Viewed organically: is Meaning: The “wolf” of control in trendy sheep’s clothing? #leadership

Via Scoop.it – Intuitive Business
There is a lot of talk about ‘meaning’ in the workplace lately. From studies about motivation to the reason people spend hundreds of hours playing Warcraft, ‘meaning’ has become an element of mental hygene that matters.   Anyone who remembers their Maslow Hierarchy of Needs will quickly recognize that meaning is in the top part of the pyramid. In this article at ‘Management Craft’ the author also points out that meaning is a very subjective thing. Meaning is something that is determined by the individual themself and therefore cannot be created by management.   While this is certainly true, management can do much to either foster or stifle the visible meaning in a job or task. Just as with goals, size plays a role. If you are responsible for making sure a client gets a completed, correct contract so that service xyz can be provided, how you do that will have clear consequences and hopefully meaning to you. However, if the last Six-Sigma team has divided the contract creation process into 8 steps, and yours is step 6, which, by the way, is not all that critical….. Well, what precisely are the consequences if you do step 6 correctly or not? How do you infuse that with meaning?   Sure, meaning is subjective, but it needs an environment that helps it to develop and stay alive. The more we try to industrialize processes of service, the less options are left to those performing the process and the harder it is for ‘meaning’ to flourish.
Via www.managementcraft.com

This entry was posted on January 16, 2012 at 12:19 and is filed under Scoops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.