needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy. The Vitality Imperative interprets and expands these essential elements as: community, contribution, and choice. In doing so, it further shatters the damaging notion of either/or thinking. Here’s the good news of The Vitality Imperative: You can both increase organizational vitality and dramatically increase business results!
As you read, you will discover the power of making community, contribution, and choice available in any organization. This makes you and your team more innovative because you are having fun. It fosters health because you and your team genuinely care and support one another. And it allows you and your team to accomplish the extraordinary because you are smarter collectively. And because no one has to live in fear and isolation, the best ideas emerge and win in an organization committed to fostering vitality.
As this book reveals, fostering vitality requires keeping seven promises. These promises do not exist only in the cognitive domain. Those committed to keeping them must also develop social, emotional, and physical awareness on the path to becoming connected leaders. For those that do, the rewards are energizing: you and your team successfully achieve the organization’s purposes with confidence, joy, and even enthusiasm. Who wouldn’t want that every day?
Years ago, while working for a major organization, I was visiting with a colleague about the looming specter of a downsizing and how to best cope. He turned to me and soberly reported, “I know we have great corporate values about respect for the individual and the power of teams, but maybe we can’t afford those values right now.” This shocking statement still haunts me as a too-common example of our false choices and assumptions. My own research shows it is precisely the times when we are facing daunting problems and conundrums that we must double-down on our beliefs and commitment for what we are in together. This opens new portals to what is possible—and in the process, expands our humanity. As a close research colleague, Dennis Sandow, once said, “To understand performance, follow the joy.” As great results can be sensed even before they arrive, I invite the reader to let joy, interest, and positive energy guide your own path to greater organizational vitality.
I cannot overemphasize that what is outlined in the following pages addresses what all human beings want—and what all organizations need. It is deceptively simple, but not necessarily a template easy to practice. Peak performance, thriving, and achieving – all these are both reason for and benefit from The Vitality Imperative. No organization, if it wishes to succeed, flourish, and sustain over time, can afford to ignore this call to action. You can’t either.
Anne Murray Allen, DSocSci
September 2015
Anne Murray Allen is a Global Partner with Conversant, specializing in organization design, collaboration, and integration. She previously served in executive positions within Hewlett-Packard (HP), at Willamette University, and with her own consulting practice. She has worked with clients such as Babcock & Wilcox, CH2M Hill, Lockheed Martin, Port of Portland, and The Nature Conservancy. Anne has taught graduate level management classes and has presented at conferences around the world. She co-authored the 2005 Reflections Journal article, “The Nature of Social Collaboration: How Work Really Gets Done,” and is published in the July 2012 edition of OD Practitioner on culture integration when merging organizations. She is a past recipient of an American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) Torch Award. Anne is also a past trustee of the D.C.-based, non-profit Millennium Institute and is currently a member of The Academy for Systemic Change.
We are members of Conversant (conversant.com), a consulting firm researching and sharing how human connectivity shapes organizational performance. We say more about our practice at the end of the book.
The Vitality Imperative is based on our collective experiences and those of our colleagues and clients over the last thirty years. Please note, however, that the final chapter is a fictional story. While it is inspired by real people and events neither the characters nor the organization in which they work is real.
The Vitality Imperative is intended for organizational leaders who want to produce great results with less time, money and stress. We have found that management practices in large organizations around the world are inconsistent with the nature of being human. As Daniel Pink has said, “What science knows is not what business does” and that makes everything harder than necessary. We think it is time to fix that.
We intend this experience for readers:
• You think about causes of performance most people fail to consider.
• You notice things most leaders fail to notice.
• You take actions most leaders do not.
• You produce better results with less time, money and stress.
We would love to hear from you about your reactions to and uses of the information coming your way. We are reachable at [email protected].
Mickey Connolly, Jim Motroni, and Richard McDonald
20 September 2015
The prime requirement for achieving any aim, including quality, is joy in work.
—W. Edwards Deming
First and foremost leadership is about being a human being. The future world will be much more purpose- and values-driven, so we want leaders that clearly understand this. It’s important to make people feel more comfortable working in situations where the win-win is not driven just by your shareholder but by all stakeholders, and that requires a different skill set.
—Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever
Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future.
—Hannah Arendt
Pam is quitting.
“I don’t know what I’ll do next,” she says, “I am leaving because almost anything will be better than this.”
A highly regarded manager at one of the largest corporations in the world, Pam is talented, well-compensated, and has much of her career ahead of her.
“We’ve gone through years of trying to do more with less. It has not worked. We move from acquisitions to layoffs to demanding more from overwhelmed employees who begin to hate their work. I don’t want to be part of that toxic cycle any longer. There has to be a better way to lead an organization.”
Pam’s company has experienced sporadic increases in productivity per employee, but they’ve done it by demanding more output, not improving how work gets done. Productivity numbers are now in rapid decline and high performers are on their way out the door.
Pam’s company is learning the hard way that increasing stress is not a sustainable source of productivity improvement.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Susan
