Fully Charged: How Great Leaders Boost Their Organization's Energy and Ignite High Performance

I spend a lot of time in workshops helping teams of managers figure out how to cut costs whilst simultaneously innovate their products and processes. Quite a tough paradox, but one common to many, I'm sure. Frequently, after all the dust of these `way forward' workshops begins to settle, and a plan has emerged, a prevailing question pops up for these managers."How are we going to ask our people to do this yet again, the last wave of changes are still in motion?"The professionalism which got the team through the previous tough workshop days just seems to evacuate the room. Deflation invades the room. Facing the reality of what they must now do, sucks the energy out of them. At this point they need some really practical help. I believe the ideas, research and tools in this book will help these teams a lot in this situation.It seems to me that making salient a language and framework to express and think about energy is highly useful. We all can feel it and see when it is present or absent. But, its intangibility makes it a difficult variable to utilise and harness. Bruch and Vogel have unlocked that intangibility, making the concept salient, quantifying its impacts and supplying tools to capture its presence. In my mind I am quite sure we need new ways to lift groups and teams to the new challenges of continous change, I really do find this concept of organisational energy compelling.

With business books, the choice is often between an easy read that's pretty trivial, or something more substantial that's a hard slog to get through. Not so with Fully Charged. What I liked about it is that it addresses an important subject - organizational energy. It's direct and engaging. And it's underpinned by rigorous academic research.Organizational energy is one of those things we can intuitively sense, by its presence or its absence. When there's productive energy, it can be great and teams can achieve great things. Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel define organizational energy as the extent to which an organization has mobilized its emotional, cognitive and behavioural potential to pursue its goals. Since not mobilizing potential is an opportunity cost that few businesses would want to sustain, this is an important commercial topic. It's also important at a very human level. How many of us want to work in an environment where energy is corrosive, or people feel resigned to inertia?Until now the intangible nature of organizational energy has meant that developing and sustaining productive energy has largely been down to guesswork. But the authors' extensive academic research has revealed that organizational energy is both measurable and malleable. What this book does is offer practical ways to work with organizational energy which are grounded in that research.Like me, many organization development consultants have been helping managers to create more engaging organizations. Now we also have some useful tools to help create more energetic organizations too.

As I began to read this brilliant book, I was reminded of how much of value that Tony Schwartz has to say (in The Way We're Working Isn't Working) about the importance of establishing and then nourishing an environment within which people can renew their energy. Achieving that worthy objective requires precisely the same leadership that Heike Bruch and Bern Vogel describe, those who can "boost their organization's energy and ignite high performance." In fact, my own opinion is that such leaders are themselves the single most important source of that energy.Throughout their lively and eloquent narrative, Bruch and Vogel respond to questions such as these:o What are the components of organizational energy (OE)?o How to measure - accurately and consistently level of OE in one's organization?Note: Bruch and Vogel recommend a seven-step process on Page 59.o How to increase positive OE with energy-efficiency?o How to eliminate or at least reduce negative OE?o What are the key leadership tasks?o How best to prepare people to complete those tasks?o What is the "acceleration trap" and how best to prevent or escape it?Note: Check out the summary of steps to prevent a Culture of Acceleration on Page 157.o How to craft and then execute a strategy to instill a proactive sense of urgency re OE?These are among the questions to which Bruch and Vogel. As these questions correctly suggest, they are convinced (and I wholly agree with them) that one of a leader's most important responsibilities is to generate, nourish, and then "orchestrate" OE. The nature and extent of effective leadership in any organization (whatever its size and nature may be) will be determined almost entirely by the nature and extent of its emotional, cognitive, and behavioral energy.Readers will appreciate the provision of Organizational Energy Questionnaire 12 (OEQ 12), a self-assessment of an organization's energy (or a division's, unit's, or team's energy) in the Appendix. The "OEQ 12" resembles the Gallup Organization's "Q12®" (to help measure employee engagement) at least to the extent that (a) both are based on an abundance of research data and (b) both help suggest areas of organizational strength or weakness on which leaders should focus.If your organization needs to become more energy-efficient, this is a "must read." If you think your organization has no such need, I suggest that you become a much more energetic observer of what's really happening...and not happening.

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