By Donna Howes, CHRP

Productive workplaces feel alive with energy and ideas; proud workplaces take things to a whole new level.

Nearly 25 years ago, Martin Weisbord, one of the world’s top ten organization development experts, wrote Productive Workplaces: Organizing and Managing for Dignity, Meaning and Community. In it, he defined productive workplaces as “those where people learn and grow as they cooperate to improve an organization’s performance.”

Today, it is even more true.

Better, Faster, Easier

Proud and productive workplaces are everywhere; my Bean Around the World coffee place is a perfect example.

Larissa, a marvelous, multi-tasking, positive force of nature, greets me every morning with a cheeky sense of humour and the same question, “What can I get for you today?” Each time she smiles, and then delivers with swift efficiency. That 20-second exchange gives my day a lift simply because of the infectious pride with which she goes about her work.

One day, I asked her, what a proud and productive workplace meant to her. Without skipping a beat she said, “Things go better….they go faster and they’re easier to deal with!” And what else? “Basically it means that you believe in what you’re doing…. that you do it really effectively, and that you’re being true to yourself.”

A recipe for us all and a good place for us to begin exploring the connections between performance, productivity and pride in what we do

What motivates you? What makes you want to do your best?

What is known from best practice and research into employee engagement is that meaningful work is a basic human need, that we seek out community in the workplace, and that we are a great deal more productive when we find it.

Weisbord, Peter Senge, and other thought leaders have shown that better solutions happen when people collaborate on finding answers; when we throw ourselves into meaningful tasks for a higher purpose, inspired results are more likely to emerge. On our own we cannot build a space station, although many of us, through our ingenuity, passion can.

Understanding what motivates us to want to do our best is present in the DNA of every proud and productive workplace.

Every workshop I ask, “What are you proudest of in the work that you do?” “What values do you contribute to this team?” “What do you want to be known for?” “What are the behaviours that contribute to your success?”

Every time, employees say, “Making a difference.” “Mattering.” “Adding value.” “Serving a customer’s real need.”

In essence, having pride in yourself and what you contribute at work may just be the ultimate team-building exercise and productivity its natural reward.

“Absolutely”, blogs Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. “The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.” Pink’s Webby Award-nominated YouTube animation on the topic, with close to six million views, is well worth checking out at (web address)

It is a vital conversation for every organization to engage in, and one that is best approached through the power of teams.

The Power of Teams

The journey to create the new supply chain organization—aligning people, processes and accountabilities—is a major undertaking, one that led Health Shared Services BC (HSSBC) to introduce Supply Chain best practices in the form of Centres of Excellence. “Centres of Excellence are there to ensure that we remain responsive to our Health Authority customers by delivering the right product, at the right time to the right place in manner that is consistent and easy for them,” explains Paul Brewer, provincial director, organization development for HSSBC.

“Our Centres of Excellence are essentially cross-functional teams that are empowered to develop end-to-end processes in the most efficient and cost-effective ways. We’ve brought together functional experts from all parts of our business, from warehousing and logistics, to category management, branch and accounts payable. Each individual comes to the Centre of Excellence team with their unique technical and functional knowledge to assess all aspects of an opportunity prior to implementation of a contract,” says Brewer. “Their role is to help our organization to make better decisions, maintain consistency, and ultimately, deliver on our mandate to enhance value to the health care system province-wide.”

Changing how strategic decisions are made in real-time within a complex supply chain environment comes with risks. HSSBC addressed these up front through a change initiative led by a newly formed working group given the all-encompassing task of creating the Centres of Excellence best practice and tools for the organization. The working group of 10 began meeting in early 2011 with the goal of developing easy to understand people processes, tools and templates that would make Centres of Excellence real and meaningful to the rest of the organization once they were rolled out. It was action learning at its best and a strong endorsement of the working group as a powerful team.

“At the very first working group meeting we talked about the needs of our customers, the organization, team needs and our own as individuals,” Paul remembers. “Then we talked about what matters most to us, what we are proudest of and what we want to be known for. That’s how we established the values that we believe will support the operation of a proud and productive Centre of Excellence.”

Being proud means you’re committed to the work, you’re self motivated and you believe in what you do. It’s like saying, ‘I’m engaged, this is important my contribution matters and it’s making a tangible difference.’

Those four values—respect, collaboration, being responsive and ethical—have energized and engaged the team, and not a meeting goes by without someone referencing them.

What, if any impact, did this open discussion about pride in the workplace have on productivity at HSSBC? Brewer believes it was crucial to the working group’s success, especially in the early stages when it wasn’t possible for members to anticipate all the benefits that the new ‘super teams’ or Centres of Excellence would deliver to the organization, or to their new roles. “The dialogue around the table created meaning for everyone in the room, and it was an important step in moving forward,” said Brewer. “ “You know, we each make too many assumptions about the best way of working together, your assumptions may be different than mine. So, once we realized we all had a common purpose to make the Centre of Excellence team work, the group really formed well. I was proud when that happened.”

The Centre of Excellence toolkit has become a standard operating manual within the HSSBC Supply Chain to help each cross-functional team work as proud and productive self-directing units. In addition to project management tools, the toolkit includes a Team Charter, Team Building, Conflict Resolution and Training materials.

The Role of Leaders – Living Your Values

Leadership of others is truly about self-leadership. That being said, when it comes to creating proud and productive workplaces, what type of leadership does it take to cultivate a culture that values both ‘what we do’ (the strategic, technical components) and ‘how we do it’ (the people, values aspects)?

In Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, author Margaret Wheatley, suggests successful leaders believe their role is to create relationships. “In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacity to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles and positions.”

This speaks to leaders who understand that how we do things—together—is more valuable than what we do individually. Foremost in building these relationships is the leader’s credibility, which is always measured by values such as integrity, trust, being passionate about a goal and ‘walking the talk’. People listen to leaders when they talk, and watch closely to decide on a leader’s sincerity towards their commitments. Proud and productive environments flourish when these leadership values and behaviours are present.

Passion fuels every proud and productive workplace. It galvanizes the efforts of each individual who wants their future to be a ‘better place’; and who believes they have something to contribute to its arrival.

In the non-profit sector, the Minerva Foundation for BC Women is a locally-grown example of an organization that has thrived through its ‘passion and purpose’. In keeping with a long line of values-driven leaders, executive director, Eleanor Guerrero-Campbell, understands that the alchemy of a proud and productive organization must first be found in the leader.

“My advice about leadership is to be self aware. Know yourself and what’s important to you, and then follow what’s important to you in your life. That’s what will create your passion, your vision, the inspiration and enthusiasm,” said Guerrero-Campbell. “And that’s what will make people follow you.”

For more than 10 years, the organization has dedicated itself and its extensive network of volunteers, mentors and sponsors, to inspiring a movement around values-based leadership for women of all ages and backgrounds, who have a desire to stand for something of value as leaders within the communities they serve across British Columbia. Since inception, Minerva has supported more than 3000 individuals throughout the life cycle of their careers.

Pride and Productivity in the Public Service

“Envisioning the future is a process that begins with passion, feeling, concern, or an inspiration that something is worth doing.” – The Leadership Challenge

Having made the transition from team member to team manager of a busy science-based division of Health Canada, Dr. Gladis Lemus arranged a full day for her new team to discuss regular departmental business along with some team building activities, including a tour of the Richmond Olympic Oval and a two and a half hour workshop titled, ‘Creating a Proud and Productive Workplace Together’.

The workshop was designed to facilitate an open dialogue on how team members could make their best contributions to the team and the goals/objectives of the department. It was to be the first step toward exploring the values they believe make a positive contribution to their effectiveness as individuals and as a team, and the strengths and skills they bring to their roles.

“It was fundamental. For me to understand, what is it that drives them, and for me to support that and acknowledge and give whatever I can,” said Dr. Lemus. “I think it also speaks to the fact that I didn’t want to assume that people have the same values and interests and goals that I have personally, and that is about acknowledging and respecting others and their values.”

Dr. Lemus explained that the experience allowed everybody to talk about what is important to them, and gave her the opportunity to acknowledge and understand what was important to them as a team. “And then the next step as their manager was to say, ‘I heard what is important to you’ and to show my commitment to doing my best to support them. So at the end of the day, we set the context for how we as a team work together.”

In addition to clarifying their core values, the team identified some behaviours they feel are important in maintaining a proud and productive workplace within the Environmental Health Program. During the workshop, team members reflected on a number of questions about the nature of their work, what they want to be known for, and what they are proudest of. The results of this dialogue are showing up in surprising and tangible ways.

“Being a scientist, I tend to have hard core measures and parameters when determining results. However, I think the best way to quantify a proud and productive workplace is when people look at you and they smile; because they feel that they are in the right place,” said Dr. Lemus. “They feel that they are being treated fairly, and that they are acknowledged and valued. From the hard core measures perspective, we all have goals and deliverables we can measure; number of reports, etc., but for me, more than that, it is acknowledging how individuals are being in their teams and what happens beyond what is required.”

And that’s the part that we usually don’t measure Dr. Lemus points out, “What is happening in my team right now is that I have people that are now talking to each other even though they are in different lines of work, saying, ‘Hey, can we work on a project together?’ This is something completely new that’s needed for our team goals and overarching work goals. It’s a different approach to things, and it’s completely on the side of their desk. We are truly breaking silos and I credit my team for their efforts on this.”

This is important now; because like the rest of Canada’s aging workforce, the federal system is undergoing a massive shift in demographics as baby boomers retire, and a new multi-generational cross-section of junior and mid-career level professionals enter from academia, the private and not-for-profits sectors. This new, socially-sophisticated labour force believes that it’s not just about getting a paycheque; it’s also about having a high level of satisfaction, a sense of purpose and importantly, work-life balance.

For employers then, there is a need to provide compelling reasons beyond the basic ‘work for pay’ environment to attract and retain top talent. It’s not just achieving the work and being paid, but ‘what are you going to give us?’

Having made the transition herself from team member to team leader, Dr. Lemus believes what fuels her desire to experiment is connected to encouragement. “Encouragement is a very interesting word because it is related to the word ‘heart’. As a scientist, I come with my full brain, full of excellent ideas and techniques for the job, and I also come with my heart. So I have to acknowledge that I have feelings and motivations and desires, and that my team also has them.”

This last point, of acknowledging and accommodating the human ‘felt needs’ within a workplace, has long been described by organizational and behavioural theorists, beginning with Chris Argyris and Edgar Schein in the 1960s, as the “psychological contract” between employer and employee.

The psychological contract, always just beneath the surface of organizational culture, reflects the deeply significant, changing and dynamic nature of workplace relationships. If we are to lay the foundations for more proud and productive organizations and ‘humanize’ our work environments, then we must recognize the unique contribution we each bring and welcome an open dialogue about what it means to everyone at the table.

• 10 top tips for creating a proud and productive work place.

Humanity at Work’s (humanityatwork.ca) Donna Howes, BBus, CEC, CHRP is a coach and organization development consultant devoted to creating confident leaders, strong teams and proud, productive workplaces. She is a Certified Executive Coach and VP of the BC Organization Development Network.

(PeopleTalk Fall 2011)