>Santiago Jaramillo
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AGILE ENGAGEMENT
How to Drive Lasting Results by Cultivating a Flexible, Responsive, and Collaborative Culture
SANTIAGO JARAMILLO
TODD RICHARDSON
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 2017 by Santiago Jaramillo and Todd Richardson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available:
ISBN 9781119286912 (Hardcover)
ISBN 9781119286929 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119286936 (ePub)
Cover Design: Wiley
To our loving parents, who prepared us to face life's challenges with humility, energy, and appreciation for all the blessings bestowed upon us.
To all employees who desire true engagement in their work lives. May this book help enlighten organizations around the world and make our dream of full engagement for all workers a reality.
To all bosses, coworkers, and partners who demonstrate the power of engagement and the amazing results that are possible when hearts, minds, and hands\break align at work.
Thank you.
Preface
Behind every worker – including you – is a unique combination of motivations. It gets you up in the morning when you would rather stay in bed. It keeps you coming back to work when you would rather quit. It makes you want to do better than you did yesterday, to be better.
For some people, they work in order to provide for their families, to send their kids to colleges, to care for aging parents, or to put food on the table while their spouses pursue educational ambitions. For others, they appreciate the mental or physical challenge, the opportunity to travel, or are personally passionate about the subject matter. Or, perhaps, they genuinely enjoy their colleagues and their managers, and that's enough to keep them coming back day after day.
Though the why behind each worker differs, the desire for professional engagement is universal.
Given the individuality of motivation, however, how are companies supposed to engage their workforces at large? How can they build and develop cultures that advance both organizational goals and the individual goals of every worker? It's not easy, but it is possible. And this book shows you how.
The topic of employee engagement and workplace cultures is not new. In fact, in recent years, it seems like every corporate blogger, speaker, and consultant touts the importance of culture and employee engagement. Theoretical discussions abound, but few people have put forth concrete strategies that help get you from point A (unengaged) to point B (fully engaged). The workplace is evolving so rapidly, in fact, that employees are feeling less and less engaged with their work. Collectively, we are in the midst of an engagement crisis. The only way out is to focus on people over processes, real engagement over cookie-cutter programs, consistent intentionality over passive manipulation, and healthy change over rigid planning. For those already familiar with technology management philosophies, what we are suggesting is the application of agile principles to the world of employee engagement.
People, and consequently employees, are extremely complex. There is not a single set of engagement rules that can be outlined during your company launch party that are guaranteed to still work at by the time you reach your 10-year anniversary. People change. Companies change. Your approach must change alongside them. And you must involve employees in the process.
Enter Agile Engagement, which provides practical advice and counsel to demystify engagement and culture. We wrote this book to dramatically impact the way the world works and the way we all work within it. We wrote this book as a way to apply the proven principles of agile software development to the world of employee engagement. Most of all, we wrote this book to help heighten the level of engagement for all workers – not only managers, not only white-collar, and not only high-tech workers. All workers.
For engagement is, at its core, the great equalizer.
True engagement can be attained (and sustained) by anyone, anywhere, doing anything. However, engagement doesn't just happen. It requires intentionality, strategic workplace culture building, an employee engagement plan that is unique to your organization and your workers, and a commitment to continuous measure and improvement.
In the following pages, we will help you understand the importance of engagement and workplace culture. Moreover, we will give you a proven framework within which to create, build, and execute your engagement strategy over the long haul. We call this framework the Engagement Canvas and it leverages the powerful Emplify Score tool.
Agile Engagement Framework
The framework we utilize infuses agile principles throughout the employee engagement process. Consistent
