Every manager loves the folks who come to work champing at the bit, raring to go and bust their butt all day long. They love to talk about the high level of engagement their team has and brag about their productivity and innovative ideas.

If you want a group like this then make no mistake, It’s your responsibility to engender that attitude, i.e., engage them.

It’s not going to happen by accident and you can’t order your people be engaged.

Engagement happens because you, and hopefully your company are engaging.

This isn’t doubletalk or smoke, think about it. Think about what engages you.

• The guideline is the same thread that has run through every major philosophy and religion for thousands of years—treat your people s you want to be treated—whether your boss treats you that way or not.

• Authenticity is the current buzz word, but it translates simply to be honest, open and do what you say; never fudge, let alone lie, intentionally or otherwise.

• There are absolutely no circumstances that warrant or excuse the messenger being killed. None. Because if you do, there’s no going back—ever.

• If your company doesn’t have an engaging culture then you must be an umbrella for your people, because you can create one below you, even if you can’t change it above.

While managers may not be able to control overall corporate culture there are many things they can do within their own group’s culture to foster engagement.

The number one approach is to show your appreciation of your people. Study after study confirms employees’ desire to feel valued; to make a difference and be credited for it. But how, with budgets cut below bone level?

Here are four simple actions that you can implement at no financial cost and that don’t require approval from anyone.

• Ask everyone for input, ideas, suggestions and opinions—not just your so-called stars.

• Listen and really hear what is said, discuss it, think about it.

• Use what you get as often as possible, whether in whole or in part, or as the springboard that leads to something totally different.

• Credit the source(s), both up and down, publicly and privately, thank them, compliment them, congratulate them.

If you’re sincere, you can’t lay it on too thick; if you’re faking it, they’ll know.

And if you’re stupid enough to steal the credit for yourself in the mistaken name of job security you’ll have the fun of explaining to your boss the plummeting productivity and soaring turnover that accompanies the thefts.

Think ALUC; pin a note on your wall that says ALUC.

Ask!

Listen!

Use!

Credit!

ALUC will make you a winner.

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Whether you laud Ted Kennedy or despise him you can’t deny that there are things he said that resonate with any person, in any country and any circumstances.

Here are some of my favorites.

“I recognize my own shortcomings — the faults in the conduct of my private life. I realize that I alone am responsible for them, and I am the one who must confront them. I believe that each of us as individuals must not only struggle to make a better world, but to make ourselves better, too.”

“There is no safety in hiding.”

“Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And we can do it again.”

“I have seen throughout my life how we as a people can rise to a challenge, embrace change and renew our destiny.”

“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.”

“We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.”

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I guess it’s pretty egotistical, but one of the links I’m giving you today is mine.

It’s is a quick read, but really useful; a guest post I did for Catch Your Limit Consulting, a strategic management and marketing firm, called Hate The Plan, Love The Planning. Let me know what you think.

The second one is an article you’ll probably be hearing a lot about. No matter what you think of the content, the question is whether John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, should have stepped into the political wasp nest of healthcare. After you read the article, be sure to click the comment tab at the top and scan through some of them. Interesting reading.

And please take a minute to share your favorite business OMG moments for the chance to win a copy of Jason Jenning’s Hit The Ground Running.

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After considering my recent views on compost as it applies to leadership and culture I want to add another for you to ponder this weekend.

It’s extremely short and I hope you will add your thoughts to my idea.

Life is compost.

You are the composting machine.

From birth to death a myriad of learning and experiences come your way.

The end result is a rich mixture of ideas, attitudes and actions and even a bit of wisdom if the worms and bacteria are especially effective.

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Hypocrisy has had a high profile on my blog this summer, especially as it relates to the emerging attitudes of young people.

One of the current hypocrisy poster boys is Senator John Ensign, who really drove home what is acceptable and not acceptable in the prevailing attitudes of those who claim the moral high ground.

The Senator, who roundly condemned then-President Clinton’s sexual peccadillo and subsequent lying to a grand jury, said, “I haven’t done anything legally wrong.” (My emphasis.)

Which mean that if Clinton had admitted screwing around with Monica Lewinsky it would have made it a “distraction” (Ensign’s term for what he did.) as opposed to the felony created by lying.

Ensign is prominent member of the Promise Keepers leadership, which lists seven basic tenets, the third being, “A Promise Keeper is committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity” and the fourth, “A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and Biblical values.”

Ensign violated both and compounded the violations by having his parents pay off his mistress.

These don’t count, since Promise Keepers isn’t a legal entity and, obviously, lying to your followers and constituency isn’t illegal—just unethical and immoral.

What kids will absorb is that there are no real repercussions; Ensign still holds his Congressional seat, will probably win reelection, hasn’t changed his role in Promise Keepers, and is still cheered when he gives a speech. And if reporters dare to raise additional questions, his response is “I’ve said everything I was going to say about that.”

We may ring our hands and lament the lack of accountability of society in general and the Millennials in particular, but we don’t have to look very far to find the cause.

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Last Monday I said that leadership was another word for initiative and that meant it had to be spread like fertilizer to every level and person if the company wanted to thrive.

Tuesday I followed up saying that leadership fertilizer was better composted than taught.

That thinking made me realize that the best cultures are also composted.

Cultural development follows a Y-shaped path.

Initially, the raw ingredients from the top person’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) form the basic building blocks of the culture.

At that point the culture moves along one of two divergent routes—one akin to the controlled manufacturing approach of synthetic fertilizer and the other to composting.

Bosses who opt for the former build out the company’s (or their organization’s) culture with little-to-no input from others. They define it, shape it and present the whole as a set piece that is unlikely to change unless they do the changing.

Bosses who opt for the latter use the basic blocks to create a framework that encourages ideas from all levels and positions within the company. The framework acts as a composter with the ideas being processed by various people. One of the most prominent examples of a composting culture was the development of ROWE at Best Buy.

Manufactured cultures have little flexibility, are limited to their creator’s world-view and often defeat initiative and the spread of leadership; even those that are positive are slower, less empowering, and less welcoming to initiative.

Composted cultures are enabling; they encourage people to have initiative, take risks, step out of their comfort zone, grow, and, above all, think—all without worrying that they will be stomped for doing so.

Manufactured culture makes bosses feel safe; they are non-threatening and within their comfort zone.

Composted culture takes bosses out of their comfort zones, often challenges their world-view and shakes up their MAP—not for the faint-of-heart.

Are you a manufacturer or a composter?

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Friday I quoted Henry Mintzberg, the man Tom Peters called the world’s premier management thinker. I hope you clicked and read the short opinion piece in Business Week.

Here is a link to an interview in the Wall Street Journal that will give you more substance on his new book, Managing.

Mintzberg says that, “Basically, managing is about influencing action. … One step removed, they manage people. Managers deal with people who take the action… And two steps removed from that, managers manage information to drive people to take action… too much managing through information—what I call “deeming,” and says his four year old daughter can do that.

“The alternative is to give more attention to the people plane and the action plane. Even when you’re managing information, you can manage in a much more nuanced way than just shooting a bunch of figures around.”

You can check out more about Managing at Amazon. I just ordered my copy (it’s available now, not September) and I recommend that you do the same.

I honestly believe that this will be one of the most valuable business books to be published in a long time.

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Just one more week in which to share your favorite business OMG moments for the chance to win a copy of Jason Jenning’s Hit The Ground Running.

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Last Monday and Tuesday I hit a nerve when I described leadership as fertilizer and went on to say that the composted kind was better than that produced in a lab.

So today I went looking for good quotes about fertilizer. I only found two really good ones, especially the one from Rick Pitino

Since there aren’t more, I thought I’d invite you to make up you own. Read the posts (if you haven’t already) and share your fertilizer quotes in comments.

“Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.” –Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Failure is good. It’s fertilizer. Everything I’ve learned about coaching, I’ve learned from making “mistakes.” –Rick Pitino

“Spreading fertilizer on others juices your own growth.” –Miki

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You, my readers, my friends and whatever enemies I have all use social media (well, almost all), I don’t. No Twitter, no texting (no cell phone:), no Facebook, no MySpace—OK, I do business blog,

But I do read a lot about it; follow the trends and tragedies, as when Twitter went down. So I thought I’d share some of the more interesting articles I’ve come across recently.

First is a clear, concise description of three tactics to get your company up and using social media. Not strategy (as several commenter pointed out) but solid action items.

The Wall Street Journal offers (more) advice—why and how—on the importance of learning texting lingo—that’s one no one will ever sell me on, but you should if you plan to function in the cyber-world.

From Psychology Today, 5 Smartphone Rules To Live By that teach you how to own your smartphone instead of it owning you.

But not everybody believes that everything you do should be chronicled for public consumption. Protocols NYC, a salon created by five Manhattan news media types and those they invite, has banned texting, cell phones, pictures, etc. They call it off the record and just talk to each other—it’s called conversation for those of you too young to have experienced that kind of focus.

Two final offerings for kids and adults who think it’s cool put their life online. They should serve as a warning to anyone with kids and the second for anyone who holds or plans to hold a job at anytime in their lives. The first tells us that “one in 10 teens admitted posting a nude or seminude shot of themselves or others online.” Combine that with the second, “35percent of the 2,667 managers and human resource workers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site,” and you have a recipe for disaster. Privacy settings aren’t the whole answer, since inappropriate pictures sent and information shared with friends may appear on their pages (and who knows where else)—and they never go away.

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