A story of engagement and stuff
Once upon a time, researchers wrote about engagement as something wanted of employees at work, but practical people who did engage, thought that engagement was a trusting relationship between at least two people. At the same time researchers wrote about people having things and stuff that reflected their different lives, work and ideas.
But, people haven’t researched engagement between people, or even identified what engagement is, and there are lots of definitions of engagement but they’re all in metaphors because it’s too difficult to explain what you mean by it. And on top of that, the connection between engagement and how things can help engagement hasn’t been made.
My research has made that connection and shows how IT suppliers and their public sector clients use things to engage with each other to get things done in work time and places.
Findings are that if people don’t have things to start with, then they don’t have anything to talk about, to use to persuade and influence, and work doesn’t get done. If they use similar types of stuff like logs or plans but if they don’t share them, then they can’t share ideas either and work doesn’t get done. But if people have and share material things and places and time, work progresses a heck of a lot better.
So the argument is that if you’ve got things and share and use them then it’s easier to talk and then it’s easier to get work done.
In the end, it boils down to sharing stuff and then everyone can work happily ever after.
A first attempt to create a proposal for the Strategy-as-Practice Workshop meant absolutely nothing to my test reader. I had to rewrite it as a story. Does it make sense to you?
