Transcripts

Omar Kahn:
IBM Consulting does an annual survey of things that keep CEO's up at night. And year after year one of the top two is the level of apathy, burnout, disengagement among their employees and staff.

Omar Kahn, author of the book Liberating Passion, says the work environment is often a place where passion dies.

Passion is pretty natural most of the time when we're not at work - we don't need a lot of help being passionate, most of us. We'll go out and play touch football and we'll get very passionate about it, nobody's paying us to do it, all it is is it's fun, a score is clearly known - I know when I'm winning, when I'm losing and as long as it's fair I'll participate.

Those same things will go a long way in the workplace, says Omar, and it's also important that people get to know the other people on their team.

For example, Whole Foods has a very simple mechanism. Before you can be hired the team interviews you, the team you're going to be on. And that's because Whole Foods is organized so that part of your compensation comes from the profitability of your segment of the store. And therefore when you're being hired, in addition to being interviewed by management, your final interview is with the team you're going to be on and insures there's enough mutual comfort and willingness to work together.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.