The Spoon

We live in a world of dramatic, tumultuous, and unpredictable change—change that is wiping out time-honored businesses and long-standing institutions and ushering in unprecedented opportunities for creative individuals and entrepreneurial organizations. So pervasive is change today that it has redefined our first task: The job is no longer figuring out how to win at the game of work and life; the job is figuring out the new rules of the game.

Truly engaged employees are committed employees. To get yourself to become committed to an organization involves truly believing in what the organization's purpose, what it's doing, and the people who are leading it.

Getting commitment takes more than the employee making the choice to be loyal and committed. It involves YOU leading them to the choice of being committed and engaged. To maximize your chances of getting long-term commitment from your people during trying economic times, be real and use Engaging Leadership. Here's how:

1. Tell people what you want to accomplish.
2. Tell them what led you to believe it's important to them and to you.
3. Tell them your own struggles along the way.
4. Tell them how long you've been thinking about "it".
5. Tell them you are committed to it.
6. Tell them your plan for helping them be able to do "it."

OK, I'm going to show a little of my nerdiness here, but do you remember 2 years ago when the International Astronomical Union striped Pluto of its "planet" status? Most of you probably heard about it, many of you probably didn't really care... but I urge you to consider this:

If change can happen to something as certain as a PLANET, it can certainly happen to us. And it does. Everyday.

Pluto's reclassification changed the rules of the game, and organizational change can be like that too. There you were confident and comfortable with your boss, and now you must readjust and reorient to a new one with a different style, focus, and rules. Like it. Don't like it. Regardless, get on board!

"Change is good. Everybody is doing it... Get on board!" -- Will Anderson, Channel Marketing Manager, Double-Take Software

People commonly tell me, "We need leadership training." After digging deeper into what they call "leadership training", I find what they're typically looking for is management skill development.

The terms "leadership" and "management" are quite often used interchangeably, but there is a profound difference and both are important to your job today.

I've made my distinction between the two simple:

Of course, to be a good manager one must have many leadership traits. Good leaders are good managers and vice versa. Leadership and management are very much intertwined, so discounting characteristics of one is discounting the importance of the other.

Times are changing, folks, and it impacts more than just your 401k and investments. This economic slowdown is more than the failure of our banking system and credit markets. This failure is signaling major changes that will affect all functions of business.

Here's an excerpt from Thanksgiving, The Economy, and Recruiting by Kevin Wheeler (posted on ere.net on Nov. 26, 2008).

The Depression of the 1930s redefined the agriculturally-based banking and finance world and made it competitive and efficient for an industrial age.

We are now in a similar period.

The nature of business and work is rapidly evolving. Organizational structure will become less hierarchical, more nimble, and flexible. Employees will begin to be treated with respect as investors — not assets or human capital. People are the most precious of success factors, and we each choose to invest our time and skills in an organization that respects and listens to us. When we are not respected, we move on. Entrepreneurship has grown rapidly in response to the lack of respect innovative employees have been given.

Look to see the finance system change to reward innovation. Look at small organizations with a global network or loosely allied suppliers and partners to dominate the economic climate of this century. It is the end of GM and other large, hierarchal organizations that were the model of efficiency in an industrial age.

Many of us will miss the familiarity and the rules of the past that gave us a sense of security and certainty. But surely this economic meltdown must signal to the most conservative of believers that times are changing.

Indeed, even our profession [recruiting] is changing fundamentally, although we are just beginning to see and understand those changes. The habits and skills we developed in a slower-moving, more certain 20th century no longer work so well. Our cheese has been moved, as the eponymous book says, and we will miss the familiar world of job boards, resumes, face-to-face recruiting, ringing telephones, cold calls, and classified ads. Technology and the Internet still feel unfamiliar and foreign to many recruiters, but we have entered a technology-dominated, virtual era.

Read More about the implications on recruiting talent.