Create a celebration mind-set to drive profitability

Tuesday, 14 October 2014 00:11 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

In these globally competitive times, resourcefulness and innovation are essential to survival. Being open to creative ways to maximise productivity and performance is at an all-time high. According to an article in Forbes, the latest Gallup poll results show that throughout the world, there are twice as many unhappy employees as there are happy ones in the workplace.

Gallup is a US based polling organisation that has been measuring international employee satisfaction in 189 different countries since 1990s. According to the article more than 90% of the world’s workers feel a source of frustration than of fulfillment because they are not engaged and therefore feel unmotivated. One way of re-engaging employees according to Scott Friedman, motivational speaker and author of several books, including the latest: ‘Celebrate – Lessons Learned from the World’s Most Admired Organisations’, believes that organisations need to ‘up’ the celebration factor to connect and motivate employees. Friedman who will be making his debut visit to Sri Lanka for a one-day seminar in October believes that celebration is a competitive advantage that organisations can embrace. “Having fun and enjoying being at work are the keys to maintaining a winning business attitude,” said Friedman. “Customer engagement, employee morale and personal branding all improve when workers are free to make light of their problems,” he said. Friedman promotes that organisations and individuals can use opportunities where mistakes can be turned into play, failure into lessons leaned. Friedman is an ardent believer that turning on and applying a personal ‘GPS’, ‘Gratitude’, ‘Play’ and ‘Surprise’, can help build personal and professional success. “Making mistakes is an opportunity to turn the situation into learning points through celebration,” said Friedman. “What is important is to tune your mind to have a ‘celebration mindset’, as celebration helps to change the focus and pushes the brain to look for positive things, opening new learning centres of the brain,” he said. “A simple example of this celebration mindset is to change ominous words like ‘deadline’ to ‘finish line’,” said Friedman. “A doomsday-type thinking, can’t be good for the workplace, whereas a simple rephrasing can indicate a much lighter, more celebratory mood,” said Friedman. “Celebrating success is everyone’s responsibility,” Friedman suggests. Management and team leaders should be driving celebration at the workplace. Friedman believes that a healthy dose of ‘Vitamin C’ or ‘celebration’, when administered mindfully and with heart, will raise organisations to unprecedented levels of innovation, productivity resulting in better profits. Friedman’s one-day only seminar, ‘Celebrate YOU’, will be held on 28 October at the Taj Samudra. A key theme at his seminar will be to demonstrate how organisations can engage their employees through celebration leading to creativity and productivity, better team performance and enhanced employee well-being.