In Pursuit of Excellence

Dear Sir:

My name is John Everyman, and I’m one of the hundreds of people who work for you. Like me, many of my co-workers have started working here fairly recently after losing their jobs. You probably haven’t had a chance to get to know many of us or what we did before we came here, but that’s understandable. Since we’ve been working side-by-side, I’ll help you get to know a little about them.

Many of my co-workers have had impressive careers and responsible, important positions. Laid-off teachers. Highly skilled craftsmen. Entrepreneurs whose businesses have failed. College graduates, some with masters degrees. Ex-soldiers who risked everything. Parents who are successfully raising families, and grandparents who have already succeeded in that most-important job of all.

Since you don’t know me, I wanted to tell you a little about what I did before I came here. I managed thirty people and a seven-figure budget. My salary was quite a bit more than the wage I earn now, but that’s alright. These days money isn’t everything like it used to be. I have a lot to be grateful for…I’m working. You have no idea how frustrating it was hearing over and over that I was “too qualified” for other jobs I had applied for before this company finally gave me a chance.

In spite of my years as a captain, I haven’t forgotten how to be a good soldier. But now that I’m back to taking orders rather than giving them, I realize that I did forget some things that are very important to the troops in the trenches. I was a manager for so long I forgot what it felt like to be just a “regular person” on the front line. That’s not to imply that you’ve forgotten too. But just in case, I want to share this with you.

Some of the best people in the world reported to me. Those same people work here. While we may be the best, we’re easy to please. Nothing that matters to us costs much of anything! My co-workers and I…

• Want to help! Is what we know, see and think important to you? If so, show it to us now and then. For starters, just let us know you are really listening, that what we say is registering with you.
• Need to know we are making a difference, and we need to know how we’re doing.
• Need to know that we’re appreciated.
• Need a compelling vision to commit to; without that all we can do is comply to the direction we’re given. There’s a big difference.
• Are good soldiers. But we need clear marching orders from leaders we trust, before we will feel safe laying it on the line.
• Need a chance to better ourselves, not just through raises or promotions. We need opportunities to learn more, do more, apply ourselves more. People need to grow.
• Need to feel like our talents are being fully utilized in our jobs. Did you know that “wasting talent” is now one of the official Eight Wastes of Lean Thinking? Talent is a terrible thing to waste.

These are the same things that my employees needed more than anything else I could have given them, and these are the basics that I lost sight of in my years as a manager. I was too busy juggling the accountabilities of the position that I had far too little time to devote to the people who were capable of making or breaking me in that position.

My family has adjusted our standard of living and we’re doing alright, especially considering the economy. This job means a great deal to us-I need the paycheck and the benefits more than you can even imagine, unless you’ve recently been without one or the other or both. I really don’t care about “position” and I’m sure many of my co-workers are like me in that respect. But if I ever do get back to a position where I am once again responsible for leading others, I have learned some valuable lessons that I will not forget.

I hope you have not forgotten those things, because that’s easy to do. We’re counting on you.

Sincerely,

John

Behind the Everyman Letter

Talent Wars

Before the downturn, the big scare was a projected shortage of talent of significant proportions. But employee retention is still a key issue; and it is black and white demographics. The number of those entering the workforce over the next few decades does not even come close to being able to replace the droves of retiring boomers. At the same time, education attainment levels are plummeting-smaller percentages of young people are graduating from both high school and college.

The talent pool is evaporating, and the impacts cannot be ignored. Fewer workers, lower skilled.

It’s more than numbers that is scary. Those boomers who do retire will be taking with them the years of experience and knowledge that built most of the companies they are working for. They are the long-term do-ers and leaders of business and industry.

Career Shifters

Countless people have recently transitioned into new jobs, many of them taking a substantial cut in pay, position, and responsibility. Some may have taken a “lesser” job just to survive, others may not mind staying where they landed even when opportunities open up again. Their new employers don’t recognize the importance of this fact. When the downturn eases, many highly skilled, experienced people will be looking for meaningful jobs if they feel they can do better. Or, does their current job satisfy them enough to entice them to stay? The opportunity to create a high-involvement, highly engaged work force will never be greater. The highest quality raw materials are readily available.

People Who Need People…

It’s no secret that your people determine your success. From The Global Workforce Study, Towers-Perrin 2007:

While many factors can trigger failure, the most critical is often overlooked: people. Lack of support, buy-in, and readiness at all levels — your employees, frontline managers and CEO — makes the difference between an abandoned initiative and one that contributes to your company’s growth. 

The downturn has elevated the need for engagement. BlessingWhite noted in their 2009 report Uncertainty’s Antidote: Three Leadership Imperatives:

Now you need employees to stay focused and productive despite taking on the ghost work of laid-off colleagues, paused pet projects, eliminated perks, ever-shifting priorities, and the distraction of the latest market headlines telling them their 401k’s have been crushed again. Employee engagement is essential.

Retention, and the Payoff

If you manage to land good talent, you’d better work hard to hold on to it. What factors impact overall job satisfaction, and therefore retention? Forget the bottom level basic survival needs of the Maslow model. The work force is craving much more than just pay and benefits. I’m not a researcher, and I don’t care to list yet again the mountains of studies and data to validate this, but the studies are out there. Fact:

Companies with higher levels of engagement also experience greater profit, productivity and retention rates.

The bad news: you cannot buy engagement. The good news: engagement costs nothing.

This post briefly describes the elements of a Human Resource Development (HRD) system (see diagram), and how the elements are integrated in an ideal system.

People flow effortlessly without friction through an integrated human resource development system, just like product and work flows through any production process. “Integrated system” simply means that all the processes and practices of the HRD system shown below cannot be stand-alone.

The critical input to the HRD system is the company’s strategy, and the most important element that aligns all the HRD processes to strategy is the job write-up, or position specification.

 Integrated HRD Starts With Alignment, the Position Spec is the Enabler

What is the company’s strategy and what are the key challenges the company faces? How does each function and its positions support the strategy and help to address the challenges? The job write-up is the justification for a position’s existence. The write-up must clearly connect the position to strategy, and describe how the position helps support the strategy and achieve goals.

Strategy is cascaded down through the company, as goals are set with increasing levels of specificity. Accountability is established until each function and each position is clearly aligned with the top and is directly responsible for a portion of the strategy.

Promotions, hiring and placement decisions are driven by the position spec. The position spec serves as the basis for recruiting and interviewing, and eventually placing a person into a vacant position. If the company knows what positions will come vacant through known attrition (retirements, promotions, backfills). The write-up for the position being vacated is the list of qualifications the successor will need (succession management).

People are groomed for advancement ahead of the need and are ready to move up when the need arises, minimizing the impact of attrition. The performance management process is the planning and monitoring tool for development of employees, and provides essential input to the training and development function. Input from performance management plans is used to determine the curriculum for meeting the developmental needs of individuals and the position needs of the company.

THE KEY POINT from ENGAGEMENT On-the-Job, PHASE ONE  was that the recipe for high engagement has three main ingredients:

1. Alignment and clarity of direction, goals and expectations;
2. Satisfaction driven by connecting with an individual’s values or motivators and strengths; and
3. Delivering results.

PHASE TWO gets complicated as there can be different outcomes after the initial newness wears off. To engage, or not to engage….that is the question.

PHASE TWO: Making the Turn to High Engagement

With experience and time, people in new assignments gather momentum and they begin delivering results of substance. Goals are established that are aligned with the company’s larger goals and efforts and strengths became more of a high-powered rifle than the shotgun they were previously.

As this topic took shape, it became clear that the impact of leadership style on engagement is a very important “AHA”. I was in Phase Two on at least three occasions, with one key difference—the leadership style of the manager to whom I reported. Here are a few of my paths to engagement and, unfortunately, disengagement. These are presented in universal terms where possible. Can you relate?

PHASE TWO(a). My leader was as new as I was to the greenfield project. He was my “manager” on the org chart only, and we worked as equals in every other respect. We had different strengths and complemented each other very well. It took time to make the turn but we both became very highly engaged, producing results and highly satisfied. We were ‘in the zone’ and winning championships… PHASE THREE: the Home Stretch.

When my manager retired, I was fortunate enough to get a new manager who was also very hands-off, and who had a complementary set of strengths to mine. Again, we worked extremely well together. The string of championships continued without missing a beat until that manager took an opportunity outside of the company.

POINT: new leader transitions can be seamless. It takes more than luck; it takes an intuitive leader, a good fit, and a conscious effort to make the transition smooth with minimal disruption. Minimal damage to existing levels of engagement is the payback.

PHASE TWO(b). Same assignment as 2(a), but with yet another new manager who was new to the department, new to the work. This manager was eager to learn everything there was to learn, which translated into micro-management. I was expected to provide a detailed accounting of everything I had done and everything that was in process, in an endless stream of status update meetings. Result: I disengaged. My satisfaction was terminal, and my contribution level suffered as well. It seemed at least that I was expected to account for my work so much that I couldn’t continue contributing, and the work environment was painfully in conflict with my core values–creativity; learning new and different things; freedom from unnecessary constraints.

I found a new assignment ASAP even though it meant leaving behind work that was a very short time ago truly engaging.

COUNTERPOINT: new leader transitions can be disastrous, shattering high levels of engagement and derailing productivity in the process.

PHASE TWO(c). A different greenfield project, a different manager who knew as little as I did in the initial phases. The start-up team was larger, the project was complex and task-intensive, and goals were more clearly defined than in 2(a). The six start-up team members possessed complementary strengths, and we all had specific tasks to manage. As a good deal of coordination was necessary among the independent tasks, the project manager was detail-oriented and hands-on, a.k.a. a micro-manager, out of necessity. But it was OK by me and the others.

While we may not have been highly engaged in the initial period, we got there quickly. All we needed was a little time to grow.

POINT: the same leadership style can either work well or lead to disengagement, depending on the circumstances. Even what would be perceived as micro-management may be appropriate, even for someone like me who has an intense aversion for unnecessary constraints. Hersey and Blanchard (situational leadership) had it right.

With all this introspection on my life in terms of engagement and disengagement, I think I’m getting closer to taking a shot at defining engagement—my original self-imposed challenge. But not yet. I do know it when I feel it or don’t feel it, though. Maybe that’s the definition…you know it when you feel it.

?

PHASE THREE: the Home Stretch.

A substantial challenge is emerging from this essay…how do you keep highly engaged individuals in the zone of high satisfaction, maximum contribution? Coming soon…what’s all the buzz about strengths-based leadership? Why not the good old “acceptable level of competency”?

Engagement is getting a lot of airplay and appears to be an important concept…. whatever it is. The ongoing challenge: come up with a working definition for engagement. In Getting Personal Part One, I tried to more clearly define engagement by tracking my own level of engagement through my music career based on four “truths”. OK, “truth” may be stretching it. My opinion only.

This musical reminiscing was relevant to engagement in business. But here I am going to track a portion of my career path against those same truths, in more universal terms. My hope is that this personal analysis will help develop an operational definition of engagement, for my own sanity if nothing else. The four “truths” below are reworked a little from Getting Personal ONE:

ONE: engagement is highly personal, as it is based on an individual’s core values (motivators, drivers). My core values include creativity; learning new and different things; freedom from unnecessary constraints.

TWO: engagement is more than feel-good stuff. For engagement to be considered to be worth pursuing by decision-makers, it has to add value to the bottom line. It can’t just be “I love my job and I’m working pretty hard too.” I favor BlessingWhite’s model of engagement (sign up for access to The State of Employee Engagement 2008 — North American Overview. See pp 3-4) which defines engagement as that rare state where maximum satisfaction and maximum contribution peacefully coexist.

THREE: I need to fully utilize my strengths to be fully engaged. A strength is more than just “talent” or being good at something. A strength is a skill that I get satisfaction out of utilizing because that particular skill means a good deal to me—it fits my motivators or core values.

FOUR: a person’s level of engagement, even in the same position or career, is not a carousel, it is a roller coaster. My roller coaster was great fun, and I’m sure many of you have been on the same ride, some of you several times around as I have.

I’m going to break the ride down into phases.

PHASE ONE: out of the gate. On a few different occasions I was placed in a new position where I really didn’t have a huge amount of expertise to start out with. A couple of these were greenfield initiatives with nothing but a blank sheet going in–no predefined goals or expectations. I was happy as heck with these assignments as they fit my motivators, and I worked really hard at making things fly. I was contributing, but was I a top contributor of results? Certainly not initially.

Engagement Pluses: motivators met, satisfaction high; strengths utilized, decent level of contribution.

Engagement Minuses: low level of alignment; little clarity of direction. The alignment and direction  elements were works-in-process. I was providing little bottom line impact, which was expected and acceptable in start-up phase. Still, the “contribution” factor drove my overall grade down: not bad at all, but still not totally engaged. “B-minus”…there’s still room to improve.

KEY POINT: the recipe for high engagement has three main ingredients:

1. Alignment and clarity of direction, goals and expectations;
2. Satisfaction driven by connecting with an individual’s values or motivators and strengths; and
3. Delivering results.

PHASE TWO: making the turn to high engagement gets complicated as there can be different outcomes after the initial newness wears off.

To engage, or not to engage….that is the question.

I’ve seen a recent spike in viewers on the topic of “engagement” and thought it might help you find what you’re looking for if you had a roadmap of recent posts on engagement here at In Pursuit of Excellence. The following posts explore engagement in both the academic and business / industry worlds, as they are very much related.

The Business Case for Alignment and Engagement  is a lengthier piece that details a good amount of data and estimates for how engagement impacts execution and productivity. 

What IS Engagement Anyway?  One of the focal points for In Pursuit of Excellence is “engagement”.  So…what IS it anyway? In exploring the blogosphere, I came away even more confused than when I went in. There is huge disparity of experience-based opinion among practitioners. Add all the academic debates, studies and dissertations on “engagement”….forget about it! I made a stab at concocting a working definition for engagement in this three-post series:

1. Engagement Per Commercial Authorities: three heavy hitters weigh in on engagement: Towers-Perrin, Gallup Management, and BlessingWhite.
2. Engagement: the Gap Between Academics and Shop Floor. Framing, for my own clarification, some of the academic language surrounding engagement…. Studies, dissertations and meta-analyses of the previously established constructs of satisfaction, commitment, involvement and motivation… Operations managers need plain talk, centered around results. They don’t live in the world of studies, constructs and dissertations. The quickest route to a manager’s stonewall is to espouse theory without substance.
3. Engagement: Now We’re Getting Personal!  The challenge: come up with a working definition for engagement. Not easy, but I’m going to give it a shot based on four attributes I hold as truths. OK, not “universal truths” but my opinion.

Let the Rabbits Run  is a great parable from the book Soar With Your Strengths by Clifton and Nelson. This book is a classic in the strengths-based leadership field pioneered by Gallup Management. The more a person has the opportunity to utilize their strengths, the more they are fully engaged.

Engagement Goes to School. The hypothesis: high school kids are disengaged in both their education and in thinking about their future….education is perceived to be irrelevant to their future. The underlying issue: students are not engaged in any kind of “future thinking” to even know what is, and isn’t relevant to them. An even deeper issue…teachers, and parents too, are also disengaged.

The High Cost of Student Disengagement?   The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools, a McKinsey report, predicts that the U.S. GDP would be $1.3-2.3 trillion higher if the achievement gap between the United States and its international peers were closed in 1998.

Meaningful School-to-Career There is a good deal more to be said about this topic, a definite work-in-process. If students saw the connection between what they were doing in school and the rest of their lives, they would become more engaged. In the meantime, the rest of the developed / developing world is kicking US students’ butts in standard achievement scores.

School-to-career requires a real partnership between education and B & I. (pssst…..this is not just an education crisis-this has everything to do with competitiveness in the global economy)

And after all this, I still don’t have a working definition of engagement in twenty words or less…

Engagement-Now We’re Getting Personal!

The challenge: come up with a working definition for engagement. Not easy, but I’m going to give it a shot based on four attributes I hold as truths. OK, not “universal truths” but my opinion. I feel these truths are pretty indisputable, but if you want to challenge any of them we can have some fun with this.

In Post Three, I promised to take a stab at defining engagement. So here comes my personal take on engagement, with examples of what my engagement journey has looked like. What’s your personal take on engagement, and what has your journey been like?

First installment of this “In Search Of” mini series was What IS Engagement Anyway?

Second installment: Engagement Per Commercial Authorities

Third in the series: Engagement: the Gap Between Academics and Shop Floor

ONE, engagement is highly personal, as it is based on an individual’s core values and how fully you are enabled to living those values. My core values did not formally present themselves to me until the middle 1990’s. But these have been with me since early grade school: creativity, learning new and different things; freedom from constraints. Based on the next three attributes and these core values, I can easily track my engagement journey going back many years.

TWO, engagement is not just touchy-feely as it is also based on a person’s level of contribution. BlessingWhite spoke very clearly to me in their definition of engagement as the apex of maximum satisfaction and maximum contribution level. Which again becomes very personal, as contribution is driven by how fully a person is utilizing their unique strengths.

THREE, strengths are more than just “talent” or being good at something. Strengths are talents that are aligned with the person’s core values…when I get a huge amount of satisfaction out of utilizing a skill because that particular skill means a good deal to me.

FOUR: a person’s level of engagement, even in one specific position or career, is not a carousel, it is a roller coaster.

Putting all this together, here are a couple examples of my own engagement roller coaster ride.

I didn’t like school-boring classes, boring assignments. Disengaged. I learned very early how to give myself a believable temperature with tap water. But I didn’t read comic books or watch TV. I studied what I wanted to and the extra credit for projects I turned, and a God-given talent for BS’ing through most tests carried me. Note-this strategy did NOT work in college.

I played music professionally for a lot of years. A great match for my core values, and I was quite good at it. There were some musical endeavors that were extremely creative and the other musicians were great friends. But as my career digressed I discovered I was doing more for money rather than for the love of it. In the most dynamic phase of my music career I had my fully engaging creative band, but also signed on as a mercenary with a couple other bands for the steady money. The wrong music, the wrong juke joints, the wrong personnel, but good money and I was still a maximum contributor. Just disengaged.

When the “disengaging” assignments began to more and more outweigh the engaging, I knew it was time to give it up. That was over twenty years ago. I still hold my love for music, have still played but not in bands until fairly recently. I found a couple of other people who liked the same kind of music, were good to be with, and didn’t need to play for money. Engaged again. We’re even thinking about trying out the next time “American Has-Been” auditions come to Iowa.

I could have just as easily tracked my engagement journey through my post-rock-star professional career. It probably would have been too revealing, and you never know who reads these things.

But I can assure you the four “truths” and my core values have played out at least as much in my second life.

First installment of this “In Search Of” mini series was What IS Engagement Anyway?

Second installment: Engagement Per Commercial Authorities

Source for some of the thoughts that follow, a post from the Employee Engagement Network  titled Academic view vs. practitioners’ view on EEngagement: how do YOU not get confused by this blurry concept?    

Framing, for my own clarification, some of the academic language surrounding engagement…. studies and meta-analyses of the previously established constructs of satisfaction, commitment, involvement and motivation lead to the question of whether “engagement” brings anything new to the table. This is apparently a very hot topic for many practitioners-to-be doing a dissertation thesis.

Ana-Maria, one of the lucky souls doing her thesis on this plate of spaghetti and the creator of this post, wrote “…’buzz’ words like engagement need substance to work.” And Dr. (Scott) J added a little later “I am not fond of “construct proliferation” but realize that engagement is now “the phrase” in the practitioner world.” I think these two comments come as close as we’ll get to hitting one of the key issues head-on.

Personally, I’m comfortable with engagement being an old wine in a new bottle. Maybe we need to market the same wine, for two different audiences, in two unique bottles? Image drives perception, determines acceptance.

Operations managers need plain talk, centered around results. They don’t live in the world of studies, constructs and dissertations. The quickest route to a manager’s stonewall is to espouse theory without substance. Managers have grown up with motivation theory et al, and for most managers even the basic stuff remains nothing but theory to them. As it is, when an organization development practitioner comes at an operations manager with talk of engagement, more often than not the whole thing comes off as nothing more than blue-sky, touchy-feely voodoo for which the manager has no interest.

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been playing around with blogging my thoughts on engagement and other stuff, just to try to get my own hands around it (ouch! Thorny bugger…). I am having a hard time agreeing with myself on this.

Ana-Maria’s post and the responses expose the core issue, and from what I’m gathering from ‘old-timer’ comments on the Employee Engagement Network this is a repeat discussion, a never-ending quest. What is desperately needed, I think, is a common-sense interpretation of engagement that appeals to those people we practitioners serve. A meta operational definition of the word, but also broken down into a context that makes sense to the specific organization. Then, what specifically engagement is capable of delivering to the bottom line, and how you go about “engaging” people. That’s our Holy Grail.

Coming soon (maybe) ….My Working Definition of Engagement. What’s yours?

Unless otherwise indicated, the following excerpts are taken directly from the sources noted. This post is part of “In Search Of Engagement”…what IS it, how do you DO it? First installment of this “In Search Of” mini series was What IS Engagement Anyway?

Towers Perrin

…our (Global Workforce Study) study paints a picture of a workforce that is energetic, ambitious and committed to working hard and giving its best. Engagement measures the level of connection employees feel with their employer, as demonstrated by their willingness and ability to help their company succeed, largely by providing discretionary effort on a sustained basis.

But turning people’s energy and ambition into engagement – and ultimately into significant performance lift – demands attention, focus and some very different behaviors from senior leaders.

“Head, hands, and heart” …the sum total of these three elements is what we used to measure overall employee engagement levels.

1.      “Head” refers to the rational part of the engagement equation, how employees connect with their company’s goals and values.

2.      “Hands” refer to the employee’s willingness to put in a great deal of extra effort to help the company succeed.

3.      “Heart” is the emotional connection between employee and employer, such as the employee’s pride in the organization.

…engagement is not just part of someone’s DNA from birth. It is definitely possible to increase employee engagement levels among existing workers.

GALLUP MANAGEMENT   

The Three Types of Employees

Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.

Not-engaged employees are essentially “checked out”. They’re sleepwalking through their workday, putting time – but not energy or passion – into their work.

Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

(a side, but critical, thought…what about new people coming into a company? Which way will they lean; what are the influencers? What can be done to tip new people toward engaged?)

BlessingWhite

(Excerpts from The State of Employee Engagement 2008 – short registration required)

Engaged employees are not just committed. They are not just passionate or proud. They have a line-of-sight on their own future and on the organization’s mission and goals. They are enthused and in gear, using their talents and discretionary effort to make a difference in their employer’s quest for sustainable business success.

Employee engagement is a complex equation that reflects each individual’s unique, personal relationship with work. As such, there are limits to what organizations can do with broad-brush workforce processes or communication programs (it’s up to leadership and individual relationships).

The term “employee engagement” means different things to different organizations. Some equate it with job satisfaction, which unfortunately can reflect a transactional relationship that is only as good as the org’s last round of perks or bonuses. Others measure engagement by gauging employees’ emotional commitment to their organization. Although commitment is an important ingredient, it is only a piece of the engagement puzzle.

While organizations are keen to maximize the contributions of each individual toward corporate imperatives and metrics, individual employees need to find purpose and satisfaction in their work. BW’s model focuses on

·         Contribution to the company’s success

·         Personal satisfaction in their role.

We believe that aligning employees’ values, goals and aspirations with those of the organization is the best method for achieving the sustainable employee engagement required for an organization to reach its goals.

Full engagement represents an alignment of maximum job satisfaction (“I like my work and do it well”) with maximum job contribution (“I help achieve the goals of the organization”)

Engagement has been hailed as the secret ingredient to competitive advantage and organizational success. It is an intuitive concept: committed, aligned, and passionate employees are good for the business.

Coming… Engagement: the gap between academics and the shop floor

One of my focal points for In Pursuit of Excellence is “engagement”.  So…what IS it anyway? In exploring the blogosphere, I came away even more confused than when I went in. There is huge disparity of experience-based opinion among practitioners. Add all the academic debates, studies and dissertations on “engagement”….forget about it!

A Right Management press release February 26, 2009 stated that “…engaging employees to ensure organizational alignment and commitment is the most important leadership practice to achieve business goals in tough business times, according to more than half of senior leaders and human resource professionals surveyed…”

The release doesn’t provide a definition of engagement; we’re just supposed to know these things already…

Engagement is most definitely a “buzz word” used ad infinitum by experts and practitioners who have an extremely difficult time putting a handle on just what engagement really is. Or, if they do know, they’re not sharing. Knowledge is, after all, power (please, somebody…share a little of your power here!).

The best I can do is find a definition that works for me. I’d love your take on this too!

Coming soon: language from three key non-academic (aka…”commercial”) sources: Towers Perrin; Gallup Management; and BlessingWhite.

Read My Lips…. “I AM a Good Communicator”  OK, OK…I believe you. But do your people? Why aren’t they getting the message?

It doesn’t matter what size of business, the nature of the business, or the make-up of the work force. The one most–often noted issue in companies is ineffective communication, hands-down.

Do a quick and honest self-assessment:

• Do you absolutely know what it is that your people want and need to know about? If you don’t know for sure, how can you be sure you are communicating the right messages?
• Are the messages being conveyed in the most effective way possible? The right channels, at the right frequency?
• Are the messages relevant, understandable, and most importantly, credible?
• How well do you communicate real-time information that people can act upon?

And the kicker….

• Do you have a consciously crafted communication strategy, or do you just share a lot of information?

Effective communication keeps the team fully engaged in the success of the company, ensuring flawless execution of the strategy and achieving desired results. It is also critical to managing the team through periods of uncertainty and change, making sure the team clearly understands the challenges the company faces, plans to address the challenges, and what their role is.

Any major initiative or broad-reaching change needs a change management strategy, and communication strategy. The sophistication of these strategies is in direct proportion to the size and importance of the initiative or change. Following is a primer on both.

Change Management Strategy

Anything new requires people to do things differently. And it’s human nature to resist change, count on it. (see Change is OK…Just Don’t Mess With MY Stuff) Change management requires, first and foremost, a change strategy, beginning with answers to these questions:

• WHY are we changing? Why Bother? Make the case for change a compelling one. What’s your burning platform?
• Change TO WHAT? Paint a clear, enticing picture of the future. Include goals, objectives and milestones along the way. If it’s a long journey you’ll want to define a few pit stops for the travelers.
• What do you EXPECT of us? Define expectations in clear terms, and make sure that accountability to deliver is crystal clear.
• HOW will we do that? Lay the roadmap on the table, at least in general terms. If you don’t know where you’re going, who is going to follow you?

Once all these questions are answered, the communication strategy to deliver the answers must be developed.

Communication Strategy

Crafting Communication Strategy oversimplified: consciously deciding what needs to be communicated, and how it needs to be communicated to effectively reach the target audience.

Elements of a communication strategy beyond the standard WHAT, HOW, WHO: frequency and duration (how often does it need to be repeated and for how long?) WHY should people care? WHO needs to deliver it? (the messenger. Level and function as well as messenger believability all come into play)

Finally, how can you make sure the messages are effective and not only received, but understood and even more importantly, believed?

Planned, disciplined crafting of both change strategy and communication strategy beats winging it. Simply following the process and answering the questions helps more clearly frame thoughts and action plans. Having a formal strategy provides a consistent message for one-on-one conversations, presentations, meetings, and any print or electronic media. Consistency is especially critical when there are a number of communicators and diverse media that need to deliver a consistent message. Consistency, among other factors, leads to credibility.

What Makes Communication Credible?

• Consistency in message–recurring themes, no conflicting messages or confusing implications. “Walking the talk” applies here.
• Connection to the top validates the importance of the message; and addresses the “why is this so important?” sentiments;
• Connection to the receivers, which is driven by relevance and WIIFM. If you can’t strike a nerve and get the attention of the target audience, you’re in trouble right out of the gate;
• Clarity of the message to ensure full understanding;
• Completeness of the information. Not telling the full story is worse than not telling any story. People tend to fill in the blanks on their own…not what you want to have happen;
• Credibility of the message and the communicator. I hear you, and I believe you!

Common Pitfalls

• Not meeting the basic needs of the receivers—not providing relevant information, or the right information via the wrong channels. Again, what do they want and need to know, and how do they prefer to get the information?
• Communicating everything and anything to the point that the really important stuff is indiscernible-the white noise factor;
• Missing the comprehension level of the target audience—either over their heads or too simplistic. One is techno babble, the other is condescending. Neither is desirable.
• Not including enough “WHY” to go with the information, including connecting the message to the top, both causing the importance of the message to be diminished or lost altogether.
• Not including clear expectations: people stand up and take notice when they get information that includes something that they are expected to do.

This has been a whirlwind tour of a topic that is much more complex than most give it credit for– the greatest reason that ineffective communication is hands-down the #1 prevailing issue in business and industry. We’ll give change management and communication strategy the attention they deserve…don’t touch that dial.

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