35 Years | 35 Lessons: Good Intentions Don’t Always Create Good Energy
The Carrot & Donut Story.
After more than 35 years working in workplace safety, ergonomics, and injury prevention, I've learned something that has shaped much of my career:
Energy matters.
Especially when you're asking people to embrace change.
One of the best lessons I ever learned about that started at 6:00AM—with 150 power company employees and one very unhappy man holding a carrot.
I had been hired by a power company to conduct a series of half-day ergonomics training sessions for its hourly employees.
Before the first session, the leadership team made what seemed like a very thoughtful decision.
They had employees dealing with obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other health concerns. Yet when employees attended company workshops, they were typically served coffee and donuts.
Someone suggested:
Why don't we serve something healthier?
Good idea, right?
So, management replaced the coffee and donuts with fruit plates, vegetable trays, and flavored water.
There was just one problem.
Nobody considered how the employees might feel about it.
Enter the carrot.
I arrived around 5:30 that morning, and employees were already gathering.
Something immediately felt wrong.
Nobody was talking.
The room was practically silent.
That's usually a pretty good indication that the energy is off.
I walked toward an employee standing in the back of the room.
He was eating a carrot.
“Good morning. How ya doing?”
He looked at me and said:
“How do you think I'm doing? It's six in the morning, and I'm eating a carrot!”
Then he held it up.
“Does this look like a donut to you?”
And there it was.
The energy in that room had shifted before I ever said a word.
Management's intentions weren't the problem.
They were trying to do something positive for their employees.
But they missed an important part of managing change:
They didn't consider the experience of the people who would be affected by the decision.
Those employees weren't thinking to themselves:
“How thoughtful of management to care about our health”.
They were thinking:
“Why is management trying to control what we eat?”
And suddenly, instead of walking into a room ready to educate, motivate, and engage people, I was facing an audience with crossed arms and a healthy dose of resistance.
All because of breakfast.
Now think about your safety programs.
How often does this sequence of events occur?
Leadership develops a new safety initiative behind closed doors.
The Employees hear rumors but aren't included in the process.
A mandatory training session appears on the calendar.
There's little opportunity to ask questions or offer input.
The training happens at the end of a long shift when everyone wants to go home.
Leadership tells employees the new initiative is extremely important.
And then?
Nobody talks about it again and six months later, another “new and improved” program arrives.
Every one of those moments is what I call an energy touch point.
And every touch point has the potential to move the energy of your safety program in one of two directions:
Positive or negative.
That's one of the ideas behind The Energized Approach™. It’s about actively driving energy in a positive direction.
Safety programs don't succeed simply because they're well designed.
They succeed when the people expected to participate in them are “energized”.
That means leaders need to think beyond:
“Is this a good idea?”
And start asking:
“How will the employees be affected by this decision and how will this influence their energy?”
Because after 35+ years in this business, I've learned:
Good intentions don't always create good energy.
Sometimes...
employees just want the donut.
🥕🍩
Michael S. Melnik, M.S., O.T.
Creator of The Energized Approach™
Speaker | Video Creator | Consultant | Author
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