Where Does Engagement "Live"?

I am very pleased to see interest in topics like employee engagement and employment branding gaining some momentum, even if it is just in dialogue.

I have to pay an homage to the people at BlessingWhite for their recent studies and research and Dr's Whitlark and Rhoads for their publication about the "Spillover" effect which provides concrete relationships and data; drawing a direct correlation between high engagement and key performance indicators like sustainability, productivity, and profitability. This is no longer "warm and fuzzy" stuff, but rather hard data.

I do continue to see that for all the dialogue I am still disappointed with the number of organizations and C level executives that are either ignoring this opportunity (some would say crisis) or paying lip service to it.

There are a couple of other things coming out about engagement that I have long believed that I am pleased to see gaining some traction as well:

• Defining engagement. This a a huge area. Engagement is not happiness or employee satisfaction. Much like compensation the lack of happiness or satisfaction can have a negative affect on engagement, but "happy" or "satisfied" employees are not necessarily engaged. The basic reason for that is that the work place may be providing an outlet for social relationships or other things that employees enjoy that affect those areas, but don't lead to additional productivity or discretionary effort. Measuring those other things doesn't necessarily yield engagement.
• Creating engagement. The other thing we are starting to recognize is that engagement is not an initiative or program it is a culture! To create and sustain an engaged workforce and long term employment brand you must create and sustain a culture.

I think that these "revelations" may be part of what is keeping many organizations from embracing an engagement strategy or employment brand- they aren't prepared to do the work.

The last thing I want to share today is my response to the opening question. In my opinion engagement and your brand live at the front line level of your organization. I am not saying that senior management support and role modeling aren't critical, but how many of your customers or employees interact regularly with C level management?

How many of us encounter Howard Schultz when we visit Starbucks or Steve Jobs at the Apple store?

My point is you must build engagement into your brand through your selection, hiring, training, and performance management and reward systems. I would go further and say that your front line managers are your greatest potential asset or weakness. In fact Whitlark and Rhoads are even more specific;

"One bad manager can pollute multiple levels of an organization, and poor managers bring down employee morale, which spills over into the engagement level of customers.”

My point being that your "engagement" or "branding" effort must be embraced as a culture change and you have to be willing to "de-recruit" employees especially managers who can not or will not make the transition. My experience has been validated by James L. Heskett, author of the book The Service-Profit Chain, who writes-

“… the hardest concept is the deployment of the culture change …which requires that organizations identify values, behaviors, and measures that help reinforce the service profit chain relationships. But it also requires actions. That is when managers are not managing by the values and cannot be admonished or retrained to do so (which rarely works), they have to go.”

So I guess what I am saying is that engagement is mutual commitment and while it is important to have brand champions in the C suite you will be most successful when you embed it into the fabric of your organization because engagement and your brand live on the "ground floor" where your employees interact with your customers. As my colleague Joseph Skursky so elegantly states, Hire Hard- Manage Easy. You will find it a better long term strategy.

From My Heart

I sit at my computer tonight with a pensive heart. It isn't just Haiti, although that gives it a focus.
I will freely admit to being a romantic. I love great stories and heroes. I love happy endings and noble causes and stories about people who displayed more integrity and courage than I have.
I'm not seeking solace or absolution, just thinking out loud.

We have an interesting set of choices before us. In many cases we are angry and disillusioned. We feel let down . Our economic security is at stake. People we trusted let us down. Where do we go?

I believe in people. I have been castigated about my focus on engagement and the power or relationships, but honestly I have have yet to see a more powerful force than a group of committed people in support of a common cause.

I have been and aspire again to be a "leader". Leadership is a a trust between those who "lead" and those who "follow".

For many years our philosophy was "Think Global, act local". Perhaps it is time for us to both think and act locally. Washington and "world leaders" can offer insight, but perhaps we need to embrace more solutions one person, one family, one community at a time?

From my heart. What do you think?

The Right Fit

A lot of you are probably tired of hearing about my ongoing love affair with the concept of engagement. Sorry I just can't help myself, it's my passion.

In my last post I talked about a couple of people who have made a deep and lasting impression on me even though they were quite different. I still think about those two people and others I have encountered that were similar. These people don't seem to spend a lot of time in that "uncertainty" zone wondering what their role or motivation is or should be. They are aligned.

I read a couple of things today that I found interesting. One was from a colleague who I respect a great deal talking about whether or not organizations should accept or even embrace their role in providing structure in a world confronted with a lot of ambiguity. His question was around social context and whether employers should play a proactive, reactive, or neutral role in creating and/or managing social relationships related to the workplace.

My response, perhaps naively, was that if you embrace a philosophy of engagement a certain amount of this need to "affiliate" will be met organically. If you share values and a sense of commitment with your colleagues the "membership" component will occur somewhat naturally. The employer will need to provide some boundary management and be sure that the approach is broad rather than prescriptive, but shouldn't have to artificially bring people together.
By prescriptive I mean being too structured as to what engagement looks like or must be practiced.

I find organized religion to be a little "prescriptive". Three of the largest religions in the world; Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all "people of the book", but we fight wars over the "right" way to practice it. I don't really get it.

Another colleague posted a very different question about the relative difficulty of coaching someone from "incompetence to mediocrity" versus "good to great". My reaction was "Why would you want to coach someone to a career pinnacle of mediocrity?" Where is the value to the person or the organization. Perhaps I am being hypocritical, I play golf badly, but I enjoy it as a hobby recognizing that Tiger (even with his current distractions) need never feel threatened. Golf is a hobby, not a career.

If you look at the single biggest reasons for "failure" in the employment environment they are around "fit" not technical competence. The numbers are pretty scary too- exceeding 30% at the C level and even higher at lower levels. How many of us know colleagues who are "living quiet lives of desperation" performing a job where they are not very engaged or frankly a great fit. I feel for these people even though by some measures they are "successful".

Maybe I just continue to be contemplative because of the recent events of my role models. Maybe it is the season. Maybe this "fit" thing is overrated. What do you think?

The Power of Example

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

I had the opportunity this week to attend two very different functions that had some interesting parallels.

The first was a "transition" or retirement party for an executive that I admire a great deal. I have known him for a long time and in candor there have been a number of occasions where our viewpoints were at odds. What I found consistently about him however; was that our disagreements never started or became personal. He possesses a clear set of values and a personal vision that although I might not always share I always appreciate.

As I listened to people who had worked with him over a 35 year career describe him they consistently used words like; integrity, honesty, ethics, vision, faith, humility, and passion. I recognized that those words resonated with me in my own experiences with him. He is tough minded yet compassionate, a strong negotiator, but never for his own personal gain.

People who worked for him would describe him as visionary, task driven, and demanding of excellence from himself and others. I doubt many would describe him as warm, but a compassion and empathy emanate from him as well as a quiet courage.

He has faced adversity both in his professional and personal life, but you get a sense that he strides on with his mission in view and his values intact. An example to peers, subordinates, and colleagues. His departure will leave a hole, I have not encountered many of his ilk of late.

The other individual in some ways couldn't be more different. His transition was sudden and unexpected. He died during an accident harvesting firewood on his ranch. He was a rancher and community leader who spent his life doing what he loved as a steward of the land that his family has owned for generations.

I met him several years ago in a small country church where he was speaking to a men's group about his faith and how it called him and changed him. I got to know him much better later as part of a community group and as a political candidate. In some ways we were unlikely allies. He was a man of the land and passionate in his conservative Christian beliefs. I have spent a good deal of my life in more urban and corporate settings. While I consider myself to be Christian I am more wary of the restrictiveness of organized religion, especially when it imposes strict boundaries.

We spent a lot of time together one on one and I found him to be a highly discerning listener and a man who while he held his own beliefs firmly was very capable of respecting the views of others; a characteristic I find rarely and appreciate more as I get older.

When I was running for office I found myself on the "wrong" side of a pretty controversial issue. As a major fundraiser and supporter who had traded on his own reputation to build support for me my position put him in an ackward spot. I remember when we met one on one to discuss it and at the end of our discussion he told me "now that I understand your position I agree with you." His steadfast support of me caused both my supporters and detractors to scratch their heads. In their minds we were polarities. They couldn't have been more wrong. We shared a common conviction that the common bond that is critical to all successful human systems is relationships and that you should endeavor to find the points of agreement rather than contention. I lost the election, but I have to say that the process of running for office and creating relationships like the one I shared with him made that experience one of the most worthwhile endeavors I will likely ever engage in.

One was an executive who through his leaderhip position and commitment leaves a legacy of organizational structure, strategic vision, and mentees and colleagues who will carry on his legacy. The other was a rancher, community leader, and "elder" who touched hundreds through engagement with his community, his church, and his friendship. The commonality; they don't talk about their values they live them onstage everyday for everyone to see.

When it is my time to "transition" or to depart I hope to follow their example and for people to think of me not in terms of what I possessed, but rather what I leave behind. Skip and Lee, thanks for setting an example for me and others.