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If My Book 'Manage To Engage' Was A Poem

Inspired by Poets Everywhere




When night comes we must ask ourselves

‘did we really engage our people

wisely, in this almost post pandemic world?’


That's the responsibility we carry.

A world we must create

where we prioritize people

and leverage our technology.

Because, we know that people power everything

and to manage to engage

creates relationships

that builds leadership.

And, as our management models age now

as quickly as

our operating models

and business models,

so we must level them up.

Step up to our accountabilities

creating fair-trade,

being fair-dinkum

and giving people a fair go

no matter a person’s position,

their gender, their race.


We do an exchange

our equivalent to meet a fair days work.

We must create a scorecard,

one that builds social capital,

management capital, a leadership license to operate.

Turning vision into verbs

and purpose into plans.

Turning aspirations in to actions,

strategies into schedules.


Before this bleak period of crisis of health and wealth,

of wellbeing,

there was already a crisis.

A pandemic of under engagement,

of people feeling less than all-in.


It cannot remain.

It can not be common place.

Because common sense says we won’t bounce back.

You have an impact.

As a leader of one or many.

What you do by day goes home with your people by night.

You make a difference,

you are the most important person in other people’s lives.

For better or for worse

you create the state,

you make the culture work, or not.


What climate change is to the planet

engagement is to the world of work.

We must remember

people power everything.

They rise up or sit down.

They persist or resist.

They create or debate.

They power our world of work.

You power theirs.


When we manage to engage

We must say ‘I've got this’,

we recognize our influence on

others, their willingness to participate and

bring their best selves to their work, to your work.


When we manage to engage

we earn the right to ask for change,

to launch our transformations,

to achieve.


When we manage to engage

we create a cause

from everyday effort,

we create a clean and meaningful workplace -

there is no lean and mean, there never was.


When we manage to engage

we create confidence that

this time is different.

We create connections and we connect.

We go heads up, raising our noses from our technology and connecting

with our humanology.


We humanize before we optimize.

We humanize before we digitize.


We pave the way for people and teams to collaborate across traditions.

We build community and capability

then we set our people free

to do the great work they want to

and bring their best selves to the work.

2Fs and 7Cs — the scorecard to be proud of.


We know great things happen at the intersection of people and technology

but only

if we connect,

if we have a new routine

One that makes people the center

of work,

a rhythm that shows we care, we are interested

We check in not up.


We know that nothing moves

until people

are moved -

their hearts, their heads, their hands.


Then we know we have a chance

to really make a difference,

to create the volunteers we need who give us their effort at work,

because we know

people power everything.

Long before pandemics

the young inspiring the old,

the old enabling the young.


When we manage to engage, we show up differently,

we enable others to step up. To speak up. To shake things up

during these tumultuous times.


When we manage to engage, different,

we become leaders.

We energize people to become remarkable,

to re-invent, to re-invigorate, to re-juvenate in these tumultuous times.

We connect.


No poetry included!

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