Interesting
One popular business buzz phrase of the last decade has been “employee engagement.” It usually shows up in long PowerPoint presentations about mission statements and growth opportunities and clear job descriptions. All of that stuff is important, but it can end up sounding like a grocery list. Check off all these things, pick up a gallon of 2% milk, and you’re good.
Sometimes, I find it helpful to go back to first principles. In this case, let’s see what happens when we replace the word “engaged” with the word “interested.” And instead of talking about “employees,” as if they’re some other species, let's just talk about people. So here’s the question: what keeps humans interested in what they’re doing?
The first requirement is that it shouldn’t be too easy or too hard. If there’s no problem to solve or question to answer, we start to get bored. Turning physicians into EHR data-entry monkeys did more to kill physician engagement than anything else in the last century. On the other hand, if it’s too difficult, we give up. This is the guiding principle behind most prior authorization processes.
Question: If you're an insurance company, what is the right number of steps to require in order to authorize a procedure?
Answer: One too many.
The second key to keeping people interested is making sure what they’re doing is relevant to their current goals. By current, I mean right now, while they’re doing the activity.
If you pay someone a lot of money to do a crappy job, they may not quit, but they won’t be engaged. On the other hand, if you give them work that feels valuable and worthwhile in the moment, as they do it, they’ll stay interested. Maybe it involves helping someone, or solving a problem, or building a skill. It’s a little different for everyone, but it’s not rocket science.
So the next time you want to help the people around you stay “engaged,” ask yourself two questions:
Is their work just challenging enough? (Not too hard and not too easy.)
Is the work they’re doing relevant to their goals at that moment?
Answer those questions, and you just might get their interest.
