Tag: Employee Engagement

Paradox is important because new strategies get stuck in translation around a major paradox causing polarization instead of creating a platform for change

Thinking of engagement as a means to successful strategic change rather than an end in itself,than investing in engagement becomes vital to performance.

Despite the strides women have made in the workplace, there is still significant work to do. How does your organization support the evolving role of women?

To truly understand how business is won and how successful work gets done is what helps an organization make the right “on” the business decisions

The Accordion Chart is an innovative tool that provides a useful visual breakdown of everything you need to know to get your employees on the same page.

If you want a high-performing organization, the good news is, it's not that difficult to identify those things that really yield high performance.

Making an employee’s first months and year as successful as possible begins before they even show up for Day 1 and goes far beyond paperwork.

If the strategy isn't clear and the executive team and board of directors weren't aligned on the it, they would never be able to bring the strategy to life.

Is your technology working for your team as much as your team is working for you? If you have any doubt that the lines between your team’s personal and professional lives are being seriously blurred – if not erased altogether – consider these recent statistics: The average worker checks email on his/her mobile device just … Continue reading “Is Your Technology Working for Your Team?”

HGI realized that it needed to form a better connection with its employees, so they, in turn, could better connect with guests and build loyalty

Work with your people to get something on paper – images, words, ideas. Encourage everyone to contribute through every iteration of the visual.

Many times, executives don’t know how to get their people on board and engaged in the process of implementing a new strategy. Largely this is because leaders underestimate the importance of a story to help people make sense of the world. Storytelling is a powerful method for creating broader understanding. In fact, a research report … Continue reading “Visual Storytelling to Drive Engagement and Increase Understanding”

At a time where creativity and strategic innovation is falling short and change is a way of life, people are not showing up at work engaged in what they do.

How vigorously and effectively are we connecting our biggest product (i.e., our company) to our most important buyers (i.e., our team members)?

In my previous blog, I talked about the seven fears that keep people from telling the truth in organizations and the impact on business performance. Today, I want to tackle how organizations can create safe havens for change. The key ingredients to creating a safe haven for truth telling are relevance, humor, vulnerability, and co-accountability … Continue reading “The Bold Side of Vulnerability in Creating Fearless Engagement – Part 2”

Realism and truth telling are at the heart of authentic engagement and change. The challenge is that rarely have we seen organizations of any type, profit or non-profit, where people tell each other the truth. And the higher you go in an organization, the worse it gets. As a matter a fact, when we ask … Continue reading “The Bold Side of Vulnerability in Creating Fearless Engagement – Part 1”

I’ve just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime experience – the Olympic Games in my home country of Great Britain, and I’m still buzzing with pride, emotion, and an unforgettable feeling of goodwill and bonhomie towards, well, everyone! It sounds corny, but it was truly exhilarating to be part of the Olympic movement as a spectator and … Continue reading “The Olympic Opportunity for Managers”

There are few things in business more important than having the right people in your company and ensuring that those people are set up for success – not just for individual success, but to help your company achieve its strategic goals. All too often, we hire new people with great excitement and anticipation only to … Continue reading “I really like him! Let’s hire him!”

An effective conversational leader needs to build a framework and define a clear purpose for the conversation so people understand the intention behind it.

Without effective dialogue, achieving real results can be challenging. But how do you ensure the dialogue in your organization is genuine and meaningful?

Leaders commonly when the business isn’t performing - “we must have the wrong people or management team in place” – and they initiate a structure change.

Our experience bridging the divide between the “smart” and the “healthy” stuff shows that most companies still outsource the engagement of people to HR.

Don’t just look at the technology enablement, but also the shift in IT culture and the norms required for mobility to thrive in your organization

I would argue employee engagement is owned by the executive team, the same way they are responsible for managing all of the other critical assets.

Think about companies where employees are engaged. Southwest Airlines or Zappos? It’s a totally different customer experience.

What does student debt have to do with strategy execution? It is all about elevating your thinking and seeing the big picture as an interconnected system.

Research shows that managers are the most important drivers of employee engagement, and that engaged employees create loyal customers. But front-line managers are “the ‘least ready’ workgroup in the company, even less capable than their entry-level employees” (Bersin & Associates).  Without a strong development program, people learn to lead by chance.  And these are the … Continue reading “Front-line Managers – Your Weak Link?”

An organization is only as strong as its root system or foundation - mainly it's employees and how engaged they are in the big picture strategy.

Last week, I talked about the challenge of senior leaders in building “collective intelligence” by owning the whole before their individual piece. When senior leaders are working too much on their individual agenda, they are often not spending enough time owning the whole — they’re not focused enough on the big picture of where the … Continue reading “Owning the Whole Before Your Piece – Part 2”

The real key is each team member must own the whole before their piece: They must sacrifice the area they represent for the overall good of the company.

A people strategy is going to have a greater impact than a mere product launch. Learn why investing in your people is as important as a product launch.

Design is essentially a rational, logical, sequential process intended to solve problems or initiate change in man-made things

Organizations that nurture leadership tirelessly take advantage of learning cycles for people to grow and internalize key contributions.

Few opportunities for building trust are as profound as a leader’s role in creating a “safe haven” for difficult conversations, decisions, and strategy execution – an environment where people feel it is safe to say what they really think and what they think is best for their organization.  Members of a team often define a … Continue reading “A Leader’s Role in Creating a Safe Haven”

Employees can truly love their organizations only when they are committed to the organization’s vision, understand the strategy and how they contribute

Engaging the entire company in the strategic change enables people to understand how they fit and how they can best enact the change that is needed.

There is a lot of advice out there for leaders – books, presentations, and blogs (ironic, I realize). In many cases that advice is meted out based on specific circumstances, such as going through a merger, entering a new market, or facing unprecedented economic challenges. That doesn’t even guarantee the advice will work for your … Continue reading “What Does It Mean to Be a Leader? Cutting to the Chase”

Cartoons aren't just for the Sunday funnies. Using them at the office opens minds to new ideas by suspending disbelief, so why not a cartoon?

“Our employees are too smart for visuals,” that they’re “analytical and data-driven.", but those same people are using images or visuals to solve problems!

We often build principles of play into our creative methods to solve business problems and build employee engagement along the way.

Working together as a team means engaging individuals in how their efforts impact their team’s success and how that success contributes to the company's success

The question became, “How can we balance the need for leaders to establish their vision while gaining commitment from more employees?”

There's a fundamental flaw in the traditional mindset of corporate training - “getting people to training” and a “learning process”

Link people who test, build, manufacture, pilot, serve, and transport the products and services to how it impacts the people using them.

Is your company at a crossroads on next steps, don't now how to respond to changes, or how to communicate new strategies - storyboards might be the answer

A meaningful journey has challenge, risks, excitement, suspense, unexpected events, unknowns and a purpose that makes it all worthwhile

Create a culture targeted at aligning organizational focus, capability, systems, and processes to enable the unique and differentiated value of each company

The culture of competence is undermined when leaders aren’t clear or aligned on the unique competence created and employees don't understand its value.

Any investment in helping managers be better employee coaches can have a lasting and significant impact on the success of your business.

The perennial advice to college grads is “find yourself.” Root CEO Jim Haudan (and others) suggest the real point is to “lose yourself.”

Creating employee engagement is a challenging endeavor for any organization, particularly if it’s suffering from low employee morale or if there is a “make or break” strategy that needs to be executed well for the organization to continue to be viable. Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start. There is really no “one size … Continue reading “Missing a Critical Element of Employment Engagement?”

All organizations have business processes, and today’s organizations are constantly trying to transform – from manufacturing to brand-led, from domestic to global. But if you ask organizations for the process that guides the way they manage the organization through change, you may get a blank stare. Strategic change is a process, but it’s often managed … Continue reading “How Successful Strategies Win: Strategic Change as an Interdependent Process”

Adventures take shape in many forms.  And from adventures there are usually lessons to be learned.  I recently took part in a program offered by the National Outdoor Leadership School, which takes people of all ages on remote wilderness expeditions, teaching technical outdoor skills, leadership, and environmental ethics in some of the world’s wildest and … Continue reading “Survivor: Patagonia”

A couple of weeks ago I was hosting a session for managers here at Root’s Corporate Headquarters in Sylvania, Ohio. We got to a part of the program where we talk about the importance of managers being able to connect their teams to the big picture of the business. And we’re not talking connectivity by … Continue reading “Managers: A lesson from Facebook”

Customers are a finicky bunch.  It only takes one bad experience to destroy loyalty to a brand. Businesses everywhere are looking to earn and keep the loyalty of customers, and in most cases they are falling short because they don’t deliver a great experience. Businesses must: Create Lifetime Loyalty: Businesses have to keep a customer’s … Continue reading “Are you creating customers for life…or customers for now?”

I was speaking at Owens-Corning the other day about the reason for strategies.  Companies create strategies so they can continue to grow.  And to grow companies and the people in them, there are six components: Embrace Reality. In more than 20 years in business consulting, we’ve learned that change and growth can occur naturally if … Continue reading “Six Ways to Lead Change, Build Teams, and Make It Personal”

For many, compliance courses (sexual harassment, diversity training, loss prevention, etc.) are the equivalent of mandatory updates to the home.  Sure, you have to ensure the attic is properly insulated, but isn’t it a lot more fun to renovate the kitchen or install that new surround-sound system in the family room?  Often, these training courses … Continue reading “Ditch the “Duhs” in Compliance Training”

Most all of us had the opportunity to watch the extraordinary events on TV over the past three weeks.  We witnessed a people overturn 30 years of dictatorship in a mere 18 days.  I’m still in awe of the spirit and endurance that the people of Egypt showed the world, the sense of community they … Continue reading “What we can learn from the events in Egypt”

We recently asked futurist Dr.  James Canton about trends for 2011 in our last issue of The Watercooler, and he suggested some new ways for leaders to lead.  In my opinion, the mentality that leaders and managers need for the near future and beyond is one of “don’t tell – ask.” The manager of the … Continue reading “The “Manager of the Future” – the Future is Now”

Lou Piniella, former Chicago Cubs general manager, was about to start his final baseball game before he retired. It was basically a meaningless game to the Cubs since they were well out of any hope for post-season play – and they lost this game by 11 runs – but it sure wasn’t meaningless to Lou … Continue reading “There’s No Crying in Baseball”

I recently returned from an overseas trip to Russia. My husband and I traveled from Detroit to Amsterdam to St. Petersburg to Arkhangelsk and back again in 6 days. A lot of traveling in a short period of time, but we couldn’t be more motivated and engaged. Even with the crazy time zones and lack … Continue reading “The Roots of Engagement in Russia”

Corporate Strategy Execution is important, fast, and difficult. Get a head start on your next strategy roll-out with these Five Fundamental Truths.

In deciding what they will do – and do differently – to respond to today’s business challenges, organizations have moved onboarding up on the priority list. The ability to make new or redeployed employees productive and effective in the shortest possible time is more critical than ever. At its best, onboarding is a holistic process … Continue reading “Strategic Approaches to Onboarding”

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”  The idea behind this is that values and cultural norms in an organization are often much stronger than the strategy that gets communicated in PowerPoint decks from the company’s top leaders.   But what about pursuing growth?  Does strategy trump culture then?  How much of the … Continue reading “Strategy or Values? Yes!”

During a merger or acquisition, it’s critical to consider corporate culture. The required cultural change often represents the soft underbelly of a merger or acquisition. Everyone agrees that it’s important, but it often takes a back seat to the stated cost synergies to be achieved and the new organizational footprint to be established. Without addressing … Continue reading “Culture Change in M&A”

Our clients often come to us with questions like, “How do we engage our people in our strategy?” or “How do we get people to understand the Big Picture, and where they fit?” or “How do we get our different business groups working together to produce greater results?” Do these questions sound familiar? Creating a … Continue reading “Learning With Game Theory”

When I work with senior teams to help them make decisions on the clarity, alignment, and execution for their strategies, I ask, “How much of your time is spent working in versus on the business?” Working in the business means playing the game with day-to-day tactical activities. Working on the business includes coaching, anticipating, and … Continue reading “4 Ways to Shift a Leader’s Focus from In the Business to On the Business”

Over the past year or so I have heard many clients talk about their increased focus on the service profit chain. While I have heard it described a variety of ways most companies are paying close attention to 3 key links: Engaged Employees Produce Satisfied Customers Resulting in Increased Profits Based on my experience these … Continue reading “Great Managers: Are They The Missing Link?”

I’m a big fan of TED. If you know what TED is, skip down to the next paragraph.  If you aren’t aware, TED is a small non-profit dedicated to allowing individuals to share ideas worth spreading. It’s like a central repository for really great innovations. Individuals get a platform to share their stories and ideas … Continue reading “Learning happens. Anywhere. Anyhow. And with anyone.”

My family purchased our first computer when I was around 10 years old. The black and white screen was probably about 6” wide and the computer hard drive held only a few megabytes of data. I remember using the computer for only two things: drawing in a paint program and playing a silly balloon game. … Continue reading “How will the learning style of today’s youth differ from our own?”

Do you believe that “a picture is worth a thousand words”? It refers to the idea that ideas and stories can be described with just a single image, instead of a large chunk of text. Well, last week, I received a picture from my older brother: A picture of my niece dressed as Belle (from … Continue reading “A picture is worth a thousand words”

As learning designers, it is our duty to present the material in a way that will allow learners to learn effectively. The presentation of information must be tailored to fit various learning styles, because every learner is different. But what is the best way to do this? Our approach to learning is based heavily on … Continue reading “Designing for Different Learning Styles: Follow-up”

How ABC’s Hit Show, Extreme Home Makeover Gave Me Insights to Efficiencies and Strategic Engagement Extreme Home Makeover recently came to our city to film an episode. For those unfamiliar with the program, basically a deserving family is surprised one morning to find the show’s charismatically, hyper host telling them to vacate the house because … Continue reading “Good Morning, Management Family!”

In a previous life I taught beginner martial arts classes for adults, and also-on days when my karma was in particularly bad shape-for preschoolers. Which basically constitutes the two most uncoordinated demographics of people whom a martial arts instructor could ever be asked to train. And instead of keeping you in suspense for the entire … Continue reading “Metaphors: Like a Kick to the Head”

This little nugget of wisdom baffles me: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Why? Is there anyone who ever had cake who wasn’t able to eat it too? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I would counter that you can in fact get everything you want. As I write this … Continue reading “I Want Cake, and Yes, I’ll be Eating It Too”

Problem solving. That’s what we do. Given the nature of our business, when we’re working with a new customer, we’re often tempted to jump right to visualization – to show what we’ve done for others as a way to frame and define what we can do for them. In the instances where they want to … Continue reading “Asking the Right Questions”

We’ve all been there before. A new strategy is presented by the CEO or business unit leader. It’s about world-class customer satisfaction, operational excellence, innovation, ambitious growth targets, and how “we” are planning to displace the competition. And after that, not a whole lot seems to change. You don’t hear much about the strategy and, … Continue reading “Marketing the “Friendly Skies””

Imagine walking into your local watering hole and taking a seat at the bar. The bartender sets your choice beverage in front of you, let’s just say, I don’t know, a brown ale. However, the drink becomes the last thing on your mind, because the moment the drink touches the bar top it is illuminated … Continue reading “The iBar™ – Engagement at the Pub”