Some thoughts from John Smythe
Engaging employees to drive performance and execution
Or as Allan Leighton, the Chairman of the Royal Mail, puts it, ‘in organisational change it’s the what down and the how up’
But to most employees the onset of change or a purge on executing work more quickly signals that their leaders will consider themselves licensed to practice command and control on steroids. Employees will be talked at, briefed and researched to see if they’ve got it. They quickly become victims or spectators watching their ever more exhausted bosses sink under the weight of trying to do it all.
Surprise
Now put yourself in the shoes of employees of a public utility where the MD has just summonsed you and your colleagues from the call centres, engineering field workshops and laboratories for an important announcement and discussion. Expecting the usual post decision pronouncements about decisions made by others, you are amazed to be invited to propose to management how to implement a cost cutting programme requiring savings of 40% of current overheads. The target is non negotiable but how the solution balances the interests of the customer, staff and organisation, is.
The target is achieved without the almost otherwise inevitable dispute and with solutions the MD says the management would never have thought of because they are too far from the customer.
Put yourself in the shoes of the associate group in a magic circle law firm where you are used to working your heart out in the hope of a partnership and doing what you are told on the way up. But times are changing and there are fewer partnerships available given the larger pool of associates than there used to be and it is common now for whole groups of lawyers to be poached; unheard of a few years ago. But as young lawyers say ‘we are all investment bankers now!’
Imagine your surprise when your law firm unveils the strategy planning round and pitches groups of associates against partners to create a strategy which will help them stay on top. You feel valued and the partners are admitting that they too are often too far from the real action to see ahead. Such initiatives in professional services firms are illustrative of the urgent need to find new incentives for people to stay and contribute.
Finally put yourself in the shoes of the top two hundred in a global scientific engineering company. You are mostly doctors, scientists, engineers and specialist marketers with a scientific background. You are invited to attend a leadership meeting at which you expect to hear the new strategy from the exec group via the usual interminable pre-decided minutely argued power points
You are amazed to find yourselves cast into unusual cross company teams either as an external predator who is planning to take over the company or as the defenders who must devise a breakthrough strategy or risk takeover. At the end of the week each team presents its breakthrough strategies and, in returning to role, each votes with investment funds. The group’s strategy is drawn up reflecting those results and within eighteen months the company has gone from defensive to offensive.
What does employee engagement mean?
Is the world of organisations going mad? No but more and more organisations are experimenting with engaging their employees in every day decision making and change to drive performance.
There has been much written recently about employee engagement but what does it mean? In the research which I undertook as a temporary Organisational Fellow with McKinsey and Company in 2004 into the meaning and value of employee engagement (among 59 organisations worldwide) we hypothesised that the primary driver resulting in engaged leaders and employees is the appetite and ability of leaders, at every level, to engage their subordinates in every day decision making and bigger ticket change.
It can be argued that we have been here before with empowerment in the 90s. What’s different this time is that the deal between employer and employee based on an exchange of security for loyalty is dead. Instead the best and brightest and everyone else for that matter, will move until they find a culture where their creativity and challenge is welcome. Why is the emerging Y generation so called? You’ve guessed correctly, because they keep asking why, why, why.
The chart below illustrates the four approaches to engaging employees open to leaders, at every level. Reflect for a moment where your reports and colleagues would pigeon hole you and ask yourself how much more you and they might be able to achieve in the race to develop and execute market beating strategies.
What are the benefits and implications of engaging effectively for leaders?
Leaders who make considered judgments about which groups and individuals to engage in every day decisions and in designing and executing change will benefit both from the addition of practical ideas from colleagues and the speed of execution which derives from people who feel ownership of the outcome.
But the leader is not handing over power to the people in a Marxist fashion, he or she must set direction in a convinced way and then govern the dialogue knowing when to close and move on.
Leaders must unlearn that being a leader means being a God with all the answers and recognise that they must become guides who inspire others to contribute their best.
John Smythe is a partner in Engage for Change, a consultancy which specialises in advising organisations in employee engagement. Previously he co-founded and ran SmytheDorwardLambert, a leader in employee communication. During that time he was a special advisor to Neil Kinnock and prior to that was in senior corporate communication posts with Occidental Petroleum, Bechtel Corporation and Marathon Oil. He has just published The CEO, The Chief Engagement Officer (Gower).
