In a previous article, I remarked on a recent survey by the Gallup organization that found that 85% of the world’s employees were disengaged from their jobs. I also talked about the discretionary energy gap that is probably the largest single opportunity for corporate performance improvement available to managers in today’s environment. You have to tap into that energy gap to increase engagement.

I recently bought the book that followed that survey written by Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, and Jim Harter, Chief Scientist for Gallup. The book is called It’s the Manager and it’s a worthwhile read. I don’t agree with everything they say but, hey, they’re both well-respected and have been around a long time. There were several surprises for me including that, as an American, the 85% disengagement rate the survey quotes is a little misleading. As I dug deeper into the book, I found that the actual disengagement rate for American employees is 66%. While that may feel a little better, it’s still very unacceptable and remains an enormous opportunity.

Over the last 20 years the pressure on CEOs to deliver growing shareholder returns has been increasing. In some industries, print being one of them, the pressure can be crushing. As we all know, there has always been only one formula for achieving this: grow revenues and/or grow margins so that profits and cash flow increase even faster when revenues grow. In shrinking markets, this often looks impossible. Organic customer growth in a shrinking market requires radically new thinking and approaches. So far, scanning the business landscape, we’re not seeing a lot of that.