Magic: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement

My work causes me to read each year 100+ top-shelf books related to business management, and for 2014 if asked I would rank MAGIC: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement by Tracy Maylett and Paul Warner among the top 5 for its contribution to achieving greater management effectiveness. MAGIC masterfully cuts through a noisy marketplace of promotional myth and misinformation about employee engagement, providing the reader with a deep and accurate understanding of what employee engagement really is (and isn’t) and how management can achieve more of it.Management knows it’s in trouble when the “best practice” approach doesn’t work, which is the situation regarding employee engagement today.* It’s estimated that companies now spend $1B annually on surveys, consulting advice and an assortment of fixes that, as anyone who deeply understands human nature would agree, have little hope of increasing employee engagement. I would be surprised if after reading this book any senior manager serious about improving employee engagement still follows that herd.MAGIC is written in a clear, conversational style for executives, practitioners and other employees, and is notably easy to digest. The current confusion in the marketplace over employee engagement isn't that the concept is too complicated to understand; it’s that the more popular solutions were originally based on an incomplete understanding of workplace behavior. When Maylett and Warner lay out the full story, most readers will immediately relate to the explanation, see how today’s best practice initiatives have little hope of succeeding, and see clearly what can and should be done to measurably increase employee engagement.The authors have organized MAGIC so readers can easily find what they need:Part 1 of the book reorients the reader to what employee engagement really is and how it works.Chapter 1 – Reveals the myths and misinformation that fuel the ineffectiveness of current best-practice initiatives to improve employee engagement.Chapter 2 – Explains how and why the “magic” or underlying human nature that arouses engagement is so powerful.Part 2 provides a deep yet actionable understanding of the five aspects of human nature that arouse employee engagement.Chapter 3 – Meaning . . . how and why having a sense of purpose, regardless of the actual work, is so powerful for people.Chapter 4 – Autonomy . . . how and why enabling people to perform discretionary work however they work best not only yields their best work, it also maximizes their economic productivity.Chapter 5 – Growth . . . how and why a challenge that interests people awakens and develops their undiscovered potential to achieve more and to create even greater economic value.Chapter 6 – Impact . . . how and why people crave the need to make a difference or at least make progress toward a significant objective.Chapter 7 – Connection . . . how and why people need to feel that they are a part of something larger, to which they belong and in which they are in touch with others.Part 3 of the book explains how to “grow” engagement across an organization by focusing on the individual, manager, and organization.Chapter 8 – Explains that engagement is a personal choice of each employee, and that making this choice creates a win for the employee, their coworkers and manager, and the organization as a whole.Chapter 9 – Explains that employees are far more likely to be engaged when managers are engaged, so remediation best begins with management.Chapter 10 – Explains that organizations of engaged employees perform at higher levels and closer to their full potential, and they are easier and take less time to manage.The Appendix includes sample questions and dialogue to support conversations about engagement.My recommendation for any company serious about employee engagement is to form a group of managers with the objective of recommending a new strategy for increasing employee engagement. Let the process begin with each member of the group reading this book in preparation for a series of meetings to discuss each chapter individually, and then consider through dialogue what new actions should be tried. Next, seek organization units whose managers will volunteer to participate by experimenting with these actions in his or her domain. Then let the positive results achieved guide the further adoption and spread of these efforts.* My context for making such a sweeping statement arises from my having spent the past 12 years involved in the nonprofit Humaneering Technology Initiative (http://eanpc.eu/insights/Focus/82), which conducted an exhaustive review and integration of the science and practices related to human performance at work. Though the resulting protocol for the design and management of human work is still in beta release, I can say by comparison that today’s “best practice” approach to employee engagement is not working because it is misguided, and that the approach put forth by Maylett and Warner in MAGIC is on the mark.

I want a business book that is going to tell me what the author(s) know, explains how they know it, and convey why I should care about what they know. Most business books fall so short of my criteria that I, for the most part, have given up on the genre.So from reading MAGIC: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement what do Tracy Maylett and Paul Warner know? They know without a doubt the following: that "engagement" is a 50/50 proposition, both organizations and employees are responsible for it. They know that there is a tremendous difference between an employee being "satisfied" and an employee being "engaged." Satisfaction is transactional, it's a deal that is struck somehow between employees and their workplaces whether or not the terms of the deal are ever spoken or actually agreed upon. Engagement is transformational; there is no deal made. True engagement by the organization (and importantly, its leaders) and by employees will make a big difference for the places that really have it. Profitability will go up, undesirable turnover will go down, innovation will be the norm, morale will noticeably elevate. Another thing these authors know: important aspects of our humanity have to be active and regularly contributing to bring true engagement to life: our hearts, our heads, our hands and our spirits. And finally, Maylett and Warner know the "MAGIC" behind authentic employee engagement. In this book they generously share the MAGIC that can bring employee engagement to life in any organization. But it's not my place to share their MAGIC. You should get the book. You'll be glad you did.So these two guys know stuff, they know a lot, and they build a compelling case for the ingredients, the MAGIC, that transforms organizations. So how do they know what they know? How can the reader rely on their MAGIC? Here's how. Both the authors are leaders in a very successful consulting enterprise, DecisonWise (www.decisionwise.com), Tracy as the CEO and Paul as the Global Employee Engagement Architect. DecisionWise has been providing Leadership Intelligence® since 1996. They have well-known clients world-wide and have amassed over 14 million employee engagement surveys in their work with them. So they know what they know because they have crunched the survey data and correlated it to the "MAGIC" ingredients of true engagement. The results are convincing and encouraging to organization development practitioners as well as HR professionals that want to contribute to their organizations' sustained success. The book readily identifies with "Egghead Alert!" when the authors share the more academic foundations of engagement. The reader can certainly skip those parts if they want and be thankful for the warning! Maylett's and Warner's style is friendly, helpful, humorous at times, and the reader will appreciate early on the breath and depths of their working knowledge of employee engagement.So why should you care about what these authors know and share? Because I think they have found the critical ingredients necessary to employee engagement. These MAGIC ingredients are not a quick fix, but neither are they out of reach to organizations that are willing to partner with their people to make full-on engagement a reality. You will enjoy this book and find it to be an great resource to both understand employee engagement and to learn how to bring it to life for yourself and your organization.

I ordered the auditory version. Good content and the person reading the book is very enthusiastic.

The book is in and of itself quite engaging...that is at the beginning of each chapter. Most every insight in it is based on what looks like solid research. It's full of pop culture references so it is fun and easier to remember. The problem is that it almost seems the author had a length requirement and became a little repetitive towards the end of most chapters.

I am a recent graduate from college looking to pursue a degree in Industrial Organizational psychology and this text has made crystal clear what I'd like to study. The practical and seasoned wisdom of the authors shows the importance and the benefits of employee engagement. Not only how it's helpful to a company and its stakeholders, but how it's necessary. I plan to take what I've read and apply it to my work and personal life, in addition to studying this subject and reproducing it for others. This text is phenomenal and I recommend it to anyone dissatisfied, unsure, or even engaged in their work!

Excelente libro, ejemplos prácticos para aquellos que quieran ser mejores líderes y realmente desarrollar a sus equipos

very powerful book based on many hard facts and strong theory