135: Engaging the Zombies at Work with Andrew Sherman

Pete Mockaitis
Andrew, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Andrew Sherman
It’s great to be here and I wish I had a name of a podcast that was as awesome as How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast. So, this is going to be fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I think it will be fun. Well, I don’t know where you’ll find time for a podcast. You’re already quite prolific and I kind of, just for kicks, wanted to know. So, you’ve written almost 30 books and you’re also a partner at a law firm. So you’re billing hours, you’re selling work, you’re providing leadership. How do you find the time to turn out just that much content?

Andrew Sherman
Well, I’m 55 years old and I had slept about 30 hours in the last 30 years. I do need to sleep more, I think, as I get older but I’ve always thought sleep was overrated. But I think some of it is time management and some of it is a bit of a problem that I have, Pete, that I see a problem in society and, instead of just having a glass of wine or talking about it with others or forgetting about it, I feel a need to write a book about it.
If you look at my last three books they’ve all been where I have a concern as a citizen. My prior books before that were around things that are part of my day-to-day practice, and I thought it was the fair thing and the right thing to share my knowledge with people about what I do, and hopefully be helpful to entrepreneurs in growing companies.
But these last few books have been a little bit outside my comfort zone in a good way, trying to challenge myself to help solve things as I see them but also admit to people upfront, “Hey, I don’t have 35 years in HR consulting. This is a book that I write more as a fellow concerned citizen than I profess to be a subject matter expert.” But, of course, by the time you write a book you end up being a subject matter expert with all the research you’ve done.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. And that’s kind of the real skillset lawyers have is that research, that getting to the bottom of things, that writing and being succinct and sharp and clear with argumentation. So I’d like to hear this story, concerned citizen, how did you end up becoming concerned with disengagement and feel the need to write this book The Crisis of Disengagement?

Andrew Sherman
Well, thank you for asking that question. That’s a nice slow pitch down the middle, I know. It gets tougher as we go. But this one is you kind of envision that triangulated set of knowledge. And a book I wrote about five years ago when I was concerned that governance and leadership was broken in our country was a book called Essays on Governance. And in that book I talked about the importance of good governance and the trickle-down effect that it could have on culture.
Then I wrote a book called Harvesting Intangible Assets and it was all about building a culture of innovation, the agrarian metaphor to serve and drive the innovation and innovation harvesting and monetization and commercialization process. And I thought I was kind of done, that I had all the bases covered.
I started working with some companies in the areas of innovation counseling and I realized that in some cases the culture was so dead, the culture was so apathetic that there couldn’t be innovation. It’s like coming in and asking people that hate their jobs to be rolling around in bed at night at three o’clock in the morning to figure out a way to make their companies better and stronger. It just wasn’t going to happen, no more than a divorce couple is going to produce children.
So, I felt that if I could finish the last leg of the stool, and if you were to sit down on a very weekend where you had absolutely nothing better to do and read Essays on Governance, Harvesting Intangible assets and The Crisis of Disengagement that you might be able to come up with an overall strategy for really improving productivity and profitability and creativity and all the things that so many companies of so many sizes in so many industries are all striving to get out of their people but can’t seem to do it.
And so I’m just hoping that this book helps move the needle a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so I’ll zoom in on the workplace here for now. I know that you referenced Gallup’s numbers, as just about everyone does if they’re thinking about engagement or disengagement. Well, you’ll probably have them more top of mind than I do. But could you give us the lay of the land in terms of what those numbers say in terms of the state of disengagement and your own opinion on if those numbers seem about right to you or you think Gallup is trying to sell some consulting for engagement, products and services and such with their crisis?

Andrew Sherman
Yeah. Well, so a couple of things. Number one, I was inspired in part by the Gallup’s State of the American Workplace study, and I do think that if you’re tuning in today to this podcast then you’re interested in the topic. It’s like reading Drucker on management. You kind of have to go to the Gallup study and read the latest report which came out just a few months ago, the updated State of the American Workplace and then you decide which parts of it really speak to you and which parts of it don’t.
When I read it the numbers were a little different but in the update let me give the breakdown for our listeners. In the latest version which came out unfortunately after my book was already published so my numbers don’t sync up with the latest study. But they basically breakdown the numbers as follows.
Thirty-three percent of the workforce is either engaged or highly-engaged. Within that 33%, 29% describe themselves as engaged and 4%, only 4%, described themselves as highly-engaged. I mean, four out of a hundred workers go the extra mile, stay up late at night thinking about the company, are aligned completely with the company’s mission. The 29% of the 33% they’re engaged but they’re still looking around for other opportunities. They’re the classic B+ students. They’re going to do work and they’re going to do it fairly well but they’re not going to be your top performers in the company.
Fifty-one percent, the largest number, are basically just there, doing what’s necessary to keep their job. They are sort of classic workplace zombies. They purposely go out of their way to stay under the radar screen. It’s not a workforce and that’s really one out of every two workers that you’re going to grow your company with.
And then the really concerning one, which is actually down from 19% to 16%, though that’s not a movement I would get excited about, are the actual actively disengaged. These are the classic saboteurs, the people that are literally working against the success of their boss and their teams. They hate the company, they hate the workplace, they’re like that guy that sat in the corner cubicle from Office Space, and yet they’re not leaving.
And here’s the problem, if you do the math that’s 16 million people. I mean, 16 million people are massively discontented. Sixteen million people are actively trying to recruit others into the subject of actively disengaged. Now, you asked me what do I think of these numbers. I think the numbers are about right. I mean, if you think about it, how many times have you, as a consumer, experienced bad service? Not just bad but bad, bad service. There’s your 16 million actively disengaged.
How many times have you walked into a store or a hospitality experience or a business-to-business setting and said, “You know, I’m walking out of here. I’m not exactly delighted. My needs were met but just barely”? There’s 15 and part of the 29%. So, I just think that if you walk around, almost like the equivalent of that thing on your wrist that counts your steps, if you were to walk around all day and decide how delighted are you as a consumer, and I have several guest contributors.
Bob Gappa talks about disengagement and the impact on the customer experience, these number are about right. Where I try and unpeel the onion of the numbers as I say, “Okay, what can we learn from these numbers? What are the ways that we can improve them?” But that’s what I try to go further in my own research and figure it out. I can share a couple of high-level thoughts but I’m sure you have some additional questions about the Gallup numbers.
But one of them is I believe, maybe I’m a glass half-full kind of guy, but I believe that the real opportunity in this country is the 51% because the 51% are the workplace zombies. They’re really open to either being pulled up into the 29% if we could figure out a way to engage them, but they’re also just as likely to be recruited into the ranks of the 16% and then we’ve lost them, then they’re truly actively disengaged.
Imagine the GDP impact and the productivity impact and the profitability impact and our global competitive impact if 4% became five, or six, or even seven. You’d be talking about additional marginal increases in productivity like this country has never seen before.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s potent and exciting in terms of possibility. And I’d say that I think I buy those numbers when I was doing sort of consumer surveys to see if this podcast anybody cared.

Andrew Sherman
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
About 4% of those surveyed had said that they would be interested in listening to such a thing which sounds like a highly-engaged thing to do listening to a podcast on how to be awesome at your job.

Andrew Sherman
Exactly. And you took the words out of my mouth, which is just the name of this podcast, which I love, I’d already told you once. I’ll say it again. If only 4% of those surveyed were even interested in listening to how to be awesome at our job, that’s scary right there.
But I do think that I’m a little bit more optimistic. And, by the way, we’ll get to this I’m sure, but one of the things I found in the book relative to the numbers is that there wasn’t a lot of distinction between Millenials versus Baby Boomers or other age groups. The study doesn’t really break down a lot around size of company or nature of industry. We’re left with these broad base numbers around the American workplace.
We don’t know if tech companies have higher levels of engagement and manufacturing has lower levels of engagement. So there’s still a lot of work to be done on the research. But the fundamental title of your podcast begs the question, “How many people do we have in the country that are really interested in being awesome at their job?” And I’d like to see out of a hundred million listeners, hey, you’d be hands down the most popular podcast ever.
But, secondly, it means people are interested in being awesome. And that’s the part that has been really troubling me is, “How many people set as their goal awesomeness in the workplace versus people that are setting awesomeness goals outside the workplace or have no awesomeness goals set for themselves at all in anything in their lives?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it’s the state of affairs. It’s where we are right now. And so I guess I’d like to know then, your subtitle mentions How Apathy, Complacency, And Selfishness Are Destroying Today’s Workplace. Now, I’m curious, is there a distinction between apathy and complacency, or they just have a nice ring to it in your creating the title or some keyword searches or something in terms of, are these many different prongs that we should be thinking about attacking?

Andrew Sherman
It was not the result of word searches or good subtitles. Although now that you make me think about it I should probably check those out. To me, apathy and complacency are slightly different things. Apathy is when I stop caring – I’d lost interest in this relationship, personal relationship, work relationship – I just don’t care anymore.
Complacency is a little bit different. It’s around my behavior, it’s around productivity, efficiency. I could be complacent without being apathetic. I could be apathetic without necessarily being complacent. How would I do it? Well, I would be upset. I would not be relating to the job but I might be productive because I’m still looking for a raise. That would be apathy without complacency.
With complacency, I’m actually interested in doing a good job but no one is giving me any leadership or guidance or coaching or mentoring on how to do it. So, I agree with you, the distinctions are subtle but in my mind they’re there, and I think it goes to one of the recommendations of the Gallup report was that we leaders, we people who are awesome at our job and want to be awesome at our job, need to take on the role of coaches and mentors.
Very successful athletes often go onto coaching because, to them, it’s a form of giving back. They don’t want to leave the sport where they excelled, and they become great coaches and they commit themselves to being great coaches. And that’s what I want to see happen in the workplace. I want those people that have been awesome at their job to give back by coaching and mentoring those who want to be awesome in their job.
And so, that component of complacency is part of somebody’s mindset but in part a failure of American management which was part of the opening of the latest update in the Gallup report. And in that regard I totally agree with Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup. I think that when he says stuff like, “We’ve reached the point where traditional leadership practices are failing so badly that they now require full disruption.” I think he’s right. That’s not an attempt to sell consulting or data. I think we need more awesome managers and we need to define what awesomeness constitutes in the field of management, governance and leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so then, let’s talk about some of those practices then associated with what excellent coaching and mentorship looks like in practice. What were some of your discoveries associated with the optimal interventions or practices we should be tackling if we want to get engagement moving in a great direction?

Andrew Sherman
Well, first, we do need to bridge. There is a gap in the workplace between the Millenials and the Baby Boomers about managing expectations, about the Baby Boomers not being fearful. I mean, Millenials will be the majority of the workforce within five years, and we need to bridge that gap. The criticism of the Millenial worker or is expecting a trophy if the come in seventh place. You know, we parents did that. We can’t blame somebody for expecting a trophy if we’ve been giving them trophies since they were three years old no matter how they did.
And so I think, one, is to chip away and build stronger bridges of communication and coordination between the generations that are in the workplace today. Another is to get at this diversity issue once and for all. We still have work to do there.
I would, again, cite Clifton’s observation about the importance of taking on more of a coaching and mentoring mindset in leadership as opposed to “I am your boss and you would do these three things.”
Another is one of the things that my research uncovered is if you survey the average person and you ask them, “How is what you do all day align with the overall mission of the company?” you get blank stares. If you ask them, “How is the mission of the company tied to your reward and compensation?” you get blank stares.
So, if you’re tuning in to today’s podcast and you are an HR manager, an HR leader, it’s time we sit down and really revamp org charts, revamp compensation and reward systems. I don’t think we can continue to sweep that issue under the rag and just hope it gets better. So, those are some top line ideas that I talk about in more detail in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I think that’s pretty helpful, that connection between mission and what you’re doing right here right now. And in some ways many companies struggle with poor mission statements to begin with that are unclear and unfocused and written by a committee. I think it’s so funny. I still remember Bain.
The mission of Bain & Company is to create such extraordinary levels of economic value for our clients that we’ve redefined our respective industries. It was so dead clear. That’s what we do here, and this is why I’m making this slide is so that our client is going to make more money when we’re done.
So, there was something to that in terms of there was no ambiguity and I dug it, but I think most folks are kind of sitting in a spot where, at least in the short term, the mission is some vague amalgamation of “We make everyone feel great from our shareholders to our employees to our customers, and we are innovative and inclusive and diverse and community-focused.” It’s just kind of like, “We’re sort of everything to everyone,” and that’s not a reality in terms of no one can be everything to everyone.

Andrew Sherman
No, and you’re totally right. And look, people see those words on the page, but if the company is not living those words then, it’s bullshit. But look at the title of your podcast again, okay? Awesome At Your Job. Well, awesome says who? Right?
You can declare yourself awesome, but really awesomeness at its core means that when I come in to work every day I’m doing the things that will advance the mission and the values of this firm. That’s awesomeness, at least as I define it.
But many people, and this is where the disconnect in the Gallup study is, people get unhappy when they see a disconnect between their own definition of awesomeness and the company’s definition of awesomeness. And if the company is unclear then I don’t even know how to declare myself as awesome or not awesome. Right?

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So now, I’d love to hear, let’s zoom in. So you are a manager, you have a team of three, and you want them to all be highly-engaged or move in that direction. What are some key things you should be doing right now?

Andrew Sherman
Well, first, we need to deal with the elephant in the room, and that is we need to take a real honest assessment of our A, B and C players. So, if I’ve got three people, I may think they’re all A players, I may think they’re all C players. I have to figure out, “Where do they fit into this Gallup grid or whatever other grid I’m creating?” And I have to be honest with myself and honest with them as to where they fit because if I give you a mandate and say, “Pete, you’ve got to grow your division by 20%, and you’ve got 80 people in your division, and the bulk of them are either just showing up for work or actual saboteurs. How do you suppose to grow by those numbers with the people that you have?”
So, figuring out what people are salvageable, what people are really capable of moving at least in the 29% of engaged is a bit part of that process.

Pete Mockaitis
And what are those acid tests that you use to determine whether or not a person is salvageable?

Andrew Sherman
Well, it’s not a survey, I’ll tell you that. I think the employee surveys can be helpful but many people lie or write what they think you want to read. I’ve asked a CEO client of mine to stop surveying his employees every two weeks because they’re just filling out paper. They’re thinking they’re going to win a door prize. To walk the halls, to talk to people face-to-face. We’ve lost a little bit of our emotional intelligence, our human interconnection. I see people texting each other, they’re standing next to each other.
Get off the phone for a second and look someone in the eye and have a conversation, and I promise you that their body language and their vocal inflections and other poker tells, if you will, you’ll be able to tell in about five minutes whether they’re genuinely engaged, whether they’re authentic and whether they’re the kinds of people that you can build a team around.
Look at sports. Some of the most successful sports teams that win the championships are not riddled with All-Star future Hall of Fame players. It’s people that are genuinely interested in playing together and that are willing to be coached and trust in each other and trust in the coach, and it’s no different in the workplace. What does your team look like? Do you have the right players? Are you willing to start making some moves to get the right players on the team? So that would be one.
I think another is finding out what people really want. Study after study that I read in writing this book is it’s not about money. I bet there’s no connection, or very little connection, between awesomeness and compensation.

Pete Mockaitis
Which is for HR executives everywhere.

Andrew Sherman
Right. I really believe that’s true. Compensation is an end product. Numbers follow, they don’t lead when it comes to this stuff. The awesomeness comes from deep inside, and then of course if you’re awesome at your job, hopefully, you end up being rewarded accordingly. But the awesomeness doesn’t come from the handing of the paycheck.
The awesomeness comes from an alignment between how you’re feeling and where the company is going and the sense of peer recognition. I think we need to do a lot better job recognizing our peers, treating people with respect no matter where they are in the organization. And a lot of that starts from both the top-down and the bottom-up.
One of the professors from the University of Maryland in the ‘50s and ‘60s that I wrote about, he talks about this concept of mattering. People want to matter. They want their lives to matter, and that’s more important to them in the long run as long as they have their basic human needs met.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Andrew Sherman
Sorry, I went off on a bit of a rant there.

Pete Mockaitis
And so with regard to the mattering, you mentioned recognizing, sort of celebrating folks, are there some particular practices associated with recognizing and respecting that we should increase to do more of, or some things we should decrease, like, “These aren’t working”? You know, do less of those specific activities.

Andrew Sherman
Well, we need less of like free soda Fridays and, “Hey, we’re going to really increase our engagement. We’re putting a ping pong table in the kitchen now, so feel free to play ping pong whenever you want.” That’s not what increases engagement. People want to feel like part of something larger than themselves. They want to feel like they can go to work every day and be excited about getting up in the morning.
One of the tests that I have, and kind of a story attached to this, is this, “Honey, how was your day?” test. And no one comes home at the end of the day, and your spouse or your family says, “Hey, dad, how much did you make today?” Right? They come home, and they say, “How was your day? What did you today? Tell me about your work, dad.”
And everyone wants to have something important to say. Everyone wants to have something that they did that helped their company, that helps society, that helped another human being, that’s a great story to share at dinner. I was affected by this. When I was a little kid, I grew up in Philadelphia, and we used to have to go through the toll booth to get to New Jersey. And I saw these toll booth operators, and all day they just receive the dollar and they handed out the receipt. It was pretty automation. I was seven years old.
And I said to my parents one day, I said, “I bet that’s the most boring job in the world. I mean, what does a toll booth operator say at the end of the day? How was your day? ‘Oh, well, it was great. I handed 8,000 people receipts and collected $8,000 at the bridge to New Jersey.’” I mean, what can they say about their day?
So, I took it on my personal mission was to make a toll booth operator’s day exciting whenever I had to go through a toll booth. So, I would do something crazy, something out of the ordinary, sometimes I’d give them $3 and pay for the two cards behind me even though I didn’t know them. Anything I could do to give the toll booth operator a story to tell their spouse when they got home. And it was just the thing that I took on, and it evolved into how many hours you take test.
I want everyone to go home and have something meaningful to share. Because, where does apathy come from? It comes from coming home and having nothing to say for years upon years.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s just to think about the actual day in, day out experience of yourself or another employee there and see, “Is there anything to say?” It’s like, “How was your day?” “Well, I copied and pasted 800 things from the internet to a spreadsheet.” And I get that has to happen from time to time when that can’t be outsourced for one reason or another. But day in, day out that’s not anything to talk about.

Andrew Sherman
I agree with you, but let me tell you a little story. You probably heard this before, but maybe not all of your listeners have. So, this guy stumbles on a construction site and he runs into three workers and they’re basically laying bricks, okay? So, he says to the first worker, “So, what are you doing?” He says, “Come on, you jerk. What do you think I’m doing? I’m laying brick here. Right? Get out of my face.”
So he turns to the second worker and he says, “What are you doing?” He says, “Well, I’m supporting my two young children and putting them through college through this brick-laying job. And I know it may not be the best job in the world but I understand what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and I feel really good about putting my kids through college.” And so, well, that’s a better answer than the first one.
He asked the third worker, “So, what are you doing?” He says, “I’m building a church.” And that was his answer. So, the first worker, he’s clearly in the 16%. He hates his job, he doesn’t want to talk about what he’s trying to accomplish. The second guy, maybe he’s in the 51%, and he’s doing his job but at least he sees a somewhat larger purpose of why he’s working and what meaningful things come to him from his hard work.
But the third guy, he gets it. Yes, he’s a bricklayer. No, it may not be the most exciting work in the world but he’s building churches, he’s building schools, he’s building places where children will live and work. One of my Georgetown law students, she told me her father – they’re from New York – her father took her out one day and drove her all over Manhattan, and he started pointing to all these buildings where he had done – I think they were in drywall – where he had put drywall.
“You see that beautiful building over there? We did that one. That one, hey, I got a funny story that happened when we were drywall-ing.” And they both started crying because he actually was very proud of his daughter who was going to Georgetown Law school to become a lawyer, but she realized how proud he was of all this work that he did that afforded, that allowed her to go to law school, but also the pride that he had in his work. And she didn’t realized how many buildings up and down the streets of Manhattan he had touched in some way.
And so, what are you doing? Are you laying bricks or you’re building churches? And leaders need to do a better job of helping the employees see what the larger picture is. So, even the guy cutting and pasting all day is doing something that’s larger than himself, and something that’s larger than that task that you described. I’m sorry if I sound a little preachy here, but I really believe this stuff and I think we can do better communicating to our workforce why they come to work every day and what we’re trying to accomplish.
And you’re right, from your point 10 minutes ago, it can’t be some wishy-washy mission that looks like everybody else’s mission. Go on. I’m going to take a sip of water now.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I want to get your take then in terms of sort of the day in, day out, what are some of the key means of helping make that connection, draw the lines so that’s really connecting and resonating, your action to the mission or outcome or purpose?

Andrew Sherman
Well, show people. Show them what they’re doing. Show them the larger work. Talk to them. We have a couple of guys here at Seyfarth in our DC office that work in office services. I’ve been here almost a year. I have never ever, ever seen them not smile. Ever. They are treated with respect. They are key members of the team. They understand that they’re helping to support a busy office that does all kinds of great legal work for a wide variety of clients.
I think that communicating to them where they fit in this organization, and the importance that they have to all of us, and how we’d be lost without them, and what we’re trying to accomplish is a result of them being here, and just basic “pleases” and “thank yous” and showing of appreciation. You can communicate more with a simple facial expression than you can with a thousand words.
I just think we need to be more sensitive.
But that’s what we want out of all our leaders. We want them to act like leaders. We want them to show empathy and passion and compassion, and know that they lay out a clear path for others as to where they fit in the organization, and be willing to get rid of the 16%. Be willing to show them the door because they are not helping anybody, and they’re not helping themselves, and maybe in a different setting they can be moved up into the 51%. But once they’ve sort of checked out of the hotel and become that dispassionate in their work, I don’t think they’re salvageable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, tell me, Andrew, is there anything else you want to make sure you cover before we talk about your favorite things?

Andrew Sherman
I just left last Friday a company that had been around for over 20 years and had their first town hall meeting, their first meeting kind of with the full set of employees in the company. And the leaders of the company kind of really opened up to them and there was a lot of interactivity and a lot of dialogue. And you could say, “Why did it take them 20 years to have a meeting like that?” I’m looking more forward. I bet it won’t be another 20 years before that happens.
So, I’m a big believer in the town hall. I’m a big believer in communication. I really think that that’s the biggest bang for the buck these days is more collaboration, more communication, more coordination. Give people opportunities to work in different types of teams and to really collaborate with each other, and see how that collaboration is driving stakeholder value.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Andrew Sherman
I would say a quote by Rabbi Hillel, and the quote says, “If I am not for myself then who shall be for me? And if I am only for myself then who am I?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Andrew Sherman
That’s a tougher one. Lately, of course, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Gallup study. In terms of piece of research, I would go back to the mattering research that was done in the ‘60s and ‘70s by the University of Maryland and others have written about, and really just basic business fundamentals. Some of these things I mentioned, Drucker on management.
Some of the core basic management philosophies to go back to, the Dale Carnegie’s about treating people the way you want to be treated. I know it sounds a little hokey to end with but I really believe that stuff. I read those things as a teenager and they still affect at 55 how I treat others and how I hope to be treated.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Andrew Sherman
Wow! I’m going to have to go with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite tool whether it’s a product or service or app, something that helps you be more awesome at your job?

Andrew Sherman
You’re going to laugh but I’m still a Blackberry guy. I did get the new but I love that snap-down keyboard, man. It keeps me connected to the world 24/7, and I’ve developed some pretty thick skin about how often I get made fun of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours?

Andrew Sherman
I still keep a traditional paper calendar with the whiteout and markings. I just find that, even though I’m an electronic calendar guy as well, the touching and the feeling, and the looking ahead in the calendar, and adjusting my schedule accordingly really helps with my time management and productivity. I think that whatever work habit, productivity tool you have, if it’s working, keep being open to technology but don’t significantly change it. I think that you get to a point in your life where it’s a habit for a reason. And if it’s a good habit, as opposed to a bad one, then stick with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular sort of nugget or articulation of your message that seems to really connect with people in terms of getting heads nodding and re-tweets happening?

Andrew Sherman
Yeah, I would say there’s a lot of talk, as you know, about this whole notion of the work-life balance. I offer up a quote from the Zen masters at the very, very end of the book, and I won’t read the whole quote to your listeners, but the essence of the quote is that the Zen master does not distinguish between what is work and what is life, or what is work or what is play. They look at it as one large integrated web. And I try to do the same thing.
If I can’t look at my play at somewhat being work then maybe I don’t go the extra set at the gym. And if I can’t look at my work as somewhat being play then I’m not going to enjoy being here till eight or nine o’clock every night. So, I would urge people to stop bucketizing pieces of their life as being one thing or the other, and look at life as kind of the interwoven fabric that it really is.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Andrew Sherman
Take a look at the Amazon site for The Crisis of Disengagement book. My bio and contact information is all on the Seyfarth website. We’re doing a lot of work here at Seyfarth in labor and employment law and on the future of the workplace, and a lot of that is on our homepage, and check it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a parting challenge or call to action for those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Andrew Sherman
I invite you to join us in the 4% and to work with me and work with regularly listening of your podcast to make sure we get that number to 5%, 6%, 7% before I’m six feet in a box. That would make me very, very, very happy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, Andrew, this has been fun, and I wish you tons of luck with the book and law and all that you’re up to.

Andrew Sherman
Well, thank you. It’s been really and absolute pleasure being on the show. Please don’t be a stranger. I’m going to definitely help get the word out on this podcast, and happy to come back for around or two if you ever need me or want me.