The need to understand organization health flows from a dramatic turn of events, where research has shown that the performance of employees is directly tied to the mental health of employees. Comprehensive analysis of mental health and productivity issues were drawn out by Dr. Edgardo Pérez, CEO, the Homewood Health Centre and Bill Wilkerson, Co-director of the Homewood Health Centre, in their book, Mindsets .

A significant shift has been taking place in the workplace, where the amount of employees in the service and high technology sectors has been outgrowing employment in traditional manufacturing jobs. According to Thomas Stewart, a member of the Board of Fortune Magazine, in 1991, capital spending in America, in machinery and equipment and other technologies for manufacturing was $107 billion and for information technology, it was $112 billion. This marked the first time in history when information technology spending outstripped spending on production technology. This highlighted the change in the nature of jobs which is being accompanied by a shift in the causes of employee absenteeism and employee health. Dr. Neva Hilliard, a former director of the British Columbia Workers' Compensation Board, noted that today most injured workers are absent from work longer and the cost of caring for them has risen dramatically. Reported WCB claims in British Columbia were down 35% over a five year period, while cost of claims soared 264%. She cited workplace stress as a rising contributor to disability as we enter the era of the white-collar knowledge worker.

How Local Leadership Affects the Bottom Line for Organizations

By Dr. Dalton Kehoe, York University

Walking the Talk on “Human Assets” — NOT!

It is widely proclaimed that we are in a knowledge-based economy where highly-skilled individual employees are vital to organizational success. In fact, many organizations find themselves competing for the top talent and seek to be “employers of choice.” As a result, some variation on “people are our most important asset” is commonly pronounced. Despite these statements of good intention, the research tells us many companies still see their “valuable human assets” as either instantly expandable or simply expendable.

SOURCE: From Soundview “Executive Book Summaries,” June 2005

The Summary in Brief: In The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, employee-retention expert Leigh Branham knocks down the wall that separates employee from employer — and even management from senior leadership — in an effort to forge an open discussion on employee disengagement and what organizations need to recognize and actively pursue in order to retain their best and brightest people. Using a voluminous amount of interview and survey data, Branham isolates each reason, tells companies what to look for, and translates the needs and desires of employers and employees into a common language, enabling companies and their most valued human resources to better understand one another.

SOURCE: Excerpt from Soundview “Executive Book Summaries,” July 2005

The Summary in Brief: Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s extraordinary life of leadership spanned more than six decades in the military, education, public administration and business sectors. The five-star general, one of only five in U.S. Army history, defined principles of leadership that were decades ahead of their time: principles reflecting shrewdness and wisdom about strategy, motivation, organization, execution and personal growth.

This summary reveals what MacArthur knew about setting the right goals; building sleek, fast-response organizations; inspiring subordinates to unprecedented performance; focusing relentlessly on results; and winning. In No Substitute for Victory, Theodore and Donna Kinni distill powerful leadership lessons from MacArthur’s life and career — lessons you can use, no matter where you lead and what you intend to accomplish.

Most organizations conduct employee surveys of various types either annually, every two years or sporadically. Some organizations use the data from the employee survey to affect real change that contributes to their ongoing success. There are organizations who like to focus on comparing their survey scores to the scores of other organizations and there are the organizations that do little with their survey results. The focus of this article is to discuss the middle group: those organizations that like to focus on and compare their employee survey scores against the average scores of all the organizations that are in a third party database.

Starting your own business and doing what you do best is easier than ever, according to Faculty Fellow at Yale and entrepreneurial wizard Bruce Judson. Even though only 20 percent of the 1.7 million employees polled by the Gallup Organization said they had the opportunity to do what they do best every day at work, and over 70 percent of U.S. workers are “disengaged” from their jobs, most do not set out on their own and start their own business. In Go It Alone!,Judson provides the practical steps that can help nearly any person create his or her own business.

Judson starts Go It Alone! by dismissing conventional wisdom and explaining that you do not need to build endless financial resources and a team of employees before starting a substantial business. He writes that his tips and suggestions can substantially limit the risk of failure associated with a new venture, and describes the specific steps that should be taken before launching a business.

O’Hara-Devereaux uses the metaphor of traveling through the badlands of the American West to describe the next 10 years of struggle and transition that organizations face today. To help companies bridge the space between the end of the Industrial Age and the “full promise of the Information Age,” the author provides them with tools and warnings that can prepare them for the road ahead. Her goal, she writes, is to soften the ride to creating a “vibrant, equitable, and fully integrated global society underpinned by robust economic growth worldwide.” She explains that today’s leaders and organizations are mismatched with the needs we will face in the new global reality.

There is no pat formula for being a CEO. Everyone does it differently and there is no right or wrong way to go about it no magic formula that is the right thing to do in all cases. Jack Welch has however, found a number of things that have helped him lead GE over the years, among them the following:

* Maintain your integrity. Establish your integrity and never waver from it. People might not have agreed with Welch on every issue, but they always knew they were getting it straight and honest.

* Set the tone for your company. The organization takes its cue from the person at the top. Welch always told his leaders that their personal intensity determined their organization’s intensity-how hard they worked and how many people they touched would be emulated a thousand times over.

In 1992, Jack Welch discussed with GE’s leaders how to differentiate GE’s managers, based on their ability to deliver numbers, while maintaining GE’s values. He described four types of managers:

* Type 1: The manager who delivers on commitments-financial and otherwise-and shares the GE values. His or her futures are an easy call.

* Type 2: The manager who does not meet commitment and does not share the organization’s values. Not a pleasant call but just as easy as the first one.

* Type 3: The manager who misses commitments but shares all of the organizational values. This type might be given a second or third chance, just in a different environment.

In the process of selling businesses, reorganizing and strengthening other business units, Jack Welch also started a process of changing the culture at GE. He moved GE from a stogy bureaucratic organization to a more responsive entrepreneurial company. Part of the fall out of this change was the loss of 118,000 people from GE’s payroll in a Five year period. This earned him the name of Neutron Jack. In 1984 he was named the toughest boss in America by Fortune magazine. However, while he was either selling off or closing companies, he spent millions renovating the company’s headquarters and initiating a major upgrade to their Crotonville management development center. He attracted a legend of critics.