Connecting people for improved performance

Creating a sense of community in the workplace

2010-11-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

I’m not a Facebook user of any great note. My children laugh at the small number of “friends” I have. However, yesterday, laid low with back troubles, I decided to see if I could find any of my old school mates. I found Sheila.

Sheila got “knocked up”, as we used to say in those days, when we were 16. I only saw her once after the baby was born. She brought her baby to school for a visit. I was intimidated and frightened by her new role and we lost touch. Facebook showed me that Sheila went on to a full life. She is now settled in the UK, where she and her husband run a tax franchise. Her albums are full of children and grandchildren.

There is much debate about the value of Facebook in the workplace. I recall a client being very distressed because employees would put their place of work on their Facebook pages. He felt it would lay the company open to security issues. Trying to manage what people say on Facebook, or anywhere else for that matter, is pointless. Social media is the modern equivalent of the water cooler and no boss every managed to keep that one quiet. Humans need to connect.

Social media, such as Facebook, should rather be seen as an opportunity for organizations to create networks and communities well beyond those with whom it would typically interact. The traditional mindset of a business is one where you put up a shingle and send out a few flyers. In effect “build it and they will come.” That notion of business is based on the idea of pre-existing communities, of high streets filled with people making connections and hopefully talking about your business. Sadly, communities like that do not, for the most part, exist any longer. We live isolated lives in the suburbs, using cars to connect us with our communities of friends, our work and other parts of our lives.

Because of the fractured nature of our lives, community is becoming more and more important. Savvy organizations recognize this and are attempting to provide employees and customers with a greater sense of belonging. MyStarbucksidea is an online community of coffee lovers (employees and customers) coming together to offer the mother company ideas to make the Starbucks experience even better.

Similarly a client of mine has had a fan page for clients and employees for quite a few years. It’s an opportunity for like-minded people to get together and share chat about what they consider to be important, in effect, a community. Even my neighbourhood corner store is into the notion of community. The guy who owns the store is bringing in local produce and putting in a kitchen so people can come and have a cup of tea or coffee and meet with neighbours.

There are huge advantages to building a sense of community within your workplace; the most obvious is enhanced engagement and improved productivity. In addition, once you build a community others want to join and work with your community. This translates to more potential (and like-minded) employees and customers.

Here are some basic strategies for building community within your organization:
• Tell stories of successful employees – story is the bedrock of community building
• Show employees why the organization is heading in the direction chosen by the senior team. Help them understand the broader context in which you operate and why your particular niche is important – in other words what makes us a community and how we contribute
• Have employees involved in the annual planning cycle
• Hold very regular town hall meetings with senior leaders. Make sure food is always part of your meetings. Food is fundamental to human relations
• Have a corporate cause to which everyone can contribute either financially or through time.
• Try social media in a managed fashion with a clear goal of establishing a sense of community. Start up a blogging centre. Collectively blog about your cause. Showcase stories related to your cause on your blog.
• Socialize. We are humans. Once we understand one another’s humanity – it makes working together a great deal easier.

Beyond training your leaders to communicate

2010-11-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

I am currently working with a large client in Ontario to develop a storytelling toolkit. The aim of the toolkit is to provide managers with the resources they need to effectively share storytelling as a strategy with their staff.

Toolkits allow organizations to share top-down messages and strategies with employee in a consistent fashion, using managers as messengers. It’s not unlike “train the trainer”; managers become subject experts through a supported process.

Using managers as communicators of corporate messaging makes sense since study after study tells us that they are the most trusted source of information. Managers are in daily contact with staff and much of their time is spent communicating; anywhere between 50 to 80 percent according to research. Every day managers communicate to ensure effective performance management, innovation, understanding of clients, and coordination of effort and management of expectations. Managers are key communicators.

The message is getting out that communication is a core management skill. A recent American Management Association survey of leaders showed that 80.4 percent of companies measure communication skills and hire with communication in mind. Three out of four (75.7%) executives who responded to the AMA survey said that that competencies, such as communications, will become more important to their organizations in the next three to five years, particularly as the economy improves and organizations look to grow. Ninety-one percent of leaders rated the pace of change in business today as a leading cause for the need to grow these competencies.

As change escalates and employees become more sophisticated and diverse, business has responded by offering more management training. It’s estimated that North American businesses spend around $100 billion on training and development. I’m not sure what proportion is devoted to leadership communications but judging by the number of companies catering to the market – not inconsiderable.

The focus should be on what happens after the training session. To maximize communication training dollars we must support managers and ensure they have the tools and resources to share messages with employees in a consistent, relevant and reliable fashion.

My client in Ontario has a full time person dedicated to developing the storytelling toolkit and supporting managers in rolling it out. Not all of us have those resources. However there are steps all organizations can take to ensure leaders have the know-how and confidence to communicate to their full potential and to the advantage of the organization.

Here are some strategies to strengthen management communication in your organization:
1. Consider a communications audit; a systematic assessment, either formal or informal, of your organization’s capacity for, or performance of, essential communications practices, in particular as it relates to management communication. An audit will determine what is working well, what is not, and what might work better if adjustments are made. A strategic communications provides a “snapshot” of where an organization currently stands in terms of its communication capacity or performance, and it points to areas in which the organization can strengthen its performance. While an audit can be on the costly side, I believe it’s worth its weight in gold in terms of directing future efforts.
2. Develop consistent communication messages to support corporate goals and objectives.
3. Have your senior team actively communicate these messages; modelling the expectation that managers do the same to their employees.
4. Involve managers in developing communication behaviours that they should adhere to.
5. Develop consensus on how to handle certain types of communication issues for example performance issues, disagreements in the workplace and so on.
6. Link management communication proficiency to performance review.
7. Provide communication training. Begin with listening skills this is the foundation of all communication
8. Support managers when they are required to communicate information from the corporation by:
a. Creating a consistent process for top down communications. A process that cascades information logically.
b. Communicate the process to managers along with expectations on deadlines and key messages
c. Ensure managers have all the support tools needed to share the communication with their employees, such as discussion guides
d. Poor communication is self-sustaining because it omits the feedback loop. Senior leaders must model good communication behaviours with managers by providing a feedback loop. Make sure managers are able to get all the answers to questions they may have. Employees will go to them first.

Building a common language in your organization

2010-09-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

Today I attended a sustainability forum in downtown Vancouver hosted by Metro Vancouver and the Board of Trade. Lunch was served, along with some interesting ideas, and a fair amount of political grandstanding.

One of the comments from the floor struck a chord; it was about the language we use and how it is open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding, particularly between different groups, say for example between business and sustainability groups.

Misinterpretation and misunderstanding based on the language we use is more common than one would imagine, even within small cohesive groups, even within families.

Here’s a telling example of how we use language very differently. My husband and I were shocked when our teenage daughter told us that girls will often call one another “bitch”, not as an insult but as a recognition of the other’s female status; horrifying to us older fogies, but perfectly acceptable to my daughter and her contemporaries.

Here is another, less extreme example. Earlier this year I was working on a technology change project. During the development phase we discovered that people were using different words to describe the same action or process. It was extremely confusing and a situation and that required action in the form of a common lexicon; a language that everyone could refer to and use. Developing the dictionary was the easy part – ensuring people used the same words in their daily interactions was far from easy.

Organizations need to speak the same language over and above the everyday languages we use like English, French, or Cantonese. We all have a laugh at the terminology that plumbers or doctors use; the acronyms and terms that make sense only to them. The languages that these people speak are important not only because they provide a powerful shorthand for them to communicate, but also because it helps create a sense of identity, a sense of community. From a more practical point of view talking the same language reduces risk and enhances the likelihood that we will do better business.

Every industry, every business has its own shorthand; we use it to simplify communication and signify our membership of the group. The trouble starts when different groups use different language and the connections break down. We see this commonly between divisions – the silo effect, also between managers and employees – the “them and us” syndrome.

Language goes hand in hand with culture. The words we use can set us apart from one another and also hold us in old and destructive patterns. In one organization I am familiar with, the management team paid a consultant (a colleague of mine) to sit in on their meetings to identify inappropriate use of language as they moved from their “old” way of doing things to the “new” way of doing things. They knew that it was important to speak the new language rather than the old if they wanted to act differently.

Using a consistent language throughout the organization has clear benefits:
• The right language clearly speaks to organizational goals and objectives
• Employees feel part of cohesive group
• The language provides a shorthand to culture and process
• Risk is reduced through clear communications
• Customers hear constancy in language, and very correctly, interpret is as steady, reliable service

Developing a consistent language is usually the result of a cohesive culture. However, as in the example above, language can be used to reinforce direction and ways of thinking. Here are some steps you can take to support culture through language:
• Start at the top. Identify the words and phrases that support the corporate direction;
• Have senior leaders promise to find ways to use the new speak in their daily connections, at staff meetings and presentations
• Change policy documents, informational materials and other standard corporate documentation to reflect the new language.
• Make sure the new words are used in support of ongoing company communications; emails, newsletters, bulletin boards, intranet etc.
• When cascading important information through the company, provide supporting discussion guides with the new language so that managers begin to use the new language.

A balanced approach to decision making

2010-09-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Here’s a story from my salad days. I was working in stakeholder relations with a large organization based here in Vancouver. Part of my responsibility involved attending project meetings. I was young, green and woefully ignorant on the technical complexities of the project, so I happily took on the role of listener. It turned out to be a real advantage and learning opportunity.

In this particular instance a group of senior professionals were talking about technical options. One of the gentlemen noted that he felt the approach they were discussing was too conservative and would limit future options. The response to this statement from the colleague who favoured this option was: “I disagree.. let me restate my opinion once again.” With that the level of tension in the room increased significantly and the two leading proponents of the differing alternatives were politely at each others throats until the end of the meeting. The rest of the attendees sat and watched. Of course there was no resolution.

I’m sure most of you have been in similar situations. The lines are drawn, people take their positions and there is no forward movement. Our world trains us to be very good advocates. Our society rewards us if our solutions are adopted so we like to get in there and tell people exactly why our ideas are best. Unfortunately advocacy alone can lead to conflict and ideas that are not sufficiently explored - culminating in bad decision making.

In the example above we needed some inquiry. Inquiry helps people to better understand one another’s’ reasoning and thinking behind a solution. So, for example, in the situation above a little bit of inquiry in the form of a question like: "Can you give me an example of what you mean" or "Can you share with me the data you are using to support that conclusion?" would have avoided conflict and allowed deeper and more meaningful exploration of the proposed approaches.

Inquiry is particularly important as our world - and the problems we deal with - become more and more complex. Inquiry can be used to truly understand the issue and the implications of proposed solutions. It is also useful when we reach an impasse. By asking the right questions people can begin to think outside of the box and look at the world from someone else’s perspective. And of course questions can be wonderful for drawing out the wisdom in the room, particularly when some people are hesitant to share ideas.

Currently I’m working with two other consultants on a new business opportunity. We are all strong minded and independent and each of us is very good at advocating his or her position. For this reason we have set up our exploration phase to include a significant amount of inquiry. This allows us to better understand one another’s’ thinking. It’s proving to be a fascinating process and we are discovering more depth to our partnership then we had earlier imagined.

However, we should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Being a good advocate is also important; we need to have opinions, as long as we are open to listening to others.

Inquiry and advocacy should work together. Inquiry broadens and deepens our understanding. Advocacy leads us to action. Without a balance between inquiry and advocacy people are more likely to remain neutral. As leaders, it is our role to balance the two to ensure effective interactions.

How do you balance inquiry and advocacy? Generally inquiry precedes advocacy - assuming we do not have all the information. Through inquiry we expose ideas and ask others to challenge and probe them. However if all the information is available then we can go ahead and advocate – which hopefully will lead to action.

Here are some approaches you may wish to consider in developing your inquiry skills:

Ask in a way that does not provoke defensiveness:
“Can you help me understand your thinking here?”

Draw out reasoning:
“Where does your reasoning go next?”

Explain your reasons for inquiring:
“I’m asking you about your assumptions here because…”

Test what they say by asking for broader context:
“Can you describe a typical example?”

Check your understanding:
“Am I correct that you are saying…”

Explore, listen and offer your own views:
“Have you considered…..”

A few tips for effective advocacy:
• Provide data and back up information
• Help people understand the context for an approach
• Make reasoning explicit
• Encourage others to explore your views
• Acknowledge weaknesses, and
• Actively inquires into others' views.

Nicky Fried is the principal of Nicky Fried Consulting Inc. She helps organizations to translate change and strategy so that employees understand where the organization is going and how they support it through their daily actions. Learn more about us at www.nickyfried.com or read her blog at www.nickyfried.blogspot.com

Facilitating for success

2010-09-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Every day about 25 million meetings take place in corporate North America; half that time is wasted.

Researcher Steven Rogelberg surveyed employees and found that professionals spend 5.6 hours a day in meetings. We can all relate to the feeling of gloom the surveyed employees expressed when sitting in unproductive meetings with piles of work waiting on their desks.

I have a game I play in one of my workshops where we look at the cost of holding a series of meetings over the course of a year. It’s quite shocking to realize your organization has just dropped $30,000 for last year’s departmental meetings.

The reasons for failed meetings are well documented, they include:
• No meeting objective
• Agenda incomplete and not sent out prior to the meeting
• Lack of clarity on roles
• Meeting does not start on time
• The agenda is not followed
• Conflict is not managed
• The meeting does not move toward resolving an issue/s
• Actions and deadlines are not assigned.

All of the above are valid. However, in addition to solid meeting management I’d like to suggest that we also need good facilitation skills for effective meetings. Let me explain.

We tend to work very much in isolation; often people come together from different parts of the organization to complete individual pieces of the pie. When we meet, it’s to get the big picture and to make decisions to move the process forward. However, given our cultural inclination to avoid confrontation and crucial conversations, we tend to revisit the same issues and our meetings become exercises in frustration.

Meeting management is defined as the process of planning, monitoring and coordinating all components of a meeting. Facilitation, on the other hand, is leadership by consent. Facilitating a meeting is different from leading a monthly organizational meeting using parliamentary procedure. The facilitator is a neutral guide who takes an active role in guiding the process.

When you become a facilitator, you share responsibility with the group members for progressing toward the goals. As facilitator you act as a guide, drawing out wisdom in the room as you move the participants forward in a particular direction.
Recently I had the pleasure of facilitating a series of management meetings with a very specific purpose. Initially I was participating very actively, by the last session my presence was superfluous and the group was self managing.

This is the process I use for facilitation. I hope you find it useful.

Stage 1 – Prior to the meeting
• Clarify purpose and objective of meeting.
• Develop an understanding of the issues
• Explore any previous sessions – reviewing strengths and weakness of those sessions
• Look at potential conflicts between participants
• Confirm expectations for you as facilitator
• Develop and send out the agenda
• Prepare materials and logistics for the meeting
• Agree on process / methodology of the meeting
• Confirm roles and responsibilities
• Establish group norms and rules for meetings

Stage 2 – During the meeting
• Begin the meeting and establish the meeting objective
• Keep everyone on track with the agenda
• Challenge thinking
• Help the group create lists of important points
• Summarize the issues from time to time
• Share ideas when they can help the meeting progress
• Provide handouts when needed to clarify the main points
• Raise questions to bring out different viewpoints
• Guide discussion
• Restate ideas when the person presenting them is not clear
• Provides constructive criticism when, for example, a person or people attempt to dominate the meeting
• Take notes
• Conclude the meeting.

Stage 3 – After the meeting up
• Report back in a fashion that ensures the process will move forward
• Follow up with people who committed to actions in the meeting.

Nicky Fried is the principal of Nicky Fried Consulting Inc. She helps organizations to translate strategy and change so that employees understand where the organization is going and how they support it through their daily actions. Learn more about us at www.nickyfried.com or read her blog at www.nickyfried.blogspot.com .

Giving it all away

2010-06-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

This week I had the satisfaction of working myself out of a job. As a consultant it’s part of what I do. I create plans, systems and processes, and engage people in them with the ultimate view that they become part of my client’s business; owned by the employees. There are some similarities to delegating.

Delegating multiplies your effectiveness provided 1) the people you are delegating have the skills to do the job and 2) you have the ability to let them do it their way and don’t have the need to look over their shoulders every five minutes.

The group I handed control to was a team going through a major change. Connecting this group to change meant we had to set up projects that connected and involved them, in a meaningful way, in the new world they were to work in; in other words they needed to take ownership of the process. In this instance a young woman had embrace a leadership role that she was very unsure about.

As a seasoned employee it’s sometimes hard to understand why a task you are so comfortable with should be so daunting to someone else. Sometimes we have to look to our personal lives to better understand how to support people. As parents, partners and friends we can certainly understand what it means to take on new ventures; the exhilaration and anxiety that goes with a challenge. Once we can connect with that experience – we can plan for success.

Here are my 11 steps for effective delegation for managers and employees:
1. Delegation means you transfer authority and the associated responsibility, from an employer or superior (who has the right to delegate) to an employee or subordinate. This means that someone else is now responsible for the work. So – butt out. Provide support and guidance but understand that everyone does things differently. Don’t you hate being micro-managed? Why would you want to do the same and lose the trust of an employee you value?
2. Delegation is an opportunity for both the manager and the employee. It’s a thoughtful process which means you don’t just give away work because don’t enjoy it. You do, however, want to give away work that will stop you from reaching your full potential.
3. Think about the fit. Does the employee have the skills to take on this task?
4. Plan the handover. Define the tasks and how the transition will take place.
5. Take time to communicate the new process to the assigned person; let them know why you are delegating to them. They need to understand what they are getting out of the assignment.
6. Think about training and resources. Will the individual need some training or additional resources?
7. Be extremely clear on your expectations.
8. Get agreement on timelines.
9. Make sure the individual is reporting to you on a regular basis.
10. Is there anyone else who needs to know about the delegation? If yes - inform them. Connect your employee with them.
11. Stay in touch. Provide feedback. Create a safe environment for your employee to grow.

By the way, I am delighted to report that the young woman I mentioned in the third paragraph has taken on the challenge with gusto. In fact she has improved on the process I started her off with. She has the advantage of a manager who meets with her regularly and supports her every step of the way. He trusts her enough to let go, but is caring enough to make sure she is not left alone.

Influence: helping others reach their potential

2010-04-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

“The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions.”

John Hancock

Last month I gave a talk on influence in the workplace. We spent some time exploring the difference between influence and persuasion. One of the participants felt that persuasion brings to mind someone getting you to do something that you might not really want to do. Influence on the other hand is all about creating “win win” situations.

The word “influence” comes from the Latin, "influere", which means "to flow into". The ancient Romans believed select individuals had special powers flowing into them from the gods. The assumption of strength and power and uniqueness remains to this day. To be regarded as a person of influence is to have power.

Chain-of-command hierarchies are obsolete. Today we function in networked, team-oriented organizations. To be successful we need to be able to influence others-especially those over whom we have no direct control.

Consider Ray Anderson who started Interface, Inc., in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1973. Every year his factories produced hundreds of gallons of wastewater and nearly 900 pollutants. Then Anderson read Paul Hawkens' book, The Ecology of Commerce. And he knew he had to change the way his organization did things.

At its plant in LaGrange, Georgia, Interface used to send six tons of carpet trimmings to the landfill every day. By June of 1997, it was sending none. At Guilford of Maine, a division of Interface, new computer controls installed on boilers not only reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 99.7%, but also improved the boilers' efficiency. The result - waste decreased and profits increased.

Anderson did a masterful job of persuading an entire organization to change. Admittedly he had the advantage of being the CEO. But many CEOs are not able to shift their organizations. Great plans die because leaders can’t figure out how to change people’s behaviors. Research shows that 70 percent of change initiatives fail because those who are to carry out the work are not engaged.

True influence is about understanding how to work with, and through others, to achieve a stated objective while staying true to your core values and maintaining your integrity.

There are three factors to consider in influence; emotion, strategy and consequences.

Emotion:

Ninety percent of decisions are emotional. In fact even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion. To influence means we must have the ability to connect with people at a fundamental level. No matter how logical your arguments you have to appeal to people’s emotions.

Research shows that we do business with people we like and avoid those we don’t like. So the more in tune you are with people you are trying to influence - the more they will be open to influence.

What to do:

• Develop relationships well in advance of attempting to influence. Understand and connect with the people you want to influence so that you are the person they like and trust.

• Help people to see the emotional benefits of the facts and figures so it’s easy for them to come to a point of decision.

Strategy:

Your likelihood of influencing others will increase significantly if you have a strategy or plan of action. People will feel far more comfortable if they see you have a vision and a path to achieve that vision.

The psychology of influence tells us that people respond more favourably to solutions if they believe the plan of action came from them. Find a way to link your strategy with their ideas.

What to do;

• Build a plan of action when trying to influence for a project. Show people you have thought about the issues.

• Link your strategy to pet ideas of the people you are attempting to influence.

• Link your strategy to corporate strategy to show strategic thinking and a willingness to plan for the good of all.

Consequences:

Influence is built upon making others successful. When you are trying to influence others ensure that your solution deals with their pain points and/or achieves goals and objectives of interest to them. Often the need to protect against pain takes priority over everything else.

What to do:

Understand the concerns of the people you are attempting to influence. Build your approach with their needs, not yours, in mind.

Influence is all about facilitating for mutual benefit. Take a real interest in the success of others, be likeable and focused on offering real results in a strategic fashion that mitigate any potential pain for the person you are trying to influence.

And finally, remember enthusiasm is contagious. Believe in your project, like the people you are attempting influence and be credible.
Nicky Fried is the principal of Nicky Fried Consulting Inc. She helps organizations to translate strategy and change so that employees understand where the organization is going and how they support it through their daily actions. Learn more about us at www.nickyfried.com

Discovering your unique ability

2010-04-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

My coach has me on a journey to discover my innate ability.

Innate ability is that which comes naturally to us. It is our preferred mode of operation; it is instinctual. We do it very well and we get a great deal of satisfaction from work performed in this mode. However, because it is instinctive we tend to take it for granted – until someone points out how valuable it is.

Some of you may remember a book “Now Discover your strengths” by Buckingham and Clifton. The premise of the book is that we should build on our strengths and if we do we will be successful.

In reality we often train our weaknesses which means that we end up with mediocre weaknesses. Why not train our innate strengths for excellence! Imagine our organizations full of people employed for their strengths and trained to become outstanding in the areas where they have natural talent. Sports people do this all the time – with obvious rewards.

It’s a “win win” when employees are operating in their natural mode. They are happy and more productive and the organization gets the benefit of an employee who does a darn good job with passion. I had coffee with a woman yesterday who used to work for a large financial institution in town. She found her passion for facilitation quite by chance and realized where she wanted to spend the rest of her working life. She is now busy, and happily, pursuing that career elsewhere because the bureaucracy she worked with had her pidgeoned in a box she no longer wanted to be in.

Because we have certain innate abilities doesn’t mean to say that we aren’t good at other things. I’m pretty good at administrative stuff - when I have to be – but it is not on my list of favorites things and I do tend to avoid it. On the other hand, I love to work with groups and help them move toward a stated goal in a creative fashion that engages them. And the more time I spend doing this the happier, and more productive, I am.

Your innate abilities and those of your staff may surprise you. My coach had me ask my clients what they thought my abilities were. None of them told me I was a great trainer or a fabulous creative writer, but all of them mentioned my ability to communicate effectively and get people on board and behind a project - which might explain why I do so much work in the area of change.

You might want to figure your innate abilities, as well as those of your team members. This is the kind of information that you can use to focus people on activities that will make them happy and your organization more successful. One way to do this is by taking an online assessment. I recently completed the Kolbe A Index www.kolbe.com . The Kolbe looks at four action modes; information gathering and sharing, arranging and designing, dealing with risk and uncertainty and your best way for handling space and tangibles. The results were pretty surprising. My scores showed me to be very high on conceptualizing and risk taking. Again, skills that are important if you work in the area of change. The Kolbe is around $50 for each person.

Another option is the Strengths Finder from Gallup. Purchase the book “Now Discover your strengths” by Buckingham and Clifton and you will get access to an online profile and find your five top strengths.

A lower cost strategy is to get together as a team and focus on what you consider the other team members unique or innate abilities might be. Try and be as specific as possible, focus only on positive attributes. For example I’m a risk taker. This could be seen as negative but the Kolbe highlighted it as very positive for example it allows me to initiate change, improvise solutions and options and create a sense of urgency. You get the idea of why working for change is good for me!

Here are five steps you and your team can take to identify and take advantage of your unique abilities:

1. As a team consider one another’s unique abilities. Summarize the findings. If you prefer do online assessments.

2. Circulate everyone’s unique abilities – give people time to celebrate how they are perceived or assessed.

3. Come together as a group – celebrate the great strength you have as a group

4. Consider how you can support one another to ensure each individual is spending more time on his or her unique ability.

5. Review your training strategy. Train your unique abilities.

Nicky Fried is the principal of Nicky Fried Consulting Inc. She helps organizations to translate strategy and change so that employees understand where the organization is going and how they support it through their daily actions. Learn more about us at http://www.nickyfried.com/.

Helping employees through change

2009-12-13T14:40:00.000-08:00

My 13 year old son is a member of the BC Boys Choir. This week sopranos and altos (unbroken voices) received an invitation to sing with Sarah Brightman, who is performing at one of the 2010 Olympic venues. We couldn’t figure out why he was so resistant until we realized that he thought he would be performing at the Opening Ceremonies; a stressful and overwhelming thought for him. Once he understood that this was not the case – he was happy to commit.

We all come at life with an existing framework; an understanding of how the world works. Sometimes our preconceptions get in the way and hinder us from moving forward and making decisions. This is particularly true when we ask employees to go through change.

The usual management strategy is to try and persuade employees with facts and figures. The only trouble is that employees will take the facts and figures and interpret them within their existing framework or mind set, and the interpretation might not be exactly as management intended.

To influence effectively we need to understand the world from the other persons point of view. We also need to be ready to trade, in other words provide them with something of value, in return for their support of the change process.

I am currently working with a client on a technology change project. The rationale for the project is solid and the change necessary. The trouble is the group has gone through a number of earlier technology changes that were not positive. This is their existing framework. This is how they see the world and no amount of facts and figures will change that. That’s because decision making has a strong emotional component to it. Research shows that at the point where we must decide, emotion is necessary.

Employees will decide to adopt a change when they can see themselves, and the role they play, within the change. This allows them to make decisions at an emotional level and adapt the change to their internal framework.

The client I am currently working with has opted for a multi-pronged approach to ensuring their employees connect with the change, and understand its value for them.

Here are some of the things you can do to make sure you are not one of the 70% of change initiatives that fail because the people who are to make the changes are not engaged.

1. Long before the change begins talk to your employees about the world the business operates within. Share with them key business results, market information, issues and challenges the industry faces, trends, and other relevant information. Interpret it so they understand what the business needs to do to move ahead. If you are involving them in key business information before you ask for change you are in effect giving them something of value – information , but also trust in sharing information usually meant for senior leaders. This value can then be traded for cooperation at a later stage.

2. Have a clear vision for your project. This will help people to connect with it at an emotional level - and understand their personal contributions.

3. Engage the employees in defining how business processes will change with the adoption of the new system. It’s their work, so they will be able to tell you what they do now and how that will change. There is great value in being seen and acknowledged as an expert.

4. Give the technology a chance. Answer all the important business questions before you introduce it.

5. Be clear about what the technology can and cannot do. Manage expectations.

6. Communicate regularly. Resist the temptation to only communicate when you have all the answers – you never do.

7. Understand clearly how different people will use the technology. Not every group will need to be communicated to in the same way.

8. Work with champions of the change to illustrate early wins. Show the behaviours people need to adopt to be successful.

9. Ensure training is relevant to each group and offers employees a real way to apply the technology.

Change is never straightforward but an acknowledgement that implementing it is more about the people then the technology and process is a good place to start.

Climbing up Maslow’s hierarchy

2009-12-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

So much of what we do is about meeting needs.

Maslow outlined it perfectly in his hierarchy of needs; you have to meet basic requirements before you can deal with higher level needs. At the bottom of the Maslow’s pyramid are needs associated with food, water and sleep, this is followed by physical safety, then belonging and affiliation, next is esteem and right at the top of the pyramid is self actualization. This is the point where we fully realize our potential.

Here in North America we have made good strides in meeting employees needs as outlined by Maslow’s hierarchy. We pay decently and frequently offer benefits, safety is a focus for all out organizations, and we work hard at developing culture and recognizing our employees. But somehow that whole actualization thing is a little bit trickier then it should be. Not all our employees feel like they make a contribution to the success of the organization and the direct impact of that is poor engagement. Not surprising given engagement is all about the involvement, commitment and satisfaction that employees have with their work.

The level of employee engagement is directly associated with performance. Some 32 % of Canadian employees are partly or fully "disengaged." Companies with the lowest percentage of engagement show declines of 33 per cent in operating income and 11 per cent in earnings per share.

I can’t think of one client I have worked with who hasn’t imagined how exciting it would be to have the majority of employees right at the top of the pyramid. Most of us can recall a situation where we have been involved with a motivated, excited group of individuals - people who feel they are making a major contribution to the organization. It is a powerful experience!

I have worked with several such teams and observed a number. The common denominator is excellence in leadership. More specifically leaders who establish a clear vision and create the kind of environment that deliberately takes care of all Maslow’s levels – pushing people up to self actualization, where they are at their most engaged and most productive.

One of the most effective means of helping people understand their contribution and how valued they are is by connecting them directly with customer needs. Helping employees understand the Maslow equivalent of client needs and what this means for them.

I was privy to an excellent example of Maslow-focused project management. This particular project manager worked to put her team in the shoes of the client, building understanding and relationship between the two that would pleasantly surprise any client. Together her team established service criteria based on client needs. She then worked very, very hard to model the kind of behaviour she wanted her employees to adopt. Her team was a screaming, happy mess of actualized success. Her company made money on the project and brought in more business because of it.

What she did sounds pretty straightforward, but it’s not always that easy to build a self-actualized team when you’re dealing with the reality of getting things done. The approach that the project manager above took meant that she had to do a lot of planning and thinking about the people stuff. Often it’s easier to simply do the work at hand.

Another example came from a manger who helped his employees connect their own needs with those of their customers – right at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. He encouraged employees to become involved in community projects of their choice. In this way he blurred the lines between customer and employee.

Helping your employees reach their fullest potential begins with leadership. Here are six steps you can take to begin to build your employees toward self actualization.

1. Begin with yourself. How far on Maslow’s hierarchy are you? What do you need to do travel further? Understand what makes you most fulfilled.

2. Build a customer-focused vision with your team. They will be more likely to accept a vision they have been involved in developing.

3. Together with the team establish your customer-service standards.

4. Work individually with each team member to ensure s/he understands their personal contribution. Plan with each employee to find opportunities for his or her special talents. Help them build their own self-actualization plan.

5. Build a community giving program. This helps shift the focus to the higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.

6. Develop your own local reward process.

Dalai Lama guides workplace productivity

2009-10-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago the Dalai Lama was guest editor for the Vancouver Sun. In his lead article he commented that our purpose in life is to be happy. Certainly no-one can argue that most of us want to be happy. Just look at the self help section in your local bookstore.

The Dalai Lama then goes on to say that we achieve a greater sense of well-being when we care for the happiness of others. This takes care of the simplistic, and indeed destructive, notion that we can and should strive for continuous personal happiness. In other words, if I understand the Dalai Lama correctly, our happiness is a by-product of our striving for the general good.

Things become a little bit more complicated when we look at the workplace. Should happiness be something we strive for within the workplace? How do we collectively define happiness and what is the greater good within an organizational setting?

These are hard questions to answer. Let’s tackle two of them:
1. Is happiness important in the workplace?
2. What is the greater good in the workplace?

As a result of research by John Helliwell, professor emeritus of economics at UBC, we now understand that the pay cheque is only half the story in terms of employee satisfaction. Just as important is how far you think you can trust your boss. If, on a scale of one to 10, you can give your employer a one-point rise in rank on trust issues, the flood of well-being you'll experience will be equivalent to a one-third increase in income. So – improve trust levels – employees will be happy and performance will improve?

Well, maybe – but didn’t the Dalai Lama also say something about happiness being the by-product of working for the greater good. So what is the greater good in an organization – the vision? Many visions are centred around making more money, selling more product. Perhaps we have to look at the organizational values; the accepted standards and behaviors that hold us together.

Values throughout the western world espouse notions such as; honesty, integrity, respect, loyalty, innovation, teamwork, excellence, accountability, pride. These are all concepts we can relate to and probably adhere to in our personal lives. So if we can connect the organizational values to those of the employees – we have something that is a common good. Something we can work toward together.

I have been involved in not-for-profits where the personal and organizational values were so closely linked that it was hard not to feel like everyone was working for the greater good. It’s a little more challenging when you deliver janitorial services. And yet my friend Steve says the company he works for is hot on values – it’s something he talks with employees about all the time, topmost among them pride and teamwork.

Happiness and values – these are tall orders for a busy organization. If you don’t have a retreat planned when you can build your values or an HR consultant to help you develop strategies to improve trust, try these two simple strategies:
1. Each senior leader take a value that is important to him or her and does three things:
a. Live that value very deliberately – every day
b. Talk about that value
c. Comment on others living that value.
2. Just as the Vancouver Sun did when the Dalai Lama edited the newspaper, ask people to submit stories about themselves or fellow employees who live the values. Display them on the notice board. Give out prizes. You will create a groundswell of goodwill and coincidentally break down silos.

Here’s to happy, value-driven workplaces!

2009-10-08T11:04:00.001-07:00

Yesterday morning my 17 year old decides to shake up her routine a little. She’s up at 6:15 am – out for a run and ready to hit the bus for school at 7:45. Her 13 year old brother, who is usually the one waiting for her, has the tables turned on him.

My daughter sits at the kitchen counter waiting for younger sib. Irritated by his homework spread over the surface she comments that she had never realized how annoying it is when someone (?) leaves papers and binders in the common area.
Her brother is tardy – she goes to the bottom of the stairs to give him a yell.

“Gosh mum”, she says, “I think I now understand why you get frustrated with me when I’m late.”

Eureka!

There is nothing like experience to help people learn important life lessons. All too often we expect employees to get it when we tell them, when in reality the best lesson will be the one they take from their own experiences.

Memo to managers: We need to get out of the way and let our employees learn from life. Our role is to help them make the connections.

2009-10-02T09:21:00.001-07:00

TELL STORIES AND CONNECT EMOTIONALLY WITH EMPLOYEES

Each of us has our own unique "mental vocabulary", an internal library of words and pictures that we associate with certain events, places, people and feelings. When we hear a story about a little girl in Africa who is hungry and would like to go to school, our internal library is hard at work looking for associations and eliciting emotions - and it is these feelings that will make us decide to act.

Skeptics might argue that all we have done is create an imaginary scenario in someone's head. But imagination and action are very integrated. Electrodes placed on a person's brain while he or she visualizes an activity will see the same parts of the brain turn on as if that person were actually doing the activity. Top sportsmen know this and integrate visualization into their practice routines. Similarly if we want employees to act, we have to get them to the point where they are visualizing their own actions.

The key is to reinterpret all the contextual information we provide; relate it to what is happening in your organization. There are two strategies we can employee to do this. The first is the more traditional reporting of information in the newsletter with statistics and interpretation and through the established cascade process. This is good and should be continued. It begins the process of making the information relevant to the front line. The only trouble is that it does not provide employees with a blueprint for how they should act.

That's where stories and examples from within the organization come in. Real stories of people who have understood the urgency and taken action are personal, powerful and provide a clear framework of expectations and behaviors. With stories we tap into an individual's internal library and we take a step toward connecting with them emotionally.

2009-09-17T10:47:00.001-07:00

Should we be introducing a new term for fully engaged employees? Read the article posted by Michael Sabastian and make up your mind. http://ping.fm/AxjcN

Don't have time for the entire article? Here's a quote from the author to give you the gist of it:

"So, it seems engagement in the traditional sense and the corporate sense are similar. Someone who is “engaged” in the corporate sense is much like a man or woman engaged to be married, which means they are committed—to a point. But they aren't committed to the fullest extent, which is marriage.

And that brings me to “employee marriagement,” a new term (I think), which means someone who is fully committed to the company in a lifelong “for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer” kind of way.

How many of your employees are married to your company? Is it time you launched an employee marriagement program?

2009-09-01T15:33:00.001-07:00

Great article from Kaihan Krippendorff. Storytelling really is fundamental to communication and learning. http://ping.fm/rrM8z

2009-08-19T17:12:00.001-07:00

Remember you only live once. Jill and Kevin get it - they made "their day" quite unique. http://ping.fm/jJ60D

2009-08-17T10:57:00.001-07:00

WE SPEND 42% OF OUR TIME LISTENING, YET 75% OF ORAL COMMUNICATION IS IGNORED OR MISUNDERSTOOD

I receive a weekly newsletter from Kaizen Consulting. http://www.kaizenconsulting.com/ . Check out their website to sign up.

This week’s topic was on enrolling people with a view to doing business, a key component of which is listening.

As author Michael Walsh points out - we are not very good at listening.

In school we are taught to write, read and present, but not to listen. Our educational system and our workplaces give “power” to the person with the microphone. We are either speaking or waiting to speak. Even so we are not having much success with our oral communication – close to 75% of oral communication is ignored or misunderstood.

We spend about 42% of our time listening. What if we were truly productive listeners? According to Michael 68% of lost business is due to “poor listening”. Just imagine what we could achieve if we truly heard others.

2009-08-02T16:45:00.001-07:00

TEN THINGS ABOUT CHANGE THAT EXCITE ME

I am on a journey of discovery. Check out my website to learn more about Nicky Fried Consulting www.nickyfried.com .

While I may be very excited to be on the path less traveled, many find change intimidating.

It may be a sign of the times but I have numerous friends and colleagues who have either chosen to or had change imposed on them. It is with them in mind that I decided to develop a top ten list of what excites me about change. I hope you will add to, and share this list with colleagues and friends, so that together we can inspire and help others to embrace change.

1. Change provides opportunity to do things better – we all love to improve.
2. Change forces my mind to work harder. When we do something differently we use unfamiliar neural pathways; it’s like exercise for the mind.
3. I get to indulge my passion for people watching. When there’s change on the go people are sure to react - one way or another.
4. I am inspired by those who are earlier adopters of change and help the rest of us to see opportunity in challenge.
5. I love the fact that people whom I would least expect to react positively to change surprise me and find their personal connection to it.
6. Change forces me to think more deeply about how I look at life and what my role and reaction to change is – and should be.
7. Change gives me a new perspective on things I take for granted. It’s like walking down a street you usually drive down – you get to look at it from a different viewpoint.
8. Change makes me feel young. When I was young possibility was around every corner, and change helps me to regain that feeling.
9. I love that I go into change knowing that I will come out a new person, more experience, enriched.
10. And the very best reason of all for change - I get to learn new things.

And now – it’s your turn.

2009-07-30T20:08:00.001-07:00

Restructuring to enhance service offerings and delivery. Join me on my latest change initiative. Check out my website: www.nickyfried.com

On my drive home I was thinking about a friend’s toddler. He’s a charming, sunny little fellow by the name of Elijah. Only trouble is Elijah is risk and change averse. And his mum is concerned because she knows that Elijah will need to take lots of risks and deal with constant change to grow and develop as a human being.

Personal change can be extremely gratifying – particularly when we feel like we have instituted the change and are in control of it.

I am fortunate enough to be going through my own self induced change right now.

Ken Milloy and I recently made the decision to restructure Strategic Connections Inc to better meet the needs of our clients. As a result of research conducted over the past three months we have decided to move forward with a new partnership-based model.

The most visible outcome of this change marks the end of an era of sorts: Strategic Connections Inc. is closing its doors and will be replaced by two separate companies; Nicky Fried Consulting Inc. and Milloy Management Consulting Inc. This new approach will allow us the flexibility needed to meet the ever changing needs of our clients – current and future – while allowing us to provide new and different services.

Through our partnership we will continue to provide the highest level of service and results possible. And for those who rely heavily on our online article library and resource centre, fear not, as plans are being made to ensure that all of the information found on the Strategic Connections inc. website will be available to all as in the past.

Here’s a little bit about the two organizations:

Nicky Fried Consulting Inc is dedicated to translating strategy and change so that it is meaningful and relevant to all employees.

We will help our clients to achieve better business results because their employees will understand the journey the company is on and the role they play in support of its success.

Milloy Management Consulting Inc will focus on supporting senior level leadership teams to identify and proactively pursue strategic programs that lead to competitive advantage through effective planning, communication and engagement.

We have had a blast in Strategic Connections and would like to thank all of you we've come in contact with. We are very excited about the next leg of the journey.

Here is my contact information. Have a look at my website, give me a call or send me an email. I'd like your input to develop and grow my new venture.

Website: www.nickyfried.com
Phone: 604.831.5692
Email at nicky.fried@telus.net

Accountability is engagement

2009-07-28T12:15:00.001-07:00

Do you have 45 minutes? Pick up a copy of John G. Miller’s QBQ: The Question behind the question. http://ping.fm/cBNx9 . It’s all about personal accountability.

Miller believes the answers are in the questions. He has a simple formula for taking accountability:
• Ask What and How questions
• Use I in the sentence
• Make the sentence action orientated.
E.g. What can I do to improve our relationship with marketing.

Imagine working in an organization where people functioned like that!

2009-07-28T12:05:00.001-07:00

Lack of personal accountability at United Airlines. http://ping.fm/Fqyd4 v=5YGc4zOqozo&feature=PlayList&p=2772A63434557B0E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=82 Customers notice when employees aren’t engaged.

The customer rules

2009-07-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

In hard times the customer rules! Check out this Globe and Mail article http://ping.fm/HH6nl

Employee shows the way to get the job done

2009-07-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

Check it out! SW Airlines employee - gets the job done his way. http://ping.fm/gmYQD

Ten most common mistakes CEOs make in communicating strategy

2009-06-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

been six months of hard work, time and energy, the results are outstanding and you and your executive are looking forward to seeing your strategic plan implemented. Nine months down the road you are disappointed and frustrated. The new plan is not having the results you would like to see.

Employees don’t seem to understand or care. It’s a great plan but it’s not getting any traction.You are not alone. Seventy percent of change plans fail, not because they aren’t good, but because the people who must execute them don’t feel engaged. To fully engage employees you will need to actively communicate.

Here are the 10 most common mistakes CEOs make in communicating strategy:

1. Not having an engagement/communication plan. Any important initiative needs a plan. You have put a lot of effort into the development so make sure an equal amount goes into the execution.

Solution: Work with your communication team to develop a clear plan that targets different groups and maps out strategies, tactics and messages.

2. Leaving it up to someone else. You own the plan. No one else has the same passion for it. How can you expect them to communicate as effectively as you?

Solution: Show you are committed and get out and communicate. Your employees will respond to your passion and understand this is important to the organization, through your behaviour. You need to be a key tactic in the communication plan. You are after all the Chief Engagement Officer!

3. Trying to be someone else in communicating the plan. Don’t try and communicate in a style that doesn’t work to your best advantage.

Solution: Use your personal style to your advantage in communicating to staff. If you are an outstanding one-on-one communicator then set up a series of meetings that allow you to communicate in this way.

4. Not taking time to simplify the message so everyone can understand it. Remember only you and the executive worked on it for six months.

Solution: Work with your communication department to create key messages and graphics that clarify and communicate the plan so everyone can understand and relate to it.

5. Sending out the same message to everyone. Different areas will need to interpret the strategic plan in different ways.

Solution: Personalize your message to different departments so that they can begin the work of interpreting it for their area.

6. Not being available to answer questions about the plan. This is not about telling – it’s about engaging and helping people understand their role in the plan.

Solution: If you are holding group meetings, assign a large portion of session for questions. Host a blog where people can interact with you. Cancel appointments and open your door to employees.

7. Not making your communication objectives clear to managers on how they must communicate the plan to their employees.

Solution: Set clear and measurable communication objectives for managers on communicating e.g. “the plan will be communicated to all your staff by July 15”.

8. Not supporting managers with appropriate materials so they can communicate to their staff.

Solution: Develop discussion guides and Q/As so managers can fully discuss the strategic plan and help employees understand how they support it.

9. Not measuring the success of communication throughout the organization. How do you know your efforts are working?

Solution: Phone surveys to random employees to see if they have been communicated to and understand the gist of the communication.

10. Not communicating early wins. Employees need to see the new behaviours in action so they can understand what they need to do.

Solution: Know who your early adopters are and make sure their successes are fully communicated.

Peter Gruber on sharing stories to engage and communicate effectively

2009-06-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

Here’s a great interview on storytelling with one of the masters, Peter Gruber, chairman of the Mandalay Entertainment Group.

Gruber maintains that we are all wired to tell stories.

Language is an organizing principle for human cultures and allows us to communicate values. We are not wired to remember information; only when it is embedded in story does it become memorable and actionable.

According to Gruber every great leaders is a storyteller, and it’s the stories leaders tell that move our hearts and excite people to action. Story makes people apostles and moves them to tell others. He reminds us that when if we tell people to move to the door – they don’t, but if we yell ‘fire’ - which is in essence a story – they run for the door.

Gruber talks about control and the viral nature of story, suggesting that control is in fact illusionary. He suggests that through story we provide the navigational stakes and the emotional connection and let others take and retell our stories.

Feathers are soft: communication is a hard core management skill

2009-06-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across Ten Tips on how to help your employees manage change in uncertain times from Towers Perrin. It’s good sensible advice like, have a strategy for uncertain times and communicate your strategy effectively. And, help employees understand the context they function within, let them know they area valued and give them an opportunity to air concerns. Have a look at them – I’m sure you will find them useful.

What intrigued me was the fact that the majority of the tips are communication related. We know that organizations that practice effective internal communication financially outperform those that don’t; up to 29.5% increase in market value and 50% higher shareholder returns. Impressive!

I don’t know why people call communication a ‘soft’ skill. Soft suggests something lightweight – like feathers. And feathers have a horrible habit of flying all over the place and being difficult to catch. I like to believe that we can be more targeted and deliberate with our communications. My business partner refers to communication as a fundamental management skill - a far more appropriate term, don’t you think?

People are more precious than machines

2009-06-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of hearing Paul Herr speak today. His book Primal Management was published last month.

Paul’s focus is natural management. This is a management strategy that respects human nature and strives to align the workplace with the motivational survival-mechanism nature built into each of our brains.

I’d like to share with you one of Paul’s analogies - I found it quite powerful.

If you purchased a $5 million piece of equipment for your organization you would likely look after it. You would have dedicated technicians to watch over it, and you would have sensors in place to track and ensure it functioned within established parameters.

Do we do the same for human beings? No we do not!

And yet we should. A Brookings Institute study found that nearly 85% of a company’s assets are related to intangible capital tied up in knowledge and human talent. Our employees truly are our greatest asset and we are all quite willing to admit as much. But we need to go beyond the words. Why is this so difficult? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Why people and engagement matter

2009-04-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

This video was first produced in 2007. I came across it in my files and was reminded of why I feel so strongly about what I do, and the importance of engaging employees in the organizational journey. I hope you enjoy it.

Facilitate leader communications for engaged employees

2009-04-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Imagine every manager in your organization fully understanding the communication role they play within the organization? And now imagine those managers with all the necessary tools and process at hand to be highly effective communicators?

My friend and client, Susan, who heads up internal communication for a financial institution, is doing just that and creating communication leaders within her company.

Susan has documented all the communication processes from the point of view of the manager. In addition she has developed a series of simple tools to help leaders take control of those processes in their areas. She is sharing this material in management meetings throughout the organization, and empowering managers to take control of the communication process.

Twenty years ago communicators produced the goods. Today we facilitate the discussion and it’s an exciting place to be.

Saying thank you still the best way to engage

2009-04-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

I am in the process of developing a Webinar on leadership communications. There are a number of cool things about the technology, such as being able to hold random polls at any point during the presentation, share multiple documents, work on a whiteboard as a group and surf the web. But my favourite is the thumbs up button. How wonderful to be able to give on the spot praise, something we are short on in our culture. We spend vast fortunes on reward and recognition programs when the most effective and well received strategy is to say “well done” right there and then. Cost to the organization: $0, payback: priceless!

Engage employees by being present in your communications

2009-03-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

Great excitement yesterday in our home. My 16 year old, a keen student of the social sciences, went off to the Provincial Legislature to observe democracy in action. She said it was hilarious. “Why?” I asked. “Were the members of the house at one another’s throats.”

Apparently not; one was having a nap, most were busy on their Blackberries – though many were just playing games. My daughter was somewhat indignant – not because of her concern for tax dollar misuse - but rather because the person who was speaking did not have the attention of the house. And she is quite right to be outraged. When we do not pay attention to humans we dismiss them – which may well have been the intent at yesterday’s session.

I remember once sitting with a senior leadership team and one of the leaders was working away on his Blackberry while the CEO was speaking. Apparently he does this with his own staff. The engagement scores within his group are abysmal.

Technology is wonderful it allows us to connect in many more and exciting ways. But we should remember to present in all our connections. If we try and be everywhere at once, we end up being nowhere and sending the message that we do not care.

Employee passion - is it being directed toward work?

2009-02-21T12:50:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending a multi-cultural choral performance featuring choirs from the Italian, Chinese and Jewish communities here in Vancouver. The finale involved all 160 voices singing songs from the three traditions.

It was a remarkable performance – and of a quality that one would expect from internationally acclaimed groups. And yet it was put together and performed by volunteers, ordinary folk; possibly the man or woman in the cubicle next door to yours. These people gave up their free time to give something astonishing back to their communities. Sometimes the effort was considerable - I know because my husband was one of the organizers.

I can’t help but wonder if the organizations these people work for understand the fabulous talent they employ – and I’m not talking about the ability to sing. What if these people gave just some of the passion they put into their singing, to their work?

It’s a question I can’t fully answer. But given what I saw over the weekend it would seem that a little bit of effort on the part of organizations to involve and enthuse employees would probably be more then worth its weight in gold. Performance improvement is in our people!

Search optimazation: Engaging clients through your web stories

2008-08-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

National Post journalist, Brianna Goldberg, writes amusingly about her competition to gain ascendance over her “googlegänger” – the other Brianna Goldberg - a pagan who worships the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and who consistently rated above her in Google searches.

There’s a secret need in all of us to be number one. As children we’re pretty straightforward about demanding attention. At school the popular kids have everyone talking about them – they get their stories out there. As we grow older our tactics become more subtle – but the aim is still to get people thinking and talking about us.

Brianna Goldberg #1 (our journalist) had some stiff competition from Brianna Goldberg # 2 (unicorn worshiper) – who had a story line to knock your socks off. Brianna # 1’s strategy involved a significant amount of social networking, including an article about her in Wikipedia. In other words she got people talking about Brianna the journalist. Brianna # 1 triumphed – first among Brianna Goldberg’s in Google-world.

If you are a business – being number one has very serious implications. Search-engine optimization is an expanding niche in online marketing.
Search-engine optimization is important, but it can only work if you have a genuine story to tell that connects with your audience. Brianna # 1 worked hard to tell her story. She told the story of Brianna the writer and musician. A story that allowed her to hook up with people interested in her world – as opposed to invisible pink unicorns.

Likewise if we are to engage prospective clients and customers, we must start with the real organizational story. The story of our pride and the journey our organization is on – and we must make it accessible. In other words find the emotional connection so people can relate to the organization. Most often this will be the stories of your customers, the stories of your staff – people stories that illustrate your service values.
With a real story to tell you are ready to connect with clients and customers and that’s where search-engine optimization can make a difference and get you noticed for what you are. I know some people say any publicity is good publicity, but I’d far prefer people come to me because of what I am, rather then what they think I might be – because that’s bound to lead to disappointment and recriminations.

Employee engagement and marketing - closely connected

2008-08-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

There is quite a bit of buzz out there about a recent session entitled "Storyteller Marketing - How the Art of Storytelling Matches Up With the Business of Marketing". The session was moderated by Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor of ClickZ. Speakers included Gary Stein, Director of Strategy, Ammo Marketing , Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus Inc. and Larry Lawfer, Founder/President, yourstorys.com: .

Charlene Jaszewski does a great job of summarizing what was said. Check out her blog.

In her blog Charlene cites Larry Fowler who defines engagement marketing as "when your DATE says you are a good date", as opposed ot PR "Your mom says you had a good date."

I'm not a marketer. I use stories to engage and align employees. But what could be more powerful for employees to fully understand the impact they make - then the stories of their customers. Employees are the people who live brand every day - if your organization wants employees to be a "great date" then connect them to the stories of the customers.

When engaging employees blurs the lines between the inside and the outside

2008-08-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

Check out http://www.mystarbucksidea.com/ . Starbucks – a masterful marketing organization is going back to the root of its success – people looking for a unique coffee experience. Their "mystarbucks idea" web site, asks for direct customer input – and they’re getting it in bucket loads. Fabulous idea – but there’s more! A lot of the suggestions and comments are from Starbucks employees.

There’s significant power in connecting employees and customers. Several months ago in our newsletter I mentioned Farm Credit Canada showing videos of customers to their staff. Other strategies include sending employees to work for the customers, bringing customers into meetings and telling customer stories. Starbucks has found the solution that works for their youthful, dispersed and coffee-connected part-time workforce and customers.

I read a column about mystarbucksidea that expressed some annoyance that customers weren’t being reimbursed for Research and Development. I’d say the writer (who looks to be about my age) is missing the point.

There’s a whole generation out there that expects and demands a more integrated relationships with their suppliers. They’ve had five years of MySpace and Facebook and they know that they can connect with anyone – anywhere. They know they don’t need to be part of the corporate structure – or the pay packet – to make a difference and influence. And they are doing just that – they’re getting the coffee they want, the clothes they need and generally managing their life experiences far more intimately then my generation ever imagined. That is power. It’s also a generation savvy enough to understand that a good idea is just that and needs to be tested and refined before it’s put into practice – and that is the job of the Starbucks corporation.

Pretty neat when the line between employee and customer blurs to the extent that they are all working toward a common goal – with little concern about which side of the counter you’re on.

Employee engagement and marketing - closely connected

2008-07-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

Storytelling - an engaging corporate strategy for large and small

2008-07-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

My friend Sherri, who works for a Credit Union in Eastern Canada, uses story. Every week Sherri sends out a much loved email/story that reinforces core behaviors the organization is seeking to develop. Sherri is a one person communication shop and her time is her budget.

Coca Cola, EDS and the Wynn Hotel group all use storytelling. These organizations have implemented corporate-wide initiatives that reach tens of thousands of people. They use story to engage and align employees to the corporate journey so that they understand, not only what the corporate goals and objectives are, but also their role in meeting those objectives.

Like Sherri’s much smaller initiative these programs illustrate the kinds of behaviors that employees must adopt to live the organizational values. The programs these organizations have adopted are integrated into their very fabric. Wynn for example uses story in hiring, training, to reward and for marketing.

Sherri and the high paid execs at Wynn understand that story works. Where facts and figures might alienate or bore us, stories are real and memorable. In a world of information overload they are a quick means of illustrating the complex and immediately helping employees understand how they contribute and indeed what is expected of them.

Take this story from Wynn for example. It’s about an employee who helped an elderly guest recover important medication left in a cab. The employee painstakingly reviewed video footage of the guest’s arrival and identified the cab license plate in the rear view mirror of the car in front. For fellow employees stories like these are not only good for morale, but they also illustrate goals and objectives in action and how they translate into behaviors.

I’d like to hear about your employee stories in action and post them on this site.

Hiring with culture in mind: engaging potential employees with the true story

2008-07-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

This morning my husband and I were coaching our teenage daughter on how to respond to behavioral interview questions. She is now on to her second interview for a position with a well known coffee retailer. At one point she asked my husband about his first job interview. He recounted the following exchange:
“Interviewer: Are you any good at tutoring math?
My much younger husband: Yes
Interviewer: Good, when can you start?”

How times have changed. We have friends who have had to go through grueling six-month, ten interview procedures – only to come in second. Hiring has gone from instinctual (I like you) to left brain gone-wild process. It’s no surprise we’ve headed in that direction – employees who are happy and engaged in the organization are significantly more productive. On the flip side the cost of hiring and training a new employee can range from 25% to 200% of annual compensation (American Management Association).

I do agree that the implications of poor hiring decisions are ugly, but I am wondering if part of the problem is that we are so focused on getting the “best candidate” that we forget about the other half of the equation – our organizations and ensuring we are sending out the right messages. Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean.

Some years ago I was involved in an organization looking for a senior HR consultant. They spent a year searching for the right person. When they finally hired she lasted three days. What she thought she was getting and the reality were entirely different. Sensibly she cut her losses and moved on when she discovered her values, and those of the hiring organization, were at odds.

Organizations need to be very clear, not only on what they believe they need, but also on what they have to offer. They need to look beyond the best candidate to the best fit. It’s rather like searching for the perfect mate – you have to be sure about who you are and where you are headed - before you can find your ideal partner.

It’s the job of communicators to ensure that our corporate story is clear – and that it is an accurate picture – one that is lived every day within the organization. A snow job will get you bemused employees disappointed that they are not living in a winter wonderland.

The shoe fits when the culture lives the values

2008-07-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

Today my teenage daughter began her first ever job search. The retail outlets she chose to leave her resume with was eclectic. Her criteria was simple: would I use, wear or eat their products/service and do I feel welcome when I enter one of their stores?

She had no trouble figuring out which stores to approach. A large number of shoe stores featured in her list - which is not surprising from someone who wrote "An ode to the Red Pump" for her poetry unit. Some may say we instinctively know when the shoe fits. But in reality we humans are very good observers and we can tell by the behaviors of others when an environment is at odds with our core values.

Trouble arises when we get conflicting messages and are seduced into thinking an organization is something it is not. Which is why it is absolutely key that organizations are true to their values and don't try and do a "snow" job. With a whole new generation of youth coming into the job market who can afford to go elsewhere - we need to attract the people who fit.

Why we choose to live by the rules

2008-06-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of mine shared her woes with me about her teenage son. He is testing boundaries, and the value of rules, in a very trying fashion for his mother.

All social systems have rules; most often they are a good thing and make our lives much easier. I am a Canadian and here in Canada we feel it is important to abide by the law and give everyone an equal opportunity. This means we respect line-ups, patiently wait our turn when traffic lanes merge, and we all experience equally unreasonable wait times for our certain medical procedures. Our tax laws are quite ridiculously cumbersome because they aim to be fair. That is the way we do things here.

And sometimes it’s frustrating. When you have to wait six months or a year for knee surgery – all this fairness seems, well – a little unfair. But for the most part it works and people respect the system.

Organizations too have systems and we would hope that when people join organizations they take the time to understand its values to ensure it’s a place they will feel comfortable in; a place where they can follow the rules.
My husband works for a large Canadian company with a very strong set of values. A small group of employees clearly did not share the same set of values; they broke the company rules – and the mess landed up on the front page of the newspaper.

That little drama has now played itself off of the front pages and out of the public arena. Inside the organization the drama has lingered. The remaining employees are deeply wounded. They were incensed that a few rogue individuals have brought into question their values. These are people who take great pride in what they do and the company they work for. This was a deeply personal and very upsetting experience for them.

I am given to understand that the executives were a little taken aback at the strength of the reaction. They should not be. We are all human and we all have strong emotional reactions when our values are messed with. Why should it be any different at work?

Employees need to feel part of a greater whole. They need to feel their values are in sync with those of the organization. They need to understand the big picture and how they contribute to the organization’s success; common values are a part of that bigger picture.

The heart of change: identifying key behaviours for success

2008-06-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

Last week I was in Calgary speaking at the Women’s Leadership Forum . I was fortunate enough to also be a participant and hear what others were thinking and doing.

Here’s a quick overview of what I learned:
1. There is a whole lot of exciting stuff happening out there but you can’t do it all. Find your area of passion and focus;
2. The right-brain is stuff is very important for effective leadership and if you are not yet comfortable with it you need to begin;
3. Our behaviors as leaders are critical to our personal success and that of our organizations.

Let’s talk about behaviors because that is one area I am really passionate about. The first keynote address was delivered by Ron McMillan, co-author of the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Ron and his co-authors studied successful influencers and documented what they did. The book is about the system they discovered through their research.

It’s a well-thought out approach beginning with clarity of vision/results and having really good plans that cover the personal, social and structural elements of change, so that it (the change) becomes inevitable.

Ron also talked about vital behaviors; those key behaviors you need to have in place for the change to take root. And that’s when I got excited. I firmly believe that every change initiative has its own set of associated behaviors. It is our job as change agents to identify those behaviors and build our programs around them.

I’m delighted to see more and more organizations taking the time to identify specific and desired behaviors. See the following article on Farm Credit Union. I’d like to hear about your success stories using behaviors to effect change.

The skills we need from internal communications and engagement employees

2008-05-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

In my first job in corporate communications the department was filled with crusty ex-journalist types. They were the most wonderful men (yes - all of them were male) - each a unique character with amazing stories to tell.

But let's get one thing straight. They were not communicators - they were writers. The copy they produced was excellent. But good copy alone does not a communicator make - particularly in internal communications.

A recent article from Ragan talks for the value of hiring journalism graduates in corporate communications. Maybe - if you are hiring for writing ability and someone who understands a variety of different social media. But you better make sure that person is able to develop other skills.
Internal communications is about a great deal more. Key to effective internal communications is the understanding that this is a strategic endeavor focused on facilitating discussions throughout the organization with the goal of performance improvement.

Please don't get me wrong. A good newsletter is worth its weight in gold. But it is one of many tools and skills that we as communicators bring to the table.

I'd be interested in your views on what's critical in the internal communications skill and tool box.

Interactive communications helps employees understand relevance

2008-05-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

This week I have been working on proposals. If you are a consultant proposals are very much a part of your life. The job of a proposal is to persuade. And a proposal persuades not by selling what you have to offer, but by providing a solution the purchaser is looking for – there is a difference.

It’s not unlike the difference between top down and interactive communication. Top down communication tells people what to think, is if often general in nature, and as such may not create relevance for employees. Interactive communication, while more time consuming, suggests a dialogue which provides an opportunity to show personal relevance for the employee.

The corporate communications folk clearly can’t enter into discussions with every employee, but they can facilitate the debate between managers and employees. If managers can help employees understand goals and objectives and their personal contributions, your organization will be in the pound seats. Like a good proposal, interactive communication talks directly to individual needs and offers a solution – in this case how the employee can support goals and objectives more directly and be part of something bigger.

Waiting at airports

2008-05-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you but my regular life seems to be filled to the brim. So when I’m thrown a curved ball – which happens – it brings with it a healthy dose of perspective.

Right now I am sitting in an airport waiting for a delayed flight. I may not be able to deliver the workshop I am flying over for. I can choose to fret pointlessly or I can use my time productively. Not much of a choice!

So here I am writing this blog and doing one of my favorite things – people watching. It’s not often we get to observe our fellow travelers in life. Given the flight was scheduled to leave at 7 am there are a lot of suits and Blackberries.

Everyone is trying to reschedule meetings. The man seated next to me needs to deliver a sealed tender document. There’s a missed funeral and a divisional meeting that’s going to go ahead without its senior leader. Despite all this juggling people are remarkably calm.

It’s astonishing the different stories evolving in this cramped little room; everyone is on a journey – aside from the actual flight we are all trying to make. Hopefully soon we will all be joined in making a common journey. When that happens there will be a great sense of camaraderie and shared experience. Organizations too need to find ways to make sure all their employees are getting on to the same flight.

Clinton tells the story of her roots

2008-05-02T22:45:00.000-07:00

Hilary Clinton is re-energizing support in Pennsylvania. In part, according to an article by Steve Denning, because she is starting to tell the story of her own roots. Her grandfather lived in Pennsylvania and worked in a lace mill. Her father grew up there too and played football for Penn State.

Our militaristic leadership model (and media portrayals) leads us to assume that the ideal leader must be aloof and invioable. A new theory of leadership is emerging, namely that leaders embody the principles of the people they lead. As such effective leaders work hard to understand the values and opinions of their followers—rather than assuming absolute authority—to enable a productive dialogue with followers about what the group embodies and stands for and thus how it should act.

Hilary Clinton shows her leadership skills by tapping into middle American values and "telling her story".

Business leaders can no longer afford to remain aloof - they need to make the connection with employees. Stories are a wonderful way to show humanity and connect in a meaningful way. But beware - everyone knows a faker - perhaps Hilary was wise to speak about her roots in Pennsylvania - home is always a good place for passion.

Generational expectations - implications for the world of work

2008-04-23T22:43:00.000-07:00

My 15-year old daughter and I buy music in very different ways. She finds the notion that that someone would buy a physical object that contained a finite number of songs arbitrarily selected by someone else - rather quaint. My daughter is very clear about what her purchases and her expectations are high.

Businesses are beginning to catch on - music sellers, networks and studios are adjusting to a new world view where the customer is not only right, but expects to be able to exercise that judgment with a click of the mouse.

Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program and the author of a new book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.” http://www.shirky.com/ suggests that the web is not competition for traditional media, but a completely different system that empowers groups and individuals, a place where choice is not only an option, but an imperative.

As a communications professional and engagement specialists I have to ask myself what this will mean for the workplace of the future. Portal-based web sites and customized benefit packages are just the tip of the ice-berg.

I was chatting with a young woman the other day – an engineer. One of her key motivators for becoming involved in volunteer activities within her organization is that she is able to exercise her creative design abilities. Can we expect to see a world where employees and managers co-design the job function? Take that one step further and one can envisage interactive strategic planning. Exciting or terrifying – depends how you look at it.

What's your bed side manner like

2008-04-12T22:39:00.000-07:00

This story on healing. A friend was hospitalized and at one point a doctor entered the ward with a group of student interns. The doctor and students did not greet any of the patients or request permission to review their cases. Instead they proceeded to discuss ailments, pointing at body parts and reviewing charts, never once looking acknowledging these people.

Horrible. Yes indeed, amazing that our doctors are still being trained in this antiquated fashion.

Scratch below the surface of many North American corporations and you will find much the same sort of behavior, with employees being viewed as no more then a resource with an associated productivity number.

Healing happens far more effectively when there is a human element to care. Likewise employees are far more productive when their unique skills and talents are acknowledged. If your manager primarily ignores you - your chances of being actively disengaged are 40 percent, where the national average is 18 percent.

When opportunity knocks

2008-03-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

Imagine - if you do not already have this - that the most perfect person walks into your life. This is your soul mate. He or she is gorgeous and meant for you in every way. Do you:

1. Jump in boots and all

2. Decide you can't possibly get involved because he/she is not in your social circle

3. You really like this person but you are too busy right now - you will get to him/her later

4. Check your bank balance and decide you don't have enough money to ask out your soul mate

5. Take nine months checking the person’s credentials by which time he/she has found someone else.

What has this go to do with business? Quite a lot actually. Often we come across strategies, tools and processes that we instinctively know will work for our organizations, but for a variety of reasons we brush them aside; we're too busy, it's too much money, need to do more research, have never worked with this company before. And so the opportunity passes by.

A fellow I know who works for a large bureaucracy found a process he loves. But he said no because the supplier was not on the preferred vendor list.

Same values - entirely different customer service

2007-12-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

Two big box stores right next door to one another – a shared parking lot and that is where the similarity ends. First I went to Big Box number one – a home and hardware store.

In BB1 a sales person was hard to fine. Only one of the three individuals I spoke to was able to direct me (with a wave) in the general direction I needed to head. As I was paying for my purchases the young man behind me was rather abruptly told he had to go to another teller because this one was closing. When he, quite rightly, objected that there was no closed sign – he was ignored.

After I had paid for my purchases I tried to head for the parking lot. But I was stuck – there did not seem to be any way for me to take my shopping cart down to the underground parking. I appealed to a member of staff for help: “each cart is worth $250,” he told me, “you can’t take it to the parking lot, it’s too expensive if we lose it.”

Yeah right – let’s see what good a whole lot of expensive carts do you without any customers.

Big Box number two was an electronics store. I was on a hunt for a vacuum cleaner. The young man I asked help from, politely took me over and gave me a thorough explanation of the product I was interested in. I asked if I could have a cart and right away he trotted off to find me one. As I was waiting for him two other sales people asked if they could help me.

Once I had paid for my purchase I went to the elevator. I pushed the button and waited - but nothing happened. I turned to one of the nearby greeters to ask if there was a problem with the elevators and she waved to me and called out that she had already called someone to see about the elevator. Boy what a difference. But wait it gets better. A young man arrived. He spent about five minutes trying to get the elevator to work – to no avail. He then happily picked up my purchase and cheerfully escorted me and it to my car.

Yes, yes, yes I am going back.

Now I happen to know that both of these organizations have similar values – I went to their respective web sites and checked. But in the one organization the values are simply words on paper, in the other they are real things that people do every day to make the customer experience worthwhile.

Getting those values off the shelf and into the hands of your employees is pretty key. What are you doing to make your values real for employees? I’d like to know because if you’re doing it right – I want to do business with you.

When 15 year olds know more

2007-11-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

We had dinner last week with a dear family friend who we have not seen for a number of years. One of the topics under discussion was how senior executives isolate themselves from the rest of the organization. Our friend cited the example of a client of his where the executive team was protected by a phalanx of secretaries and assistants – to the detriment of the organization.

My 15 year old daughter (whose experience of the working world is limited) shook her head and made the following comment: “That’s just daft everyone knows leaders are supposed to inspire people and get them to collaborate. How can they do that if they never see anyone?”

How indeed? Gives you pause for thought when a 15 year old intuitively understands what a highly paid 45 year old executive cannot implement.

Engagement and the happiness score

2007-10-31T21:27:00.000-07:00

On a ten point scale a one point difference in worker’s trust in management has the same impact on life satisfaction as a one-third change in income. This from an article by Professors Helliwell and Haslam in yesterday’s Vancouver Sun.

One could conclude that companies could save a wack of money by improving levels of trust rather than giving increases – a debate I’m not going to enter into. I’m more interested in the notion of happiness and its positive impact on productivity.

Helliwell and Haslam also point out that happiness increases with a sense of group identity and when we feel we have control over our surroundings.

Intuitively we understand that happy employees are productive employees. Indeed many of the questions we ask when attempting to gauge engagement relate directly to our well-being; Am I heard? Do my opinions count? Does anyone care? Do I contribute to departmental and organizational goals?

We put a great deal of effort into carefully crafted compensation packages – and they are important make no mistake. But I can’t help wondering how much we could increase productivity if we focused more of our efforts on the “happiness” score.

On shoes and fish

2007-09-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago we had dinner with dear friends. No dinner party is complete without a good story and this one was no exception. The story was told by our host who is a keen fisherman. It involved a salmon – and a pair of Kenneth Coles. Shoes are important to our host. He is the CEO of a large shoe store chain.

Our friend was escaping a very frustrating day at the office. Still dressed to deal he went fishing to relieve the tension, and eventually landed every fisherman’s dream - a 20 lb salmon. (This is his story – not mine.) The Kenneth Coles were mentioned frequently and appear to have stood the test of reeling in a 20 pounder while battling the currents and avoiding large sea-faring vessels.

What’s amazing about this story, other than the fact that I remembered it, is that I now know the name of a brand of men’s shoes. And this is important because I do not buy men’s shoes. Personally I avoid shoe shopping – it’s a painful experience for me. And because I find buying shoes so stressful – I see no need to be involved in the purchase of shoes for others. Good heavens my husband actually enjoys shoe shopping and probably owns more pairs of shoes than I do. I’ve no doubt he bonds with our children while the three of them are out shoe shopping. So why I ask you should I remember any brand of male foot attire?

I remember Kenneth Cole because someone told me a really good story. And if that isn’t a powerful business tool I’ll eat my shoe.

Only 21% of employees engaged

2007-09-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

Only 10 percent of employees around the globe believe senior management treats people as the most important part of the organization - this according to a Towers Perrin survey of nearly 90,000 workers worldwide.

The survey goes on to say that just 21 percent of the employees surveyed are engaged in their work, meaning they're willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed. Thirty-eight percent are partly to fully disengaged. Towers Perrin has dubbed this the "engagement gap".

Firms with the highest percentage of engaged employees increased operating income by 19 percent and earnings per share by 28 percent.

It’s clear that the performance improvement opportunity for businesses today is in accessing discretionary effort and lessening the “engagement gap”.

People are fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work when they understand how they personally contribute to the organization’s goals and objectves. Supervisors and managers are best placed to make that connection for employees – far more so then say - the employee newsletter.

Are we investing our communication dollars in the right place?

Employess ARE the pieces of the puzzle

2007-09-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

I am not a native of North America. And after 18 years living on this continent I still find the North American tendency to fully disclose rather confusing.

On the one hand it’s very helpful; a better understanding of the people you work with eight hours a day, five days a week certainly takes the guess out of the relationship. On the other hand my natural reserve is unsettled and I wonder if I too am expected to “spill my guts”.

This is not the model I grew up with.

The model I was raised with is long dead. In that model people went to work and left their problems at home. It was stiff upper lip all day long and kick the cat when you got home. Of course in those days people really did work eight hours a day and there was a cat at home.

The reality, then and now, is that we are all on a journey. And no matter how hard we try the private journey will intrude on the workplace. Most of us are able to see the connection between our personal and workplace travels. The truly productive among us are those who fully integrate the corporation’s journey into their own personal travels.

When the private and corporate journeys diverge – we’re in trouble. At that point we feel like our values are being stepped on and separation is highly likely.

When I was growing up it was the job of the employee to “buck up” and step in line. The tables have turned. Faced with 80 million retiring boomers corporations can no longer expect employees to abandon their own life stories in favor of the corporate story. Now the company must meets its employees half way and help them to integrate the personal with the workplace. It’s no longer enough to tell only one side of the story.

Highlighting individual stories of achievement is a good way of building the corporate story. It’s rather like a jigsaw puzzle; the corporation is the border and all the employees are the pieces in the puzzle.

Power to the people

2007-09-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

I have a pen pal. Most of our communication is via email with the occasional phone conversation.

My pal Kenny is a busy senior executive who still finds time to talk to me even though he has never seen me and lives half a continent away. Pretty amazing, but then Kenny is rather special.

Kenny is the corporate ombudsman at KeySpan Corp., a Brooklyn, New York-based energy company. Before joining KeySpan he was a Roman Catholic monk.

You’d imagine that going from monk to manager would be quite enough stimulation for a single lifetime but Kenny keeps looking for ways to make corporate life better.

During our last conversation he shared with me his experiences with Open Space. Open Space Technology enables people to create inspired meetings and events. In Open Space meetings participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance. In other words a group of anywhere between 20 and 200 people turn up at a session with no more than a theme - no agenda.

They spend the first part of the day setting up the agenda. People who are passionate about topics related to the central theme volunteer to run breakouts on that topic. Once everyone who wants to run a session has volunteered then they go to separate rooms and the remaining participants use their feet to take them to the subject that excites them.

Wow! Subversive. Talk about power to the people.

There are a whole bunch of things that excite me about Open Space but most of all I like that fact that it is so grounded in the positive. People are voluntarily seeking out what they are enthusiastic about.

Trouble with adopting something like Open Space is that managers have to have faith in their employees. They have to trust that employees really do have the best interests of the company at heart. And that, I believe, is the real challenge to the success of initiatives like Open Space.
I’d like to hear what you think.

Check out Kenny’s book The CEO and the Monk: One Company’s Journey to Profit and Purpose (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), written together with KeySpan CEO Robert Catell and writer Glenn Rifkin.

Tall tales and why we tell them

2007-09-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

We changed the format of our blog and for a brief period of time all the blogs I had written since May disappeared. My first thought: “Someone on our team doesn’t like my blogs, they’re trying to get rid of them.”

Utter nonsense of course. It was nothing more than a technical problem. But I am human and like most of you I need to make sense of my world. So when something happened that I didn’t understand, I made up a story, namely that my colleagues hated my blogs and were hell bent on getting rid of them.

We do this all the time, especially in the complex corporate world. If relationships and communication are muddy we create stories to fill in the gaps. And frequently we don’t bother to go and check the accuracy of our interpretation.

But here’s the scary part. We then go and tell friends and colleagues our stories, who in turn tell others and these stories create a new reality.
This is not healthy. The only way to stop it is through open and honest communication. The basis for which is trust; strung together in this way these are four of the most challenging letters in our alphabet.

Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick leaves storytellng legacy

2007-09-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop died yesterday after suffering a brain hemorrhage. She was 64.

Roddick began her beauty and retailing career in 1976 in a little hippie shop in Brighton England . She set herself apart by underscoring the ethical properties of her formulations, created with natural ingredients, and often sourced from the developing world.

In 2006, The Body Shop was purchased by L'Oreal Group, but remains an independently run company. Today there are nearly 2,000 body shop stores in 50 countries.

In addition to being a visionary entrepreneur Roddick was also a great storyteller. Here is a story from a woman who went boldly where others would not:

“My first shop was between two funeral parlors. They objected to the name Body Shop because of course they had coffins passing by all day. I remember thinking “they can’t stop me, but I can have some fun with this”. So I called the local newspaper - anonymously with the hankie over the mouthpiece - and told them I was being intimidated by “mafia undertakers”. It was my first free publicity and I have never paid for publicity since.”

Anita Roddick, 2007

Good deeds lead to improved performance

2007-09-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago one of our partners did us a good turn. I was touched and amazed. It wasn’t something I had anticipated. I thanked our partner and went about my business.

Yesterday it suddenly dawned me how that one good turn had influenced my behavior. We’ve been working with this partner for a number of years and when the opportunity arises I always recommend their programs. But in the past two weeks I have mentioned them far more frequently. At some level I’m trying to say “thank you”, but for the most part this was entirely unconscious.

When I realized how my behavior had changed, I got to thinking about the impact of good turns in the workplace. What happens when a manager fully acknowledges an employee by giving him or her credit for an idea? What happens when a colleague passes some meaningful work along to a co-worker with no thought of payback?

I am reminded of a manager of mine from many years ago. He was quick to sing the praises of his employees and publicly acknowledged our ideas – even if he had coached us in developing those ideas. He always looked for opportunities to showcase our performance. This man was very well loved and those of us who worked for him were more than happy to put in extra effort. His simple acts of human decency produced real and concrete results.

In case you are interested, the partner organization I mentioned in the first paragraph is the Writing and Publishing Program within the Continuing Studies Department of Simon Fraser University.

Large organizations are filled with people doing good turns every day and increasing the profitability of their organizations.

Showtime of dancing to the same tune

2007-09-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Last week my eleven year old son, together with 79 children ages 9 to19 performed in a Broadway-type extravaganza. It was the climax of an intensive month long program; six hours of practice a day, a faculty of eight instructors, 33 song and dance numbers, 44 lines of dialogue, a total of 900 costumes. It culminated in three highly professional and entertaining performances.

What’s the secret to success of a program like this? In part it’s good old fashioned organization. There was a very well thought out master plan and everything was geared toward achieving that plan.

But to achieve a well thought out plan the players need to be committed and working toward the same goal. That’s where business plans often fail. The senior executives develop wonderful strategies that employees can’t see the rationale for, can’t figure out what it means for them personally and as a result don’t bother to make them happen.

This plan succeeded because every child understood and joyfully supported the end goal. The children may not have been aware of the details of the master plan, but they embraced the destination and their individual roles in achieving the plan. Each child completely understood that he or she was absolutely vital to the final act and by extension the journey.

Just imagine if all your employees felt the same way? Perhaps business has something to learn from the arts.

Still focussed on product

2007-09-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with a senior executive from a large multinational. This guy is one smart cookie. Any communication or change management professional working for him had better know what he or she is doing – because this guy can see through the bullshit.

Until very recently his organization operated under a PR-style model for internal communications. Not surprisingly it didn’t work. This savvy exec was quite clear that superficial internal communication - driven by product – was not good enough to take his company into the future.
Actually it’s not good enough for any organization.

That’s not to say that communication products like newsletters, podcasts and web sites don’t play an important part in the communication mix. However, the role of manager as communicator is, I would argue, pivotal. And if that is the case, then the role of the communications professional is to facilitate the conversation and develop the process and tools to support it.

Why are communicators still focused on product even when their execs are looking for something else? I’d be interested to hear your views.

Talking with the receptionist

2007-08-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

One of the first items in my inbox this morning was an article from Knowledge@Wharton entitled "Talking with the Receptionist". Who can resist a title like that?

The article begins with the story of Stephen Harrison, (at the time he was CEO of Lee Hecht Harrison, a global career management services company) being reprimanded by his COO for not greeting the receptionist when visiting one of their regional offices.

The COO explains that a receptionist is "a corporate concierge. They will talk to more important people in a day - suppliers, customers, even CEOs - than you will talk to all year."

It's well known that many organizational types think more about the people above them in the hierarchy, than those below them. Yet, it is frequently those at the lower rungs who have daily contact with the client, and make and deliver the goods and services for those same clients.

Leaders who understand this and pay attention to everyone within the organization, no matter their level, will be repaid a million times as their employees apply the same care and attention to customers.

Respect builds loyalty

2007-08-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

Eli's parents came to Canada from Poland. They did not speak English. It was the kindness of strangers that helped them settle in and make their way in the new world.

Eli's experience influenced his later thinking when he established his sanitation business. He made respect a cornerstone of his employee relations policy.

Most of the positions in Eli's organization are filled by immigrants; decent people who due to language constraints are not able to work to their potential. Eli tells them they are valued and respected in many ways from paying their benefit package in full, to welcoming children to the compulsory bi-monthly staff meeting, and arranging English lessons on Saturday mornings.

Most of Eli's competitors are struggling to find good employees and turnover is high. Eli has the opposite concern - he has a surfeit of loyal and dedicated staff.

The story was told me by one of Eli's managers. He spoke about his staff and colleagues with more respect and concern than we have grown to expect in the workplace. And that's a pity because the business benefits of valuing your employees are real and relate directly to the bottom line.

Silent movies allow us to co-own the story

2007-08-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

I'm probably one of few who hankers after silent movies.
This weekend my husband and I, and our 11 year old son, laughed and cried our way through The Gold Rush; one of Charlie Chaplin's most successful silent films. First made in 1925 the black and white film is a masterpiece of physical humor and pathos.

We watched both the original 1925 version and the one Chaplin edited and added narration to in 1942. All of us agreed that the original was a far more powerful piece of cinema.

A good story puts you right in the middle of the action. You feel like you are part of the drama. With silent film much of the interpretation is left up to you. You project your own thoughts and feelings (and words) onto the characters. You make the story part of your own experience - your own lexicon - and that is powerful. Powerful because once it becomes your story - you begin to integrate it into your belief system.

The same may be said of radio drama where you are encouraged to imagine an entire world based on conversations between people.
When people use storytelling in a corporate setting they offer listeners an opportunity to co-own a story - to make it their own. Replace the story with facts and figures and people struggle to make the story personal and integrate it with their belief systems.

Shopping can be instructive

2007-08-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

My teenage daughter likes to shop at TNA. I have never fully understood the attraction. The clothes are attractive, sensible, decent quality and a little overpriced for a teen. As a parent I am thankful for the first three attributes.

Yesterday I went shopping with my daughter, and now I get it. Shopping at TNA is a connected, solutions-orientated experience. The shop assistants were right there connecting with my daughter, and finding solutions that worked just for her. It makes shopping a real breeze when you have someone looking for a way to make your experience personally satisfying.

How do they do it? I think I know the answer - passion. The young women who work for TNA love the product they sell and are excited to bring it to their customers. This can't be an accident.

Our next stop was a sporting goods store. The contrast could not have been more dramatic. It was hard to get the attention of the staff; they were lackluster and not very helpful. Clearly this was no more than a job.

Retail highlights the need to engage employees and bring them along on the corporate journey. There are lessons for the rest of us whether we are manufacturing tractors of developing software. We all have customers or clients even when we work in government or not-for-profits. If the people who work for you love the service or product you offer - they will sell or support it gladly.

Can you make people love your product or service?

Yes I think you can. Here are some of the things you will need to do:

Help your employees understand how they support the product or service you offer. Help them understand how their daily activities move the organization closer to its goals;
Help your employees understand the broader context in which you operate; who your customers are, and the added value you offer them;
Show them the complete selling cycle;
Set clear expectations and relate these back to your goals and objectives;
Provide training;
Build a culture that celebrates the people who exhibit the behaviors you want.

Stories make connections around the globe

2007-07-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Travel broadens the mind, and in my case, the hips as well. The good meals and interesting conversations I had last week in the UK are to blame.

I am struck, as always, by the cultural differences between our polite and charming European cousins and North Americans. I am also, as usual, struck by the similarities. Let me explain: In all nations we face the common challenge of ensuring our people are thoroughly engaged in the organizational journey. In all countries we struggle with the challenges of making our most expensive and most precious resource, people, highly productive.

We have long been schooled in cultural differences. North Americans and Europeans seek eye contact, the Japanese avoid it. In India you indicate yes by shaking your head, in North America that means no. In the rush to honor differences we sometimes overlook the similarities.

I attended a large corporate event in London. It was within a stones throw of Hyde Park, which certainly lent a little grandeur to the occasion. Initially I was so focused on the differences that I couldn't see the commonalities. There were obvious differences in language, humor and culture. For example I have never been to a North American corporate event where the CEO sent everyone off to get a drink before he closed the session.

But in one respect we are the same the world over. We all need to make that human connection; to be acknowledged and build relationships. Whether you are in London, Chicago, Toronto, Tokyo or Delhi that need remains constant. It also seems the hardest to fulfill, certainly within the business context. Stories do it. At the meeting in London, executives and employees used stories to talk about how they met objectives. The real human stories of endeavor and success made it right to the hearts of the attendees. Our language might change depending on where we are; our emphasis and manners might differ. But we all achieve the same result when we tell a story - connections that speak volumes to our common humanity.

Fruits of our labour

2007-07-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Great organizations achieve sustainable growth and profits because they do what other organizations don’t: they maximize the innate, individual talents of their employees to connect with customers. They know that tapping the resources of humans is the only remaining area where significant improvements can--and do--lead to an unlimited source of competitive advantages."

Curt Coffman, Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina, in Follow this Path 2002
My hairdresser is at it again - managing my curls and filling my head with exciting thoughts. This weekend it was Fruits.

Fruits is a Japanese magazine. It is choc full with fabulous images of Tokyo street fashion; young women who are unashamedly devoted to fashion and who relish to opportunity to be creative and display their difference. Each of these women has clearly taken a lot of time to create an individual interpretation of what is currently considered "in-style".

We all yearn to be noticed for our difference and our unique contributions. The hankering doesn’t stop just because we work in a corporate setting with a common set of goals and objectives.

Remember the book "Now, Discover your strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton?

It focuses on building organizations and individuals based on people’s strengths. The message resonated with many of us who for years have been trying to fix the deficits and fit into the mould.

With more honours students coming out of India and China then we have children in North America, the only true competitive advantage any organization has is the creativity and flexibility of its people. Why would we not use that to its fullest by encouraging individual talents?

Lesson from my hairdresser on making the connection

2007-07-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

My mother always said a woman needs two things; a comfortable pair of shoes and a good haircut. She was right, particularly if your hairdresser happens to be a management guru.

My hairdresser is just that. Aside from the obvious hairdressing skills she is a communicator par excellence. She makes a very real and personal connection with each and every one of her clients. And it shows - she has a large and loyal following. I am always royally entertained by her insights and comments. Her latest story is a gem I must share.

My hairdresser has a client (we will call her Jill), who works for a large high tech multinational. She is happy and motivated and loves what she does. But Jill is becoming increasingly irritated by the number of telephone conference calls she is asked to participate in by colleagues across North American.

Jill, who is resourceful, (and has great hair), has figured out how to deal with conference calls; she simply gets on with her work. If there is a pause in the conversation or she hears her name, she says something along the lines of: "I'm sorry you just cut out, would you mind repeating the last sentence."

Smart cookie our Jill. Turns out she's not alone. Jill was at a convention and met with colleagues from across North America. She discovered many of them were doing the same thing.

So what's going on when half the people involved in a continental teleconference are tuning out and putting their creative talents into the 'opt out' process?

Perhaps the person who convened the conference call didn't think through the invitation list; perhaps he or she was tying too hard to be inclusive. Maybe Jill should have said no. Was she afraid her voice would be lost if she didn't participate? Or worse, afraid that people would think she was not a team player? I'm sure all the above are contributing factors.

The technology doesn't improve matters. What with email calendaring, teleconferencing and videoconferencing it's almost too easy to schedule a meeting. Evidence the fact that our calendars are overloaded. Technology is so seductive, it promises so much. And yet once we are over the hurdle of setting up the telephone call, the video or online conference - it's hard to feel connected.

With teams operating around the globe it's easy for employees to feel disengaged, particularly if their interfacing with technology rather than a human being. I wonder how Jill would have handled things if she had a personal relationship with the meeting chair. A personal connection may have allowed her to be honest and say "no I'm not going to be available - I'm too busy - if you need my voice please find another way to connect with me."

My hairdresser will tell you that connecting with people is important and only once you have the connection can you be honest. This explains why, despite my entreaties, I am not ash blonde this summer.

I'd be interested in your thoughts. Send me an email and I will publish your responses in this blog.

Outcomes as the starting point for effective communication

2007-07-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

I am fortunate to have the acquaintance of some truly inspiring individuals. Spending time with them is not unlike sharing a meal with the angels. You're up there in the intellectual ether.

I had one such opportunity recently in London with storytelling systems and process guru, Marcus Hayes. What I love about people like Marcus is their ability not only to play with ideas, but their capacity to develop real and workable solutions with those ideas.

Marcus is currently looking at re-engineering some of our standard processes; starting with outcome to stimulate small groups to develop strategy and the corresponding actions. It's a novel approach; we're more accustomed to starting with strategy, then moving to actions and finally outcomes. Marcus however, begins by linking individual outcomes directly to corporate strategy and so providing each of us with the opportunity to dream our own reality. What an exciting idea - every employee writing his or her own corporate vision statement.

Outcomes are of course what we are all after - the gold standard. That's why we invest so much time developing strategy and measuring performance. So beginning with the outcomes you want to achieve is a rather good idea. Provided, of course, that those outcomes support the strategic direction.

In his most recent article, Strategic Connections Inc president, Ken Milloy, talks about our role as communicators in shaping outcomes. (And by the way I happen to believe that anyone with the word 'supervisor' 'leader' or 'manager' in their title is by definition a communicator.) Ken - a pretty sharp thinker himself - is very clear that as communicators our outcomes should be a lot more than product, including:

Helping employees develop a better understanding of how what they do relates to the organization's vision, strategies, goals and performance.
Ensuring employees not only get, but understand, the information they need to help guide their day-to-day decisions.
Recognizing and reinforcing desired behaviors and outcomes through communication.
Establishing a communication environment that involves employees in thinking about and understanding how they influence business results.

It's the Kens and the Marcus' of the world who help us to build our competencies and dream a little more effectively. What are your outcome dreams?

Doing the corporate nod

2007-06-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I saw the Blue Man Group. One word: singular. I'm not even going to begin to categorize the performance. But in case you are wondering, yes, they are blue.

What interested me was that the performance could be viewed both as fun entertainment, and at a deeper level, as social commentary. The drama of our working lives is not dissimilar, particularly when it comes to how we communicate with one another. We say things because we have to fit in. We do the corporate nod because it's expected. But inside an entirely different dialogue is on the go and that internal dialogue is often reflected in our behaviors.

"Yes, love the idea says one manager to another," while secretly thinking "stupidest thing I ever heard," and s/he quickly rush off to do …..nothing. Well of course employees are not stupid and when they see the leader "doing nothing" they will take their cue from his or her behavior and they too will "do nothing".

All the fine words in the world will be ignored because our eyes tell us what's really important.

Oh the drama of the workplace!

Everyone has a real life story to tell

2007-05-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

Every one of us has a real and true life story to tell
"We learned that our life stories are so much more important than our traits, characteristics, leadership styles, or the training programs that companies teach about competencies and skills. Those pale by comparison with the importance of knowing your life story and being true to it."
Bill George, author of Authentic Leadership and True North

Every one of us has a real and true life story to tell. A story that reflects our deeply held values.

When we're given the opportunity to truly share our stories we feel valued and important. And that's good for everyone. It's good for the business because individual performance improves and profits increase. It's good for employees because we have purpose in life - we feel we belong - our life story becomes part of the cultural fabric of our organization.

Storytelling is a wonderful tool, but it's not something we should reserve for "leaders only". Stories are for everyone. To feel valued and listened to is a fundamental human need.

But what do we do when people in positions of trust - say our manager - is not able to listen and really hear our stories?
What happens is people stop telling their stories. And when they do that one of the threads is lost, a thread that enables us to motivate, inform and inspire - no matter where we sit in the organization.

Getting the culture right to catch em and keep em

2007-03-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

I’m pretty good at reviewing books I haven't finished reading – see my recent article on storytelling books. I have yet to review a book I have not read and I’m not going to start. But there’s a book out there with an important message that I feel I have to mention, even though I do not yet have it in bookshelf.

The book is Catch Them If You Can!: How Any Manager Can Win the War for Talent in the Global Labor Shortage'>Catch Them if You Can!: How Any Manager Can Win the War for Talent in the Global Labor Shortage Greg Ford and Dr. Sullivan. As you may have guessed from the title, it’s about the worker shortage we will face as the baby boom generation retires. The US Department of Labor predicts a shortfall of 10 million workers by 2010; one in 13 jobs will be vacant.

Actually I lie; I have read a couple of chapters of the book. Greg is a friend and I had the pleasure of a pre-publish peak.

Greg and John have written a book to help managers understand the need to aggressively go after the top talent. They provide practical strategies that can be easily implemented, including a step-by-step recruiting plan that the reader can take away and apply immediately.

But there’s a strong message in this book beyond recruitment, namely that we need to ensure an engaged and vibrant culture to prosper. The world has changed - employees are no longer lining up to work in our organizations. If we want to hire the best then we had better make sure our cultures are open, aligned and full of opportunity.

A lot of people my age have trouble reconciling the attitude of youngsters coming into the workplace today. They see them as entitled. I don’t. I see a very realistic attitude. This is a group of people who knows when they are good and they are not going to stick around and do boring, irrelevant work for 10 years until the boss retires.

Role of management to engage all by reflecting diverse employee stories

2005-12-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

Last week I was out hunting for behavioral stories for a client. I began my search with a contact list of middle to senior managers. I also had some basic information about each of the areas including some engagement scores.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In the areas with high engagement scores – I had no trouble at all in getting stories of front-line employees living the desired behaviors. In the areas with lower engagement scores the stories, while all very worthy, were about middle managers and senior professionals.

Stories about building a new division or bringing a consortium of partners are valuable and should be told; but so too are the stories about re-arranging the stock room for improved efficiency and finding a way to get a package to a client quickly.

Managers need to understand that it is their job to ensure every employee feels valued and understands how he or she contributes to the organizational goals. Managers need to tell all their employees stories.