By day, I’m an account manager for a technology and software company. It pays the bills, provides another level of purpose to my life, and offers one more laboratory to practice workplay philosophy. After working primarily in the non-profit sector for the past ten years, life in the corporate world has been interesting. There are some surprising differences and even more surprising similarities. The fact is that organizations, regardless of whether they are non-profit or corporate in structure, share characteristics at their core. I have an upcoming series brewing on this subject…when I manage to finish the current series on reflection (and who knows when that will occur). Hopefully, this serves as a preface to any upcoming posts (like this one) that tie together my experiences in account management and customer/client relations with the workplay philosophy.

When it comes to account management and working with clients, there’s always a baseline level of service you can provide. The specifics may differ, but generally it all boils down to being responsive and being respectful. It really is as simple as that. However, let’s go beyond these baseline expectations and enter the more meaningful space of being remarkable. The challenge of being remarkable is that it’s different for everyone. Every client desires something that is unique to them and their business mission. What one person expects as customary service may WOW someone else. But hey, if being remarkable was easy everyone would be there…which is why so few make it to the party.

Today’s challenge is to ask yourself: What does being remarkable look like when I serve this particular client or customer? And you can apply this same question to other areas of work. As a manager, what can you do to be remarkable in service to each of your employees? As a trainer, what can you do to be remarkable in service to each of your students? As a professional, what can you do to be remarkable in your own field?

I use the idea of remarkable for a reason. It’s built on Seth Godin’s idea (or at least he’s the one who made it remarkable for me) that if you want folks to talk about you, you have to give them something to talk about. In our case, we want to be remarkably kick-ass awesome. So, being remarkable means understanding what a client’s baseline expectations are and brainstorm all the different ways that might WOW them.

If it’s important to you, then it’s worth being remarkable.

Once upon a time, I was a middle manager. It was something I aspired to. I saw it as a way to advance as a professional and grow as a leader. I also believed it was a way to help others connect the work they did to meaning and purpose. Then, somewhere along the way, I got lost. I got tired of mediating petty squabbles. I became frustrated by the idiotic political turf wars. I grew weary of being squeezed from top-side executives and board and bottom-side staff – not to mention from the members and customers at the sides. My passion was extinguished and I was happy to find new work here in Texas where I didn’t have to worry about managing anyone. I was content to merely be an employee.

Fast forward to today…I’m still not a manager, but the year-long respite seems to have recharged my batteries. At least I can again see the potential of great management and its importance in helping to connect people to purpose. And I absolutely know down to my core how damn hard it is to be a middle manager. It’s from this place that I connected with Lisa Haneberg’s recent post on how depressingly little the role of middle management has changed in the past three decades. If anything, many of the changes have been negative. Downsizing, busted bubbles, broken trust from executives…yeah, plenty of reasons to scoff at the suggestion that management is the place to be in order to do great things.

Yet, I sense some positive momentum which gives me hope that middle management will see a brighter future. We’re entering a time when we are beginning to demand more from our business leaders. We’re insisting that they start to aim higher than they have in the past. We’re not allowing them to squander our collective potential. As employees and managers, we now want more from our work. We seek meaning and purpose not just because it feels good and helps us get out of bed in the morning…we seek these things because our souls crave it. Middle management isn’t the only way there. The path to creating work that matters is unique to each of us. But to all the middle managers out there searching for meaning, purpose, and fulfillment – it’s still possible.

I’ll close as I closed my comment to Lisa: “Maybe this truly is our time to reach for what was promised decades ago. Maybe we needed these hard times of the 80s and 90s to show us the path we can only take now. Or maybe I’m just a starry-eyed idealist. Keep the faith.”

One thing that I sometimes struggle with here at WorkPlay is the direction of my writings. I’ll be honest, I’d really like to have more traffic roll through and some of that can be accomplished by me (metaphorically) stepping out my front door and building better relationships with fellow thinkers and bloggers. I’ve allowed my more introverted side to come through online and that’s changing. I only have to look at Phil Gerbyshak for a great model of how its done. To that end, I’ve been trying to be a more frequent commenter throughout the blogosphere. And here on WorkPlay, I’ve brought back a blogroll to the front page and inserted a MyBlogLog widget. All you RSS feed readers, click here and see how it all looks.

I also fully understand that attracting more readers and commenters is a result of writing great content and therein lies a bit of my quandary. As I attempt to approach my blogging from a new angle, I find the type of content that really drives traffic is the more applied, bulleted how-to lists – the type of posts that start off “Top 10 Ways to…” These are great and I love them myself. And yet they’re somewhat limiting when it comes to pitching big picture, reality-shifting ideas for redesigning the work experience. The simple answer is to do both except that I’m far more comfortable with the latter. However, I’ll try to bring a balance to the WorkPlay content.

As always, thanks to all you readers out there. If there’s something here that excites you or pisses you off, come and join the dialogue. It’s all welcome here.

A week or so ago, Jamie Notter pointed to a recent interview with Stephen M.R. Covey in Associations Now magazine. This Stephen Covey is the son of the other Stephen Covey and even though his language and approach is similar, he’s clearly forging his own path. His most recent book is focused on Trust and the interview is a brilliant read as Covey lays some of the groundwork for taking the ’soft’ label off the idea of trust. He argues there are simple economics associated with trust and distrust. The highlight is that there is a direct cost to trust (Covey calls it a dividend) and distrust (more like a tax).

Being an idealist, I’m hopeful for the day when we can take the ’soft’ and ‘hard’ distinctions off of essential organizational qualities. Managers and organizational leaders will see concepts such as trust, openness, and empathy just as relevant and important as quantitative measurements and financial results. Yet, I’m also a realist and know that this change in management thinking will take time and patience. What Covey is attempting to do is create a bridge that will help facilitate this change. His bridge is communicating something foreign (or at least not well understood) using the hard skills, metrics-focused, old-school individual’s more familiar language. So, if we apply the term ‘economics’ and its related methodologies to soft organizational qualities, will that make them easier to digest in the corner offices? God knows anytime I’ve even come close to introducing the idea of spirit or empathy in a meeting, I can see some managers getting the sweats and looking for the door. I’ve found success far more readily when I’ve taken the time to gauge my audience and determine just how open they are to different ways of thinking about management and leadership. The learning here is that if you’re trying to successfully communicate with a Hungarian, don’t start by speaking Mandarin Chinese.

Update: Jamie has followed his original post about trust with another gem. Go check it out.

In terms of having an internet start page, I’ve been around the block a time or two. For the longest time, I used Google Personalized Page, then tried working briefly with Netvibes, only to return to Google when they recently incorporated all the widget functionality. Yet I was unsatisfied and found my eye wandering to PageFlakes. While it does have its comparative downsides, it more than makes up for it in quick performance and some pretty slick features. One thing that I really like is the easy creation and integration of Pagecasts. I’ve created a Pagecast called Work Redesigned.

If you’re not already set up with a PageFlakes page, go ahead and register…it takes just a minute. Then you’re ready to add the Work Redesigned Pagecast.

Step 1
Click on the large asterisk in the upper right corner (it’s orangy-yellow in the screenshot above). This opens the admin menu where you can select flakes, find Pagecasts, and edit your profile.

Step 2
In the left menu of admin area, select the option for Pagecasts. You’ll see some of the featured Pagecasts and you can click the button for Browse All Pagecasts.

Step 3
The easiest way to get the Work Redesigned Pagecast is to use the search feature. Type in ‘Work Redesigned’ and and then View Pagecast.

Step 4
In the top navigation bar, you should see an option called Watch this Pagecast. Click this option and it will add the Work Redesigned tab to your own PageFlakes page.

You’re finished. Now you can get your daily fill of some of the best thinking on how we can improve the work experience for ourselves and others.

Contents of Version 1 include:
Brazen Careerist
Career Hub
The Chief Happiness Officer
CareerJournal.com
Managing with Aloha Coaching
Interactions – Creative Strategies for Business
The Future of Work
Water Cooler Wisdom
The Occupational Adventure
The Servant Leadership Blog
Creative Careers Unleashed
Oh, and of course it includes WorkPlay

For anyone in the process of building or re-engaging a workteam, setting expectations and the right tone for what’s acceptable behavior is vital for healthy cohesion. Rather than establishing ground rules, Tammy Lenski suggests creating group norms.

Group norms are co-created, with time for consideration (instead of an exercise to be gotten through) and updated as the team’s interactions grow organically over time. Group norms suggest, “This is what we believe will help create robust dialogue in our group,” while ground rules suggest, “Don’t violate these rules or you’re not a team player.” Group norms are an invitation, ground rules an order.

The problem with ground rules is that they present a false sense of control. As Tammy notes, “Just because someone tells you never to interrupt in a stressful meeting, does that mean you can magically stop?” Even more troublesome is that ground rules automatically presume that there will be problems (gasp…perhaps conflict) that will require a set of rules to resolve.

Tammy shares a few of her favorite norms that you can use to kickstart the process of introducing group norms to your workteam. Here are two that I like:

• Curiosity is always welcomed. Ask questions born out of genuine curiosity and the desire to understand the other’s perspective.
• It’s OK to disagree. You don’t need to share another’s thinking about everything we talk about. How you challenge will can the difference between stubborn debate and real dialogue.

Creating an organically evolving set of group norms signals an expectation that everyone is bringing their best to the team.