In parts 1 and 2 of the Relationship Performance Quick Guide, I've conveyed: • that work relationships take place between very different parties; • they're formed and sustained by mutual attraction and • for reliable attraction, and to avoid dangerous assumptions, work relationships must be constructed by authentic expression, dialog and validated by agreement. With this foundation of principles in place, I'll now share the next principle of Relationship Performance:
Part 3: The Fusion Principle™ of Performance, Happiness, Security and Durability
Overview: Too often work relations are not designed and chosen so as to include all of the vital components of good work: happiness, performance, security and durability. Though such a "fusion" of these four factors is sometimes seen as a random "anomaly;" by the practice of RP, it is practical for this fusion to become an expected "normality" in all workplaces and lives that seek betterment.
In high quality work relationships, work performance and personal work fulfillment are firmly coupled and should not be separated. What’s more, these are directly linked to personal work security and create the most durable relationship for a person and organization.
In Relationship Performance, a framework for achieving personal happiness in one’s work is known as being in the Flow Zone. A somewhat related framework applied by an organization to gain peak performance from a worker is known as “Personal Experience of Role Functional Satisfaction™” (PERFS™). The application of these "mirrored" frameworks by workers and organizations respectively is essential for mutually rewarding, high quality work relationships.
1) It is obvious as we observe anyone of any age who’s at “the top of their game” in any workplace, in athletics, in the arts, in education or within any domain of politics, that these people are at once a blending or "fusing" together of certain factors. That is, there are certain attributes that always seem to be present. I suggest that any consistently high-performing person that you may choose to consider will be found to have these four factors in place simultaneously as they work:
Performance… constantly striving to perform at their personal best,
Happiness… deeply satisfied or fulfilled by their work as they do so,
Durability... tenaciously persisting or adaptively enduring challenges, trials and tribulations,
Security… typically as secure and stable as reasonably possible within their chosen work/profession, and as compared to others in similar roles and/or situations.
Isn’t that consistent mix of these common factors fascinating? Isn’t that combination highly desirable? Why would you ever design and seek work to be any other way, whether as a person or organization? But unfortunately, this can be too rare in thousands of workplaces and countless lives. It doesn't have to be this way. If you choose it to be, "fusion happens."
What do I mean by “fulfillment” or “happiness?”
I’m referring to person’s state of mind in which there is deep personal satisfaction, joy, meaning and/or purpose in one’s work. There are not necessarily always smiles, laughter, frivolity and celebrations, though these may occur at times. In this definition of happiness in work, there often will be the presence of healthy stress or significant challenges. There may be pain, struggle, frustration and hardship, or even danger. In most cases, it is "fun," as viewed by that person (though it may not seem so to others). This state of mind is also known as the Flow Zone in Relationship Performance. Flow Zones are personal, subjective, relative and evolving, thus only a person defines their own Flow Zone at any given time of their life. (See below and the first chapter of Career Fulcrum.)
Now back to the principle, perhaps a means to get you to some “big aha’s” will be by offering five Fusion Principle maxims:
A) Good, mutually-rewarding work = optimal personal work performance = optimal personal work satisfaction = optimal personal work security = optimal relationship durability.
B) Consistently top performing workers are deeply satisfied workers; and by being so, the workers achieve the most reliable and rewarding work relationships.
C) Organizations that design work roles and their talent stewardship to be highly satisfying to qualified, well-chosen workers will realize the greatest work role performance, worker engagement and positive behaviors, workforce innovation and achieve the greatest relationship durability.
D) For a worker to gain and have satisfying and durable (lasting) work, work roles must be chosen and validated by agreement so as to predictably provide the Flow Zone as to their Personal Triangle criteria while serving the work role’s Organizational Triangle criteria across the time period of the relationship.
E) For an organization to gain peak functional performance from workers in long-term durable relationships, work roles must be designed across the period of the relationship to predictably provide: i) The Flow Zone for Personal Triangle criteria of qualified workers such that they will enjoy performing ii) functional performance is all pertinent to the Organizational Triangle areas, plus iii) precision worker selection iv) relationship formation by agreement, and v) attentive work role relationship stewardship across the time period of the relationship.
2) It’s rather amazing, and of no small concern, that as we travel into a new century, this Fusion Principle still has so little general recognition, attention and adherence by either workers or organizations. Many of us know the Fusion Principle to be true from our personal experiences and on a visceral level. We work at our best when we enjoy our work. You cannot separate these four pillars of a work role: performance, happiness, durability and security, if you’re wanting the best from a work role relationship, either in a personal or a organizational context. But still many try to leave out one or more, and they almost always find disappointment, problems or losses of opportunities. All four components of the Fusion Principle are vital and should always be unified, integrated or a union. It should also be seen that if performance and satisfaction are present, durability and security follow. However, the reverse is seldom true over the long term.
If this is true and these are so important, why might so many workers and organizations still be so wanting, lacking, inattentive or careless in this area? Why are there so many people unhappy in their work? Why are so many sub-optimal and dysfunctional circumstances in organizations? Why are so many relationships formed so thoughtlessly; and related, why do so many disappoint and come to an end prematurely? Since this content is intended to only be a quick guide, there’s not time to be extensive as to all the causes. Nevertheless, I’ll briefly offer six potential reasons for you to consider, since each may aid your greater understanding of workplace dynamics and the many merits of Relationship Performance:
• There remains a general illiteracy about work role relations. Few are offered any formal or informal instruction in this area. There is an absence of general knowledge of organizing principles for better thinking and actions. In this case, ignorance may actually prevent bliss. Related, there is an absence of common language and structure for better communication of each others' needs. Relationship Performance can effectively change this by offering beneficial knowledge to everyone so they can seek better workplace realities.
• There is a chronic attitude of “scarcity” in the workplace with the players not appreciating they (can) have options, and if they do create options for themselves, they can exercise choice. Choice is power. Choice is a state of mind. Choice is a choice. Choice provides force and influence over conditions and destiny. It’s an abundant world, and even more so when workplace players understand, leverage and apply choice with the principles and frameworks of Relationship Performance. You might recall that choice is a core ingredient of free enterprise marketplaces and governmental democracies. Choice is a powerful asset and possession. One party having and willing to exercise choice causes the other party to be better, more attentive. Choice should be far more prevalent in organizations and worker’s lives than it generally is today. Whenever choice is absent, there is little else to do than accept what you have and tolerate the status quo. That’s a sad condition, but thinking one does not have choice explains much about many workplaces and people’s lives.
• A prevailing workplace convention has been: a “financial construct” “compensating” a “job construct.” This has largely defined the affiliation. Compensation’s more correct definition of the word is to “counterbalance.” It stands to reason that both parties must be compensated, and is actually needed by each, to reward that which they provide to a relationship. By using compensation in a one-way model and only in a financial context, the parties have considered, defined, designed and maintained relations far too narrowly and anemically. There is far more to a workers’ work fulfillment needs than only money and related benefits. Equally there is far more needed and sought by organizations than that which is conveyed by a “job description.” In other words, work realities today point us to reciprocal performance and reciprocal, accurate, and comprehensive compensation:
Each party’s performance must be reasonably and accurately compensated by the other party for a durable relationship to be reliably formed and sustained.
• Information exchange (aka: communications) is often relatively weak between workers and organizations. This is further exaggerated by “authority suppressing authenticity.” This phenomenon occurs in both directions. Work role relationships have inherent differences in authority since whoever is representing the organization’s interest has greater authority than the worker in that context. This condition can lead to both being ill-informed and can become a petri dish for growing assumptions, misunderstandings or mistrust and acrimony.
• Related, and historically, work relations often have degrees of ambivalence or antagonism toward the other party, or sometimes are simply too “me-focused” on one or both sides of the equation. One or both parties can be focused too much on what they seek, and even believing themselves to be entitled to the other “doing their job” or “taking care of them.” Workers can be far too casual and haphazard in choosing work for their life. Organizations can take short cuts and apply one-size-fits-all or “lowest common denominator” approaches to recruitment and management.
Both parties must wake up and appreciate that work must become a “we thing!” if they are to enjoy a better reality. Each must be empathetic to the other’s needs.
* In the now ending industrial age, work was designed for meeting a minimum level of personal performance and did so in a standardized, uniform manner across the many “jobs” that were a part of operations. Workers were simply “human resources” plugged into the machinery of production. Conversely, in a global, fast-paced, ever-more-competitive world of work filled with hyper-changes, people are much more than “resources” (and I argue they were never “capital”). Latent talent, energy and creativity must be fully tapped and extracted. Every organization that seeks to thrive strategically needs to unleash the power of people and do so by design. The stewardship of talent becomes an operational imperative.
So you can perhaps appreciate that any of the above are liabilities in their own right, but when combined, it can be very easy to see why things have existed the way they have, and still are, in many work environments.
3) Does this mean that the connection of personal happiness, relationship durability or security and peak personal performance are absolute and always dependable? No. People change. Organizations change. Marketplaces and technologies change. Surprises happen and unexpected events or circumstances creep in that shift viewpoints, needs and conditions. Any of these can have influence or impact on a work relationship. But, as in most activities, it is important to be on the right side of probability.
For a work relationship to be lasting/durable, a person’s work performance must be deemed as superlative. For superlative performance to be sustainable, a person must be happy performing. Equally, for a work relationship to be lasting/durable, a person must be deeply satisfied in their work. Conversely and attractively, a person will be most secure if performing at their best, being the most engaged and interested, being the most creative, rapidly adapting to changes and requiring the least attention and resources when they are happy in their work. Thus when designing and choosing a work relationship, either party should do all within reason to predictably ensure that performance and happiness will be present in the work relationship. Relationship durability and security will follow as surely as a sturdy cart behind a fine horse.
4) If you accept the above, then you will readily appreciate why understanding the Flow Framework is elementary knowledge for both parties. You can learn about the Flow Framework through instruction in Career Fulcrum. You perhaps may now understand why it’s the very first chapter of that reference manual. Flow is a powerful way for a person to think about and diagnose their Personal Triangle. Here are few basic points about the Flow Framework:
A) Who we “are” (our life, our capabilities) are separate from what we “do” (the functions of our work, its setting, its social interactions, etc.).
B) For most of us, both “are” and “do” evolve across time, not necessarily at the same rate or pace.
C) When our “are” is in reasonable balance with our “do”… we are in the Flow Zone. That is, we are “one with our work” or simply stated as to work: we are happy, we are content, we are deeply involved, engaged, curious and perhaps, “consumed in the moment.” When we are in the Flow Zone we are gaining meaning, purpose and deep satisfaction from our work activities and those who are a part of it.
D) When our “are” is greater than our “do,” we find ourselves as being bored, restless, antsy, ambivalent, disengaged. This is known as the “A Zone.”
E) When our “do” is greater than our “are,” we may find ourselves being overwhelmed, lacking confidence, having low self-esteem or suffering from toxic stress and paralyzed thinking. This is known as the “B Zone.”
F) Since people and work evolve, the framework reflects the passage of time on each axis, thus a "zone" is the target, not a "point."
excerpt from Career Fulcrum
The Flow Zone is the personal target for what they desire to realize from a work relationship in their life. It is the place where work performance meets personal happiness. It is not reasonable to expect that you will always be in the Flow Zone at every moment in work, but is the ideal state that most do and should seek. The Flow framework can be used to diagnose, predict and remedy personal work-related problems, solutions and opportunities. Often doing so is as simple as looking at the symptoms and working backwards to determine the causes that may be present … or missing. The Framework is very important for it distinctly provides for the separation of the “are” factors from the “do” factors.
Flow is a way of modeling work into a life. It is very important to remember that Flow is a personal framework (or you might say, a framework of forecasting and understanding work as it is placed into your life)!
5) This brings us to PERFS™ or Personal Experience of Role Functional Satisfaction™. PERFS is a work role framework, and since work roles are owned by the organization, you could say that PERFS is an organizational framework. Flow is a very important and compelling framework to guide success in one’s life. Flow also offers a more general understanding of how, when left unconsidered by organizations, it either may present problems or success in a workplace. Read on …
It works like this: people very much like to be in the Flow Zone, especially once they have experienced it. It’s so good! Now that’s very fine if the person is within the Flow Zone while performing precisely the work that the organization needs to have done. But what if they’re not in the Flow Zone? If you accept the premise that people seek the Flow Zone, and equally that they suffer when in the A and B Zones, this leads to all kinds of problems and dysfunctions for both the person and the organization. Performance suffers and issues emerge that are often followed at some point by exits or terminations, but generally only after pain and expense for both parties.
In fact, one of the most serious and challenging work relationship problems can happen when a person’s Flow Zone is only slightly apart or has only subtle differences with what the organization desires for them to do. Here the worker can report being very happy in their work while the organization is continually having a variety of problems and frustrations that sometimes are not easy to detect, diagnose or remedy by the organization, and in some cases the worker is “blindsided” by a termination or layoff. (This also relates to an inherent problem in “employee survey” methods, and further arguing for the need for substantive relationship “agreements.”) So as a person, you can see that to you, Flow is very important and you should always pursue your Flow Zone.
No organization can make a given worker happy per se, that is, ensure they will be in, or find their way to the Flow Zone. (Those factors and that power reside solely within a life.) Since an organization has no control over anyone’s personal definition of their Flow Zone, the organization must go beyond and think about how to define and choose workers that will likely be in the Flow Zone performing in the prescribed way, place, style and community in which the work performance is needed.
Therefore, an organization can be smart about the way it designs its work and the people it chooses for that work. It is very smart for the organization to do this in a manner that a worker will be happy doing what needs to be done. That is the purpose and distinction of PERFS. PERFS provides a framework that leverages the power of the Flow Zone. PERFS framework is used to diagnose and design work, and specify the critical traits and characteristics that a life should (or should not) possess so as to more precisely forecast that the relationships will be in the worker’s Flow Zones.
PERFS is a framework for creating happy (aka: satisfied) workers in a specific work role, specific condition(s) and environment(s) and specific community (directly related to item 1. E. above):
A) PERFS is anchored in a particular and specific work relationship, as to placing the right specific work into the right life that would be most suitable and predictive of resulting happiness.
B) Whereas Flow Framework helps a specific person define the right work for their particular life.
C) One more difference: since PERFS is a work design tool, PERFS is considered on a function-by-function basis, whereas, Flow is more holistic in nature covering all aspects of work (do) in one’s life(are) from a personal perspective. (You may better appreciate this in Part 4 of this series.)
Always remember, in both Flow and PERFS, it's as important to determine what may cause work experiences in the “A” and “B” zones as it is to determine what places one into the desirable Flow zone. Only by understanding the negatives and the positives can you really have the understanding needed for the best results.
Does this mean that only organizations should know about PERFS? I think not. A worker or a candidate should understand why personal happiness is important to them from from the perspectives of both parties. Both parties should recognize, upfront, if happiness is possible in the work role. They should begin a dialog and march to agreement. If happiness is not likely, the parties are best to avoid seeking and forming a relationship and seek better options.
I encourage any worker or candidate to not only understand themselves and their Flow Zone, but learn more about how the organization is considering and defining the PERFS zone for the role, and in doing so, consider available information for adherence to the Fusion Principle, being alert to potential incongruities.
The practicing reader is strongly encouraged to read the following Career Fulcrum unit for a better understanding of Flow:
03-30-11 PMe
