Here's what the world's most successful organizations don't do.
They don't suppose that either superior college grades or
comprehensive training is the only accurate or dependable indicator
of the right person for the right job. Neither do they expect that
employee incentives will guarantee consistently better job
performance.
Instead they depend on the reliable source that other businesses
disdain: human nature. They know that the emotions of both
employees and customers create feelings, which drive their
behavior. Great organizations are aware of the power of emotions
and therefore set up the conditions that generate and cultivate
emotional mechanisms among employees and customers. The only way to
achieve this is through human interaction, the fastest and most
powerful trigger of emotional states.
By recognizing and unleashing the innate abilities of employees
and matching their gifts to the positions that will best take
advantage of them, thus making them even stronger, great
organizations look inward in order to move forward.
They cherish the fluctuations in human behavior because they
understand that these create a pathway as electric as any inside a
brain:
- Employees who use their natural talents in their jobs produce
significantly more than average workers.
- Emotionally committed employees form teams that deliver
exceptional outcomes.
- Customers recognize the passion and commitment employees feel
toward them and cannot help but respond in an emotional way.
- This emotionally driven reaction builds a bridge between
employees and customers that creates engagement.
- This engagement becomes the key factor that drives sustainable
growth.
- Sustainable growth is the route to profits and, ultimately,
higher stock value.
In the end great organizations know that a reason-driven economy
can travel only so far. The missing link is the engagement of
deep-seated emotions as the driver of growth and profits. These --
and only these -- feelings are the fuel that propel talented
individuals to do more, and inspire customers to return. And while
reason influences both employees and customers, emotions are
indispensable because they drive the best in both of them.