The opening talk at a conference earlier this week, where we went to present OmniContext Personal Analytics, was by Marshall Goldsmith. This was a brilliant presentation, and its topic was a new approach to engagement at work.

The essential message from Dr. Goldsmith was about engagement actually being the person's own responsibility rather than multiple complex obligations from the company. I found it very unexpected. Not the concept as such, which is very logical, but the apparent fact that it goes against all established rules of conduct in today's businesses. Those rules of conduct obviously are that improving engagement means for the company endless thinking how to give me some new or additional perks, incentives, and all possible warm and fuzzy feelings so the miracle would happen and I would become engaged. And it does not seem at all that something would be expected of me.

Well, Marshall Goldsmith suggests that I have my own things to do as well, and those are based on asking myself a series of questions about what I did today and what efforts I applied myself to do what I think I should have done. This makes perfect sense. And still, what has happened to this world that we have to be convinced of this now, as if it were really something unheard of?

Probably it has to do with different types of persons. An entrepreneur would not wait for somebody else to come up with a set of perks to make him engaged. Now we know that many businesses are trying to make their employees think and act as entrepreneurs. This is the single most powerful factor in increasing individual productivity and efficiency. So this personality type will probably grow in numbers.

It is for this sort of professionals that we develop Personal Analytics. Understand what you do and how you work, and verify every day that you are doing what you think is right.​

​