Andrew Deutscher of The Energy Project spoke at today’s Baton Rouge Area Chamber meeting. As a longtime fan of Tony Schwartz, founder of The Energy Project and author of the book, Be Excellent at Anything (previously titled The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working), it was a thrill to attend.
Lots of great wisdom was shared at this event and of course, I want to pass some on:
Luke Kissam, CEO of Albemarle Corporation introduced the speaker. Kissam is leading the initiative to change Albemarle’s culture to one that values energy renewal via tools and ideas from The Energy Project. He shared a really important kernel of truth re: organizational change that many well-intentioned change agents often disregard or don’t understand which is commitment to culture change starts at the top. Org change is extremely difficult and without commitment from the top, it is exponentially harder and in some cases may not be possible.
Here are a couple of ideas from Deutscher that really struck a chord:
1. Too often companies are focused on developing skills/talent in their people rather than the capacity (energy) of their people to perform. I see and hear this need for skills/talent a lot but rarely see leaders address the burnout causing a superstar to contribute less and less as long as that person is working more and more.
2. Time is an external resource that is limited. Energy is an internal resource that we can manage.
3. What should be important is not the number of hours worked but the energy (capacity) we bring to the hours worked.
Did these give you some aha moments?
Finally, Deutscher said that if leaders model the behavior they want, it’s not even necessary for them to tell people what to do. That is the power of behavior modelling and why commitment to culture change must start at the top. (I totally agree with this one and have written about behavior modeling in the past.)
How is your energy? What techniques do you use to stay energized and working at full capacity? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
And thanks for reading!
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