I had dinner with an old friend a couple days ago and he told me this story.

My son – he’s four – has been going to a great daycare this summer.  They organize some kind of learning around theme days.  Last week they chose pirate days.  I’m not sure what they learned, but he brought home a little plastic compass.  Apparently you need compass on the bounding main.  I was leaving for work the next day.  I said goodbye and he offered me the compass.

“Here, Daddy,” he said.  “Take this with you so you always know which way is North.”  You know how that turns your heart to loving mush.  But he didn’t want me to get lost and knew that pirates use a compass to find their way on the open sea.  I was delivering training to new managers that day.  I started class by assuring them, “Thanks to my son, we can”t get lost, no matter what happens, because I have a compass and I know where I’m going.”

Not a verbatim account, but that’s what I heard.

We are all our own leaders

Every day the demands on the job threaten to distract us from the few simple good things we’re aiming at.  Thanks to a four year old, I’m reminded of the two most important principles to live and work by, no matter what you do or what level you’ve achieved in the organization.

Principles for being your own leader (Thanks to Cap’n Jack)

• Stick to the heading the leads to your destination.

• Be a pirate!

Once you start talking about climate in an organization, people want to know what this “climate idea” is good for.  Because if you turn it over a couple of times, it may just look like a theory.  What is climate thinking good for?

Climate is not really about happiness

Climate…

• Objectively reflects what people experience at work.  So first, it’s information you can only guess at today.  And you really do want to know what’s inside your team’s heads.
• Measures six dimensions of work that directly relate to people’s motivation and performance.  You don’t need a decoder ring to figure out what to do next.
• Measures the way leaders and managers are creating “the experience of work here.”  You don’t need to look somewhere else.  You can change climate.

Side note about leadership and managing

While managers should lead and most leaders also manage, they’re not the same capabilities.  I’m cribbing from John Kotter.  Leaders address and chart a course through complexity to achieve a set of objectives.  That means adapting to constant change.  Managers bring order and consistency to work so that it achieves those objectives.  That also means adapting to constant change.  This is not a caste distinction.  The organization needs as much of both as it can get.  But when we talk about climate, I’ll say “managers” and mean everyone who leads and manages.  Because they’re the ones who create climate, change climate, and are responsible for what it’s like to work around here.

Climate dimensions make sense

The power of climate lies in the way it readily makes sense.  People tend to be motivated by their work along these six dimensions (6D):

• Structure and clarity
• Standards
• Responsibility
• Recognition
• Teamwork or support
• Commitment

Even before I describe what these might mean, it’s not hard to see that giving people the right degree of responsibility for their work could be motivating, especially if you’ve recruited people who are motivated by a sense of autonomy.  Right away, ideas about how to give people still more responsibility as a reward for their growing expertise come to mind.  That leads to envisoning ways to make sure the standards for greater responsibility are clear, stated objectively, and then offered to anyone who will strive to meet higher standards of performance.

Remember that the first use of climate is to measure what it’s like “around here” today.  Low scores aren’t indicators that people aren’t happy.  (You’ve read survey results like those.  Do you really want to spend your time on making people happy?)  Climate scores show what to focus on.

But it is managers’ responsibility to exercise expertise and judgment to determine the right tactics.  They decide how much is enough of, say, teamwork and pressure to achieve high standards.  The objective is not to make people happy, but to help them be effective, and ensure that they can expect to be effective.  You may make them happy as well.

If you were given the list above and told to manage your people using only these six dimensions as tools, what would be left out?

So for example, focus on responsibility.  Where would the work and the experience of work improve if your people could exercise more autonomy and take responsibility for it?