Why is it that seasoned consultants/coaches are seemly in their comfort zone when they back away from the use of technolgy in their day-to-day practice? It's reminiscent of physicians who have a very low adoption rate when it comes to the use of new EMRs (Electronic Medical Records) in hospitals.
Maybe for the younger consulting generation, the barriers to hi-tech assistence might be much lower. Maybe it's the burden of learning new technology skills and then trying to figure out how to integrate knowledge? Is it that consultants/coaches feel threatened that their own lack of personal skills may cause the failure to grasp the technology? Are business opportunities being trumped by technology tools? Are they fearful of the loss of the cherished daily rate?
Maybe I'm wrong altogether and there really are no barriers of technology useage by the consultant/coach considering technology is the wave of the future for the successful consultants.
I would like to hear your thoughts.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Consulting Without a Survey Is Like Brain Surgery Without a CAT Scan
I have joined an Employee Engagement forum in which seemingly successful consultants blog about the importance of motivating employees so they, as a unit, will perform their duties in a way that delights their customer and results in greater profitability. The responses I have read cause me to fall off my chair! The only analogy I can draw is like brain surgeons doing brain incision work without a cat scan. It is like surgery by "touch and feel".
Now consider a surgeon prepared with preemptive analysis. I am sure you would feel more comfortable as a patient if your surgeon knew EXACTLY what he was doing. Using survey data gives you a picture of the entire engagement climate and culture, all at one time, so that consultants will know what surgery to perform, where to do it and how to do it effectively and efficiently. As a for instance, in a worldwide company of 2000 employee and 200 managers and 30 VP, where do you begin?
With organizational survey data results, you instantly find the critical places to focus, where to prioritize, who to coach, who to have engaged conversations with, even gain insights to know if the issues are top-down and if the solutions are bottom-up. By asking Organizational Excellence questions you can also assess processes, culture, customer focus issues, and other concerns degrading efficiencies and requiring instant response. For a client benefit, as well as evidencing impact of poor engagement, starting your consulting efforts with a survey will give you a pretty good visual and baseline measurement system for the plans ahead.
When the baseline is established, you can then plan individual coaching sessions with managers, who we feel are principally responsible for their departmental culture, with leaders and workers. Added survey technology as the frontend piece then creates the x-ray for you to more effectively take the critical action steps. As a consultant, I try to be like the TV show, House, by first assessing the symptoms and always using explicit evidence to recommend a cure for the toughest organizational diseases.
Try starting out with a good survey next time- you might like it and it might even make your job easier!
Now consider a surgeon prepared with preemptive analysis. I am sure you would feel more comfortable as a patient if your surgeon knew EXACTLY what he was doing. Using survey data gives you a picture of the entire engagement climate and culture, all at one time, so that consultants will know what surgery to perform, where to do it and how to do it effectively and efficiently. As a for instance, in a worldwide company of 2000 employee and 200 managers and 30 VP, where do you begin?
With organizational survey data results, you instantly find the critical places to focus, where to prioritize, who to coach, who to have engaged conversations with, even gain insights to know if the issues are top-down and if the solutions are bottom-up. By asking Organizational Excellence questions you can also assess processes, culture, customer focus issues, and other concerns degrading efficiencies and requiring instant response. For a client benefit, as well as evidencing impact of poor engagement, starting your consulting efforts with a survey will give you a pretty good visual and baseline measurement system for the plans ahead.
When the baseline is established, you can then plan individual coaching sessions with managers, who we feel are principally responsible for their departmental culture, with leaders and workers. Added survey technology as the frontend piece then creates the x-ray for you to more effectively take the critical action steps. As a consultant, I try to be like the TV show, House, by first assessing the symptoms and always using explicit evidence to recommend a cure for the toughest organizational diseases.
Try starting out with a good survey next time- you might like it and it might even make your job easier!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Why Should YOU Care About Employee Engagement?
ANSWER: It’s good for business!! It directly impacts shareholder return, financial improvement and competitive advantage. You must read 1. Before you read 2.
1. Making the Business Case for an Employee Engaged Culture:
Hewitt research found a 63% differential in total shareholder return for companies with high employee engagement vs. those with low engagement:
“Organizations with high levels of engagement (where 65 percent or more of employees are engaged) outperformed the total stock market index even in volatile economic conditions. During 2009, total shareholder return for these companies was 19 percent higher than the average total shareholder return. Conversely, companies with low engagement (where less than 40 percent of employees are engaged) had a total shareholder return that was 44 percent lower than the average.”
Gallup research found companies in the top 25% for employee engagement have (as compared to bottom 25%):
• 37% less absenteeism
• 25% less employee turnover in high-turnover organizations (such as retail)
• 49% less turnover in low-turnover organizations
• 27% less shrinkage
• 49% fewer safety incidents
• 60% fewer product defects
• 12% higher customer metrics
• 18% higher productivity
• 16% higher profitability
And that’s just the start. Gallup also found:
• EPS exceeds competition by 28% (top 25% for employee engagement)
• EPS exceeds competition by 72% (top 10%)
• Growth trajectory (for financial improvement): 2.5 times the competition (top 25%)
• Growth trajectory: 3.9 times the competition (top 10%)
What did the level of employee engagement mean to companies during the recession?
• Those in the top 25% that were trailing competition before the recession surpassed the competition in 2008.
• Those in the top 10% were already ahead of their competition in 2007, but widened the gap further in 2008.
• Those in the bottom 25% for engagement in 2007, however, followed the same downward trend as their competition during the recession.
Still think employee engagement doesn’t matter?
2. How The Hell Do You Engage Your Workforce?
This is where the “rubber meets the road”. I receive the Google alerts for Employment Engagement and I’m flabbergasted that I have counted over 50 ways, so far, that authors have suggested as to “How to Engage Your Employees”. If you had 50 employees I guess you try each way on each employee and see what works. This is of course ridiculous.
The fact is that people are different from each other in so many ways, such as upbringing, backgrounds, ingrained conditioning responses, mother and father complexes, basketball players vs. computer geeks, males vs. females, tall vs. short, bulky, physically attractive and those not, maybe a million more influences. That to lump all workers into a stereo type by authoring a lackluster suggestion is senseless, ineffective and maybe having an unintended negative result.
Employee engagement is a personal, hidden behavioral quality that is so internalized that many times even the “employee” doesn’t know why they are motivated. This becomes a good starting point for us to examine how to really measure engagement for the benefit of the employer.
We all know the first lesson is to take the time to measure the current level of engagement of your workforce but with a complete demographic slicing capability. Especially so, you MUST understand the behaviors and impact that CEO’s have on Senior Manager and then on Managers and then on the workforce. This is known as “Vertical Alignment”, The Power of Alignment, Dr. George Labovitz.
How do you fix stuff if you don’t know who or what to fix! I submit this complicated task cannot be, as suggested by some, to simply take the pulse of the people by asking if “They have a best friend at work”, or “talk nicely to your workers”, without a clearly defined way to isolate responses by each demographic in the company. If you have a staff of 1000 people, what CEO in their sane mind would spend the time to ask each of the workers feel they are not “talk nicely to your workers”-get real!
A client VP, who became a friend, was recently laid off from his senior level position because of his conflict in dealing with a new VP that the new CEO brought into the company. This example is important because it underscores the need for every organization to take a baseline pulse of their work force. This VP friend, lets call him “Greg” was the most dedicated, engaged, committed, tireless worker that his ex company ever had working for it. His dedication to drive his ex organization to greater profitability was unmatched by even his ex and current CEO. Had the new CEO been aware of Greg’s level of “engagement”, results may well have been different-for both.
Based on what we now know, what’s the very first step to convert your culture of getting people engaged or committed? The Canadian Conference Board Research identified 28 emotional and rational key drivers of people; each contributed to people giving that extra bit of effort to their work and their leadership that keep them striving to contribute to the company goals. There could be 60 or 100 other emotional or rational drivers, but the fact is that you need to take a shot gun approach in learning key success drivers of each of your workforce demographics.
The second step is the Engagement Survey. Make sure it’s online, use an experienced survey consultant vendor that provides a way for you to x-ray the organizational skeleton, with an analysis means to dissect each of the measures by each work group area. Lastly, the data analysis must allow you to cross tab or use correlations to really see which parts of your workgroup are with you or “agan you”.
Now comes the hard part! Let’s ask, “who cares if my people are happy and committed” if they aren’t engaged in your business. Workers can be very happy doing nothing! So, happy workers who don’t know how to deliver the best to build great customer service, are as useful as bumps on a log. So, you, as the “boss” need to understand what your workers need from you to make their job more effective and efficient in generating profitability. This is the true essence of engagement! It’s a reciprocal relationship: bosses give what people need and people give what bosses need. So take measures based on needs of both!
Let’s summarize: good survey content to measure those important drivers of your workforce for them to work more effectively, great analysis capability of your survey tools to really understand the data so to know what to fix and who to fix, and a clear understanding of what it takes YOUR business to meet YOUR customer needs. Now engagement will be the key to drive your profitability.
1. Making the Business Case for an Employee Engaged Culture:
Hewitt research found a 63% differential in total shareholder return for companies with high employee engagement vs. those with low engagement:
“Organizations with high levels of engagement (where 65 percent or more of employees are engaged) outperformed the total stock market index even in volatile economic conditions. During 2009, total shareholder return for these companies was 19 percent higher than the average total shareholder return. Conversely, companies with low engagement (where less than 40 percent of employees are engaged) had a total shareholder return that was 44 percent lower than the average.”
Gallup research found companies in the top 25% for employee engagement have (as compared to bottom 25%):
• 37% less absenteeism
• 25% less employee turnover in high-turnover organizations (such as retail)
• 49% less turnover in low-turnover organizations
• 27% less shrinkage
• 49% fewer safety incidents
• 60% fewer product defects
• 12% higher customer metrics
• 18% higher productivity
• 16% higher profitability
And that’s just the start. Gallup also found:
• EPS exceeds competition by 28% (top 25% for employee engagement)
• EPS exceeds competition by 72% (top 10%)
• Growth trajectory (for financial improvement): 2.5 times the competition (top 25%)
• Growth trajectory: 3.9 times the competition (top 10%)
What did the level of employee engagement mean to companies during the recession?
• Those in the top 25% that were trailing competition before the recession surpassed the competition in 2008.
• Those in the top 10% were already ahead of their competition in 2007, but widened the gap further in 2008.
• Those in the bottom 25% for engagement in 2007, however, followed the same downward trend as their competition during the recession.
Still think employee engagement doesn’t matter?
2. How The Hell Do You Engage Your Workforce?
This is where the “rubber meets the road”. I receive the Google alerts for Employment Engagement and I’m flabbergasted that I have counted over 50 ways, so far, that authors have suggested as to “How to Engage Your Employees”. If you had 50 employees I guess you try each way on each employee and see what works. This is of course ridiculous.
The fact is that people are different from each other in so many ways, such as upbringing, backgrounds, ingrained conditioning responses, mother and father complexes, basketball players vs. computer geeks, males vs. females, tall vs. short, bulky, physically attractive and those not, maybe a million more influences. That to lump all workers into a stereo type by authoring a lackluster suggestion is senseless, ineffective and maybe having an unintended negative result.
Employee engagement is a personal, hidden behavioral quality that is so internalized that many times even the “employee” doesn’t know why they are motivated. This becomes a good starting point for us to examine how to really measure engagement for the benefit of the employer.
We all know the first lesson is to take the time to measure the current level of engagement of your workforce but with a complete demographic slicing capability. Especially so, you MUST understand the behaviors and impact that CEO’s have on Senior Manager and then on Managers and then on the workforce. This is known as “Vertical Alignment”, The Power of Alignment, Dr. George Labovitz.
How do you fix stuff if you don’t know who or what to fix! I submit this complicated task cannot be, as suggested by some, to simply take the pulse of the people by asking if “They have a best friend at work”, or “talk nicely to your workers”, without a clearly defined way to isolate responses by each demographic in the company. If you have a staff of 1000 people, what CEO in their sane mind would spend the time to ask each of the workers feel they are not “talk nicely to your workers”-get real!
A client VP, who became a friend, was recently laid off from his senior level position because of his conflict in dealing with a new VP that the new CEO brought into the company. This example is important because it underscores the need for every organization to take a baseline pulse of their work force. This VP friend, lets call him “Greg” was the most dedicated, engaged, committed, tireless worker that his ex company ever had working for it. His dedication to drive his ex organization to greater profitability was unmatched by even his ex and current CEO. Had the new CEO been aware of Greg’s level of “engagement”, results may well have been different-for both.
Based on what we now know, what’s the very first step to convert your culture of getting people engaged or committed? The Canadian Conference Board Research identified 28 emotional and rational key drivers of people; each contributed to people giving that extra bit of effort to their work and their leadership that keep them striving to contribute to the company goals. There could be 60 or 100 other emotional or rational drivers, but the fact is that you need to take a shot gun approach in learning key success drivers of each of your workforce demographics.
The second step is the Engagement Survey. Make sure it’s online, use an experienced survey consultant vendor that provides a way for you to x-ray the organizational skeleton, with an analysis means to dissect each of the measures by each work group area. Lastly, the data analysis must allow you to cross tab or use correlations to really see which parts of your workgroup are with you or “agan you”.
Now comes the hard part! Let’s ask, “who cares if my people are happy and committed” if they aren’t engaged in your business. Workers can be very happy doing nothing! So, happy workers who don’t know how to deliver the best to build great customer service, are as useful as bumps on a log. So, you, as the “boss” need to understand what your workers need from you to make their job more effective and efficient in generating profitability. This is the true essence of engagement! It’s a reciprocal relationship: bosses give what people need and people give what bosses need. So take measures based on needs of both!
Let’s summarize: good survey content to measure those important drivers of your workforce for them to work more effectively, great analysis capability of your survey tools to really understand the data so to know what to fix and who to fix, and a clear understanding of what it takes YOUR business to meet YOUR customer needs. Now engagement will be the key to drive your profitability.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Don’t Count Your Fortunes Yet, if You’re Drinking the Kool Aid that Employee Engagement is the Path to Fortunes!
Employee Engagement is the new buzz by the water coolers outside the HR director’s office. The statistics and research blogs are coming in fast and furious from Google that organizations that seemingly have a high, measured, level of employee engagement are vastly outperforming those organizations not engaged. Hogwash!!! Stop drinking the kool aid!!! That’s only 1/2 of the story.
Let’s start at the beginning. How important is it to have an engaged workforce? Very, is my answer, but let’s talk about the “how” to get there and what you need to do to really make it meaningful.
First, the definition of engagement has been all over the place. How and why there are so many different measures of engagement is beyond me. One company has 12 measures, another 28, another 15 and each are different. Everyone is measuring different elements, so who knows what are the right ones? Does it really make a difference? Maybe not. Just having high survey scores signifying happy people might well be enough to make them pliable for a change process.
It’s intuitive that happy workers are more apt to be committed to the company and their boss. That in and of itself will create a foundation for the “high performing” culture you’re seeking. It’s also the precursor for the real next step: aligning your business to your customer. This is where you can “show me the money.”
Every Engagement survey must have at least 50% of the questions focused on organizational issues. Happy workers that are so disconnected to the business will not make you more money. It these issues that really matter: How about the manager to worker relationships? do the processes really meet customer needs? Are the worker connected to the real business strategy and do they know how they contribute? How about the ongoing training, communication, culture and so much more that align to happy customers?
If you really want to convert straw to gold, the buzz about EE is only 50% correct. The second 50% is to link the “happy people” to the business issues. This is the hard work; How to mentor and supporting the managers to sustain the “happy people” attitudes, while improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Take this to the bank--happy people first, organization rehab second; then start counting your pennies.
Stanley Labovitz, CEO
Let’s start at the beginning. How important is it to have an engaged workforce? Very, is my answer, but let’s talk about the “how” to get there and what you need to do to really make it meaningful.
First, the definition of engagement has been all over the place. How and why there are so many different measures of engagement is beyond me. One company has 12 measures, another 28, another 15 and each are different. Everyone is measuring different elements, so who knows what are the right ones? Does it really make a difference? Maybe not. Just having high survey scores signifying happy people might well be enough to make them pliable for a change process.
It’s intuitive that happy workers are more apt to be committed to the company and their boss. That in and of itself will create a foundation for the “high performing” culture you’re seeking. It’s also the precursor for the real next step: aligning your business to your customer. This is where you can “show me the money.”
Every Engagement survey must have at least 50% of the questions focused on organizational issues. Happy workers that are so disconnected to the business will not make you more money. It these issues that really matter: How about the manager to worker relationships? do the processes really meet customer needs? Are the worker connected to the real business strategy and do they know how they contribute? How about the ongoing training, communication, culture and so much more that align to happy customers?
If you really want to convert straw to gold, the buzz about EE is only 50% correct. The second 50% is to link the “happy people” to the business issues. This is the hard work; How to mentor and supporting the managers to sustain the “happy people” attitudes, while improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Take this to the bank--happy people first, organization rehab second; then start counting your pennies.
Stanley Labovitz, CEO
Friday, July 23, 2010
STEP 2- Critical Success Factors: "How Do You Get There?"
After the Main Thing has been defined, the next question is “how do you get there?”
This brainstorming exercise is best served by people talking to each other to really understand the essential, critical success factors (CSFs)to accomplish the mission of the “Main Thing” and be filtered downward. This is what is called Vertical Alignment. The Power of Alignement, Wiley 1998 . Weak leadership, at any level of this deployment process will cause variability in the way the MT strategy will be executed.
Brainstorming includes asking the question, “What is unique to our business that if we can achieve a bunch of critical steps, we can be successful?”. Each “Main Thing’s” CSFs must include examinations of existing Leadership and Culture as two of the essential components.
Leadership: As we know, not only is it critical to articulate, communicate, deploy the MT to the workforce, but people must know “how to get there”. This “how to get there” must be effectively understood, tools to get there, communicated with uniformity, and with sincerity through the various roadmap, they need to deploy. What are challenges they face? What are the baselines? What does the workforce need to in the form of tools, leadership, culture shifts, emotional realignments, training, learning’s and communication skills to “get there”?
The finest measurement/diagnostic tools must be used to establish this baseline. Diagnostics must contain fine tuned analytics so that each department local manager will get a clear x-ray picture of their department, assessing whether those competencies exists to achieve best practices of each of the items or questions nested in each of the CSFs.
Culture: Effective execution is critically impacted by the organizations culture.
Remaining CSFs: Strategy makers know what needs to be done to reach the goals established around the main Thing. To get there, we need to to this and that. It’s the “this and that” which comprise the 3-5 critical success factors. These steps must be defined at the strategy level. These steps to success must be brainstormed, messaged, fishboned or whatever tools used, so there is a clear path or series of achievements to be met.
Take for a real example the President of a bank that wanted to grow his commercial banking business by 15% in a year. These are clear fined goals; an understandable Main Thing. His critical success factors were: Leadership, Culture and customer focus.
LEADERSHIP: He knew for his leadership, he needed to know his manager’s ability to delivered, by learning if his vertical alignment of leaders, at all levels and in all department, had capabilities, or needed help, to lead in 6 essential areas: Change, communication skills, industry knowledge, immediate supervisor leadership and vision and strategy.
CULTURE: Motivation, teamwork, job knowledge and integrity
CUTOMER FOCUS: Technology, Expand the business relationships, drive the business development, quality service and bank service
An “amazing win” for this leader was profitability, but he knew what his organization needed to do, the strengths he needed to expand or the needs of his workforce he wanted to fulfill. For this leader, he knew that without taking the time and energy to clearly define his goals and mission and how to get there, these essential, critical measures would be left to others. Usually those other have not the same passion or insight, and there is no message more powerful than that of the “boss defining the way”.
EXECUTION:
The theory and models of success have been define by the leader, but execution is becomes a very large stumbling block. What is even more troubling that good execution at parts of the organizations, coupled with fair or medioca execution in most of the organization and poor execution in a portion of the organization will lead to varying levels of conflict, inefficiency, ineffectiveness. This is what I describe as “aligned performance variability”. Take the example of an 8 cylinder , hi performance engine, the “hemi”, but working 2 cylinders are performing perfectly , 2 are operating at 80% capacity, 2 at 60% and 2 at 20 %. That’s performance variability..
There are many reasons for this inexact delivery or deployments system. The reasons can stem from culture issues, communication, poor trust issues, weak managers, angry workers, and so on…The fact is that there is a disappointed, frustrated leader who anguishes as his or her best plans of utopia for the shareholders and the organization are languishing. Frustration turns to acceptance, turning to expensive fix-it plans created internally or by consultants.
SOLUTIONS:
Eliminating performance variability of the holy grail, the “critical success factors”, but by each demographics or department is the solution. Is a global, off the shelf training program, the answer? How about a manger retreat where power points of survey scores are plastered on screens and the audience visibly gasps and then goes back to “the old normal”. Not by intentional fault, but by lack of an effective plan of solution.
Failure of changes management or business transformations are not the “cross to bear “ of any particular leadership group. Sporadic improvements, not sustained, will revert back to the “old normal” as the people expected to perform are plain old people with the frailty of humanity. Compounded by then putting groups of these people together, with varying degrees of commitment, gender differences, education, love hate with manager, with each other certainly makes a global training program’s suspiciously effective.
This is but one department. Now add 20-50 to 500 more departments. The expectation of leadership that each depart will execute upon the decreed “critical success factors” with dispatch. Idyllically, if each department can and will, with the same degree of success, the leaders “Main Thing” will be achieved.
This brainstorming exercise is best served by people talking to each other to really understand the essential, critical success factors (CSFs)to accomplish the mission of the “Main Thing” and be filtered downward. This is what is called Vertical Alignment. The Power of Alignement, Wiley 1998 . Weak leadership, at any level of this deployment process will cause variability in the way the MT strategy will be executed.
Brainstorming includes asking the question, “What is unique to our business that if we can achieve a bunch of critical steps, we can be successful?”. Each “Main Thing’s” CSFs must include examinations of existing Leadership and Culture as two of the essential components.
Leadership: As we know, not only is it critical to articulate, communicate, deploy the MT to the workforce, but people must know “how to get there”. This “how to get there” must be effectively understood, tools to get there, communicated with uniformity, and with sincerity through the various roadmap, they need to deploy. What are challenges they face? What are the baselines? What does the workforce need to in the form of tools, leadership, culture shifts, emotional realignments, training, learning’s and communication skills to “get there”?
The finest measurement/diagnostic tools must be used to establish this baseline. Diagnostics must contain fine tuned analytics so that each department local manager will get a clear x-ray picture of their department, assessing whether those competencies exists to achieve best practices of each of the items or questions nested in each of the CSFs.
Culture: Effective execution is critically impacted by the organizations culture.
Remaining CSFs: Strategy makers know what needs to be done to reach the goals established around the main Thing. To get there, we need to to this and that. It’s the “this and that” which comprise the 3-5 critical success factors. These steps must be defined at the strategy level. These steps to success must be brainstormed, messaged, fishboned or whatever tools used, so there is a clear path or series of achievements to be met.
Take for a real example the President of a bank that wanted to grow his commercial banking business by 15% in a year. These are clear fined goals; an understandable Main Thing. His critical success factors were: Leadership, Culture and customer focus.
LEADERSHIP: He knew for his leadership, he needed to know his manager’s ability to delivered, by learning if his vertical alignment of leaders, at all levels and in all department, had capabilities, or needed help, to lead in 6 essential areas: Change, communication skills, industry knowledge, immediate supervisor leadership and vision and strategy.
CULTURE: Motivation, teamwork, job knowledge and integrity
CUTOMER FOCUS: Technology, Expand the business relationships, drive the business development, quality service and bank service
An “amazing win” for this leader was profitability, but he knew what his organization needed to do, the strengths he needed to expand or the needs of his workforce he wanted to fulfill. For this leader, he knew that without taking the time and energy to clearly define his goals and mission and how to get there, these essential, critical measures would be left to others. Usually those other have not the same passion or insight, and there is no message more powerful than that of the “boss defining the way”.
EXECUTION:
The theory and models of success have been define by the leader, but execution is becomes a very large stumbling block. What is even more troubling that good execution at parts of the organizations, coupled with fair or medioca execution in most of the organization and poor execution in a portion of the organization will lead to varying levels of conflict, inefficiency, ineffectiveness. This is what I describe as “aligned performance variability”. Take the example of an 8 cylinder , hi performance engine, the “hemi”, but working 2 cylinders are performing perfectly , 2 are operating at 80% capacity, 2 at 60% and 2 at 20 %. That’s performance variability..
There are many reasons for this inexact delivery or deployments system. The reasons can stem from culture issues, communication, poor trust issues, weak managers, angry workers, and so on…The fact is that there is a disappointed, frustrated leader who anguishes as his or her best plans of utopia for the shareholders and the organization are languishing. Frustration turns to acceptance, turning to expensive fix-it plans created internally or by consultants.
SOLUTIONS:
Eliminating performance variability of the holy grail, the “critical success factors”, but by each demographics or department is the solution. Is a global, off the shelf training program, the answer? How about a manger retreat where power points of survey scores are plastered on screens and the audience visibly gasps and then goes back to “the old normal”. Not by intentional fault, but by lack of an effective plan of solution.
Failure of changes management or business transformations are not the “cross to bear “ of any particular leadership group. Sporadic improvements, not sustained, will revert back to the “old normal” as the people expected to perform are plain old people with the frailty of humanity. Compounded by then putting groups of these people together, with varying degrees of commitment, gender differences, education, love hate with manager, with each other certainly makes a global training program’s suspiciously effective.
This is but one department. Now add 20-50 to 500 more departments. The expectation of leadership that each depart will execute upon the decreed “critical success factors” with dispatch. Idyllically, if each department can and will, with the same degree of success, the leaders “Main Thing” will be achieved.
STEP 1- Main Thing: What is it? - The Leaders Responsibility
The starting point is making sure the leader has established and articulated a “Main Thing” and everyone knows about It. A Main Thing might also be coined, as what “an amazing win” looks like for that leader. Usually it’s about profitability, growth or meeting customers 100% satisfaction levels. It might be linked to building organic growth, profitability, or defining the essence of where you hope to be in the next year or two.
Most strategists have a way of connecting the strategy to customers, their buying habits, satisfaction, or even creation of the passionate, loyal customer. The research cited in The Human Sigma, defines and argues for a new level of customer connection far beyond meeting customer expectations.
Usually all strategic action and mission statement have a direct correlation to satisfying a customers need so they buy from you, buy more from you and as often as they can. Some might describe it as the mission statement, a vision, or goal setting, but the “Main Thing” can be much more.
Take for example the B14, a tool for a bank leader.
The B14 (there are 14 critical measures) targets all of the internal competencies needed by the workforce to achieve the goals of organic growth in the banking business. Start with the universal conclusion that a bank leader who has a clearly articulated, targeted focus of their “Main Thing” (goal, challenge, or purpose), successfully executed throughout the workforce by and through committed and competent local managers, will outperform their market by every possible measure.
Banking, like all other customer focused industries, requires a leadership AND workforce focused on creating a service culture that is aligned with their “Main Thing" and a strategy of creating a passionate, loyal customer. The challenge is how! B14 is a unique "tool" application just for the banking industry. This "tool" was conceptualized by a Regional President of a multibillion dollar bank, with over 30 years of banking experience.
This new, intrinsic application spotlights the 14 critical success factors which are the requisite workforce competencies needed for the growth and alignment of the banking business. This banking tool, "B14", provides a bank leader with the cost effective means of executing a tightly focused growth strategy with established criteria unique to banking. A leader can expect to heighten workforce performance, while eliminating variability, by addressing and improving these 14 validated factors.
This seasoned bank president has “cracked the code”, paving a rapid means to bring the bank's organization into alignment with their "Main Thing"- rapid growth in the retail and commercial lending sector of the banking business.
However the “Main Thing” is defined , we repeat, it must be clear, articulated and communicated and MUST be interwoven into the fabric of the culture of the organization, especially in each departmental level. This is the sole obligation and responsibility of the leader to make sure this essential step is fully complied with.
NEXT- STEP 2: Critical Success Factors
Most strategists have a way of connecting the strategy to customers, their buying habits, satisfaction, or even creation of the passionate, loyal customer. The research cited in The Human Sigma, defines and argues for a new level of customer connection far beyond meeting customer expectations.
Usually all strategic action and mission statement have a direct correlation to satisfying a customers need so they buy from you, buy more from you and as often as they can. Some might describe it as the mission statement, a vision, or goal setting, but the “Main Thing” can be much more.
Take for example the B14, a tool for a bank leader.
The B14 (there are 14 critical measures) targets all of the internal competencies needed by the workforce to achieve the goals of organic growth in the banking business. Start with the universal conclusion that a bank leader who has a clearly articulated, targeted focus of their “Main Thing” (goal, challenge, or purpose), successfully executed throughout the workforce by and through committed and competent local managers, will outperform their market by every possible measure.
Banking, like all other customer focused industries, requires a leadership AND workforce focused on creating a service culture that is aligned with their “Main Thing" and a strategy of creating a passionate, loyal customer. The challenge is how! B14 is a unique "tool" application just for the banking industry. This "tool" was conceptualized by a Regional President of a multibillion dollar bank, with over 30 years of banking experience.
This new, intrinsic application spotlights the 14 critical success factors which are the requisite workforce competencies needed for the growth and alignment of the banking business. This banking tool, "B14", provides a bank leader with the cost effective means of executing a tightly focused growth strategy with established criteria unique to banking. A leader can expect to heighten workforce performance, while eliminating variability, by addressing and improving these 14 validated factors.
This seasoned bank president has “cracked the code”, paving a rapid means to bring the bank's organization into alignment with their "Main Thing"- rapid growth in the retail and commercial lending sector of the banking business.
However the “Main Thing” is defined , we repeat, it must be clear, articulated and communicated and MUST be interwoven into the fabric of the culture of the organization, especially in each departmental level. This is the sole obligation and responsibility of the leader to make sure this essential step is fully complied with.
NEXT- STEP 2: Critical Success Factors
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
HI-Performing Organizations and Engagement
Employee engagement is a precursor to developing a hi performance culture. In a study of 2,178 business units from 10 companies, research evidenced that workforce engagement predicted levels of performance. Harter,J.K., Schmidt (2005, August). Employee engagement and business unit performance: A longitudinal meta-analytic study of casual direction. If employee engagement is formulated by the local manger’s behaviors, style and the created local culture, managers need as much help as leadership can provide. This relationship, known as vertical alignment, is managed with ease using the 30 second manager tools, and a defined system containing essential elements of leader focus, communication and unlimited support for the people responsible for executing the leader’s strategy.
In summary, the workforce responsible for executing the leader’s vision must first become “engaged” in order to become a high performing workgroup. To transcend this model from a concept to a reality, by leader being very clear on the vision, (MT), a team of leadership and managers defining what they need to know about competencies, processes, tools and workforce engagement to “get them there”. Theses will be the “Critical Success Factors.”
Look for our next post: "Step 1- The 'Main Thing'- The Leadership Responsibility"
In summary, the workforce responsible for executing the leader’s vision must first become “engaged” in order to become a high performing workgroup. To transcend this model from a concept to a reality, by leader being very clear on the vision, (MT), a team of leadership and managers defining what they need to know about competencies, processes, tools and workforce engagement to “get them there”. Theses will be the “Critical Success Factors.”
Look for our next post: "Step 1- The 'Main Thing'- The Leadership Responsibility"
What Makes a Hi-Performing Organization
Organizations need to create higher performing workforce cultures, coupled with a new competency of nimbleness, if they expect to continue creating value for their shareholders. A high- performance organization is one where all departments are in sync, working together, and aligned with each other so as to provide to their customers the very best, on time delivery of your services or products. Anything short of that state of excellence are the results of varying degrees of misalignment. In that reality, expect impacts upon customer loyalty, profitability, process, people, culture and all those other states of being that create loss or create organic growth.
High performance is impossible to achieve so long as there are variability’s in work force performance. Simply stated, departments that are performing at different rates and levels of performance, efficiency and competence, within each of the critical success factor critical to the leader’s declared mission, which results are a touchstone to the customer buying criteria, is a recipe for loss in profitability and /or growth. This is not a trivial matter, as the larger thevariability of workforce performance, the larger the gap between the organizations delivery systems and its customer satisfaction.
What causes variability in workforce performance, within similar workgroups, has been the source of much study but the research that resonates is “among the many variables that discriminate between highly productive workplaces and those that are unproductive, is the quality of the local workplace manager and his or her ability to meet a core set of employees’ emotional requirements.” Primarily, emotional conditions are described as those that meet basic human needs. Buckingham,M & Coffman,C. (1999). First Break all the Rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. New York:Simon and Shuster. Coffman, C. & Gonzalas-Molina,G. (2002). Follow this path: How the world’s greatest organizations drive growth by unleashing human potential. New York:Warner.
Not only can that hard evidence of variability of performance can be found in every organization’s cost accounting systems, but each department’s variability of output contributes to the bottom line in uneven contribution. Now we’re addressing performance or engagement of the workforce, but by department, by department, by department. Why does 1 department outperform another? To discover this cause and effect is the “holy grail”.
Each department has their own leader that creates the culture for that department. This local culture may or not be the same culture declared as the corporate way of doing business. It’s that simple.
The solution is having a strong corporate Leader that has the insights, tools, the will, and crystal clear strategy and system that will assist each of the local managers to eliminate performance variability in their respective departments. Easy to say, hard to do; until now.
Here’s the ultimate goal. Each department delivers the best output possibly, focused upon each of the designed, “critical success factors “consistent with the leader’s stated mission. That’s high performance execution strategically linked to profitability. Expect organic growth. Eliminate lop sided delivery. Gets that HEMI engine working on all 8 cylinders! I am not suggesting robotizing the employee organization as that’s trying to regulate humanity. Realistically, it’s both impossible and ill advised to harness people’s human emotion, but performance and workforce efficiency, if managed, hard coded, rewarded and targeted to each of the missions critical success factors, will excite. Thus, this workforce engagement falls squarely on the shoulders of the local manager. This manager engagement falls squarely on the shoulders of the leader.
High performance is impossible to achieve so long as there are variability’s in work force performance. Simply stated, departments that are performing at different rates and levels of performance, efficiency and competence, within each of the critical success factor critical to the leader’s declared mission, which results are a touchstone to the customer buying criteria, is a recipe for loss in profitability and /or growth. This is not a trivial matter, as the larger thevariability of workforce performance, the larger the gap between the organizations delivery systems and its customer satisfaction.
What causes variability in workforce performance, within similar workgroups, has been the source of much study but the research that resonates is “among the many variables that discriminate between highly productive workplaces and those that are unproductive, is the quality of the local workplace manager and his or her ability to meet a core set of employees’ emotional requirements.” Primarily, emotional conditions are described as those that meet basic human needs. Buckingham,M & Coffman,C. (1999). First Break all the Rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. New York:Simon and Shuster. Coffman, C. & Gonzalas-Molina,G. (2002). Follow this path: How the world’s greatest organizations drive growth by unleashing human potential. New York:Warner.
Not only can that hard evidence of variability of performance can be found in every organization’s cost accounting systems, but each department’s variability of output contributes to the bottom line in uneven contribution. Now we’re addressing performance or engagement of the workforce, but by department, by department, by department. Why does 1 department outperform another? To discover this cause and effect is the “holy grail”.
Each department has their own leader that creates the culture for that department. This local culture may or not be the same culture declared as the corporate way of doing business. It’s that simple.
The solution is having a strong corporate Leader that has the insights, tools, the will, and crystal clear strategy and system that will assist each of the local managers to eliminate performance variability in their respective departments. Easy to say, hard to do; until now.
Here’s the ultimate goal. Each department delivers the best output possibly, focused upon each of the designed, “critical success factors “consistent with the leader’s stated mission. That’s high performance execution strategically linked to profitability. Expect organic growth. Eliminate lop sided delivery. Gets that HEMI engine working on all 8 cylinders! I am not suggesting robotizing the employee organization as that’s trying to regulate humanity. Realistically, it’s both impossible and ill advised to harness people’s human emotion, but performance and workforce efficiency, if managed, hard coded, rewarded and targeted to each of the missions critical success factors, will excite. Thus, this workforce engagement falls squarely on the shoulders of the local manager. This manager engagement falls squarely on the shoulders of the leader.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Make your surveys worth while
Virtually every business in the world does some type of data collection for information as to how well their business is being run. This billion dollar business is growing, while the economy is shrinking.
99.9 % of competitors deliver bar charts or line charts with trend line and then call that market research data to be used to improve organizational or employee effectiveness. That’s furthest from the truth. Contrasted to Infotool, our diagnostic technology proves a comprehensive x-ray of an organization by each demographics and simple , easy to use tools, to make change effective.
Infotool offers the very best in survey collection, design and reporting tools; perfect for organization improvement. A great turnkey opportunity!
99.9 % of competitors deliver bar charts or line charts with trend line and then call that market research data to be used to improve organizational or employee effectiveness. That’s furthest from the truth. Contrasted to Infotool, our diagnostic technology proves a comprehensive x-ray of an organization by each demographics and simple , easy to use tools, to make change effective.
Infotool offers the very best in survey collection, design and reporting tools; perfect for organization improvement. A great turnkey opportunity!
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Customer Satisfaction at its Best
How Important is Customer Satisfaction?
Extremely! Imagine, knowing EXACTLY what your customers need to keep them coming back (and telling their friends/family/coworkers). Why wouldn't you want to be privy to this information? Many business owners believe that customer satisfaction surveys should be used to measure individual employee performance, where in fact, the greatest benefit comes from knowing how the entire organization can come together to satisfy the customer. When surveys measure individual performance, they tend to become more of a lottery ticket than an actual guide to growth and success.
With years of experience in survey design, Infotool Inc. is now reinforcing the importance of the Customer Satisfaction Survey with customized, portable survey devices. Granted, almost every major company has its own Customer Satisfaction Survey, the delivery method will most likely prevent you from getting the information you need to please your patrons. If the survey isn't accessible right there and then at the time of service, customers will forget, or worse, the ones who remember are the angry and disgruntled ones. What about those "in-between" customers? The ones saying, "yeah, it was good, but it would have been better if...." This is type of information that will give you the steps to take to have your customers saying, "It was great!"
Honest and open customer feedback is hard to come by, but business owners need to know what they could be doing better to keep customers loyal. I highly doubt those disgruntled customers will be coming back anyways without some sort of big, future discount.
With that, we are pleased to announce the development of Customer Connect, LLC. This new technology will provide onsite customer feedback in an attractive, customized, portable survey device. For just a few dollars a day, know exactly how all of your customers feel about your business! This lightweight machine is easy-to-use and is coupled with Infotool Inc,' s advanced online survey reporting tools, used by major business leaders and consultants today. Infotool has been heralded by PWC, IBM, Dell, Perot, GE in Latin America and hundreds of others all over the world, now it is your turn to have access to this tool. The technology, expertise and portability of Customer Connect, LLC will give you the information you need to never have an unsatisfied customer again.
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