Transformation, People and Success

Three Simple Rules for Super Engagement Through Times of Significant Change

Since my retirement last year, the number one question I've been asked is, "How the heck do I keep people engaged during the most intense transformation in my company's history?" Usually followed up by, "Do I really have to? Aren't they going to be frustrated, challenged, and distracted by all the change anyway? Is employee engagement really that important? Afterall, my engagement scores haven't really been that high to begin with and most of my people are great performers. I guess it's not that important. Plus, this is a digital transformation and everyone knows there will be a reduction in people needed at the end as we automate manual processes and implement new technology." If this is the conclusion you have reached, you can stop reading now and get back to your transformation. For the rest of us, lets take a few minutes and focus on the challenge at hand.

Most successful businesses today realize that people are their biggest asset. This wasn't true when I started my career. People were often viewed as the biggest cost and riskiest liability the business incurred. They needed to be managed through MBO (management by objective) and strict employment policy that punished the 99% while "managing" the 1%. Free thinking and individual innovation were often frowned upon and the manager was the manager because they knew the work better than anyone else. If you are a manager today, I urge you to become a leader and inspire your people to be the best they can be in their contributions and results. This brings me to my first rule of employee engagement: Engagement is not about what you give people, it is about how people feel.

Sure providing good pay, competitive benefits and great working conditions are important, but the emerging workforce (I'm not a big fan of segmenting and labeling people simply based on when they were born, plus each new generation strongly influences the previous resetting expectations of the entire work force) expects to be respected and valued by their company, boss and coworkers, just as they expect or at least hope to be proud of their company, boss, and coworkers in return. We've all heard the often quoted statistic that people don't leave companies, they leave bosses. While this is true, more and more people will leave a company they don't respect for a variety of ethical, environmental, and political reasons. Creating an environment where people feel valued has become the number one role of the leader in achieving great business outcomes, leaving the expertise to the individual or team responsible for the work. Today the leader's role requires clear communications of expectations, development, enablement, resource and organizational support, coaching, and reward. So, on to the second rule of employee engagement: People are only as engaged as their leadership.

People expect more out of their leadership at every level than ever before. The war for talent in this time of record low unemployment requires leaders who are at the top of their game, understand what is expected of them and have adopted a new perspective on what it means to lead. People look for Say-Do disconnects where leaders don't model the very same expectations for behavior and performance results that is expected from them. In the extremes, mediocre business performance will be the result of formerly highly engaged people leaving the organization for a better environment and those who stay being a combination of the underperformers who feel no accountability to perform and potential high performers who see no reason to step up their game, often because there appears to be no reward or inspiration to do so. The highly engaged leader knows that they win the war for talent by making it a war for top talent. Engagement is contagious. No one wants to be the poor performer in a highly engaged, high performing team, just as few will want to take the extra step or initiative to do more if they see little reward or a history of negative consequence if they make a mistake. There is safety in numbers on both extremes and that brings me to the third rule of employee engagement: Everyone needs a piece of the action.

The latest business rallying cry is, "Disrupt ourselves or be disrupted!" The wise senior leadership team knows exactly who the Amazon of their industry is or at least has a strong idea where the innovation will come from that undermines the foundation of their business model. Few, however, understand the internal policies and processes that block their ability to address the challenge. This is why every member of the senior team owes the Board and CEO a comprehensive plan on how their respective department will contribute to each strategic initiative, not just the obvious ones that seem to directly apply. For example, HR clearly plays a significant role in delivering against a strategic initiative requiring a high performing organization. HR also needs to play a role in delivering a digital strategy or leveraging/divesting under performing assets. The internal policies, structure and ways of working coupled with leadership behavior determine organizational culture and how work gets done. HR must be proactive here, not reactive, employing and demonstrating mastery in all four HR disciplines: Organization Effectiveness, Talent, Reward, and Coaching. Nothing can be left to chance and every person in the organization must feel briefed, aligned, focused and rewarded for achieving the desired business results. Its worth noting at this point that Reward includes both financial and non-financial value. Non-financial Reward includes opportunity, development, diversity, coaching, feedback, inclusion and feeling valued and they are strong motivators for results and retention.

I used the term "Super Engagement" above. To be clear, engagement without business results is a waste of business resources. Let's use the figure below to illustrate the point and reinforce the three rules.

Most companies have a method to determine the level of engagement of their people. Typically, an annual engagement survey of some type. Most will break down engagement by teams, with the smallest group being 5 to 10 people in order to protect confidentiality. The company hires a third party who runs the survey and results are shared 4 to 10 weeks later. Each leader is expected to action one or two of the findings to improve engagement and then the cycle repeats a year later. Ugh. By itself, this is woefully inadequate and can actually result in disengagement, but that's a topic for a future discussion. Let's say you have all of the appropriate tools, feedback and actioning mechanisms in place and you can map where every team falls on the table above. You can now start to take action to drive each team towards High Performance. You also have some very valuable data that your workforce data and analytics team can use to overlay attrition, internal movement, etc. and bring previously dark data into the light helping you to take data driven actions for better outcomes.

The labels in the figure above are meant to be provocative, but they also represent how people tend to feel based on their level of engagement and business results achieved. It is worth noting that while the Social Club may be a happy place for some, others may use it as a reason to leave the department or company. The same can be said about the other quadrants. But this figure is important when you are driving a transformation that to most people is changing everything. When you introduce change, people feel a degree of pressure. This can range from mild confusion to full on disillusionment. The bigger, more intense and longer the duration of the change, the faster and deeper people move toward the bottom left quadrant. Interestingly, the Social Club often moves to Failure faster than the Sweat Shop, but the Social Club also can move to High Performance faster. Eroding engagement and business results are self-fulfilling. As momentum builds, speed increases to the point where it becomes almost impossible to stop and the transformation is slowed or stopped. There are many studies that show the significant business value of a highly engaged workforce and the importance during a transformation. The lack of employee engagement is one of the biggest reasons that transformation and organizational change fails.

So, what to do? The biggest defense is to create the highest percentage of engaged people possible and nurture engagement continually. Super Engaged is a term some companies have adopted to define a subset of their engaged population that, as long as they are nurtured (see the three rules above), they are almost impervious to disengagement. The three rules do not survive individually. There is a synergy in their interaction that accelerates the desired outcomes. There is also not a generic map or a single formula that works for all. The best approach is to directly and deliberately design the plan for your specific business. I'll cover this in greater detail next month in how my experience with deconstructed food was an epiphony for organizational success.

We've really just scratched the surface. There is much more to discuss and plans to be developed. I love a great conversation and always learn something from every interaction. Share your thoughts in the comments or drop me a note if you would like a conversation. All the best in your transformation!