Engagement & Actualization
Our Big Employee Engagement Opportunity (2021). The piece where I first argued that disengagement is a design choice and a moment of change is the opening to fix it.
I started writing about employee engagement in 2021, back when roughly a third of the workforce was engaged at work and the rest were running on autopilot or actively checked out.
I argued then that this was an opportunity hiding inside a problem. AI has made that argument more urgent. The default path automates the parts of work people already disliked and leaves the disengagement exactly where it was. The better path treats this moment as a rare chance to redesign work so people get to be more of who they are. Perks and surveys keep treating the symptom. Engagement is a design problem, and the design belongs to leaders.
What I’ve made
My keynote, “Our Big Engagement Opportunity”
The live version of this argument, built for leaders at every level. See Talks.
“Not Another AI Talk”
The same argument framed for the AI moment: this is not a talk about tools, it is about the human decisions that determine whether AI creates meaning or just accelerates what is already broken. See Talks.
Our Big Employee Engagement Opportunity (2021)
The written seed of the thesis.
What I recommend
Drive
Daniel Pink. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The motivational stack underneath every real engagement gain, and the reason carrots and sticks keep underperforming.
The Octopus Organization
Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner. The case that organizations now live in continuous transformation, and that adaptability is a people-and-leadership capability before it is a structural one. A current influence on how I think about engagement in the AI era.
Get a Grip
Gino Wickman. The entrepreneurial operating system (EOS) we implemented at DPL. Clarity, accountability, and a shared rhythm are engagement infrastructure, not bureaucracy.
BetterCulture
Dr. Kim Hoogeveen. The People Leader Checklist and a practical system for building culture on purpose. We are putting it to work at DPL.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
Paul Graham. Short and load-bearing. Engaged, creative work needs long uninterrupted blocks, and one carelessly placed meeting can cost an afternoon. Protecting maker time is an engagement intervention.
More on my 2017 Innovator’s Reading List.
Ask your team this week which parts of their work they would keep if a tool offered to take them away, and which they would happily hand over. The answers show you where AI amplifies people and where it just hollows the job out.