No Time for Heroes

 

 

It’s a familiar narrative, the new CEO: bold, brave, and ready to carry the entire company on their shoulders. The question remains, is this truly the time for heroes?

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In the eight years since 2008, The Bedford Consulting Group has hosted dozens of CEO and Human Capital Roundtable events attended by top leaders in Canada’s most resilient and successful businesses. While invitations to these events are limited, the knowledge gained from the gatherings is not. Over the years, these leaders have shared their experiences helping their organizations thrive in an uncertain present and create a more sustainable future. As such, we have identified a number of consistent success factors to win in today’s business environment. In the first of our series, we learn of the death of the hero (circa 2008).

CEOs and executive search leaders often agree; A-List candidates for senior leadership roles in the period before the 2008 financial crisis would rarely make the short-lists for current leadership searches without significant evolution away from one of their key traits of the past – being the hero.

Bedford Roundtable CEOs described how they (or their predecessors) were often promoted in this period based on old school autocratic behaviors that saw them ride in to single handedly save stagnant or struggling firms with “The Plan”. These popular hero CEOs were often effective but also created stiff, hierarchical structures that cannot prepare the firm or its young leaders for our current business climate. If being the stand alone hero is no longer ideal, what does an aspiring leader do differently? Top CEOs suggested three simple points on how to create sustainable change without enacting an idolized separation of the CEO from the company body. 

1: Be Visible, Be Accessible

The hero CEO can often be placed on a pedestal that creates a sense of inaccessibility within an organization. Today’s winning CEO must instead be of the people, not separated by personage. The evolving leader can take a cue from Tangerine Bank CEO Peter Aceto, who has emphasized the vitality of CEO visibility and authenticity in all levels of a business. Aceto himself has been known to put in shifts in the company call centers in order to break down barriers and better understand the needs of the company and the potential for growth from the ground up. Tangerine and similar firms are setting themselves apart by developing this internal, external and online accessibility on an ongoing basis.

2: Recognize Talent No Matter What Package it Comes In

If we are to learn anything from the traditional hero’s narrative that can still be applied to fostering winning businesses, it is that great power does not always come from the places we tend to expect. Whether it is in the C-Suite, HR Leaders, or our workers in the field, today’s leaders must be compelled to act as mentors rather than as idols for new talent. In a 2013 report, the International Labour Organization indicates that we will see a significant shift by 2020 as Millennials step in to comprise half the workforce. Top leaders are already working to engage this population, recognizing their potential without falling into the myth that this incoming workforce is entering with an inherent sense of entitlement. In light of this incoming workforce evolution, CEOs such as David Labistour of MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) continue to emphasize the crucial role of senior leaders in creating a workplace culture and strategy that will keep fresh talent engaged.

3: Promote Engagement and Accountability

We must recognize that there is no such thing as a perfect hero, CEO or otherwise. In order to create sustainable change in our businesses, we must be able to learn from our shortcomings and be willing to share that pragmatic experience. Labistour notes that, “leadership is about being human, and accountability” (Canadian Business, 2016). As such, our CEOs must be able to stand for what they believe in while humbling themselves to be accountable for their mistakes, treating shortcomings as an opportunity for collaborative learning and the development of a new vision for the future.

The real movers and shakers of today’s business environment can still learn from the heroic model, as among other traits they retain the tenacity and vision that came along with it. In the new business world, however, top leaders recognize that, much like the head is useless without the body, the individual is only as strong as their team. Heroes can no longer save the day alone.

© 2006-2016 The Bedford Consulting Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

What Makes An Employee Highly Engaged?

Harnessing the Power of Awe To Engage and Inspire Your Team

When I’m in the wilderness, I love looking up into the sky and feeling awestruck by the magnitude of the universe. It blows my mind when I try to comprehend that that every star is a sun like ours. I feel both tiny in comparison and connected to infinite possibilities.

We’ve all experienced awe. We have those experiences that stop you in your tracks, catch your breath and open your heart and mind.

It turns out these experiences are important because they actually positively affect health and well-being. Studies found people who experience the emotion of awe felt they had more time, were less impatient and more willing to volunteer to help others.

As a manager, you can create experiences that inspire awe as a way to engage your team and bring them closer together. You can use it to sell your product or services more effectively. Or, you can use it to amaze your customers and turn them into raving fans. And why not? As a tool for influence awe is incredibly effective.

As a magician I make awe work for me. I often say I manipulate my audience’s feelings for their own benefit. The experience of awe opens people’s minds, and activates their creativity and problem solving skills. It has the potential to create a deep and meaningful impact.

The more awestruck you are, the better I’ve done my job. As a manager, you can use the same principles to manipulate your team for their own benefit. 

What Inspires The Feeling Of Awe?
While the feeling of awe is subjective, there are a few common traits:

1. The unknown - the pursuit of understanding the unknown inspires scientists, scholars, explorers and enthusiasts alike.
2. Nature - mountains, oceans, natural wonders, exotic animals.
3. Extreme size - what we see in the sky, or through a magnifying glass.
4. Technology - the possibilities of what it allows us to do and the rate it changes.
5. The future, and in some cases the past. We are amazed about what is to come and the history of the world.
6. Mastery - People who have really mastered their craft often are awe-inspiring. Watching a Cirque Du Soliel show is a prime example of this.
7. The unexpected - when your expectations are defied, you can get a moment of wonder.
8. Generosity - acts of kindness, unconditional love and generosity. 

5 Situations In Which Awe Can Help Influence Your Team To Their Benefit

1. When implementing large organizational changes 
Change can affect morale, commitment and productivity. When people become worried, they start becoming focused on their own needs. By facilitating experiences that use awe, you help your team to shift perspective from that of worry to seeing the positive opportunities that change brings. 

2. Resolving conflicts
Conflict is often a result of only seeing things from a single perspective. Awe is a pattern interrupt. By nature, awe expands someone’s thinking.  This is useful when people are stuck in old patterns and need to shift their perspective. 

3. Improving communication
I recently posted about The Empathy Toy - a tool that gets people to experience how easily miscommunications can occur, and elicits self learning and adjustment of communication. Participating in an experience like that creates moments of awe and wonder. 

4. Inspiring Innovation
Awe lurks in the heart of innovation. People who ponder how to fly, go faster or make something more efficient all harness the power of awe. When you want your team to think big, awe is a great way to get them there. 

5. Problem solving
Effective problem solving requires big picture thinking and the ability to see things from different perspectives. Awe helps to inspire new connections and ideas. 

Make Your Team Awesome!

 
Whether you are helping to break the everyday routine to spark some creativity, innovation and problem solving or you need to make changes and resolve conflict, awe is a powerful tool to influence your team members for their benefit.

A little awe can go a long way.

About the Author
Dan Trommater is a Speaker and Magician who transforms passive event attendees into engaged participants with unique keynotes and workshops. By using world-class magic, humour, stories and interactive exercises he delivers a powerful message about learning to see things from other people’s perspective. This provides business and life changing opportunities for those who adopt it.  Connect with Dan on Linkedin and visit him at www.dantrommater.com.

Beware the Silent Killer of Your 2016 Business Plan

Mining for coal is risky business. From cave-ins to machinery or equipment failures and gas explosions to electrocution, dedicated miners face dozens of risks literally every day they clock in and head underground. The greatest danger of all was the build-up of carbon monoxide, a silent killer—because humans can’t really smell it—responsible for the deaths of thousands of workers until modern ventilation systems were introduced in the past 50 years.
The best protection against this silent killer involved bringing a caged canary into the mines. Canaries were the early detection system for dangerous gas. As long as they kept singing, all was well. But a dead canary meant it was time to evacuate—and fast. 

Can You Smell It?
As a business leader, you’re already deep into the first quarter of 2016. The months and weeks you spent planning, designing and presenting business plans for the year are behind you—your strategies are set and your tactics have been carefully adopted. How can you possibly fail?

And yet, year after year, from organization to organization, without regard to industry, size, or competency, we’ve seen business plans fail to generate the returns their leaders so desperately intended.

The most common silent killer: your organization’s culture. 

Why Culture Kills?
Defined simply as “the way your people think and act,” culture has been described by Roger Connors, best selling author of Change The Culture, Change The Game, as having the ability to “eat strategy for lunch.” The fact is, the most brilliant business plans only succeed when the organization’s culture can actually execute on the plan.

So, what’s the equivalent of the canary in the “culture” mine? How can you detect the presence of poisonous gases threatening your success in 2016?

One good early indicator is your measure of employee engagement. And if your organization is like most in the United States—and around the world—there’s undoubtedly work that can be done in this area.

Don’t feel bad; you’re not alone. The Gallup organization recently revealed that 2015 was another disappointing year for employee engagement in the U.S. Just last month, it reported that employee engagement remained stagnant at just 32%—remaining in roughly the same range since first being reported back in 2000. Even more troubling was the fact that 50.3% of employees when polled admitted to being “not engaged” in the work they are doing, and another 16.8% described themselves as being “actively disengaged.” “Actively disengaged?” What does that look like? That means that in the U.S. workforce, nearly one in five workers is going out of their way to undermine, derail, and even sabotage the very plan they are being paid to execute. 

Seeing and Hearing the Hard Things
I spoke with a colleague one time who was so disengaged, he not only hoped that a specific business plan would fail miserably in order to embarrass the leadership team, but he even admitted actually taking personal action to ensure it failed. That kind of disengagement, from the very people leaders are counting on the most to propel a plan to success, is costing American businesses billions of dollars. In fact, Gallup estimates that “actively disengaged” employees cost the U.S. between $450-$550 billion in lost productivity every year. That’s a staggering amount.

Fully understanding what kind of engagement exists in their organizations is critical for leaders when they begin evaluating their culture. Creating a culture where open and honest feedback exists is the easiest and most affordable way to measure engagement. But even in organizations where that practice is common, we recommend that employee sentiment be measured by inexpensive analytical tools. Still, if engagement scores are through the roof, investing in meaningful efforts to improve and enhance your organization’s culture is paramount. 

Making Sure the Lights Are On
The first step in building an enhanced culture, is linked to the creation of clear, distinct, and engaging Key Results. Over the years of partnering with thousands of organizations, our experts report a consistent finding in virtually every company they work with—the lack of clearly defined Key Results communicated effectively throughout the organization.

In the upcoming book, Fix It! Getting Accountability Right (Penguin Publishing, May 2016), authors Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Tracy Skousen, Marcus Nicolls, and Craig Hickman unveil and explore the results of Partners In Leadership’s groundbreaking “Workplace Accountability Study,” which includes data culled from over 40,000 people since 2012. In their study, the authors found to their dismay that most companies only talk about their Key Results—the three or four absolute must-hit goals—during annual planning periods.

Those Key Results might get mentioned. They might even get published. But rarely do even the best companies effectively communicate those Key Results down to every employee in a way that is meaningful, motivational and engaging. In fact, in the Workplace Accountability Study, only 15% of respondents said that company results were “sufficiently defined.” More than 66% of employees stated that priorities changed frequently, creating confusion about what really was most important to their organization. And a mere 7% said that members of their organization effectively aligned their daily work around what was most important to the company. Just 7%! That means that your brilliant business plan, the one you and your leadership team spent months creating, most likely lacks the clarity and cultural support to achieve its true implementation. 

Modernizing Your Cultural Ventilation System
The second step is to systematically and intentionally create a Culture of Accountability where engagement thrives. Every company has its own culture, whether its leader intended it or not. Over the course of the past quarter-century we’ve learned that cultures can be successfully created and that a culture with accountability at its core is the most effective of them all. A Culture of Accountability leads to greater engagement, greater ownership and alignment, and also leads to greater innovation, execution and trust.

Most organizational leaders are well aware of the importance and power of culture. In fact, in 2014, “culture” was the number one business term in the United States. Louis V. Gerstner Jr., former Chairman and CEO of IBM said famously, “I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.” If that’s so, why do so many leaders spend so little time working on the very thing that is likely undermining their own work?

First of all, they don’t know how. We spend billions of dollars educating and training our future business leaders. They spend years in undergraduate studies, get MBAs, then hone their business acumen and skillsets for years in the business world. They can read finance reports, understand the nuances and challenges of M&A, and are masters of strategic creation, implementation and execution. But we spend little to no real time learning about, understanding and creating workplace culture. In fact, the Workplace Accountability Study found that over 70% of leaders polled admitted that their change management efforts are not supported by a simple and effective model that people at all levels can use—clearly demonstrating the lack of focus leaders are putting on managing culture.

Secondly, they believe it takes too long to implement. One study suggests that it takes on average 2.6 years to fully complete true culture change. They get the need, but they need to deliver on this year’s business plan, not the one in 2018. What that thinking misses, however, is the incremental—virtually immediate!—impact that culture change provides organizations. 

Facing the Hard Reality and Overcoming It
Several years ago, while heading up a talented but challenging sales organization, I came to realize that what was holding us back as a company wasn’t the product, marketing deficiencies or excessive competition. What was holding us back was true ownership of the organization’s Key Results as a result of a fractured company culture. The sales professionals were some of the best in the industry, but they had spiraled into a team that spent more time pointing fingers of blame at everyone else rather than embracing the situation and making it better. As a young leader I recognized the problem but didn’t have a clue how to effect the change. Working with a Partners In Leadership consultant we created a plan to inject greater accountability into the organization, clarifying Key Results and introducing simple, effective tools and language into the culture to make the shift easier to make.

I believed the effort would work, but what was surprising to me was how quickly the change took shape. Literally, the day after introducing the language and the tools, I started hearing people using the language and referencing the models. While it’s true that the overall culture shift took many months to complete, the improvements were noticeable immediately and led to record sales that year. Idling on whether or not to implement a change management process can cost your company millions—leaders need to always be working on culture—and sooner rather than later.

To bring it all back, do you remember that coal mine referenced at the beginning of this article? That mine is a metaphor for whatever organization you’re working for, working with, or leading. There is great potential in that organization, potential that your business plan was specifically and painstakingly designed to produce. But without the same level of attention and effort to bolster the culture of your organization, a culture that is always changing and shifting as people come and go and environments change, the true potential of your team, your organization, your company could be in just as much jeopardy as that proverbial canary.

Source: www.ceoworld.biz

Keys to Employee Engagement: 9. Commitment

Published January 21, 2016 | By Ron Jamieson

 

So far, in this series, we’ve talked about ensuring employees have a clear idea of what is expected of them and helping them realize that by providing them the tools to do the job right.  Employees can be inspired by the company’s mission, which can give them a strong sense of purpose.

I’ve seen several organizations where the majority of employees are excited about coming to work every day but a few slackers were enough to bring down the mood in the office.  It can be hard to sustain your motivation if your co-workers undermine all the good work you do by not caring.

So the ninth question in Gallup’s Q12 explores this, posing, “Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?”

 

Gallup suggests this commitment by fellow workers, along with four other measures is correlated with productivity.  When employees, overall, feel their fellow employees share their commitment to the organization, the productivity of the organization increases.

(The other four measures were: “I know what is expected of me”, “My opinions are valued”, “ I believe in the company’s mission” and “Overall satisfaction”.)

Imagine how it must feel for someone who takes pride in their work and who does an excellent job to hand off their work to someone who drops the ball or is careless how they do their part of the task or project.  Similarly, you’ll find in many companies employees who have to correct others’ mistakes or sloppiness so they can hand off to the next operation.  They must feel constantly frustrated.

From a customer’s point of view, shoddy workmanship usually shows up in defective materials.  They have to call in the sales rep to assess the scope of the problem, segregate defective materials and work out some form of compensation as well as paperwork to return the defective goods.  In a worst case scenario, the customer may have to shut down their line and lay off people – then ask for even more compensation for lost work and possibly lost business.

What can you do about this?

One of the easiest ways to start addressing this is by going out on the shop floor (or office) and talk to the employees one on one to work your way through the process to identify which employee(s) are contributing to the situation.

Improving the calibre of their work may simply be a matter of training them or providing the proper tools to do their task right. It might mean modifying the process (by automation, for example) to remove the human element from affecting the outcome.

If the root cause of the problem is attitude, that is a much harder issue to deal with.  It may mean terminating employees.  In some cases, not getting rid of employees who don’t care about their jobs can be seen by employees as weak management or a demonstration that management doesn’t care or lacks commitment to the company’s mission.  You can risk losing your best employees in this type of situation.  So, sometimes terminating bad employees have a positive overall effect on morale and productivity.

Getting out on the shop floor is one way to demonstrate to employees that management cares about what’s happening in the plant. Speaking with them one on one is one way to show that management cares about employees’ opinions.  Correcting problems in the plant shows employees that management can not only act on their input, but also walk the talk.  In other words, they have enough commitment to the company’s mission to make things work.

Talk is cheap. Action gets results.

What makes an employee highly engaged

Seven Things Great Employers Do (that Others Don’t)

For most people, paid work is unsettling and energy-sapping. Despite employee engagement racing up the priority list of CEOs (see, for example, The Conference Board’s CEO Challenge 2014), our research into workplaces all over the world reveals a sorry state of affairs: workers who are actively disengaged outnumber their engaged colleagues by an overwhelming factor of 2:1. The good news is that there are companies out there bucking the trend, and we’ve discovered how.

Over a five-year timeframe, we studied 32 exemplary companies (collectively employing 600,000 people) across seven industries including hospitality, banking, manufacturing, and hospitals. At these companies, the engaged workers outnumber the actively disengaged ones by a 9:1 ratio. To understand what drives that tremendous advantage, we looked for contrasts between them and a much larger set of companies we know to be struggling to turn around bland and uninspiring workplaces.

We found seven elements in place at the companies with spirited employees which are notably lacking in the others. Are all of the seven causes of high performance?   No doubt at least some of them involve virtuous circles. But as a recipe for an engaged workforce, these are ingredients we feel confident in recommending:

Have involved and curious leaders who want to improve. Leaders’ own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors have powerful trickle-down effects on their organizations’ cultures. Leaders of great workplaces don’t just talk about what they want to see in the management ranks – they model it and keep practicing to get better at it every day with their own teams. By displaying a little vulnerability and visibly working on improving themselves, they signal that such engagement is how one gets ahead.

Have cracking HR functions. The best HR people have a gift for influencing, teaching, and holding executives accountable – this is important because many executives rise through the ranks despite not being very good managers. HR experts teach leaders and managers to stretch and develop employees in accordance with their natural capabilities. By the way, when you find cracking HR leaders, hold on to them for dear life: they are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Ensure the basic engagement requirements are met before expecting an inspiring mission to matter. When employees know what is expected of them, have what they need to do their jobs, are good fits for their roles, and feel their managers have their backs, they will commit to almost anything the company is trying to accomplish. Conversely, if these basic needs are not met, even the most exalted mission may not engage them. People simply don’t connect with proclamations of mission or values- no matter how inspiring these might sound in the head office.

Never use a downturn as an excuse. The excuse we hear the most to explain away a lousy workplace is the state of the economy; in periods of belt-tightening, engagement inevitably takes a hit. The experience of the 32 exemplary companies we studied calls this rationalization into question. With few exceptions, they have also had to respond to flat or declining top lines – with structural changes, redundancies, and declining real pay and benefits – and yet not only have they maintained their strong cultures, they’ve improved them. They have achieved this by being open, making changes swiftly, communicating constantly, and providing hope. The truth is that employee engagement is one of the few things managers and leaders can influence in times when so much else is out of their control. Great employers recognize this and they go about managing it in the right way.

Trust, hold accountable, and relentlessly support their managers and teams. The experiences that inspire and encourage employees are local. Strong teams are built when teams themselves size up the problems facing them and take a hands-on approach to solving them. Exemplary companies lavish support upon their managers, build their capability and resilience, and then hold them and their teams accountable for the micro-cultures they create. (There is an important corollary here: the good intentions of a CEO can backfire if he or she charges all over the company trying to fix things personally.)

Have a straightforward and decisive approach to performance management. The companies in our study with the highest engagement levels know how to use recognition as a powerful incentive currency. Indeed, a hallmark of these great workplaces is that they are filled with recognition junkies. These companies see recognition as a powerful means to develop and stretch employees to new levels of capability. Meanwhile, they see tolerance of mediocrity as the enemy. Any action or inaction that doesn’t produce appropriate consequences adds to workplace disillusionment and corrodes commitment.

Do not pursue engagement for its own sake. As it becomes increasingly possible to measure and track engagement accurately, some companies start “managing to the metric.” Great employers keep their eyes on the outcomes they need greater engagement to achieve. One of the best examples we can cite is the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. Ranked number one in the U.S. for orthopaedic surgery by U.S. News & World Report, this hospital needs a high-octane culture to meet patients’ demands. Senior Vice President of Patient Care and Chief Nursing Officer, Stephanie Goldberg, told us that patients expect miracles and her nurses would struggle to get through a single day if they themselves did not feel that they mattered to the hospital. HSS’s nurse turnover is lower than the industry average, let alone the average in hospital-rich New York.

There they are, then: the magnificent seven. Now note how different the list is from the tactics most companies are pursuing as they try to create great working environments. Many make the mistake of prioritizing the easy, shiny stuff – hip office space, remote work arrangements, and inventive benefits – over the elements that will strengthen emotional ties and connect employees more deeply to their managers, teams, and companies. Pity them: If they manage to survive and compete, it will be despite their miserable and confused staff.

Pity their employees more. Our research into a representative sample of nearly all the world’s adults shows that a job has the potential to be at the heart of a great life, but only if its holder is engaged at work. Copious amounts of prose has been devoted to how to make this happen – by making work more fun, funky, and even meaningful – but companies still fail. The exemplary companies we studied have figured out how to establish emotional connections with their staff. It isn’t easy, but if you focus on the magnificent seven, you too can create a company where people love their work.

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Peter Flade is Gallup’s Managing Partner for Europe, based in London, and a member of the firm’s executive committee. He works with company leadership teams to increase organic growth and productivity through a better understanding of employee and customer needs.

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Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist of Workplace Management and Well-Being for Gallup’s workplace management practice. He is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing, an exploration of the 12 crucial elements for creating and harnessing employee engagement. His latest book, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, is based on a global study of what differentiates people who are thriving from those who are not.

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Jim Asplund is Chief Scientist focusing on strengths-based development for Gallup and coauthor of Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter.

9 Things Millennials Can Teach the Rest of Us About Engagement

Search the Internet and you find a ton of theories on how to engage Millennials at work. Fair enough given those born between 1980 and 1999 are tomorrow’s leaders, if they aren’t there already. Yet most research suggests longer tenured employees are the bigger engagement challenge. So why aren’t we asking Millennials to help engage the rest of us versus the other way around?

Millennial stereotypes abound -- lazy, unfocused, entitled, disloyal.... And the reasons range from over-indulgent parenting to advances in technology or, more recently, the massive blow to trust in corporations. However my experience, observing from the cusp of the Boomer and X generations, has been very different.

First off, much of what Millennials want, even expect, from employment is not unique to their generation. “Boomers and Gen X’ers want more leadership, more involvement and ultimately more balance too,” says Youthful Cities co-founder Robert Barnard. “Millennials are just able to scream that much louder!”

The combined voice of Millennials merits a good listen, not just because of its volume but because it makes good sense. Based on many discussions here at Edelman and at other organisations, following are a few tips Millennials might suggest about engagement if given the chance:

1. Frequent, instant recognition. Young employees are not far from their school years where they received consistent, measurable and peer comparable feedback almost weekly from the age of six. Also conditioned by gaming, Millennials have been accustomed to instant, albeit virtual, rewards for achieving new levels of competence. Applied in the workplace, we could all benefit from immediate and specific feedback rather than waiting for the annual or semi-annual review.
2. More productive use of time. I’ve always found Millennials are willing to put in the hours. But they’re not interested in just appearing to be busy. In charge, they'd likely schedule fewer and shorter meetings or conference calls but with focused agendas and action logs. And when our work is done, they’d encourage us to leave and enjoy the rest of their life, always remaining connected if necessary. Better use of time could make us more productive, and frankly more interesting, when we’re at work. Shouldn’t that be a goal for all of us?
3. Short term performance management. Among the stereotypes I see reinforced every day is that Millennials don’t have much patience for long-term promises. Based on seeing their parents often toil for many years with one company only to have the rug pulled out due to the financial crisis or the latest recession, can we blame them? Long-term incentive programs and 10-year career-path trajectories don’t hold much interest. What they do tend to embrace are clear, measurable objectives that are regularly reviewed and challenging short-term assignments, at home or abroad. With rapid change requiring companies to be agile, employees’ ability to be so nimble will be a big advantage.
4. More collaboration. Millennials tend to be very comfortable working in teams. They want to be involved and ultimately share their experiences as widely as possible. For organizations that value teamwork and seek to instill a spirit of advocacy for their brands, Millennials can show the rest of us how to do it.
5. A more explicit employee deal. Full transparency around the expectations between employer and employee has probably always been an engagement driver. If Millennials take it further and shout for a more explicit “employee deal,” that’s a good thing according to Andy Brown, CEO of the UK-based Engage. “Increasingly, organizations are putting in place explicit sets of “terms” that outline what the employer expects from employees in terms of behaviours, effort and delivery. And they also spell out what employees can expect back in terms of development, opportunity, culture and rewards.
6. Meritocracy. Yes, the opposite of entitlement. Millennials consistently hate “waiting their turn” to give input and will run from a traditional, tenure-based workplace hierarchy. By evolving in this regard, organizations surely benefit from environments in which rewards are earned versus entitled.
7. More fun. To truly enjoy their work, Millennials will tell you they need to enjoy their workplace. Open, engaging environments promote inspiration, innovation and collegiality. And friends at the office are the norm versus the exception, making work and life seamless. I recently enjoyed reading HR Magazine's interview with tech firm FNZ’s HR director Daniel Kasmir, who describes the company’s Edinburgh location, complete with a four-pod think tank, kitchen meeting area with pool table and large graffiti wall. If we create a workplace that promotes fun, Millennials are more likely to stick around. As for the balance of us, we just need to lighten up and join in.
8. More purpose. Millennials will consistently tell you they want to work for a company that makes a positive difference. Do they want to have their cake and it eat it too? Perhaps. And why not? Today’s young adults have often had experience of contributing their time and reasonably expect their employer to generate more than a profit as well. Articulating a clear purpose, or "North Star," and actively involving employees in corporate social responsibility programs will reap big dividends.
9. Tailored engagement action plans. While there are many common denominators for engagement across the generations, it’s also true that we value different things as we journey through life’s stages. I think Millennials would advise us to segment our engagement actions and avoid using a “single hammer” to address engagement across everyone as if we were one homogenous mass.

I'd love to see this list extended with more suggestions, but the point is clear. Rather than constantly trying to figure out how to engage Millennials, we can seek their help to engage us. It could be the key to improving the terrible math I referred to in my blog a few weeks ago. Finding the answers will only become more important as retirement ages get pushed back and three or even four generations work side by side in the companies of the future.

Nigel Miller is co-chair Europe CIS Employee Engagement & global director Talent 

Engagement, Edelman.Posted by:Nigel Miller

A CEO’s secrets to successful employee engagement

"Keeping employees engaged means enabling them to “see themselves in the room.”

For people to stay at an organization and feel engaged, they have to “see themselves in the room.” If you have bright young people who don’t see themselves at the top, they’ll punch their time cards and then move on—and that’s a shame. There are a couple of things you need to do to keep that from happening.

First, you need to identify the key people who, with a little mentoring, coaching or outside training, could be promoted quicker than most. Then you make the differential investment to get those people ready. The worst thing you can do is promote a diverse candidate who’s not ready. That sets the individual up to fail and it sets the organization’s diversity efforts back as the naysayers and skeptics say “I told you so.”

The second thing you need to do is take care of the people who have long-term potential. How do you keep them satisfied? The key is to identify who is really great versus who is average. Again, make a differential investment in the great ones so they can continue to move up. For those who are above average, offer them some of the opportunities to improve so they can move from above average to very good. You don’t necessarily need to promote this group to keep them happy—they need to earn it.

Find out what’s really going on at the front lines.
I started having ice cream socials where I would bring 15 people into a room and give them the freedom to speak “anonymously.” To make it work, I made up my mind never to appear insulted or offended. And I had a rule that the only person who could be quoted outside of that room was me. This really helped to promote a safe-to-speak-up environment.

I would also go to our call centers and hold focus groups by myself with the people who answer the phones. It’s amazing what you find out from the people who are doing the day-to-day work when you create a safe environment. HQ has great intentions when policies are created, but sometimes those don’t work out when the rubber meets the road.

For example: the call center folks were evaluated on certain metrics—and one was whether they used the caller’s name six times in a conversation. That’s fine in a two- to three-minute call. But when it’s a simple inquiry, using the caller’s name six times within the 20-second call sounds unfriendly and forced—which completely defeats the purpose. Those moments make you realize that you really need to listen to what’s going on at the ground level.

BPGs are a tremendous resource.
Toyota does a great job with business partnering groups (BPGs) and they host a variety of events throughout the year. I still vividly recall the time I went to an African-American Collaborative (AAC) luncheon. The speaker had me spellbound and it was a huge “aha!” moment for me. Previously, I thought that these groups were more like clubs than working groups. But once I went, I realized how important they can be to the success of the organization.

Since then, I’ve encouraged BPG engagement from the top. The people that run the BPGs meet with key leaders to inform them of their objectives. We also dispel the notion that you have to have a certain background to join a BPG. In other words, you don’t need to be black to get involved with the African-American Collaborative. Anyone can learn a tremendous amount by going. We started with two BPGs in the organization and we now have nine, all of which work together collaboratively.

Show people it’s important to be present by being present.
The other lesson I learned from attending BPG events is that the simple act of showing up has a huge impact. I was stunned by the reaction of others to my being there. They were thrilled that someone at my level would go, and I was thanked time and again. Normally, no one ever thanks me for going to meetings! So I started talking about it. I didn’t mandate that people go, but I talked about the events I went to and what I learned. People think that if it’s important to the boss then maybe they should go, too.

Does your organization have employee resource groups like TFS’ BPGs? Do they get executive-level engagement? 


George Borst, CEO of Toyota Financial Services (TFS), was named the winner of the “Outstanding CEO Award” at our 2013 Women in Leadership Institute™. In September, he retired after 16 years at the helm of TFS. George recently shared what he has learned about leadership and employee engagement throughout the course of his career.  

How to choose a customer engagement strategy that works

By Andy Goodman

Pretend that you work for Pacific Gas & Electric, an energy company serving thousands of homes in northern California. The hot summer months are coming, and if your customers use their air conditioners as much as they did last year, there's a strong likelihood your power grid will fail and blackouts will roll across the state.

To prevent this, PG&E has introduced an energy conservation program called "SmartAC." If a customer enrolls, PG&E will install a switch at their residence that allows the company to remotely control their air conditioner -- and in times of peak demand, that means turning it down or off. The program is voluntary, and there's no cost to the customer for joining.

Which brings us back to your new job at PG&E: head of enrollment for residential customers. Before you start printing up fliers or knocking on doors, though, I have to warn you that the company already has marketed this program in a few areas and customer interest has been low.

Sure, PG&E has told them that it costs nothing, and the company has touted significant public benefits. Not only would there be fewer (if any) interruptions in service, PG&E also could avoid spending billions of dollars to increase generating capacity a massive investment which undoubtedly would raise rates. But so far that public good appears to be trumped by self-interest. After all, who really wants to cede control of their air conditioner on a hot day?

Fortunately, some very smart people have come to you with three strategies to boost enrollment:

Strategy #1: offer a $25 incentive for signing up. Nothing fancy here -- just a good old fashioned bribe to help customers do the right thing.

Strategy #2: post a sign-up sheet in a public space (the lobby of an apartment building) to make the enrollment process more observable. Ask customers to write their names on the list so everyone can see exactly who's in and who's not.

Strategy #3: as above, post a sign-up sheet in a public space but assign each customer a code number to write on the sheet instead of their name. In this way, you're again making the process more observable but are also protecting the privacy of those who sign up (as well as those who don't.)

If you could invest your marketing dollars in only one of these strategies, which would you choose? The correct answer -- based on an actual field study completed earlier this year -- is #2. And by a wide margin.

The field study was conducted in Santa Clara County. While the SmartAC program had been marketed in other parts of California -- with the lackluster results noted above -- it had not been introduced in this county before the field test.

Materials advertising the program were slipped under doors, left on doorsteps or sent via mail to 2,413 PG&E customers. For one group, the materials offered the $25 incentive and no public sign-up sheets were involved; a second group received no cash offer but found sign-up sheets posted in common areas where they were asked to enter their names; and a third group also received no incentive but saw sign-up sheets where they could enter code numbers and remain anonymous.

All of the strategies increased enrollment compared to other regions in northern California, but not to the same degree. The anonymous sign-up sheets increased enrollments three times more than the cash incentives. And the sign-up sheets where customers entered their names were seven times as effective as the cash incentives, making Strategy #2 the clear winner.

Why? 

First, it was superior to Strategy #1 because it took a transaction that was happening out of the public eye and made it observable -- literally could see their neighbors signing up for the SmartAC program. While Strategy #3 also made the process observable, Strategy #2 offered the additional incentive of boosting an individual's reputation for publicly signing on (and, conversely, imposed a cost for not participating). It also tapped the power of indirect reciprocity, a form of cooperation where individuals become more likely to help when they see others helping first. (In fact, the study makes it clear that for indirect reciprocity to really kick in, we need to know the names of the other helpers.)

And what does this mean for you back in your real job? Whether you're asking people to give blood or give money, drive a fuel-efficient car or drive down energy usage at home, bear this in mind: human beings are more inclined to do the right thing when they can see others doing it, and when they know others will see them doing it as well.