Let’s talk about vampires.
I know vampires aren’t as “hot” now as they were in the Twilight / True Blood era, but I think we can Make Vampires Great Again!
Just kidding, vampires suck.
(Yeah, I went there. Sorry / you’re welcome.)
Today I’m going to talk a little more about human energy, understanding there are vampires all around us — they just don’t have “big pointy teeth” so we don’t recognize them quickly or easily. They’re energy vampires.
At first glance, you might think I’m talking about other people… but I’m not. (Those people certainly exist, but what we do about them will be in a different article.) The energy vampires I worry most about live in our Selves and in our Systems.
I’ll start with a potentially controversial statement: The most important thing you can do in your organization is focus on Human Energy.
Why?
Because literally NOTHING happens without it.
Think about it: the reason anything happens in your company ever is because a human had the energy to build it or has the energy to keep it going. (If you can think of something that doesn’t fit in these categories let me know, because I can’t think of a single thing.)
But, strangely, despite this reality, most of our companies are actually mostly designed to be energy vampires. They’re like some version of The Matrix, where the machine plugs into the humans and extracts their energy to make the larger machine function.
It doesn’t have to be this way, of course, and it’s WAY better for your organization if it’s not.
When we flip the system around — when we make all work-related systems life-giving instead of life-sucking — everything works better. People are more productive, they treat customers better, they create more innovation, on and on.
If you were to look in your organization at the teams that are highest performing or the divisions that are most creative, etc., you’ll almost certainly find an active effort by the leaders of those teams to “protect” their people from as many energy-drainers as possible.
Everything works better when we optimize work, and workplaces, for Human Energy.
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So let’s say I’ve convinced you that you want to pay more attention to this “Human Energy” thing… what would you do about the energy vampires? Great question!
There are two ways to stake these vampires — a ME solution and a WE solution and you HAVE to do BOTH.
THE “ME” SOLUTION (VAMPIRES IN SELVES)
On the ME side, of course you have to take care of the obvious physical and emotional parts of your body. You have to get good sleep, drink lots of water, and put on your frickin’ yoga pants and do your frickin’ poses. Meditate, be mindful, and connect your personal purpose to your job. All great, and all vital.
But here’s the bad news: all that obvious stuff will NEVER be enough. Because you know what you’re doing between sleeping and down dogs and meditation?
You’re frickin’ working!
And if the majority of stuff you’re working ON is draining your energy, no amount of self-care around it will ever fix your problem.
(Maybe you’ve noticed this.)
BUT, there’s a HUGE untapped source of human energy hiding in plain sight…
Where?
IN THE WORK.
Not in the stuff you do “around” the work (like the sleeping and water and yoga), but IN THE WORK ITSELF. Granted, certain work activities are energy vampires that suck the life out of you. But other work activities are life-giving and you LOVE them.
It might not seem obvious at first, but you’ve almost certainly experienced some kind of life-giving work in your life… you maybe just haven’t thought about it much. These are the activities you’re doing when time seems to fly by, when you feel hyper-present and intensely focused. We often call this “being in the zone,” and you might know it by its psychological name: flow.
When we get to do work that feels like that, we LOVE it. There aren’t many things in life that feel better!
Here’s the coolest part…
Those activities actually recharge your personal battery WHILE YOU DO THEM. This means Human Energy is also the ultimate renewable resource.
But other activities… well, they suck the life out of us when we do them. They are energy vampires. It’s likely you could quite easily make a (potentially long) list of these things at work. These activities are the vampires that live in our Selves. This is “subtle body” stuff. It takes awareness and reflection, but you can absolutely uncover what’s draining your energy and actively try to do less of it.
You can also learn more about what brings you energy, and practice doing more of it.
That’s the ME solution: fewer drainers, and WAY more energizers at work.
THE “WE” SOLUTION (VAMPIRES IN SYSTEMS)
Now, I also told you vampires live in our systems (which is admittedly creepy). This is what I call the “WE” solution — it’s about the ways we work together, collectively. This solution is related to what I mean when I say we need to ignore “culture” and work on our organizational operating system instead.
Let’s make this super tangible.
There are a bunch of systems inside your organization that intersect directly with your humans. Let’s talk about 4 of them:
- The way you do meetings
- Your HR platform
- Your performance management process
- Your expense report process
How many of these things are life-giving for people… everybody loves them all, right??
No! Most of our organizational systems are, sadly, life-sucking vampires. I could probably count on one hand the number of organizations I’ve been inside in the last almost-20 years that wouldn’t say at least one of these systems absolutely sucks. Your performance management process probably doesn’t leave people in an optimal performing state (oh the irony).
This is like entropy inside an organizational package; these systems drift towards the lowest possible form of what can be called “functioning” unless someone has the HUMAN ENERGY to procure/deploy/support something that’s actually more life-giving.
But doing something different is also quite hard to do, because 1) There aren’t actually a ton of life-giving systems out there, and 2) It takes a LOT of time, energy, and love to find/deploy/support something other than the status quo. (It might even be harder to get budget for those “different” things because, you know what, all your executives have already heard of Workday…!)
We have to fix these “energy vampire” systems, and I understand these fixes aren’t always easy to do. But it is easy to know WHAT to do: ALL systems need to give people energy, not suck it out .
If you are a people leader of any kind (or HR person) in an organization, this should be your ultimate goal.
Let’s recap…
On the ME side — do more of what energizes you at work
On the WE side — seek out the life-sucking systems and do whatever you can in your sphere of influence to make them better.
Human Energy isn’t just another resource, my friends — it’s THE resource. And when your organization orbits everything around making things life-giving, it creates the kind of future we all want to work in.
Now go stake some frickin’ vampires!
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BONUS CONTENT: If you’d like to watch me deliver the above message as a 5-minute talk, your wish has been granted! Please share with someone who needs to hear this message!
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IMPORTANT NOTE: One of my favorite things is to deliver a TEAM WORKSHOP on this topic (includes an amazing assessment!)… click here and send me a quick message if you’d like to learn more!