A new kind of energy audit
Financial management is all about maximizing your assets, investing wisely, and minimizing your losses. Similarly, energy audits for your home identify the best sources of energy (and best investment), then seek to maximize energy benefits and minimize energy loss.
What about our most critical asset: human capital? What if we conducted human “energy audits” in our businesses, organizations, and schools? What would we find? How much energy would be leaking through the cracks of boredom, frustration, and misalignment? Would we even know where each of our human assets derive their energy? Would we know how to maximize it? Where to invest? How to plug the leaks?
Too often, the answer is no — but it doesn’t have to be that way. We know the components of energy-rich human beings and, in turn, organizations.
1. They are engaged and have a strong sense of purpose and meaning. (Shared purpose and meaning is an energy multiplier.)
2. Each person knows and fully understands their primary source of energy (their strengths) and their energy drains, and ensure that there is more energy coming in than going out. We use concrete strategies to maximize strengths and minimize or manage weaknesses, no matter what the situation.
3. The organization maximizes energy efficiency by creating strong matches between individuals’ strengths and the roles they are assigned, as well as the support they are provided. (E.g. Some people draw energy from high-level autonomy, others from consistent direction.)
4. Both the individuals and the organization assume 100% responsibility for all of these elements.
Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? And very different from the energy associated with motivational rah-rah, which is like spending more money than you have or continually pumping more heat into a leaky house. There is lots of activity, but the energy is soon gone.
No, energy-rich people and organizations are “lit up” in a different way. You can feel that the energy that is coursing through them is being created by them. You can see the mindfulness of their strategies. And you can measure the outcomes to which that energy is being directed.
Yes, now that we know better, it’s time to do better – much better. Know the source of your energy. Manage the energy for maximum benefit. Plug the leaks.
Time for an energy audit.
Time to invest.
Time to unleash the unstoppable power of fully energized human beings.