Engagement or lack of....

I attended an HR Leadership Council conference recently, and want to share some disturbing findings:

• 95 % of employees don’t understand their company’s strategic goals
• 50 % of the average employee’s time is spent on non-productive work
• Globally, the number of highly disengaged employees has increased from 1 of 10 to 1:5 since 2007!
• Data suggests that rising stars have been particularly hit. 5 times more high potential employees report that they are not putting in full effort in their job, AND 1 in 4 believes he/she will be working for another employer within one year.
• Only 20 % of employees are actively aligning their efforts with company goals. This is bad news for excellence in execution.
• The disengaged are staying with the employer more than before! While they before were looking for alternatives they now just stay due to risk aversion. Combine this with the fact that the rising stars are more actively looking for alternatives than ever before!
• Managers are less likely than ever before to flag bad news! Less than 20 % of executive teams are informed of bad news that is material to company strategy and performance....and the company earnings at stake before we flag a problem is increasing too!
• 97 % of senior managers believe that innovation will be more important in the coming years. At the same time managers are less likely to encourage and support employees to try new things. Managers are becoming more risk averse!

It would be ignorance to assume there being easy solutions to these challenges. But there are in fact some low cost steps we as managers can take in times like these.

Some very practical and inexpensive success factors and suggestions:

1. Performance management. More than ever assure that your critical staff has goals that are linked to the strategy, that goal progress is monitored and documented!
2. Informal performance management: more than ever keep in dialogue with your staff. Follow up on progress; ask if they have what they need to succeed etc.
3. Job-interest alignment is the overall most powerful commitment driver. Ensure people have tasks and projects that they find interesting and challenging. The only way to know is to ask. Do not assume you know what make people tick. Check and double check!
4. Manager quality is the second most important driver for commitment...hmm.. More than ever: think through the way you manage and how you could increase commitment and engagement.

Look stupid more often

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss has said that ”I wish people would dear to look stupid more often. We would all have more fun!”

I once gave a lecture to a large audience in an amphi. I realised as I was talking that there were smiles and looks not related to what I said. I asked one in the front row what was happening. She told me my trousers had a huge tear in the back! My underwear shined through! How embarrassing, and certainly a distraction for them and me!
I made the following deal: I would finish the remaining 30 minutes of my lecture without turning my back to them once, if they promised to listen to what I said. It became a strange but fun session. I use the white board and the flip chart a lot, so it was challenging too. I certainly remember that day, and probably some of them do too.

The quote: “The fear of not looking good is the greatest enemy of learning” (P. Senge I think) touches upon the same thing, but goes a bit further. Not only would we have more fun, but could we also learn more if we were less afraid of looking good?

As a University lecturer it puzzled me why so many of the questions I got were questions they obviously already knew the answer too. The question was asked to look good.

Is ignorance scary? Is lack of knowledge a weakness?

Many teambuilding exercises have this element in them. People try to learn juggling; we dress in silly costumes etc. We look stupid and laugh, and sometimes it also gives us insights we did not have before.
But how well does this transfer to the company scene?

What can I do this week that is stupid but add to the fun around me?
How can I clearly verbalise my ignorance to increase my learning?
Do we need a bit more madness at the workplace?


Between two evils always pick the one you haven’t tried. — Mae West

Trollringer

Management guru Richard Pascale snakket i et foredrag om ”rackets” – ”a racket is an unwanted condition that persists”. Altså en uønsket tilstand som vedvarer. Foreldre opplever at barnets rom forblir uryddig selv om vi ønsker det annerledes. Selv har jeg snakket om at jeg burde vært noen kilo lettere! I organisasjonslivet har vi i mange år snakket om at vi bør ha ”flere kvinner i ledende stillinger”. Per juni 2010 har ca 2 % av selskapene på Oslo Børs kvinnelige sjefer. Hmm.... Klassiske ”Rackets”!

Racket er et engelsk ord som jeg ikke umiddelbart kan assosiere med, så jeg undret meg om det kunne finnes et norsk ord vi kunne bruke. Administrerende direktør i Næringsforeningen i Stavanger, Jostein Soland foreslo ”Trollring” etter Sigurd Hoels bok ”Trollringen”. Uansett hva man gjør så blir man sittende fast, det er som det er slått en trollring rundt oss eller det vi vil forandre. I Hoels bok vil hovedpersonen forandre verden til det bedre, men blir offer for motkrefter i bygden.

Finnes det noen trollringer i vårt liv eller i vår organisasjon? Uønskede tilstander som vi har snakket om å gjøre noe med, kanskje også prøvd å gjøre noe med, men som like forbannet er uendret!

Trollringer må nærmes med respekt og kløkt. Det er nemlig gode grunner for at uønskede tilstander vedvarer. Det er krefter som holder dem der! De kreftene kan til tider være svært så synlige, men like fullt vanskelige å temme. Mange av dem er usynlige for oss, enten fordi vi har vent oss til dem, eller fordi vi ikke har nøstet opp i de bakenforliggende årsakene.

Vi må selvfølgelig tro at troll kan temmes.

• Anerkjenn at vi har å gjøre med en trollring
• Ta på oss Askeladden-hatten. Dette krever kløkt
• Identifiser kreftene som opprettholder trollringen
• Hvordan kan vi svekke de kreftene som opprettholder trollringen?
• Analyser de motkreftene vi har prøvd å iverksette. Hvorfor virker de ikke?
• Unngå at vi gjør mer av det samme!

Trollringer er uønskede tilstander som vedvarer til tross for våre forsøk på å gjøre noe med dem. Trollringbekjempere ønskes velkommen i våre ledergrupper og i våre organisasjoner! Ikke sant?

“In Germany, if you have a vision, you should see a Doctor!”

This was said to me in a break at a leadership development program.

One of the participants was a young manager from Hamburg, and he came up to me after my lecture on “Creating a Vision – a leadership task”. He was joking, sort of.
But he had two very powerful observations: One, he perceived a cultural challenge in our “management speak”. The lofty, hairy and motivational speeches were not so motivational for him. I will touch upon that part in a later post.
Secondly, he underlined the problem of so many company visions: 1) They are perceived as unrealistic hollow words, and 2) They change, not because we have achieved them and need another more challenging one, but because we change our managers! At times we are tempted to change it by overambitious marketers too.

The Vision can be illustrated by holding a rubber band between two hands.

The distance creates tension. The longer away the hands are, the more tension, obviously.
The upper hand can symbolise the vision, and the lower hand the current reality. The vision should create interesting tension, not so far away that the string breaks, and not so close that it becomes lame and uninspiring.

The challenge is that the tension could be resolved in two ways: 1) to lift the current reality closer to the vision, but also 2) to lower the vision (or ambition), or to change it totally. ;-)

In addition the vision should paint an inspiring picture of where we are at some stage (timeframe depend on culture and business reality), and what it looks like when we get there. Too many visions are intentions, and intentions seldom get us anywhere.

Is my vision or ambition interestingly far away from current reality? Does it create inspiration? Are all of my efforts aimed at lifting the current reality? If we are tempted to lower the ambition to ease the tension, do we have the guts to stop and remind ourselves that our task is to move us and the business towards the vision!

Find Five Errors

It is easy to get fascinated by this little game. Two pictures are almost alike, and then our task is to find the five differences or errors. It can be OK for killing time, but less OK if used for killing talent!

I have met many managers who unfortunately use this approach with huge passion. An employee have spent talent and time on exploring an important area, hand in her report, and then you can literally see the “find five errors” look on the managers face. How can we find the holes in the arguments, the errors in typing, the missing pieces etc, etc.? The rational result can of course be that we end up with a more sound recommendation, but the downside is that it creates negative focus, de-motivation and at times even resistance.

Why is this “find five errors”-approach so popular? I would think that partly it is our educational system (I still remember the red line under the words that were misspelled!), but probably even more deeply rooted than that. If you look at a lot of journalism, being it either TV or newspapers, it is more often about finding weak points, creating crooks to make a story, errors in the system etc, etc, than about finding every day hero’s and systems that work well. Anyway, back to management.

Do I mean we should not look for errors? No, that would be counter productive. But it does not have to be the default style and approach for the manager!

I remember a story about a Japanese manager who got an important report in his hands. After reading the report he looked at his employee, smiled and said: “This is very good, now let’s see if we can make it even better”. This is a very different approach with a very different outcome. This approach shows respect for the person and the work that has been done, it creates a joint responsibility for making it even better, and it potentially creates energy around improvement.

Some have learned to say a few positives before they dive into the “real” feedback. It is actually better, but not ideal.

I encourage the approach of starting with “Here are the things I liked the best” and then move on to “Let’s see how we can make it even better”.

Which part did you like best?

Many years ago I was lucky to meet Benjamin Tonna at a management program in Malta. He was a priest but also a great management thinker. He gave a fantastic speech in the grotto in Rabat where St. Paul is said to have taken refuge after his shipwreck on Malta. His speech was about spirituality and management, but what happened after the speech is what made the biggest impact on me.
I wanted to give him some feedback, so I walked over to him afterwards and said: “That was a wonderful speech”. He grabbed my hand, smiled, looked me in the eyes and said: “Thank you”. It could have stopped there, but then he added: “Which part did you like best?” I was not prepared for this, but I reflected quickly and shared some of the parts that I remembered being the best. It could have stopped there, but he still looked at me and asked one more important question: “Why was that part so important to you?” The conversation then moved into a “on the spot” coaching session.
What a great lesson in leadership! Not through big words, but through action and role modelling.
He demonstrated true caring and empathy, but also genuine interest in his own performance and how it impacts others. He taught me how to use feedback in a constructive way to make it more precise and as a learning opportunity. He also demonstrated how a situation can be used for coaching. We were there on a management program, so it was appropriate. He used the opportunity to turn a potential polite exchange of words into a situation of great interaction and learning. The question “Which part did you like best” turns the general feedback into precision, but the even more powerful follow up question “Why was that so important to you” allows deeper reflections and learning into values and motivational foundations for what we do and react to.
Our everyday dealings give us these opportunities all the time. Grab them!

Benjamin Tonna died in 2001. He graduated with a degree in sociology from Louvain University. He served as parish priest of his native town of Rabat in the Republic of Malta as well as co-director with Brian P. Hall of the Omega Institute of the University of Santa Clara. Thank you, Benjamin and also Brian for making it possible to meet him!

We are in the hope industry

“In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.” This was apparently said by Charles Revson, one of the founders of Revlon. What a beautiful way of describing the added value of what you are offering. From a branding perspective it is a powerful sentence. But this blog is neither about branding nor lipstick. I don’t use lipstick, but I want to get up in the morning, look in the mirror and despite seeing an aging and tired face, I want to know that I can make the world a better place.
How many of us, as leaders, are in the “hope industry”? How much of my daily communication creates hope that we can do it, trust that we will succeed, belief that I can make a difference?
How much of my coaching is focused on what we can do more of? How much of my feedback is focused on what is done well? How much of my actions and my words talk to the goal we are aiming for?
I see myself in the hope industry. My job is to create better organisations that make better results. Do I fail? Again and again. Do I still believe that’s my job? Yes, because I want to work in the hope industry and create an industry of hope!