Ten Thousand Horses is a story of transformation. Using a fable format, John Stahl-Wert and Ken Jennings tackle the fundamental question of how to move employees from compliance to engagement. Matt James was a top-performing advertising salesman who is promoted to head his division. Directing a division—being responsible for leading other workers toward goals they must achieve together—is an entirely different job from the one he was good at. His workers do not respond to his efforts to lead them, and he is on the brink of being fired for his division’s poor results when he reaches out to an old mentor—a former “turn-around” guru—to teach him what he’s doing wrong and how to correct it. David Butler has abandoned the corporate world—and the turn-around methods that made him famous—and now lives on a ranch in Colorado where he is working with wild mustang horses and at-risk youth. David agrees to work with his former student, but only on the condition that Matt comes to him—to the ranch. David’s unorthodox tutelage introduces Matt to the simple but widely under-attended idea that leaders who succeed in engaging their workers do so because they see their day-to-day work as an opportunity to build an organizational culture of engagement. Every day, in every way, they live the formula I+ C3= E (Integrity)+C3(Co-Creation, Calibration, Celebration) = E (Engagement). Matt’s understanding of these principles and how they function ultimately results in a new-found ability to engage those on his team as well as others in his life. Ten Thousand Horses reveals the engagement model in a successively expanding manner throughout the book, as Matt is guided into a detailed understanding of its components piece by piece. A final, closing recap of the model offers readers a work-tool and a portal to a full on-line work guide that assists them in implementing the model in their own organizations. Drawing on data derived from Gallup’s ground-breaking Q-12 survey on the subject, their years of in-house consulting with hundreds of bus ness leaders, and their own professional experience as chief executives and managing partners, the authors provide both fresh insights into worker engagement and a step-by-step action plan for fostering it through the everyday work of managing people and projects. Through this optimistic story of personal and professional transformation, Ten Thousand Horses demystifies worker engagement, showing leaders that their actions can and must make all the difference.
