Horton Hears A Who by Dr. SuessLast year, I wrote a post entitled, What Crayons Can Teach Us About Employee Engagement, where I compared the story of the children’s book The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt to that of disengagement within a company.

 

In this post, I’m going to tackle another children’s book; this time from the beloved Dr. Seuss:

 

Horton Hears a Who! 1

“On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing…enjoying…the jungle’s great joys…
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.2

So Horton stopped splashing. He looked toward the sound.
“That’s funny,” thought Horton. “There’s no one around.”
Then he heard it again! Just a very faint yelp
As if some tiny person were calling for help.” 3

 

 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this classic tale. Horton, an elephant, hears the cries of the Whos who are living on a speck of dust floating by and vows to protect them by placing them on a clover. Others witnessing this event think he is talking nonsense about hearing the Whos. First they steal the clover and drop it into a clover field. When Horton is finally reunited with the Whos, he implores them to make enough noise to be heard because the others then vow to destroy it by boiling it. It isn’t until every Who in Whoville, even the smallest, raises their voices that the others realize that Horton was telling the truth.  From that point, everyone vows to keep the Whos safe.

 

Horton hears a Who!. Do you? I was struck by how this story applies to employee engagement. In companies, there are Hortons and there are Whos. A Horton resembles those managers that truly care for their employees and look out for their best interest in spite of obstacles that the company throws at them. They will go to the ends of the earth to make sure that their employees do not “come to great harm” 4 so that they can focus on doing their work. As Horton says, “I’ll stick by you small folks through thin and through thick.” 5

 

And the Whos, of course, are the employees, often unknown and unheard by those without listening skills. Literally, the Whos as in ‘Who are they?’ They need our help. Employees want to be heard: “We are here! We are here! We are here! We are here!”6 And they were heard when they were all engaged in the same purpose. When a company can rally every employee to work toward the same purpose, it will be “heard” in terms of better financials, decreased turnover, etc.

 

Like Horton, we must be protective of our people until the others are able to hear them.

 

I’m a Horton. Are you?

 

Thanks for hearing me. “Yopp!”7

 

 

 

What are your thoughts on Horton Hears a Who and employee engagement?  What other children’s books have lessons that can be applied to employee engagement?

 

 

1 Seuss, Dr. Horton Hears A Who. New York: Random House, 1982. Print.
2 Ibid., page 1
3 Ibid., page 3.
4 Ibid., page 16.
5 Ibid., page 34.
6 Ibid.,page 42.
7 Ibid., page 57.

 

 

 

Let’s Engage!

I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

Employee engagement is a critical mission. I hope I can count on your help! Subscribe to the RSS Feed to receive the latest intelligence/insights and/or register to make entries in the comments log.

I'm Simpson....Gregory F Simpson, Agent in EngagementYou can follow me @agtinengagement.
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P.S.  First contact? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement community. Explore and join fellow employee engagement operatives in targeting a known thief – alias: Disengagement. Together we can bring this thief to justice and make the world a better place for all companies and their employees.

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