I love the holiday season! A great time to get together with extended families – and a perfect time to conduct a little informal research on generational differences.
Here’s one example . . .
I recently attended a family gathering where 17 year-old Alexandra, announced that she was quitting her weekend waitress job because the manager wouldn’t give her time off to attend a party. Her statement and the responses she got from various family members were classic:
“It’s no big deal,” Alex said. “I’ll just get another job somewhere else.”
“Never quit one job until you have another,” counseled her 28-year-old cousin.
“Maybe you should consider staying there a little longer. It will look better on your resume,” added her 49-year old mother.
And Alex’s septuagenarian grandfather grumbled, “Where is your work ethic young lady? That restaurant is counting on you!”
When I address business audiences, I’m often asked whether or not it’s fair to generalize when talking about individuals. And in many ways, it isn’t. Everyone is unique – with personal motivations, desires, and goals.
No one likes being lumped into a generational category that encompasses 18 years – and then stamped with a single label. But, like it or not, there are shared circumstances that help shape expectations and attitudes. And these circumstances differ with times in which people were born and raised.
In today’s work force, four generations are currently represented:
o The Silent Generation, born between 1927-1945, are the children of world wars and the Great Depression. Because economic times were tough when they were looking for jobs, this generation tends to be hard working, loyal, and thrifty.
o Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were raised in an era of opportunity, progress, and optimism. Growing up in a radically changing society marked by rebellion, shifting social norms, and outward challenge of authority, they created the need for organizational “vision, values, and mission.”
o Gen Xers were born between 1965-1983. They are technologically savvy and were raised in the age of dual-career families. Watching their parents “bleed company colors” only to be found “redundant,” this generation hit the job market looking for career development, flexibility and work-life balance.
o The Millennials (1984-2002) are the newest members of the work force. A “plugged-in” generation, they have been around technology since birth. Navigating the world of blogs, wikis, podcasting, and instant messaging is as natural to them as breathing.
Each of these distinct groups of people views life differently. And it isn’t just technology that divides the generations. Their differences include perspectives on authority and respect, hierarchy and collaboration, balancing the demands of work and home, aspirations for leadership, and the definition of workplace loyalty.
Just consider the friction that is bound to exist in financial attitudes between those who grew up with economic scarcity, frugality and rationing during the Depression era and those who were raised in an “instant gratification, no payment until next year,” society. And there’s sure to be a clash between members of the Silent Generation, whose definition of leadership reflects the military structure with its command and control philosophy, and their Millennial counterparts who are distrustful of leaders in general – and who expect a collaborative/inclusive work environment.
So what can organizations do to engage and motivate employees across generational boundaries? Here are a few ideas:
o Expect and accommodate differences. Career growth and development opportunities are crucial to the retention of younger employees – as is exciting, challenging work. Silents and Boomers may be looking for a way to leave a legacy or to have their contributions acknowledged and shared.
o Create choices and let the workplace organize itself around the job to be done. Call it empowerment or autonomy or flextime or “doing their own thing.” The reality is that different work styles/hours/locations can attain the same results. And results are what count!
o Focus on commonalities. Regardless of generational category, all employees have two things in common: They want to be successful and want to do meaningful work. When you build your management and communication strategies around these universal motivators, you appeal to the most senior as well as the newest members of the organization.
Each generation has much to offer an organization – and much to offer other generations. The more we know about generational differences and similarities, the easier it is to create workplace environments based on complementary talents, mutual respect, and unified purpose.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
My friend, Joe, keeps information to himself. In his mind, not telling what he knows gives him a personal competitive advantage. After all, he reasons, “Knowledge is power.”
My other friend, Ken, doesn’t see it that way. His recent promotion came as a result of the exposure he received from sharing his ideas and experiences (in conversations and presentations) throughout the organization.
So who’s right?
According to evolution – maybe both!
Recent research shows that the instinct to hoard can be traced back to early humans hoarding vital supplies, like food, out of fear of not having enough. The more food they put away, the safer they felt. In an evolutionary sense, those who hoarded food and other basic necessities, were better off, healthier, and produced more offspring.
This emotional attachment to our possessions has been hard-wired into our brains to help us survive. And, still today, whenever we feel threatened, fearful, distrustful or insecure, the “hoarding gene” kicks into high gear, urging us to hold on tightly to whatever we possess – including knowledge.
On the other hand . . . humans are also a learning, teaching, knowledge-sharing species. This too has been hard-wired in us. Experiments at Notre Dame support the notion that cooperation helped our ancient ancestors survive. Computer simulations add to real world evidence that teamwork in early humans was critical. For example, the common use of stone tools suggests they shared information on the location of suitable material. These sites are sometimes 30 kilometers away from where the tools are found and would have been difficult for individuals to discover on their own.
This knowledge-sharing instinct is alive and active in little children. They can’t wait to tell what happened in school or on the playground. And when children grow up, they become adults who thrive on collaboration. According to just about every employee survey I’ve seen, hoarding information is identified as a huge barrier to optimal productivity and morale. People prefer to work in a collaborative environment because it is where they feel that their contribution matters. High participation builds high employee engagement.
So, when it comes to knowledge, which survival strategy (hoarding or sharing) is more likely to be effective in today’s fast-paced, information-intensive world?
The answer lies in the shift from the Industrial Era, when knowledge obsolescence took years and when hoarders created leverage and power bases by hanging onto what they knew, to today, when the shelf life of knowledge is much shorter. Knowledge is no longer a commodity like gold, which holds (or increases) its worth over time. It’s more like milk – fluid, evolving, and stamped with an expiration date. And by the way, there is nothing less powerful than hanging on to knowledge whose time has expired.
Want to add real value to your team – your company – your profession? Want to build a reputation as an informed player? Then put your knowledge into action – fast. The new model of power/influence/success is a cycle of learning quickly, sharing what you know while it is still valid, unlearning what no longer works, and relearning.
Now that’s an instinct worth cultivating!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
1) Acknowledge weaknesses, but play to people’s strengths.
Todd Mansfield, the executive vice president of Disney Development Company, found that his company had been spending too much time on employee weaknesses. He said, “When we’d sit down to evaluate associates, we’d spend 20 percent of our time talking about the things they did well, and 80 percent on what needed to be improved. That is just not effective. We ought to spend and energy helping people determine what they are gifted at doing and get their responsibilities aligned with those capabilities.” 2) Don’t assume people know how good they are.
I gave a speech for the top management team of a software company in Northern California that was relocating out of state. A few days later the president of the company telephoned me to say, ” I have an administrative assistant who is probably the brightest, most creative person I’ve worked with. The problem is, she’s married and can’t move her family out of the Bay Area. I was wondering if you would see her for a private counseling session, so that when she applies for a new job, she will come across just as terrific as she really is. I’ll even pay for the session.”
Of course, I agreed, and looked forward to meeting this talented woman. When she came into my office I said, “This is a real pleasure. I’ve heard so many nice things about you. Tell me about yourself. What is it that you do exceptionally well? What would you most want a prospective employer to know about you?” The woman was silent for several seconds. Finally she sighed and said, “I really don’t know. I do a lot of things well, but when I do them, I don’t notice.”
3) When people do something very well, acknowledge it immediately.
Timing is everything when it comes to building confidence. Get in the habit of commenting on outstanding employee behavior as soon as you notice it. When managers at El Torito Restaurants in Irvine, Calif., catch a worker doing something exceptional, they immediately give the employee a “Star Buck.” Each restaurant has a monthly drawing from the pool of “stars” for prizes (cash, TV, etc.), and each region has a drawing for $1,000 cash.
4) Encourage people to recognize their own achievements and then to go public.
One manager I know came up with a creative solution to her employees’ lament that, although she did a pretty good job overall, there were many times when she seemed too preoccupied to notice accomplishments. She put a hand-painted sign in her office and jokingly encouraged employees to display it whenever they had a significant achievement. What started out as an office gag is now a favorite employee ritual. The sign reads, “I just did something wonderful. Ask me about it!”
5) Help people identify strengths and then find ways to capitalize on them.
Everyone has unique talents and abilities that are not always used in their present jobs. Paula Banks, a former Human Resources director at Sears, once had a secretary who was doing an adequate, but mediocre job. Paula talked to the woman and found out that, in her spare time, she was a top salesperson for Mary Kay Cosmetics. In Paula’s words: “I found out she had great sales skills, so I changed her duties to include more of what she was really good at – organizing, follow-through, and closing deals. She had this tremendous ability. My job was to figure out how to use it.”
6) Create small victories.
To encourage people on the way to achieving goals of exceptional performance, managers need to design “small wins.” One manager put it this way, “A stretch goal can scare people to death. I always begin with a mini-goal that I know my staff can achieve, and then I use that victory as a confidence-builder for reaching the larger objective.”
Here’s how to get started:
Bring in the customer. Despite the demonstrated benefits of working closely with customers to drive sales, improve product innovation, and better match supply with demand, a recent study by Deloitte found that only 3% to 8% of respondents are actually engaging their customers in this manner. If your company is not already collaborating with customers for innovative product/services development, this is the place to begin.
LEGO Factory has been around for a while, but it remains an inspiring example of how to tap the creativity in a customer base. Children and other building enthusiasts visiting the site are invited to design models (using easy to use, free downloadable software) and take part in competitions for LEGO prizes. A popular contest last year entitled winners to have their model produced and featured in Shop@Home, receiving a 5% royalty on each set sold.
Make suppliers part of the solution. As part of Chrysler’s SCORE (Supplier Cost-Reduction Effort), there is shared responsibility for innovative ideas to get cheaper parts. The goal for each supplier is cost-cutting opportunities that equate to 5% of its annual billings to Chrysler. The collaborative program has generated a flood of more than 100 ideas per week and an estimated savings of $2.5 billion.
Partner with the competition. Collaboration among competitors is the most difficult and delicate form of partnership. But archrivals Procter & Gamble and Clorox have managed to make it work. The two packaged goods companies compete fiercely in the cleaning products and water purification categories, yet both profited when Press’nSeal, a new plastic wrap based on breakthrough P&G technology, went to market under Clorox’s well-established Glad brand. And the collaboration continues with the recent introduction of Glad ForceFlex trash bags, which are made of strong but stretchable plastic developed by P&G.
Choose the right people. The best collaborative projects are often those in which the team members can let go of their own (sometimes entrenched) views and ideas, and apply a more open style of working with others. Because collaboration is built on a foundation of good working relationships and trust between individuals, personal qualities (good communicators, good relationship builders, flexible, culturally and politically savvy, confident without being arrogant) are often more important than subject matter expertise. Experts can be brought in as a resource to the process, whereas key interpersonal skills are what keep the collaborative venture on track.
You’ve no doubt seen them tromping through the halls of your company, or at least hiding in the corner of the room. Elephants. These elephants have two characteristics: They’re something big that your organization knows is there and finds impossible to ignore. They’re also something no one talks about—because nobody knows what to do about them.
Some companies have lots of elephants; others have fairly few. But there’s one elephant that resides in nearly every organization (and that communicators should be helping to hunt down)—e-mail overload.
Why is e-mail overload an elephant? For one thing, the costs are huge. A couple of years ago, the CFO of a professional services firm shared a startling factoid with his organization. If everyone spent an hour a day less managing e-mail, it would add $2 million a year to the bottom line. And that’s for just 500 people!
That amount strikes me as quite conservative: By my calculations, if you work in a 500-person organization where employees average $50 an hour, you can free up $2 million in productivity in a year by eliminating just 20 minutes of wasted time per day. Consider the amount of time employees spend simply handling (or mishandling) the mechanics of e-mail, and 20 minutes a day seems like an easy target.
Too much e-mail can bury vital information. According to IDC, knowledge workers spend more time recreating existing information than they do turning out new information. Why can’t they locate the existing stuff? My theory: A lot of it was shared via e-mail. Then it got deleted to make room for more messages, or buried in folders with subject lines that didn’t do the job. IDC says chasing existing info can cost untold millions in a single knowledge company.
How about your IQ? What’s that worth to your company? Research by Hewlett Packard and the University of London shows that the IQ of an average employee falls 10 points when interrupted repeatedly by incoming e-mail – more than twice the four-point drop experienced by marijuana smokers. HP is striving to reduce “always on” communications among its own employees, and has created a “Guide to Info Mania” to help others.
Most organizations, however, aren’t sure what to do about the e-mail elephant. There’s no shortage of software, books, courses and other tools to help tackle the problem. The challenge—as countless communicators have discovered—is that no one offers an off-the-shelf solution that will address e-mail overload comprehensively.
So we have assembled a toolbox for you that will enable to you combat information overload on three fronts within your organization: Better tools for in-box management, changing sender behavior, and alternative technologies.
Try any or all of them and see what they do for your organization. Just as important, please let us know which ideas worked well for you—and which didn’t.
Use tools for in-box management
1. A good system—including self-discipline
There are many places you can turn for advice on how to deal with the 2,785 e-mails awaiting your attention. Which system you choose is not nearly as important as having a system of some kind.
Productivity consultant and executive coach Sally McGhee teaches courses on the Microsoft campus on how to get the most from Outlook. You may want to consider something similar for your organization.
Like many e-mail gurus, McGhee prefers an empty inbox. She recommends that you start at the top, tackling e-mails one at a time, and do one of four things with each:
- Delete it—you can do this with about half your e-mail
- Do it—if you can accomplish that in two minutes or less
- Delegate it—this should take no more than two minutes
- Defer it—this should be about 10 percent of your e-mail
McGhee says power e-mail processors can go through about 100 messages an hour. She also recommends you build a simple e-mail reference system. Read McGhee’s article at http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/manageinfo/e-mail.mspx
Consultant Bill Jensen, author of several books on simplifying communications, advises you to delete 75 percent of your e-mails. “They bring the noisy, unfiltered, unfocused, and undesired world to you!” he says. “You need to get disciplined about closing your virtual door.”
In The Simplicity Survival Handbook, Jensen says the first step in eliminating most of the noise coming at us is admitting that we own part of the problem. Advises Jensen: “If BOTH the Subject and the Sender fail to create this reaction – I have to read or at least scan this today – DO NOT open or scan the message. Hit Delete immediately.”
Then, he says, scan the remaining e-mails for two bits of information: Action you must take, and date or deadline for that action. “If the messages do not contain an action and a short-term date, delete them.”
Other e-mail experts advise you to touch every message only once. The success of any system will depend on balance – the balance between dealing with e-mail regularly enough to keep it under control, but not so often that you “live” in your inbox.
2. Teach employees to use more descriptive subject lines
When it comes to being able to handle e-mail, better subject lines are one of the most promising “quick hits” available. Sally McGhee advises her clients to include three elements: An objective or project name (which lets you know what the e-mail relates to), a requested action, and a due date. “Taking the time to create clear subject lines makes e-mail communication more effective and increases the chance that your e-mail will be responded to,” says McGhee.
Another little-considered subject line is the one attached to meeting requests. Instead of “SETI Project meeting,” how about “SETI Project: Responding to e-mail from aliens”?
You might also include one other category of useful info – who’s supposed to attend. Unfortunately, Microsoft Outlook’s calendar entries include where a meeting will take place, but not who’s invited. Add Your name, Invitee 1, and Invitee 2 to the subject line – and you’ve undoubtedly saved time for all three people. (No, this won’t work with 10 people – but how many of your meetings include 10 people?)
3. Create a priortization code for subject lines
There’s yet another element to subject lines that—if widely used—could help everyone filter their messages more effectively. One of the problems with e-mails is that they seldom clearly indicate what you’re supposed to do with them.
“Imagine,” says McGhee, “if you could sort your Subject lines by action – Action Requested (AR), Response Requested (RR), and Read Only (RO) – or if you could sort them by objectives or due dates.”
I believe this system would work even better with unique four-letter indicators (I call them “O-Marks,” for Outlook):
URGT: Urgent – respond or act ASAP
ACTN: Action required
RSPN: Response requested
UN2K: You need to know
FYIN: Read at your convenience
Other categories could include:
MTNG: Pre- or post-meeting communication
BUSN: Strategic business information
EMPY: Information for employees – benefits, job postings, HR
TRNG: Training-related communications
And, for your team or department, make up your own. Create O-Marks for projects, team updates, whatever your particular group is working on. Adding O-Marks at the front of your subject line can make e-mails – at least from your teammates – easier to process quickly. Just sort your in-box alphabetically to group like categories – or send each type of e-mail to its own folder.
Change sender behavior
4. Write some corporate e-mail rules
Most companies have rules—ranging from a few guidelines to thick manuals – on how to use the Web. Almost no one has rules surrounding e-mail (apart from the usual boilerplate about how We The Company can read every word of it – and if you violate one of the 50 rules, you’re history).
Why shouldn’t the rules include how to use e-mail effectively? E-mail is a business tool, and companies have the right to decide how it will be used to conduct business. That could mean, for instance, limitations on use of the “cc” line. Companies are very quick to identify the cost of producing communications – but they too seldom calculate the cost of consuming them. A low-value e-mail sent to 20 top managers can be very expensive, indeed.
The rules might evolve into a comprehensive guide to how to use all the company’s electronic channels. Technology consultant Shel Holtz says too often, the launch of technology is left to IT:
“Most IT departments do a great job at what they’re supposed to do: get the technology working. It’s not—and shouldn’t be—IT’s job to establish policies for the use of technologies, to market the tool, or to drive a cultural change around how the tool should be used in a business context. Whenever IT is the only department involved in the launch of a new technology, technology is all employees get. ‘Here you go everybody. We’ve installed e-mail for you. Godspeed.’
“As a result, employees figure out how to use the technology based on personal preferences rather than a companywide imperative.” Holtz envisions a joint effort between HR and Employee Communications – which he calls “Message Mission Control” – to set and communicate policies on the use of all messaging channels, from interoffice mail to SMS.
Holtz says this effort must include promoting behavior change through rewards and recognition. “Part of the culture change,” he says, “is knowing when NOT to use e-mail, but rather the phone, fax, IM, face-to-face or other channels.”
Part II of Taming the e-mail elephant
By Bill Boyd, ABC
Communications Integrator + Principal, Outsource Marketing
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of the Journal of Employee Communication Management (JECM) magazine, published by Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc. (http://www.ragan.com). It is shared with members of the Communitelligence portal with the kind permission of JECM’s editor, David R. Murray.
Because of the bilateral surgery, Ray spent a full week in the hospital (instead of the usual three days) and I was with him every day. That gave me plenty of time to observe the hospital staff. And what I saw was almost as impressive as Ray’s speedy recovery. I was constantly surprised and delighted by the highly collaborative spirit of the team of physicians, nurses, therapists, and aids who worked on his case.
I was especially grateful because I know how rare it is to get this level of service. I’ve consulted with several healthcare organizations where, instead of patient-centric synergy, a silo mentality had taken over.
And healthcare isn’t the only industry dealing with silos . . .
A study by Industry Week found that business functions operating as silos are the biggest hindrance to corporate growth. A more recent American Management Association survey shows that 83 percent of executives said that silos existed in their companies and that 97 percent think they have a negative effect.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article on the latest business buzzwords, the word “unsiloing” was listed. Unsiloing mangles the noun silo to make a simple but important point: Managers must find ways to foster cooperation across departmental, hierarchical, and functional boundaries.
Which is no easy task.
Turf battles happen everywhere – in hospitals, government agencies, associations, school systems and private industry. Silos can be created around an individual, a group, a division, a function, or even a product line. Wherever it’s found, silo mentality becomes synonymous with power struggles, lack of cooperation, and loss of productivity. And always, the customer/client/patient is the ultimate loser.
I’ve seen firsthand what silos can do to an enterprise: The organization disintegrates into a group of isolated camps, with little incentive to collaborate, share information, or team up to pursue critical outcomes. Various groups develop impervious boundaries, neutralizing the effectiveness of people who have to interact across them. Local leaders focus on serving their individual agendas – often at the expense of the goals of the rest of the organization. The resulting internal battles over authority, finances and resources destroy productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate objectives. Talented (and frustrated) employees walk out the door – or worse yet, stay and simply stop caring.
What can be done to tear down silos, reduce conflicts, and increase collaboration? Here are a few ideas:
Reward collaboration. Too many companies talk about collaboration yet reward individual achievement. Therefore, the first obvious solution is to change the reward system. Define and make collaborative performance objectives part of the employee review process. Recognize and promote people who work across organizational boundaries – and tell their stories to the whole organization.
Focus on innovation. Innovation is triggered by a cross-pollination of ideas, such as when the “right people” happen to meet at the right time and discover, in the course of conversation, that each has information needed by the other. It is in the combination and collision of ideas that creative breakthroughs most often occur. When an organization focuses on innovation, it does so by bringing together people with diverse perspectives and expertise – breaking down barriers and silos in the process.
Communicate transparently. In any organization, the way information is handled determines whether it becomes an obstacle to or an enabler of collaboration. Company-wide communication is a vitally important tool in breaking up silos or avoiding their creation. You need to make sure that every employee has access to the same candid information about how the company runs its business – its financial challenges, competitive pressures, and strategic initiatives.
Encourage networks. Employees with multiple networks throughout the organization facilitate collaboration. You can accelerate the flow of knowledge and information across boundaries by encouraging workplace relationships and communities. Use a tool like Social Network Analysis (SNA) to create a visual model of current networks so you can reinforce the connections and help fill the gaps.
Create alignment. You want your people to understand their roles and what they do to help the organization succeed. You also want them to understand the roles of others. To help combat silo mentality, departments and teams need to know how they support or influence other areas of the organization. They need to understand the importance of working in concert with other areas to achieve crucial strategic objectives.
Mix it up. Encourage teams from different areas of an organization to work together. Find opportunities for managers and other employees in the organization to collaborate in cross-functional teams. Rotate personnel in various jobs around the organization. Invite managers from other areas of the organization to visit your team meetings, even making them members of the group, as you work on mutually beneficial efforts.
Focus on the customer. Nothing is more important in an organization – whether it’s a for-profit company or a non-profit group – that staying close to the end user of the service or product you offer. Unfortunately, within silos, the focus is typically on internal issues rather than on response to customers. You can refocus the organization by sharing marketplace information and customer feedback. Better yet, bring in a panel of end users to report on their experience so that everyone understands how the enterprise as a whole is meeting, exceeding, o
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
If you’ve been in communication for a while now, and you consider yourself an advisor rather than an order-taker, then right now your brow is furrowed. Why would I ask what the value of strategic communication is? Aren’t we passed this? Can’t we just assume that yes, strategic communication is valuable. More valuable than simple tactics such as newsletters and Town Halls?
First, let’s take a stab at defining “strategic communication.” Here’s a simple view (I am, as always, focused on internal communication):
Sound and measurable communication process that supports business goals, enables individuals and teams to contribute their best, and encourages dialog and recognition
These are the elements research shows us are fundamental to engagement in the workplace. These are the elements that make workplace change more successful, and according to the work of John P. Kotter, our organizations more financially sound.
Right about now, you’re wondering why I’m talking about this. Well, last month I facilitated a webinar for Communitelligence on moving execs and clients off a tactical focus and onto a more strategic thought process. One comment in the evaluation really sparked my attention. The attendee wanted more explanation of what made strategic communication better.
I talked this through with several others, including Communitelligence founder John Gerstner. We all wonder why we’re still talking about this. Isn’t it obvious that making a strategic difference to our organizations is better than just cranking out newsletters? Haven’t we proven this in our ROIs, measurement and business cases
Could it be that this was an entry level communicator who hasn’t yet discovered the value of strategy in his or her work? If so, this speaks to a void in our educational system that we professionals will have to fill as these newbies come into the work place.
Could it be that this was a mid-level communicator who hasn’t had the benefit of a mentor or working for a strategic-thinking organization? Likely – we see it all the time. This is what our associations are striving to do, along with those of us providing many different organizations counsel. But, it takes a long time to reach everyone, especially those who are not networking, not reaching out, not getting involved with other communicators.
Could it be that this was a senior level communicator who still hasn’t got the message about strategy, about serving as an advisor, about delivering value? I sure hope not. You’d have to have been working for decades in a vacuum.
I am always willing to educate other communicators on the value of strategy in our work. I wistfully look to the day when the presumption is that communication is strategic – there is no other option.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado.
| Comments |
| RE: What’s the value of strategic communication? |
| Interesting topic, Stacy…I’ve been discussing this issue of “tactical vs. strategic” communication around a lot recently with colleagues and friends. I think what I’m missing in your definition is the word “change.” A great tactical communications plan will be measurable and support one or more business goals, but it focuses on a delivered result rather than on a delivered change. It’s really only when either individual behavior and/or organizational direction needs to be changed that a communications strategy is required. A planner asks the question “Are we doing things right?” while a strategist asks “Are we doing the right things?” A strategy is only valued where it is required — i.e. where change is well defined — otherwise, a really good plan will do perfectly fine, even at a high level in the organization. Remember the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland…When Alice asks the cat which fork in the road to take, the cat asks where she wants to go. When she says that it doesn’t really matter where she goes, then the cat says it doesn’t matter which road she chooses. When managers can’t really define the change they want to see, they aren’t likely to value communication strategy. |
Posted on Thursday, Jan 21, 2010 – 09:24:00 PM CST  Peg |
| RE: What’s the value of strategic communication? |
| Mike, valid comments. However, in my original post, I noted that I’m willing to “educate.” I don’t think you can persuade someone to take up a strategic mindset and certainly did not imply that. But, education is required and it can be done without the big wow effort. Just yesterday I spoke with a young communicator about her communication plan. We walked through it step-by-step and addressed where her thinking needed to be more strategic. We talked about how she can use this thinking to reposition herself with her internal client and achieve more results with stakeholders. If we keep talking about this type of focus, even with the small stuff, eventually she embeds the thinking. We tackle her confidence level and position her to make a difference, even if it’s not in a shock and awe sort of way. It’s one person at a time. Changing the definition and the entry methods into the profession will wait for another day. |
| Posted on Friday, Jan 15, 2010 – 03:04:00 PM CST stacywilson |
| Are We Appropriately Recognized? |
| The issue of whether the value of the communicator is appropriately recognized is an old, old chestnut. It persists, in my view for four main reasons: 1) There is no common definition for “communication” within and among businesses. One person’s job spec for a “communication lead” may involve strategy and messaging, another’s may involve effectively acting as a concierge for senior stakeholders. This problem is unlikely to disappear. 2) The barrier for entry into the world of communication is non-existent. Everyone–particularly many senior managers–fancies themself as a communication expert on some level. Many who end up as professional communicators do so by default or accident. Even with aggressive growth of professional accreditation, this is unlikely to change as well. 3) The above factors do little for the confidence of professional communicators (and particularly internal communicators) and the corresponding timidity produces work that is safer and more tactical than required. 4) The organization has yet to have a “shock and awe” moment when they realize something desired would not have been possible without the strategic communicator. I do think things will get better–not by trying to persuade people that we should be treated as strategic–but by seizing the opportunities for communication to make a difference in these turbulent times. Mike Klein–The Intersection http://intersectionblog.wordpress.com |
| Posted on Friday, Jan 15, 2010 – 10:18:00 AM CST Leadershift |
Yesterday’s Communitelligence webinar was about getting executives and clients off the individual tactics and into strategic thinking and decision-making. As the facilitator, I talked about using questioning and even offered 15 specific questions people can use to pull a client or exec back to strategy.
- Creating your own questions
- Facilitating a flexible planning session
- Recapturing a hi-jacked session
One of the individuals who sent in the evaluation after the webinar had this to say: “Perhaps more specific, rather than general, examples.” Ok, I can accept that a few specific stories illustrating how to use all the intellectual capital we just gave away would have been good adds. I’ll do that next time.
But, as my colleague just said, “they want you to do it for them.” He’s right. So many of the communicators I run into in conference and workshop sessions want someone to give them step-by-step instruction. “Just tell me what to say in that difficult conversation with my exec – give me a script.”
John Gerstner, president of Communitelligence, commented to me that even best practices don’t always make sense because you need a solution that speaks to your particular organization. So, it’s about taking the tools and figuring it out for your situation or organization. Requires some critical thinking, a skill that all of us in communication should continue to hone.
This depends on my ability to recognize a bunch of valuable tools when I see them. I think some are looking so hard for the script that they miss the tools right in front of them. And it means being able to think through how to use the tools once I’ve recognized them. Takes work. Takes effort, focus and dedication. Sometimes courage.
I’m all about tools. Those who’ve worked with me know this. But, not tools that simply tell “how” to do something or tell precisely “what” to do. No, I value tools that prompt my strategic thinking and that of my client. I want tools that push me to be practical, direct, honest with myself and my client, focused on the right stuff. That’s what a good communication tool should do.
When we took a bunch of our custom tools and made them available online at http://www.eloquor.com, this was our focus. Help communicators think more strategically, even when putting out fires. Part of that is about helping communication teams conduct their strategic business more consistently. Ultimately, it all comes down to positioning communication as a strategic function that serves as a valuable asset and trusted advisor to the business. Put in less “corporate speak”: communication matters to the business and communicators offer the business value.
But, communicators have to be willing to hone their critical thinking skills, to use strategic thinking tools and to master the ability to find great and appropriate solutions. It’s our future.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado.
Every couple of weeks, someone will drop a draft of their company’s social media policy in front of me and ask what I think. In most cases, I am delighted that it’s a draft and not yet published. These policies are usually riddled with “do not” and “never” and “forbidden” language. It makes me want to launch a performance art project with actor John Lithgow doing dramatic readings of these clamp-down policies.
Now, John Lithgow has a great, resonate, voice-of-God kind of voice. But I choose him specifically because of his role in one of my favorite cheesy 80s movies, Footloose. As Reverend Shaw Moore (thanks, IMDB) he kept poor Kevin Bacon and his friends from dancing in their little rural town.
It didn’t work.
I don’t believe that the social media policies that focus on the forbidden work, either. They aren’t realistic and they give the impression that employees’ judgment is no better than your average first grader’s.
Sun Microsystems took a much saner and smarter route in the Sun Approach to Public Discourse. Here are a few headlines from the policy: Don’t Tell Secrets; Be Respectful; Be Interesting, But Be Honest.
Hill and Knowlton also has a straight-forward approach highlighted in this blog post that focuses on disclosure, ethical actions and other topics pertinent to an agency that conducts social media campaigns on behalf of its clients.
The common denominators in both policies are that they treat people like adults and they accept that employees are going to use the Internet in all sorts of official and unofficial ways. The policies don’t go all John Lithgow on them and try to put a stop to such nonsense; they give guidance toward doing it well, with integrity and in ways that won’t damage the company, the client or the employee.
And you’d be wise to give guidance to employees. In the Social Media/Networking Usage Trends Report prepared by Travelers, only 25 percent of respondents showed any concern that things that they post online could be damaging to them professionally. Forty-two percent said that they “never post anything that reflects poorly on my employer.” What are the other 58% up to?
I am sure that there are other examples of good social media policies out there, and I’d love to see additional examples. Know of any?
PS: I have no connection to Sun Microsystems (other than having met the delightful Deirdre Straughan who pointed me to their policy at a Communintelligence event), Hill & Knowlton, John Lithgow or Kevin Bacon. But if you can put me in touch with John about that project…
Barbara Govednik launched 423 Communication in 2001 to helps its clients tell their stories through freelance writing services, coaching and editing services, and employee communication consulting and implementation. Read Barbara’s Being Well Said Blog.
You just never know when and where you’re going to run into business insight and inspiration. If you’re lucky – or maybe just tuned in to signs from the universe – it can be anywhere and anyplace. Even at a film for kids like The Lego Movie.
It wasn’t that big of a leap, actually. The film’s antagonist is Lord Business, and he’s definitely not the kind of enlightened leader that employee engagement proponents look to as a role model – at least not at the beginning. He’s basically your kick-butt drill sergeant with a mean streak a mile wide. His singular obsession is world domination where everyone follows instructions and does exactly what they’re told to do.
The film’s hero is a construction worker named Emmet. He is mistakenly identified by the downtrodden as “The Special” – the person destined to save the world from the evil Lord Business and his wicked weapon, the dreaded “Kragle,” which immobilizes any effort at divergence. The “prophecy” proclaimed at the beginning of the movie sets up the adventure like this:
One day a talented lass or fellow,
A Special one with face of yellow,
Will make the Piece of Resistance found,
From its hiding refuge underground.
With a noble army at the helm,
This Master Builder will thwart the Kragle and save the realm,
And be the greatest, most interesting,
Most important person of all times.
All this is true, because it rhymes.
Well, as such movies go, the hero faces countless hurdles and comical misadventures along the way (it is, after all, a cartoon). In the end, of course, he prevails. But not how you’d expect. At the climactic confrontation between Emmet and Lord Business, Emmet melts the villain’s cold, hard heart and turns him into a ****** cat with the following verse:
You don’t have to be the bad guy.
You are the most talented, most interesting
and most extraordinary person in the universe.
And you are capable of amazing things.
Because YOU are The Special. And so am I.
And so is everyone.
The prophecy is made up, but it’s also true.
It’s about all of us. Right now, it’s about you.
And you … still … can change everything.
And he does – beginning with himself. Suddenly the Kragle-fied characters are released from their bondage, and imagination and free will reign supreme. If you’ve read my book, “Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement,” you know why that’s so important. Those special qualities that exist in ALL of us are what differentiate humans most from all other living creatures on the planet – and they give us the power and the purpose to do truly amazing things.
Want to learn more about the importance of those wondrous qualities?
Then …
Read my book, and you shall see
Why human beings must be free
To let imagination thrive
If they want to feel alive!
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Roger D’Prix, author of The Face-to-Face Communication Toolkit, admits face-to-face communication by first-line managers strikes many as anachronistic in our technological age.
John Gerstner, Communitelligence CEO, interviewed Roger for the Communitelligence webinar, Back to Face-to-Face: How to Re-ignite Your Manager Communication Program and would like to get a sense of how organizations are treating face-to-face these days.
Are you putting more or less emphasis on manager communication? What questions you would ask Roger, undoubtedly the most passionate and articulate advocate of face-to-face communication programs in the world?
You’re invited to join the conversation. Purchase the replay: Back to Face-to-Face: How to Re-ignite Your Manager Communication Program.
A few years ago, the Conference Board offered a definition of employee engagement that has become widely used and highly popular: “A heightened emotional connection that employees feel for their organization … that influences them to exert greater discretionary effort to their work.”
The key point in that description is the link between “emotional connection” and “discretionary effort.” Without an emotional connection, it’s very difficult to get people tuned in, turned on and eager to go the extra mile.
Making an emotional connection
In my new book – Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement – I offer a somewhat provocative idea on how to make that kind of emotional connection. It starts with the premise about the main qualities that differentiate human beings from all other living creatures – namely imagination and free will. Not our intelligence – lots of animals are highly intelligent. Not our souls – Disney has made it clear that “all dogs go to heaven.” Not our compassion – many animals demonstrate strong emotional feelings about their fellow creatures.
At one point in writing the book, I was overcome by an out-of-body force that seemed to take over the keyboard and channel through me what may be the only significant original thought I’ve ever had. Imagination and free will go hand-in-hand, and they are useless without one another. Imagination without free will has no power. Free will without imagination has no purpose.
Here’s why that idea is so important. When people are not given the opportunity to exercise their innate, uniquely human gifts of imagination and free will, you diminish their potential and undermine their trust in the organization’s commitment to their success and well being. Putting it more simply – you take the human out of human being.
Going beyond imagination and free will
But imagination and free will by themselves are not enough. Lots horrible things have come from people using their imagination and free will. If you want employees to trust the organization and give the very best they are capable of contributing to its success, you must design systems, processes, policies and practices that foster the development of “human rockets” in three ways – just like a real rocket:
- Optimize the potential of each person’s capacity for imagination and free will (thrusters and boosters to make them soar)
- Provide for the security and self-esteem that people need in order to feel safe in exercising their imagination and free will (stabilizers to keep them from wobbling)
- Specify the responsibility and provide the constructive accountability that people need in order to guide their decisions and actions in the use of their imagination and free will (a guidance system to keep them on course)
If you grasp the essential nature of the “human rocket,” it’s easy to understand why employees need to have some sense of control over the things that affect their lives and their ability to perform at their best. No one does their best when their only motivation comes from an external force.
Looking at the bright side of control
It’s also important to understand that “control” is not a four-letter word. In the end, it’s just another word for predictability. We mistakenly think that people don’t like “command and control,” but that’s only half right. They hate the command part, for sure, but the control part is important. No one likes it when things are out of control. People just want to have some say in what those controls are and how they are applied – especially when it comes to things that affect their own lives and their ability to do their best. When organizations learn how to apply that vital lesson, there will no shortage of the connection that employees feel for their enterprise – and they will demonstrate a level of extra effort beyond what most managers can imagine.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Let’s do some word association. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “game.” I’ll bet it wasn’t “business.” That is, of course, unless you’re one of the many devotees around the world of “open book management,” a game-changing way of management that made its first big public appearance 20 years ago with the initial publication of “The Great Game of Business.”
Two Decades of Game-Winning Strategies
Well … I’ve got great news for you, folks. Last week, Random House released the long-awaited 20th anniversary edition of this ground-breaking classicwritten by Jack Stack, the head of SRC Holdings and the “father” of open book management (OBM). As the people at SRC describe it, OBM is all about “creating better engagement – creating a sense of ownership through a deep connection with the numbers that matter most to the business and the individual.”
To say that it’s had a powerful impact on the businesses where OBM has been applied would be a huge understatement. Take SRC Holdings, for example. The company got its start in 1983 when Jack and the other employees at Springfield Remanufacturing decided to buy the operation from International Harvester. IH was shutting down and selling off a bunch of their plants to stop a flood of red ink that was killing their business. It was a highly leveraged buyout at 18% interest, and Jack knew they couldn’t survive unless every single employee had intimate knowledge of all the financial details of the business. So he taught them – all of them – and every person in the company became more knowledgeable about finance than most MBA grads.
Here’s the juicy part of the story. Their success has been meteoric by many measures, but the stock price tells it all. When the introduction of the new edition of the book was written, here’s how the numbers stacked up. If you had invested $1,000 in the S&P 500 in 1983 when SRC got started, your investment would have turned into $8,434. If you had invested that $1,000 in Warren Buffet’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, it would be worth $113,000. Not bad. If you had been one of the lucky employees who invested $1,000 in SRC – and you had to be an employee, not an outside investor – it would be worth $3.4 million Can you say cha-ching??!!
Getting People Engaged in the Game
So what does all that have to do with communication and employee engagement? Maybe everything! I’ve talked before in this column about the essential criteria of an effective, engaging organizational communication system – all of which are exemplified in the OBM management process:
-
Interaction – If it isn’t two-way, it isn’t communication. It’s message distribution. (OBM employees are plugged in to business conversations daily)
-
Speed – Quarterly publications have their place in an organization, but faster vehicles (like weekly OBM “huddles”) are needed to give people information they need to stay on top of performance and make needed adjustments on a routine basis.
-
Availability – Other than proprietary formulas and confidential human resource files, follow the policy for making information available to employees that one Baldrige Award winning company ultimately adopted – No secrets! (That’s the mantra in an OBM culture)
4. Access – It’s not enough to “open the books” to employees. Making information available is useless if people have to jump through hoops to get at it.(Aside from weekly “huddles,” OBM companies have processes for easy access to all critical information)
5. Relevance – Dumping tons of information on people isn’t much better than hoarding it. Find out what people find relevant and valuable (like company financials), and make sure they get it.
6. Inclusion – Beware of leaving certain people out of the loop of information that might make a difference in their knowledge and performance. (Everyone from the janitor to the CEO is included in the OBM process)
7. Authenticity & Transparency – Be real, be open, and avoid the temptation to sanitize and glamorize information. (What could be more real than seeing every detail of how the company keeps score?)
On Your Mark, Get Set, Game On!
When you look at how those criteria map up with the OMB process, the “great game” may be the most effective employee engagement tool any organization could use in today’s business climate. It’s been described by one well-known author on the subject, John Case, as “lightning in a bottle.” If you’re ready to set the world on fire and kick your competition’s rear end, you may want to think about putting an OBM “lighting rod” on the rooftop of your business.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Hurricane Katrina is a distant memory for most people. For others, the effects of that horrific event continue to be felt, and compelling stories continue to be told – some actually so wonderful that they take your breath away. Just the other day, I saw a great story about the extraordinary response by Hancock Bank after the mega-storm had passed. It came from a blog posting on the website of Realized Worth, a firm with considerable passion for corporate social responsibility.
Aside from the heroic proportions of how Hancock dived in head-first to help people cope with the crisis, the story is all the more remarkable for the impact it had on the bank’s long term business. Even though the events took place nearly seven years ago now, the story has a timeless message that is well worth retelling for people like me who somehow missed it the first time around.
Here’s a slightly edited version of what appeared on the Realized Worth website.
The Crazy Things Hancock Bank Did Following Katrina
Hancock Bank was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. Approximately 90 of the bank’s 103 branches along the Gulf Coast near New Orleans and along the Mississippi River suffered some damage. Electricity and phones were out in the area for weeks, and many of the bank’s branches lost connections to the main data center. People had no access to their money, and they were desperate for cash for simple things like ice and gasoline. What happened next was quite extraordinary.Laundering Cash for Good
The day after the storm, Hancock Bank set up stations with whatever was available. Sometimes it was just card tables and chairs. And they went about getting cash into the hands of the people. They kept the cash flow going by using money from ATM’s, vaults, and night deposits. Hancock employees were literally “laundering” the money, putting it in a washing machine to clean it from the sewage that had flooded the area. Bank employees, many of whom were also affected by Katrina, worked extended hours to accommodate everyone. Busloads of employees made 250 mile round trips daily in order to keep the Bank running.Risk and Reward
All of this was quite admirable, but not completely shocking for a bank or any business during a crisis. However, Hancock Bank went far beyond what the community might have expected. They loaned out millions of dollars during the days immediately after Katrina. Without electricity or other modern technology, they went old school, tracking loans with post it notes. And they didn’t just give the money to bank customers. They gave out cash to anyone who needed it, and trusted that it would be paid back, including $3.5 million to people who were not even customers.The gamble paid off, and all but $300,000 was paid back. In the words of George Schloegel, Bank Chairman at the time, “Basically, people are honest and want to do the right thing and they’ll stand by you if you do the right thing by them.” The best part of the story is how people stood by the bank after their initial support efforts. In the four months following Katrina, Hancock grew by $1.6 billion, more than they had grown in their previous 95 years. Thousands of new customers opened up accounts with the bank, and George Schoegel was rewarded for his trust by being elected Mayor of Gulfport, Mississippi in 2009 with nearly 90% of the vote.
The insights for business success from this story could fill a book. In a nutshell, it offers striking testimony for the cycle of success a company can generate when its top priority is the common interests of everyone touched by the organization inside and out. When that is done well and selflessly, you’re well on your way to creating a great organization where people love to work and customers love doing business.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Les Landes, President, Landes & Associates, is presenting a Communitelliigence webinar June 13 titled Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement. The webinar is built around his new book by the same name. To get an idea of what’s in store during the webinar, we posed these questions:
Your book departs from traditional business books by using a fictional narrative to deliver strategic leadership concepts. What led you to take this approach?
It’s more fun … more real … less formulaic … and still provides good guidance. Most people like reading stories more than basic business text. I think stories also help to heighten the human reality of what’s at stake when we’re talking about a workplace environment that allows people to do their very best. Something else makes the story format important. Getting to a high level of employee engagement is not a straight-line process. It’s messy. It’s emotional. And it’s frustrating. And showing the drama of how people work through those challenges gives a better, more palpable sense of what it takes to get to a high-performance culture as much as the solutions themselves.
You also decided not to use the usual formula of constructing a business book around best-practice case studies. Instead, you focused on the roots of human behavior and how these affect employee engagement. Have we been ignoring the basics?
I actually do cite some “best practices” in the book, just not in the format that most authors write them in the typical business text. Rather than citing specific companies and what they’re doing that’s working, my “mysterious mentor” offers some hard-nosed practical direction on how to make certain kinds of systems and processes work more effectively – like communication and continuous improvement. At the end of the book, I lay out a detailed description of what an effective continuous improvement system looks like. We call it the ImaginAction System.
For economic and other reasons, the idea of employees staying with a single organization for more than a few years, let alone a career, has largely evaporated. Is there anything in your free will and imagination equation that can substantially offset this?
People want to work where they can do interesting work, where management demonstrates appreciation for what they do, where they are listened to and where they are in on important information and decisions. Other things matter, too, and they all have implications for those key characteristics of imagination and free will that differentiate human beings from all other living creatures. If you do a great job on those key driving factors for employee engagement, why would people want to leave for other pastures that are unlikely be any greener?
What will makes this employee engagement webinar unique?
What makes this webinar distinctive is the combination of theory and practice. It will explain both the “why” and the “how” of extraordinary employee engagement, blending compelling new insights about human nature in the workplace with practical applications of those insights in key operating systems and processes.
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
When you hear someone say, “That person’s got quite an ego,” it’s rarely meant as a form of flattery. In fact, it typically carries a lot of negative baggage. But without a “healthy ego,” a person can be pretty dysfunctional. Indecisive. Defensive. Insensitive. Accusatory. Insecure. Risk averse. You name it.
One way to think of ego in a positive light is to look at what it takes to maintain a healthy one. Using the word EGO as an acronym, here are three key requirements:
- E-xpectations
- G-oals
- O-ptions
Expectations
If you want to mess with people’s heads, be fuzzy about what you expect them to do. Then give them a rash of trouble when they fail to meet your expectations. That problem crops up quite a bit in the annual ritual of the performance review and appraisal process. What starts out at the beginning of the year looking like a clearly defined set of goals and objectives often becomes a sore point of contention. The employee and the supervisor discover they had different pictures in their respective heads of what successful completion looks like, and guess who usually wins the argument.
Even the best of employees can get bruised egos from that kind of experience. Both people bear responsibility for making the process work, but the supervisor has to take the lead in making sure they’re on the same page from the outset.
Goals
Remember the classic exchange between Alice and the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland? Alice is wandering around lost, and the cat asks her where she’s going. She replies that she really doesn’t know, and the cat says, well then, any road will take you there.
I don’t know if Alice was suffering from a shaky ego – after all, she was a fictional character in a far-flung fantasy. But if you’re a real live, flesh and blood human being, your ego is in jeopardy if you don’t have clear goals for yourself. When it comes to the workplace, employees and supervisors alike have to make sure that clear, meaningful goals are in place if they want to keep people feeling happy, health and whole.
Options
In my new book, Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement, I talk about imagination and free will as the two essential qualities that differentiate human beings most from all other living creatures. When it comes to free will, our capacity to make choices – to do things that aren’t dictated by the program that controls other animals – is a forceful driver of people’s attitudes and behaviors.
Failing to appreciate that force leads to a basic misunderstanding about human nature in the workplace. The old bromide that people resist change is a classic example. Fact is, people change all the time. What they resist – and what they don’t like – is being forced to change without having a say in the matter. People hate not having the control that comes with choices and options. What’s more, they won’t trust anyone who takes that control away from them, and their performance on the job is usually pretty subpar when they don’t get it.
Bottom line, healthy EGOs are a big part of what makes the business world go ‘round. So take the time to make sure employees are clear on their E-xpectations, G-oals and O-ptions if you want to keep them tuned in, turned on and ready to go the extra mile.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Many organisations face the challenge of deploying an enterprise social network with limited funds. There just aren’t enough free resources — money, headcount and time — to devote to this important task. If you’re about to assume the role of project champion inside a small or mid-sized organisation, you need to be aware of the many different hats you’ll probably be wearing in the very near future.
1. Strategist
Developing a coherent and credible social strategy is the foundation of a successful network deployment. You need to be able to paint a clear vision of what you hope to achieve, develop a detailed roadmap that explains exactly how you intend to get there, and set out clear milestones that will gauge progress.2. Advocate
Someone needs to sell the business case to the business. There is a small chance a C-suite sponsor will assume this role, but even if they do you’ll probably find yourself filling in the gaps. Effective advocacy is an unending challenge, not a one-off task.3. Architect
While it is true that social networks can grow organically, the final result will almost certainly be a lot more effective if you map out a plan that details how you’d like the network to operate on a day-today basis. Consulting with people inside the business to establish their needs and wants will help you plan for success.4. Engineer
While a cloud deployment is simple, integrating enterprise systems into the network can be a far more complex task. You’d hope and expect IT to manage this part of the deployment. Nevertheless, you’ll want to understand the basics so you can keep across what’s happening.5. Change Agent
Using these platforms can require people to change the way they work. As any of us who have attempted to stop smoking, lose weight or start exercising will know, getting someone to break a hard-wired habit is a challenging assignment. A full understanding of change management theory and practice will prove invaluable.6. Educator
These tools are so simple that most people can use them right out of the box. However, to achieve your strategic goals you’ll need to educate people on best practice. A blended learning approach of face-to—face and online learning works well. You’ll find that you’ll almost certainly need to run the face-to-face sessions yourself.7. Communicator
An ongoing communication program is part and parcel of most deployments. There is of course the need for a strong launch campaign. In addition, there is a requirement for an ongoing campaign that shares success stories and encourages participation. Experience of running an internal communications program will pay dividends.
Employees have things to say, but most organizations don’t provide the channels for them to say it. Maybe there are some lessons for internal communicators from the outlandish success of the Bleacher Report.
There’s no single narrative to encapsulate the ascent of Bleacher Report, a site that churns out around 800 articles a day penned by 2,000 “core contributors.” The site is as polarizing as it is popular. And it is very popular. In August, some 14.2 million users visited it. Astronomical pageview numbers have translated into loads of advertising revenue — media reports peg the site as on pace to gross $30 million to $40 million this year.
It could be argued that Bleacher Report’s success is a 21st-century iteration of the American Dream. Four twentysomething sports nuts, friends since they attended the elite Menlo School in Atherton, quit their jobs in 2007 to found a sports website written by the fans, for the fans. In doing so, they harnessed the energy of the legions of sports enthusiasts who would have otherwise been yammering on call-in radio or laboring on obscure blogs and message boards, and bundled the labor into a platform that could be backed by advertising dollars.
The site’s deft use of search engine optimization (SEO) — the tweaking of content and coding to increase online visibility — propelled its unpaid, amateur writers’ fare to the top of Google’s search engine results, placing it on equal footing with original work created by established journalistic outlets. It’s a rare sports-related Google search that doesn’t feature a Bleacher Report article among the top results. And once readers click onto Bleacher Report, they stick there — visitors are besieged with applications to subscribe to team-specific newsletters or mobile applications, or drawn into click-happy slideshows, polls, or other user-engaging devices that rack up massive pageviews per visit (to date, a slideshow titled “The 20 Most Boobtastic Athletes of All Time” has amassed 1.4 million views).
The economic downturn of the last few years has taken a toll on employers and employees alike. In some ways, though, management has held the upper hand. They’ve been telling employees the only way their company can survive – and people can keep their jobs – is by going “the extra mile” and “doing more with less,” including little if any salary increases.
The End is Near
Here’s some compelling evidence. In a recent study conducted by Vistage, 84% of their CEO members answered YES to the question, “Have you learned how to make your business more productive with fewer employees?” Who can blame them? Tough times call for tough measures, right?
Up to now, employees have pretty much gone along. But that may be coming to an end. A different study conducted recently by Right Management coincidentally shows that 84% of employees say they’re going to be looking for a new job in 2012 – and for good reason.
These days, when young boomers say “50 is the new 40,” it’s not just about age – it’s about being expected to work 50 hours a week for 40 hours of pay. The good news for employees is the job market is improving, giving them more options. The bad news for employers is that workers are getting fed up, and we’re likely to see an employee “mutiny” in the not too distant future.
It’s just a matter of time before people start jumping ship and companies across America begin finding themselves with a serious talent drain that’s going to be very costly to replace. That includes front line supervisors and middle managers who, in many cases, are struggling hardest of all as job vacancies have been left unfilled and resources have been stripped away. At the same time, they’re still being expected to maintain or expand output. Even if people don’t physically bail out, the “mental mutiny” from trying to keep up that kind of pace is almost inevitable.
Ask the Right Questions
Trying to deal with that challenge, I often hear managers pleading, “How do I motivate my people?” Problem is, it’s a bad question, and here’s what I tell those managers.
First … Unless God has taken you in as a partner, or you’ve taken in slaves, employee are not your people. They are independent adult human beings who want some say and some control over what happens in the workplace – especially when it affects them directly.
Second … You’re wasting your time. There’s only one kind of motivation, and that’s self-motivation. Anything else is either carrots, sticks, sweet-talk or begging. If that’s what you’re using to try and “motivate your people,” the best you can expect to get from employees is compliance – never excellence and certainly not extra effort.
Once managers come to terms with that basic reality, then they can ask a better question about how to engage employees in a dialogue about extra effort: “How can I get the very best that people are willing and able to contribute to the mutual benefit of their own personal growth and the success of this organization?”
Right the Ship with Trust
The key to getting that voluntary extra effort comes down to a simple, yet powerful 5-letter word – TRUST. It’s a belief that people will do the right thing … in the right way … at the right time. So what are some of those “right things” you need in order to build trust?
-
Employees need to see their managers demonstrate behaviors that build credibility – caring, honesty and openness, responsiveness, competence, reliability, and the willingness to admit when they’re wrong and apologize for it.
-
Design the organization’s primary people-systems – measurement, rewards and recognition, communication, learning and development, and continuous improvement – in a way that tells employees loud and clear … “You come first, and we trust you to do the right thing.”
History shows that most ship captains who’ve experienced a mutiny have gotten what they deserve. If companies want to avoid the same fate during the economic recovery, they better change their tune AND start asking the right questions.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Click to enlarged infographic view.
Results of the third annual APCO Worldwide-Gagen MacDonald employee engagement study, which specifically looked at the usage and impact of internal social media within corporations, are now available.
After surveying 1,000 U.S. employees, it’s clear organizations are increasingly making use of internal social media (ISM) as leaders recognize the many business advantages of successful ISM programs.
Survey respondents said:
- they have more confidence in companies that use ISM
- a company’s use of social media demonstrates innovation
- use of social media builds brand ambassadors
- they will forego a job at a company that bans social media
Check more findings and learn more at Gagen MacDonald.
The infographic above illustrates what characterizes a successful internal social media strategy – one that drives innovation, improves employee retention, increases collaboration and delivers measurable ROI.
