We’ve all heard it before. “We’re different.” “You can’t compare us to (name the company).” “It’s like comparing apples to oranges.” It's easy to rationalize why comparisons to organizations with high employee-engagement levels don’t apply. After all, giving any indication that a business is less than stellar can often seem to be an affront to the leadership capabilities of the organization in question, even when the data shows a direct correlation between high employee-engag

If you've ever seen Joachim de Posada's online video of the Marshmallow Test, you know it's one of the more entertaining Ted Talks available, but it also provides an intriguing study of what is a much larger issue with employee engagement levels across the world. In the late 1960s, Stanford professor Walter Mischel performed the famous Marshmallow test, in which they offered children the choice between one treat (e.g. a marshmallow or cookie), provided immediately, or two tre