Maybe you are still asking yourself: Why should we implement the Dream Manager Program? At every step in the process the Dream Manager Program provides significant insights about what motivates and engages individual employees. As a manager this knowledge is indispensable. Most managers spend too much time trying to guess what motivates and inspires their employees. How much time is spent, or wasted, every year in corporate America trying to work out what incentive programs will be most effective? The beauty of the Dream Manager Program is that employees tell you what engages and motivates them.
Understanding what drives different people is critical to managing people and teams.
In my work with teams, organizations, and individuals, I am always interested in the many unique differences that exist. Though lately, I have been more intrigued by the recurring similarities that I am witnessing.
In the closing decades of the twentieth century, we saw a number of trends dominating the workplace, particularly of note here are the trends that related to the attitudes of workers.
In the 1980’s there was an enormous emphasis on financial compensation and extended working hours. In the 90’s we saw a noticeable shift toward leisure. Workers were still willing to work hard, and still wanted to be generously compensated, but they were less willing to sacrifice their personal lives and well-being. Now, in this new millennium, a new shift is emerging in the attitudes of workers. It exists just as a faint whisper now, but before long it will become a deafening roar. This new trend is toward meaningful work. The twenty-first century worker is no longer willing to work just to get paid, modern workers want to have a sense of satisfaction in the work they do.
This evolution of worker attitudes finds us far from the days when people were simply grateful to have a job, any job.
In each case these trends emerged first among those who could afford the change. Those who decide they won’t work an eighty-hour week are usually those who can afford not to. Those who step away from the corporate world to work for a non-profit they are passionate about are usually those who can afford to. It may be a relatively small number of people who are able to take these steps, but they tell us something about the whole worker population, and predict a sentiment that will explode among the general population of workers before too long. Some people may not be able to afford an entire shift but will make lifestyle adjustments to ensure a more fulfilling existence.
One of the significant ways we can track this sentiment among workers who cannot afford to make a full-time professional move toward more meaningful work is by examining the explosion of volunteer hours that people are contributing to their favorite causes each year. They are trying to fill a void, to satisfy their real and legitimate need for meaningful work.
Volunteering is many people’s attempt to compensate for their disengagement at work. Consciously or unconsciously they sense the need to be more fully engaged, but volunteering will only quench the desire to be more meaningfully engaged for so long. Often, volunteering to participate in a more meaningful endeavor only exaggerates the problem by creating a greater discontent for one’s daily work. This tends to lead people to start thinking about making a change professionally.
A couple of years ago I met a woman who was in the middle of this journey. She had a great job, was making good money, had a lot of fringe benefits that came with her role including A-list parties, first-class travel, and front row seats for any concert, to name a few. But over time that world began to feel increasingly shallow and superficial, so she started volunteering for the American Cancer Society. About two years later she accepted a full-time position with ACS, taking a significant cut in compensation in order to be more fully engaged.
More and more people are making a shift of one type or another, and that trend is only going to continue. Many, perhaps most, will stay doing exactly what they are doing, but only because they must in order to survive. It does not mean that they do not yearn for more meaningful work. Be assured, they do. It is these workers who have no other option - or think they have no options - who we should be most concerned about. These are the workers who are at highest risk of actively disengaging.
Corporate cultures around the world will pretend that this awakening is not taking place, and the more it is ignored the more workers will actively disengage. First they will disengage from the organization they work for, then from the work itself, and lastly, always lastly, from their colleagues, the people they work with.
Nothing will cause plummeting profitability like this disengagement. You can rest assured that this disengagement will be the greatest challenge modern managers and organizational leaders will face in the future.
The overwhelming desire of the twenty-first century worker will be for meaningful work. The consciousness of the worker has been evolving for centuries and it will necessarily lead to its highest expression in this desire for meaningful work.
I do not, however, live in the utopian delusion that we can find work for everyone that is intrinsically meaningful or of life-changing significance. I am not the first to recognize this truth. In fact, this truth has become so universally recognized that we have falsely accepted it as law. I do, however, want to boldly suggest that there is another way. If we cannot find work that is intrinsically meaningful for everyone, the other option is to teach people to bring meaning to even the most seemingly meaningless work. The Dream Manager concept makes this possible by linking a person’s work today with his or her dreams for the future.
Some work is highly meaningful in and of itself. Examples would include providing micro-financing in third-world countries, helping young people discover and pursue their passions, and seeking a cure for cancer. But only a very small number of jobs hold this level of meaning. Most jobs are several steps removed from the meaning and value they contribute to society, and so it is easy for workers to lose sight of their contribution. Collecting the trash may not seem that important to most people, but if we stopped collecting it for a few weeks, it would quickly become an urgent and important priority. In the same way, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that every time we buy or sell something, anything, we help create a job for someone, somewhere.
There are many jobs that have become so soulless and most managers would have a hard time convincing anybody that such work had meaning or could be fulfilling. This is true not only at the low paying end of the spectrum. There are a great many people on mid-six figure incomes, wondering what they are doing with their lives and yearning to make a more meaningful contribution.
It is this group of people that the modern manager must find a way to engage. The genius of the Dream Manager concept is that it creates the connection between the work of our daily lives and the dreams we have for our future. In the process it changes the way we see our work.
We cannot create work that is intrinsically meaningful for every person on the planet. But we can show people how to bring meaning to their work by encouraging them to expand their vision of themselves, to explore their possibilities for the future, and to look at their work in a new way.
My father went to work everyday to give my seven brothers and me opportunities that he never had. He was a salesman and enjoyed his work, but my father was under no illusions that his work was deeply meaningful or changing the world. That didn’t matter to him. It was honest work and he brought meaning to his job by seeing it as an opportunity to provide for his family and to grow in character.
The modern worker is desperately in need of a new approach. The modern manger is charged with the responsibility of teaching the worker to bring meaning to his or her work. Any honest human activity, however trivial or menial, can be transformed to become deeply meaningful in two ways.
First, by making the connection between our work and the opportunities it will create for our self and for others in the future. This is the dream factor. Working to achieve a sales goal, for example, is most successful when we consciously make the connection between achieving that goal and the dreams that it will enable us to fulfill.
The second way to bring meaning to our work, and elevate it exponentially, is to see our work as an opportunity to grow in character. When I work hard I become a-better-version-of-myself, and everything and everyone in my life benefits from this personal growth. When I pay attention to the details of my work I develop patience – and that makes me a better friend, son, colleague, employee, manager, and lover. When we grow in character everyone who crosses our path benefits. No honest work, however mind-numbing, lacks this possibility of infinite meaning.
So, if you look at your work and find less meaning in it than you would like, don’t despair - bring meaning to your work. In this way you decide how meaningful your work is.
It is a mistake to ignore the shifting attitudes of workers. Our employees are, after all, our first customers, and to ignore the changing attitudes of our customers is to commit corporate suicide. Therefore, as the attitudes of our employees change, the way we manage them must change if our organizations are to thrive.
