A New Term for Bosses: Employee Empowerment Advocates

May 1, 2013 – 2:59 pm

While we all see, read, and scan countless blog posts on a daily basis, how many stand out? And why does a certain post stand out? Recently, I read an excellent post on Google Plus (link provided at the end of this post), and not only the title but the message have remained with me.

The question posed by the post was, should we banish the word “boss” from our business vocabulary? There are so many negative connotations with the word boss stemming from how a boss supervises his or her employees to how he or she interacts with them in casual situations. However, since the boss oversees departments and teams, assigns projects, and conducts performance reviews, it is clear why the individual known as “the boss” is in charge. (Consider all the Dilbert cartoons.)

Just like you, I have seen people change overnight when they assume the title of boss. It is as if a light bulb goes on in their head, and they are no longer able to communicate or empathize with the workers. This does not create a positive working environment – and the boss is solely to blame.

So, what can be done? The memorable blog post recommended shifting from the term boss toward an educational term of mentor. But that really doesn’t go far enough. Titles are not the only thing that must change in order for workplaces to become more productive.

Corporate cultures must change, and in the process, anyone who has the privilege to supervise employees, teams, and departments must evolve. These supervisors or managers or leaders must be credible advocates for their employees. They must provide their employees with the tools to do their jobs and the authority to make decisions to improve customer experiences.

In the words of leadership expert Mark Herbert, “Leadership is a gift, not a position. It doesn’t require you to be the smartest person in the room…It requires you to block and tackle for others.”

So, would you use my new term for your boss: Employee Empowerment Advocate? If it improves your workplace culture, I invite you to adopt the term.
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Here’s the post: What If We Banished “Boss?” by Wendy Appel

http://www.wendyappel.com/what-if-we-banished-bosses

______________________

GUEST POST BY DEBBIE LASKEY, MBA
Debbie Laskey has 15 years of marketing experience and an MBA Degree. She developed her marketing expertise while working in the high-tech industry, the Consumer Marketing Department at Disneyland Paris in France, the non-profit arena, and the insurance industry. Currently, Debbie is a brand marketing, social media, employee engagement, and customer experience consultant to small businesses, start-ups, and non-profits in California. Since 2002, Debbie has served as a judge for the Web Marketing Association’s annual web award competition. Follow Debbie on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/DebbieLaskeyMBA) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MarketingSocialMediaAndMore).

By DLaskey | Posted in accountability, action, best practices, choice, coaching, commitment, communication, employees, engagement, management, paradigm shift, purpose, relationships, respect, teamwork, transparency, trust, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Dedicated to Awesome

March 29, 2013 – 11:45 am

 

 

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For those in the Christian faith today is Good Friday, the day we recognize the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I am not sure why we call it Good Friday, but that is a discussion for another day.

It does represent for me a good day to contemplate, to look forward and backward at what I have achieved and what I still aspire to achieve.

Over the last week or so a number of things have happened that cause me to look at the work I do and recognize that there is still plenty of opportunity available to me. I work in the area of change management trying to help organizations and individuals find better ways to respect each other and work together to the common benefit of both. Generically these days they call that employee engagement. Employee engagement often gets a bad rap these days because in many cases they don’t define it properly or try to achieve it in a meaningful way.

Employee engagement is about alignment. The data shows very clearly that organizations with high levels of employee engagement outperform their competitors in every key performance area. The bad news is that employee engagement is not a program, or a survey. It is a culture and it requires commitment from everybody in the organization.

The other bad news is that programs like lean; six sigma, technology, etc. don’t contribute much to employee engagement.

What contributes to employee engagement are things like values alignment, a clear value proposition, clear expectations, constructive feedback, trust , and respect. Things we typically describe as soft skills.

A recent article from Gallup indicated that effective managers and leaders are the key to engagement and organizational performance in the long term. The bad news is they reported that we have a significant shortage of effective managers on a global basis.

We are not committing ourselves to developing a bench of highly capable managers and leaders. In most cases we select candidates for management and leadership roles based on their technical competency, not their ability to manage, coach, and develop others.

We refer to people as human resources and human capital, not people. We don’t talk much about things like congruency or motivation. We rely of software programs to do a lot of our candidate screening and our recruitment and selection processes are often two dimensional.

We don’t try to do change with people, we do change to them.

A friend shared a video from YouTube with me that really spoke to some of our issues in very simple understandable terms. We are settling for being boring. We have created a social contract for ourselves based on compliance and uniformity. We want to know what the rules are and conduct ourselves in a series of transaction rather than build and sustain relationships.

Social media in theory is about relationships, but in truth we have largely reduced to a series of transactions. LinkedIn is the largest professional networking site in the world, but probably 75% of the users are conducting transaction rather than developing relationships.

Most people see networking as something you do when you are seeking employment or desiring a change, not an investment in relationships.

The statistics say that we lose $5 trillion each year to employee turnover. We lose another $200 billion to presenteeism, where people show up, but don’t contribute at their full potential. Less than 1 in 3 Americans describe themselves as fully engaged at work.

It has been that way for the last twenty years, I find that not only boring, but dumb! We need a new model.

Yesterday I lost a friend and thought partner who was committed to being awesome. One of the questions they like to ask on engagement surveys is, “Do you have a best friend at work?” During the time we shared I could answer yes to that question. Together with a group of others we shared a vision and commitment to changing a paradigm and doing things differently.

A lot of people thought we were foolish and taking too many risks, but our results financially and emotionally on the part of our stakeholders proved them wrong. We were committed to being awesome.

That was my friend’s gift to those of us who worked with him. He came to the game every day playing for awesome.

He wasn’t unrealistic or Pollyanna, we just shared a belief and vision that we could create awesome for all of our stakeholders and build from a place of plenty rather than scarcity.

When I look at the potential we have through the opportunity costs we are spending in retention and turnover, presenteeism, and a health care delivery model that works kind of I think of my colleague and working for awesome.

We can do this.

Russell, you were what James Secretan would call a torch and although I will miss you I will make it part of my purpose to keep your torch burning. Rest in peace my friend and know that you left a legacy behind you for others of us to carry on….

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, authenticity, Change, character, choice, commitment, competency, congruence, engagement, fit, friends, heroes, honesty, inspiration, leading, loss, paradigms, relationships, trust, whole people | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

March 11, 2013 – 3:25 pm

 

 

Leaders

 

 

Every once in a while you read an article or see a post that makes you say “did someone really say that out loud or put that in print?”

That was my reaction when I read an article quoting the CEO of the American Management Association regarding a survey of American corporate leaders that concluded that U.S. workers just don’t have what it takes. They specifically focused on areas like collaboration, creativity and communications.

They were very gracious however in pointing out where the average worker can improve themselves- Executives want people who can make decisions, talk and write to their co-workers in ways that are both welcome and easily understood, work well with other people and be innovative and take action on their own when the group is getting too sluggish.

I wonder if the people who completed this survey or responded to it see the irony of their comments. Employee engagement scores for most industrialized countries including the United States are at historical lows, the U.K. has even created a national initiative to address it.

C level compensation has increased at rate averaging over 20% per year over the last three years while employee compensation has increased around 2% per annum.

The Department of Labor estimates that we lose $5 trillion annually to turnover and other studies estimate we lose $200 billion annually to presenteeism, where employees work to less than their full potential or capacity.

Corporate profits are up and unemployment remains historically high. A survey of corporate HR executives indicated that they see the most important role they play in their organization is ensuring compliance!

What I found particular ironic is that the executives and leaders quoted and referenced in this article seemed to take no responsibility for where we are or to contribute to a solution.

The reason I mention this is because the primary impediments reported by employees in being more engaged (and therefore contributing more) are lack of clear expectations, alignment between their personal values and organizational values and their relationship with and the competency of their manager. Good thing those leaders aren’t responsible for any of those things!

It is amazing to me that after being in the workforce for over three decades; with a large part of that being in human resources and C level management roles we still refer to the ability to build and manage people and relationships as soft skills.

In decades of coaching and training managers and aspiring leaders I find the attributes that these executives lament being present in the average employee as being pretty much AWOL in the managerial/leadership ranks.

In our graduate business schools we are much more focused on technical skills like finance and marketing than human resources management and communications. Most organizations promote people into leadership based on their technical competency, not their ability in managing others. It is not uncommon in many large organizations for managers not to undergo any formal leadership training until mid-career, in my opinion usually a decade too late.

I see advertisements daily involving then application of technology and systems like lean, six sigma and others to the human resources profession. Doesn’t sound like cultivation of relationship, communication, and collaboration skills.

Many of our models are still firmly rooted in Frederick W. Taylor’s scientific management model of a highly compliant workforce performing tasks assigned to them by managers. That doesn’t breed or reinforce creativity or collaboration.

I don’t disagree with the premise that greater collaboration, communication, and creativity can benefit not only the U.S., but the world economy. In fact statistics prove that organizations with highly engaged employee populations outperform their counterparts in every key performance category.

What I find wryly amusing is that less than 30% of American companies have an engagement initiative of any kind and that the leaders didn’t state any responsibility or call to arms to correct the issue.

I thought leadership was about crafting solutions, creating alignment and generating results, perhaps I was mistaken.

On the other hand I would say to my colleagues that perhaps we have the workforce we have cultivated and reinforced and if we want a better workforce perhaps we might want to contribute more effort than observations….

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, action, authenticity, autonomy, best practices, Change, character, choice, coaching, collaboration, communication, competence, decision making, dissatisfaction, education, employees, engagement, example, hiring, human resources, individuality, involvement, management, paradigm shift, personal competency, purpose, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Wrong Paradigm

February 22, 2013 – 12:52 pm

 The Wrong Paradigm

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Over the last week or so I have seen three different discussions from colleagues that I really respect that cause me to believe that much of our society and especially the business sector are still chasing what I fervently believe to be the wrong paradigm.

 

In the first instance a colleague posed the question of whether or not an organization should focus on its fiscal health, i.e. profitability or acting in a more socially responsible way. We see similar questions posed daily about whether customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction (engagement) should be the higher priority.

 

Because I know my colleague I knew that he was posing the question rhetorically, but my concern is that the vast majority of executives and leaders you would pose that question to wouldn’t see it that way. They still continue to see it as either or.

 

The second instance a question was posed as to whether the leader of an organization should be capable of both creating the vision and crafting the implementation of the strategy to insure its execution.

 

Again I may be in the minority, but I am not a big believer in what I facetiously refer to as the cape and tights model of leadership. Some heroic leader singularly crafts a vision and strategy and then impels a group of awe struck followers to successfully implement it. Don’t get me wrong, I believe highly in effective leadership. I think people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, and others are/were gifted and compelling leaders. I also believe they were gifted enough to recognize where their own capabilities need to be supplemented by others. They sponsor and role model the vision, but they don’t retain exclusive ownership.

 

In fact the infallible leader in my mind is a dangerous myth. I tell leaders “if you look behind you and nobody is following you are not a leader, you are a boss. If you have to impose your vision rather than impel people to it you are not a leader”.

 

I see a leader as a facilitator, coach, and guide. I love heroic figures like Caesar (Julius), Arthur, and others. When I read their histories they created a contract based on mutual trust and respect between themselves and their followers. Could they be ruthless in their decision making and execution, absolutely, but fear was not their primary tool.

 

The third instance was a colleague who shared the latest data (2012) from Forbes and Gallup on employee engagement. As this is my primary focus I wasn’t surprised by the numbers. I am not going to regurgitate the whole article for you, but here are some of the high points-

 

  • Of employees surveyed 23% of non- management employees (less than 1 in 4) described themselves as engaged or highly engaged
  • 65% of those employees evaluating themselves as non-engaged indicated they would change employers for a pay increase of 5%
  • 80% of employees who have issues or don’t feel supported by their immediate supervisor describe themselves as disengaged
  • 39% of those surveyed do not have trust and confidence in senior management in their organization

 

I guess you could say so what, but I have seen and written about what those numbers mean in terms of costs to our economy-

 

  • $200 billion annually in lost opportunity from presenteeism
  • $5 trillion annually attributable to employee turnover
  • Direct correlation between employee dissatisfaction/disengagement to absenteeism, health plan utilization, accidents and injuries, etc.

 

On the other hand there is a clear relationship between employee engagement and business results- per capita productivity, employee and customer retention, profitability, etc. We aren’t talking small numbers. In some cases the variance between highly engaged and non-engaged is 100%. This isn’t soft science.

 

Google identified and tracked the characteristics of their most effective managers and identified eight key indicators that were represented in each case. They then created training and coaching programs that specifically addressed those eight factors. The result was a significant increase in the performance and effectiveness of 75% of their lowest performing managers and units.

 

I would submit if you look at Google’s stock performance you might conclude they have experienced a degree of success.

 

This is an example of blowing up a couple of myths-

 

  • Effective managers/leaders are born not trained or created
  • Effective human resource management is a soft science

 

There are a lot of reasons that organizations haven’t embraced engagement. A big one is definition.

 

As recently as today I saw another discussion on whether employee engagement and employee happiness or morale are the same thing; I would submit they are not. An employee can be happy or content at work for a lot of reasons.

 

  • They have a short commute
  • They like their coworkers
  • The work environment is fun

 

The reality is that happy employees aren’t necessarily the most productive. In my mind engagement is about alignment;

 

  • employees see a direct correlation between the organizations goals and their own goals.
  •  they have clear expectations
  •  they feel like they are valued and contributing
  •  they feel like they are mastering and acquiring skills that have value to them
  • They feel like their personal values and the values of the organization are in alignment
  • They respect and feel respected by their supervisor and their colleagues

 

What is wrong with our current paradigm is that we still ask questions about whether being a contributing societal member or being profitable is more important.

 

That we ask whether subordinating the interests of shareholders over stakeholders is the right business strategy.

 

That we refer to skills like effective communication, establishing expectations, coaching, taking appropriate corrective action when expectations aren’t being met and others are soft skills and we usually don’t begin training our front line leaders in these skills until mid-career if ever.

 

That in most organizations leadership is an elective; we promote and reward technical skills rather than the skills to manage people.

 

That we refer to our employees collectively as human capital or human resources rather than people.

 

And finally that when I see my former colleagues in Human Resources pursuing more credibility and influence the majority are pursuing systematic rather than systemic solutions focusing on technology and metrics to the exclusion of relationships and seeking certifications rather than creating capacity and responsibility to manage talent and people.

 

So I think we need a new paradigm. What do you think….?

 

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, action, authenticity, best practices, Change, clarity, coaching, communications, competency, direction, employees, happiness, HR, human resources, Leadership, leading, management, message, paradigm shift, paradigms, progress, relationships, respect, retention, social contract, soft skills, stakeholders, trust, turnover, Uncategorized, whole people | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Be the Manager You’d Like to Have

January 18, 2013 – 9:34 am

I read a recent blog post by author and leadership expert Erika Andersen. The title of the post was “Why It Feels So Terrible to Be Managed.” Andersen shared two recommendations but one has stayed with me: Be the manager you’d like to have.

How often do you wonder why your boss does the things he or she does? Why does the person show his or her anger and yell at employees? Why doesn’t the boss speak to employees in private when upset? Why doesn’t the boss recognize employee accomplishments in public and show gratitude for everyone’s contributions? Why doesn’t the boss advocate for team members when annual reviews take place? Why doesn’t the boss communicate all aspects of a project instead of just one aspect of the project?

Often, people become supervisors, managers, or leaders without proper training. As a result, they don’t have the tools to be effective. They may be great at their jobs but they don’t interact well with their employees, so they don’t create positive work environments. And then, they wonder why they have high turnover.

Well, Andersen has provided the secret for new supervisors, managers, or leaders: Change your behavior immediately. Be the manager you’d like to have. If you normally check the clock to make sure your employees are seated at their desks at a specific time – but you would hate it if someone did that to you – then change your behavior. If you hold meetings that run too long without an agenda – but you hate that type of meeting – then change your behavior and create agendas and set time limits for meetings. If you have favorite employees and constantly go to lunch with the same group – but you’d hate it if people left you out – then invite new people to lunch every day.

You can make a difference immediately. Give it a try – you have nothing to lose but much to gain!
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Here’s the article by Erika Andersen:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2013/01/16/why-it-feels-so-terrible-to-be-managed-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/

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GUEST POST BY DEBBIE LASKEY, MBA
Debbie Laskey has 15 years of marketing experience and an MBA Degree. She developed her marketing expertise while working in the high-tech industry, the Consumer Marketing Department at Disneyland Paris in France, the non-profit arena, and the insurance industry. Currently, Debbie is a brand marketing, social media, employee engagement, and customer experience consultant to small businesses, start-ups, and non-profits in California. Since 2002, Debbie has served as a judge for the Web Marketing Association’s annual web award competition. Follow Debbie on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/DebbieLaskeyMBA) and on her Blog (http://debbielaskey.blogspot.com).

By DLaskey | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

We Are Waiting For…?

January 10, 2013 – 11:14 am

 

DilbertSo today is January 10 of a new year. If you put any credibility into the information collected by the Gallup information (and I do) we have so far this year lost $10 billion in potential productivity from the direct and indirect effects of employee disengagement based on their estimate that disengagement costs the U.S. economy $350 billion per year.

Is it just me or does that seem like a pretty significant amount of money to leave on the table?

We can talk about all the reasons this is still occurring like the accuracy of the data, what does engagement really mean, who should be in charge of it, etc., but at the end of the day a billion dollars a day is a billion dollars a day.

Over the last ten days I have had a chance to do a lot of reading (I know you are stunned) and I think the single biggest reasons are inertia and failure to lead.

A couple things I had a chance to read provided me some interesting insights.

  • The first was a reprint from HBR on the leadership model at Toyota using the onboarding of an American executive into their organization. He was a little stunned that with his track record and expertise he went through an onboarding process of almost six months before taking over a production facility. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but the essence was teaching him that the core of leadership is producing excellent first line managers and leaders and aligning individual and organizational objectives- creating congruency and engagement.
  • The second piece was about a health care organization in Texas that subsidized availability of health care for individuals who had never had access to coverage before. The objective was to involve individuals in the management of their own health and to address health proactively rather than reactively. The result was pretty interesting. Over 70 % of the participants continued to participate in the health care program after the subsidy discontinued even though their personal contribution went up substantially because they found positive results on both their personal health and their economic well- being having made the investment. They became stakeholders rather than codependents. Does this approach sound familiar at all?
  • Another rather illuminating share from a colleague reflected the fact that many executives say that they are no longer engaging in meaningful strategic planning because there is too much ambiguity in their environment.

Wow and here I am thinking that the purpose of leadership is remove ambiguity and provide clarity for the people we expect to follow us.

I guess I have been getting it wrong all these years!

I get an opportunity to receive these kinds of insights almost daily. To me they essentially say the same thing-

To paraphrase Einstein- the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

For close to a hundred years the majority of organizations have been practicing and we have been teaching the same management and leadership models.

  • We call people human capital or human resources and treat them accordingly.
  • We elevate one stakeholder group (shareholders) over all the others and then we ponder why we don’t see meaningful, sustained change.
  • We try to do change to rather than with people and we ignore the 85% of the resistance to change that is emotional or embedded rather than cognitive.
  • We try to create change through technology and processes without foundational considerations like culture, trust, and congruency.
  • We elevate leaders to almost demagogue status and they begin to read their own press clippings and believe that they are always the smartest person in the room about everything.

I have some pretty strong opinions that I like to think have been validated by not only my own experiences, but the data:

  • Leadership is a trust; it comes from those who agree to follow you not a position on an org chart.
  • The pillars of successful leadership are trust, competency, credibility, and the ability to organize and align people.
  • You will never have higher engagement from your customers, shareholders, suppliers, etc. than you have with your employees.
  • Engagement is a journey and a culture not just a process or a program. You never arrive; you work at it every day.
  • Engagement may be created in the Boardroom, but it lives at the frontline. If you have poorly trained or disengaged front line leaders you will not have an engaged workforce.
  • You have to do the work. There are no shortcuts.
  • Engagement is better, way better. It affects every key performance indicator on a sustained basis.

A billion dollars a day, every day just in the U.S. ….

So I ask again- what are we waiting for…?

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, action, best practices, Change, commitment, congruence, decision making, direction, economy, employment, engagement, future, Harvard, human resources, Leadership, management, Maslow, models, paradigm shift, paradigms, people, progress, purpose, respect, social contract, strategic plan, trust, turnover, values, vision, whole people | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Where Do We Go From Here?

December 31, 2012 – 10:28 am

bn08-spp0105-imagining-world-printNew Years is always interesting. You look forward and you look back, at least I do.

My mentor, Freya, has taught me a lot about spending more time looking forward and less looking back. Her philosophy is incorporating the valuable lessons and leave the rest behind, every day represents a new opportunity so you should embrace it.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but 2012 seemed like a rocket ride to me! I seems like it should maybe be Halloween.

I had an opportunity to work with a number of amazing people and I think to make progress on a number of fronts. As most of you know I am very passionate about the topic of employee engagement. I had a chance to share my views on that topic in forums ranging from speaking engagements and webinars to one on one discussions. It has been interesting to see the amount of dialogue happening out there on this topic.

None of it is consistent; there are definitely advocates and people who think it is nothing more than the latest management fad or trend. There are multiple definitions and thousands of experts and firms to help you implement it. I have had the opportunity to participate in a dialogue for a week or so lately on why we aren’t seeing more progress and implementation of engagement as a business philosophy.

I shared my view point that in many cases people still see engagement as a program. You survey for it annually, plan a few activities and wait for your culture to miraculously change. In most cases it is under the leadership of human resources or organizational development, meaning it is not championed by the C level.

It is defined esoterically in many situations as a function of employee morale, tenure, or satisfaction. My person viewpoint is that these are indicative, but do not define or represent engagement. To me engagement is about alignment, it is recognizing and embracing a stakeholder versus a shareholder mentality. You align personal and professional objectives. You do this systemically versus systematically. It begins in the hiring and selection process and continues through all of your interactions with all of your stakeholders.

Although it is intended to be collaborative and participative I don’t believe in the long term you make it optional. People who don’t buy into your values and value proposition in the long term are not going to contribute as maximum. Management has the responsibility for creating consistency and alignment, but beyond that employees as stakeholders need to embrace or be assisted or encouraged to find other employment if they can’t or won’t buy in.

Engagement requires different skill sets from management and leadership. Things like building and reinforcing trust and respect, providing clear expectations, constructive feedback and meaningful rewards. You know that peopley stuff that we have been trying to avoid for the last 100+ years and don’t do a good job of teaching our leaders and emerging leaders to do.

I have read some great stuff this year that talks about how we don’t train our management and leadership nearly early enough in these skills and techniques. Often times people are mid- career before we begin exposing them to the more conceptual side of management and leadership. We remain very focused on technology and processes rather than relationships to achieve our objectives. Then we are perplexed when people don’t embrace them.

I really like the line from the video produced in the UK about their national engagement initiative- I am a person not a human resource. Pretty clear and unambiguous to me, but then I have never seen it as that complicated.

So we enter 2013 with some optimism and some trepidation. Obamacare is real and there is no impending election to rescue us. The GOP was unsuccessful in convincing the majority of Americans that returning to the good old days was the solution to our economic and social issues. I think a message was sent that we are tired of partisan posturing on both sides of the aisle- we want meaningful change.

I have decided that my goal for 2013 remains essentially the same- try to change how we work with and interact with one another one person, one organization, and one community at a time.

As the angel, said this time if we fail it will be a failure of imagination. She has placed the world in our hands, what we do with it is up to us.

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, action, authenticity, best practices, Change, character, engagement, fit, involvement, leading, paradigms, reflection, relationships, respect, Uncategorized, whole people | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

I Am A Person!

December 12, 2012 – 11:25 am

That statement is from the young man in the embedded video
from a U.K. based movement Engaged for Growth, a national employee engagement
initiative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqO3sfRZDAE

I was intrigued by the elegant simplicity of the message; I
was also impressed that the U.K. has recognized the importance of this
phenomenon and strategy in making a difference. The young man quotes the
statistic that only one in three employees in the U.K. are fully engaged, in the U.S. our performance is lower yet, we are
slightly better than one in four.

So what you might say.

My reaction as I have
stated before is that each year the Department of Labor estimates that we lose
$5 trillion dollars to employee turnover. We lose another $200 billion to presenteeism, where as this young man
describes people show up, but contribute less than they are capable of for a
myriad of reasons, mostly dealing with work related stresses or dissatisfaction
with management or other elements of their job.

We spend another $100 billion on training annually, but
studies estimate that the retention of
that training is less than ten percent after 18 months.

So you ask yourself why. The answer is how we view and work
with people. How many times do you hear employees referred to as human resources or human capital? As this young
man clearly states they are neither of those things, they are people.

Some of it goes back to an interesting differentiation that
Seth Godin made recently between industrialists
and capitalists. Industrialists use
systematic solutions. The utilize benchmarks and standards, and best practices
to seek efficiencies- to squeeze more dollars out of the systems.

Capitalists on the other hand seek to expand market
opportunities. They want to grow markets and create new ones. The
characteristic they both share in the American economic model is that the focus
is on the benefit to what they see as the primary stakeholder- the shareholder
or owner.

This isn’t new. I just finished reading the second book in
Ken Follett’s three part trilogy about several families from different economic
classes and countries, following them from pre- World War 1 through at this
stage post World War 2. The upper classes
simply don’t understand how there is anything about the model that is
broken. They have grown up with a sense of entitlement and sense of how things
should be.

I think there is a large dimension of our society that still
embraces this paradigm. If the wealthy and large corporations get the flexibility to do what they need to
maximize shareholder return then everyone will benefit, right? History says not
necessarily. I think there were many who were stunned when the electorate rejected
a return to this paradigm.

Although he would likely disagree I would categorize
Governor Romney as an industrialist. He was and remains and astute businessman,
but his model was building wealth, not capacity. He ran an investment firm
where success was measured strictly in financial terms. Decisions were made on
the basis of optimized financial returns, not social entrepreneurism. People or human capital was an item on the balance sheet. This isn’t a
criticism, merely an observation.

People aren’t embracing that paradigm as readily anymore.
They want to be respected as individuals.

Before anyone sees this as a socialist rant I would tell you
another event that occurred this week that I am supportive of is Michigan’s
conversion to a right to work state.

Again I want to be clear that I am not anti- union or anti
collective bargaining. I think an effort to prevent anyone including public
employee’s from participating in the collective bargaining process is
inherently flawed. I think on the other hand that individual employee’s should
have the opportunity to choose whether or not to participate in that process. I
think that requiring an individual to join a union or a particular union in
order to work for an organization or in an industry is fundamentally flawed.

The union or bargaining agent no matter what they call
themselves; should be required to provide a meaningful value proposition to each prospective member, just as an employer
does in their competition for talent. There shouldn’t be a mandate.

The history of the relationship between labor and
management, especially in the United States, has not been an attractive one.
Employers saw labor as a resource to be utilized and discarded as they saw fit.

In some way collective bargaining in my mind contributed to
the concept of human resources or human capital. Under U.S law employers
with union contracts in place are required to negotiate over wages, hours, and
working conditions. They are not required to negotiate over the means of
production or involve “labor” in those discussions. It is a transactionally
based rather than relationship based model.

We remain unique in that aspect among industrialized
countries. In other countries management is required to negotiate the
introduction of new methods and technologies, not just the effects of those
technologies.

I remember discussing with a Fortune 500 employer their
efforts to fully implement total quality in their organization in the mid
1980’s and their inclusion of their various collective bargaining agencies in
that discussion. They were incredulous that I even asked the question. They
simply saw the unions as an impediment rather than as a stakeholder.

Unions rightfully have taken much criticism for their
insistence on inclusion of guarantees around economic security, pensions, and
health plans that exclude personal responsibility for managing your own health
and levels of benefits that fiscally impossible.

Societally we have treated employees more as kind of
slightly slow grown up children when it comes to things like retirement and the
management of health.

I have expressed my concern that much of the Affordable Care
Act, also known as Obamacare focuses on the delivery of health care and the
provider community rather than a more comprehensive viewpoint including a new
role for employer and employee/consumer.

We spend more on health care than any other industrialized
society for results that are pretty tepid on average. Like the earlier examples
I provided on turnover and presenteeism these provide significant opportunities
for collaboration and improvement.

I guess what I am advocating is a new model where we
understand that collaboration among all the stakeholders can allow us to find
solutions that benefit everybody. The studies already demonstrate that organizations
that have embraced and implemented true engagement strategies enjoy superior
performance as measured by every key performance indicator.

The systematic
models like lean, black belt, etc. have merit as tools and there is certainly
room for improvement in every industry around efficiency and best practices,
but the foundational issues such as congruency
and trust are going to have to be
addressed before we see those tools implemented in a sustainable fashion.

A few years back I posed the question on Linked In as to
whether or not we should have a national engagement
initiative led by a coalition of government,
industry leadership and others. It didn’t get much interest. That was in 2008.
By my calculations if we give some validity to the numbers asserted regarding
the opportunity costs represented by employee turnover and presenteeism we
“gave up” $20.8 trillion in that four year period. I won’t even add in the lost
opportunity in managing health care delivery rather than health. It would seem
to me like those dollars might have had an impact on the fiscal cliff we are facing…

As the young man stated, “I am not a human resource, I am a
person”.  Perhaps I overestimate the
significance of exploring a new paradigm where we take him at his word and
begin exploring a new model, but then again maybe I am not overestimating…..

 

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, action, Change, choice, clarity, communication, congruence, direction, economic development, education, employees, employment at will, engagement, fit, HR, human resources, involvement, Leadership, Maslow, paradigm shift, people, purpose, relationships, respect, retention, social contract, solutions, trust, values, whole people | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Systemic versus Systematic

December 4, 2012 – 10:23 am

It has been a while since I have written my last blog post.
I have had a chance to do some traveling, interact with a lot of family,
friends and clients and reflect.

The aftermath of the election continues to be interesting.
It would seem that there is a sizable part of the population that is still kind
of stunned on the outcome. They were sure that a return to our previous
economic models would resonate with an overwhelming majority and we would step
away from these mandates and government interference.

I am not part of that group. I have felt for some time that
we need to be catalyzed into making some significant changes.

Seth Godin had an excellent blog post this morning that
differentiated the difference between capitalists
and industrialists. He defined
industrialists as people whose goals and perspectives are highly focused on
efficiencies; squeezing costs and thereby increasing profits through operating
efficiencies and related methodologies. Capitalists on the other hand look to
open new markets and optimize wealth.

I find it an interesting differentiation. Once focuses on
systems, the other is systemic.

I have written about and like to think of myself as a social entrepreneur. I am a capitalist;
I want to be financially secure and successful. I am deeply committed to
concepts like pay based on performance, continuous improvement and personal
responsibility. I don’t like codependency in any form; personal, governmental,
or corporate.

That being said I think for too long we have defined
entrepreneurialism and capitalism too narrowly. If profitability is focused on
optimizing one stakeholder group to the detriment of another I think it will
ultimately fail to be sustainable. That is the issue with many of our models
today.

There has been much literature written over the past few
years about the subject of employee
engagement. Personally I find a lot of it to be flawed. It is based on
systems rather than systemic and it excludes or minimizes the critical
connection between alignment of individual and organizational goals.
Organizations exist to serve their stakeholders, not optimize individuals at
the expense of other stakeholders.

Many of the systems I
see focus on employee satisfaction, morale, retention, etc. They leave out
organizational performance. Many employers don’t like the fact that a true
engagement strategy is embedded on core interpersonal relationships like trust,
clear expectations, effective feedback loops, equitable reward systems, etc.
They want a magic pill.

Our approach to health management, including Obamacare is about systems, not
systemic. It is very heavily process and delivery focused versus behavior
focused. There is little addressing the responsibility and role of consumers
and employers other than as payers and beneficiaries. It misses a lot of root
causes.

Organizations, especially for profits are in relentless
pursuit of systems. Even in my old
field of Human Resources I see colleagues racing to get certified in models like Black Belt, Lean, etc. I get besieged
daily by offers to systematize my hiring and selection processes, performance
management, etc. All of these approaches have something in common- they do
things to people rather than with people.

We continue to be very reluctant to address the issue of
relationships and their criticality. I find that interesting given the research
done by Covey, BlessingWhite, and others about the futility of trying to change
behavior in the long term without addressing areas like trust and congruency.

I led a workshop for a client last week where a senior
executive from another discipline stopped in and shared his frustration that
employees just don’t get it! He went
on to say that employees and managers had been provided with hours of training, reams of procedures, and other structural guidelines. The idea that no
meaningful trust based relationship or anything approaching efforts at
congruency had been explored seemed to totally elude him. He sees things from a
systems rather than systemic perspective.

To really see meaningful changes occur or to embed a
particular strategy it has to be systemic, not systematic. To paraphrase
Rosabeth Moss Kanter change must be done with
people rather than to people.

The most effective organizations who utilize employment
brand strategies recognize this. Their brand
is embedded in every aspect of their business model from hiring and
selection to performance management and compensation- they build it in rather
than try to bolt it on.

I like Godin’s differentiation. I also like the concept of
social gravity and social entrepreneurialism where we measure profit and
success in broader terms than shareholder return and earnings per share.

I also firmly believe Margaret Wheatley-

“In
organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The
patterns of relationships and the capacity to form them are more important than
tasks, functions, roles, and positions.”

At the end of the day for every organization it is about
execution-

Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality,
align people with goals and achieve the promised result.

Most organizations fail at the first two elements,
especially the people alignment.

Until we begin to think and act systemically rather than
systematically I believe we will continue to struggle.

What do you think?

By Mark Herbert | Posted in accountability, action, best practices, Change, choice, clarity, collaboration, competence, Congress, congruence, economic development, election, engagement, health care, human resources, Innovation, Leadership, motivation, paradigms, purpose, reflection, relationships, social media, soft skills, stakeholders, transparency, trust, values, whole people | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Leadership Tips Thanks to Social Media Connections

December 2, 2012 – 10:08 pm

I am honored to be a guest contributor to Mark Herbert’s blog. Mark and I met through our social media activity, and I continue to be inspired and challenged by his leadership insights. Mark invited me to participate in several leadership roundtables, and in one of those roundtables, he introduced me to David Shedd, a seasoned executive/leadership expert/author. I recently read one of David’s books, and since Mark was the glue that brought us together, it was fitting to share the review here.
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Have you ever started a book by reading the last page? If you’re curious by nature, you know that sometimes, there just isn’t enough time to read an entire book.

In Build A Better B2B Business, Winning Leadership for Your Business-to-Business Company, David Shedd provides two final exam questions on page one. But don’t be scared…he provides the answers on page two. Does this sound odd? Perhaps, but the book’s theme is so critical, especially during today’s challenging economic climate and over-saturated marketplace that everyone can benefit by reading about the fundamentals to drive business success.

According to Shedd, a key component to drive business success is leading by example. To help create better leaders, take the quick quiz from the book. Don’t be upset if you don’t have all “Yes” answers, use the “No” responses to improve your leadership skills.

[1] Can you recall three examples where your ethics visibly showed to your team?

[2] Do you return everyone’s phone calls immediately and respond to all emails promptly? Do you start and finish meetings promptly?

[3] Right now, does your front line management have fewer than five goals?

[4] As a leader, do you take full accountability for the failures but share the praise for the successes?

[5] Have you ensured that all of your senior direct reports are held accountable for their performance?

[6] Are you easy to reach and interact with?

[7] In the last week, have you found at least 10 people doing something right and recognized and thanked them for their work?

[8] In the last month, have you coached or trained at least one small group in your business?

[9] In the last two weeks, have you been involved in resolving a customer service issue?

[10] In the last two weeks, have you been involved in thanking a customer for their business?

Shedd also shares other useful tips to drive business success:

[1] Write out and develop three goals for your business.

[2] Determine the most significant “Mokitas” in your business – these are the dirty little secrets that aren’t really very secret – for example, the industry you serve is in decline and will never rebound OR the sales manager was promoted from the finance department and doesn’t interact well with customers.

[3] Aim to accomplish one key initiative each morning, and at the end of each day, ask yourself, “Did I accomplish this task?” If not, decide how you will accomplish the task tomorrow.

[4] Recognize employees on a regular basis.

[5] Value your customers.

[6] Deliver on the brand promise – for example, FedEx delivers by 10am each day – and align all employees to be effective brand advocates.

[7] Solve a customer’s problem. “No customer has ever bought anything because it was “strategically logical or synergistic.” A customer buys from you because he has a problem, and you have a solution for that problem.”

Lastly, Shedd quotes Mark Herbert when explaining the importance of employee engagement: “Motivation and engagement live and die on the front line of your business.” Always remember, employees rarely “quit companies.” More often, employees quit their managers or supervisors, and the result is that they leave their companies.

As you can see, the final exam questions and answers were only a teaser…the best part of the book was in between the front and back covers.
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GUEST POST BY DEBBIE LASKEY, MBA
Debbie Laskey has 15 years of marketing experience and an MBA Degree. She developed her marketing expertise while working in the high-tech industry, the Consumer Marketing Department at Disneyland Paris in France, the non-profit arena, and the insurance industry. Currently, Debbie is a brand marketing, social media, employee engagement, and customer experience consultant to small businesses, start-ups, and non-profits. Recognized as a “Woman Making a Difference” by the Los Angeles Business Journal, Debbie has served as a judge for the Web Marketing Association’s annual web award competition since 2002. Follow Debbie on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/DebbieLaskeyMBA) and on her Blog (http://debbielaskey.blogspot.com).

By DLaskey | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)