process. Listen for it in what the candidates say about past jobs.  Engagement is something the candidate brings to the job. It is not something the job should be expected to give to the candidate.

What is the person’s passion? Purpose? What is important to this person? Does this person truly believe that problems can be solved and setbacks are external and temporary? Is there a history of achievement?  How has the person worked in the past? Was there passion and a sense of accomplishment, regardless of how menial or narrowly-defined the actual job might have been? What was the individual able to add to the job (rather than vice-versa)

The right person will feel engaged at any job, at least for a while, whether working as a short-order cook, a bundler in a box factory, or a pizza delivery driver. Someone who has passion for work will find a way to feel engaged in whatever he or she is doing. That is the kind of person you want in any job.

Engagement—hire it; do not try to create it.

Duane Lakin, Ph.D.

Consulting Psychologist 

“Free” traffic sources

Ritengo questa immagine molto interessante. Rappresenta, in sunto, la strategia di marketing online condotta da Seomoz. Seomoz è un’azienda di 32 persone, totalmente priva di un reparto commerciale, che ha chiuso il 2010 con 5,7M $ di fatturato e l’83% di gross margin. 

Fonte: Mario Lupi’s Blog

Google Search Sucks

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, has written a very interesting article in which he talks about how Google search has lowered its quality, and highlighted some interesting points to give more relevance to this thesis:

- Google right now is mainly used for navigation, and not for specific research (Facebook is the most searched word in 2010).

- Searching for something specific (travel, hotels, reviews), and obtain specific answers on Google has become very hard - Google started to track and follow its competitors, looking for long-term solutions to its problems showing possible signs of crisis.

- There is an extreme need for a viable competitor to Google to push it to improve.

What do you think?

(via Tin Hang Liu from Michal Arrington)

Venerdì 11, Roma: That’s Crowdsourcing

Venerdì 11 sarò a Roma per la Social Media Week a parlare di Crowdsourcing e mostrare in diretta all’evento “That’s Crowdsourcing” il processo con cui funziona BestCreativity. Verrà lanciata una gara da 1000 euro con cui si chiederà al pubblico e ai creativi di realizzare il logo per il sito Saperlo.it.

Devo ammettere di essere fiducioso ma allo stesso tempo molto curioso di conoscere i risultati di questa tipologia di lavoro collettivo applicato ad un ambito temporale così ristretto.

Se sei a Roma e sei interessato all’evento ti invito a iscriverti utilizzando questo link. In alternativa puoi provare a mettere alla prova la tua creatività lavorando con i migliori creativi di BestCreativity, collegandoti sul sito venerdì tra le 14 e le 16.