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What can we learn about leadership from the actions and experience of other leaders. The bottom line is that a horse won't win any race it doesn't want to win. People work for their own reasons as well. Organizations succeed when their members want to succeed, not just because their managers want them to. The first task of any manager is to make sure the people are highly involved and commited. Traditionally, it might have been enough to be sure your people knew what was expected of them (or else). Today, we know we need employees who do far more than just show up. We need them to make sure everything is running smoothly, and to put their heads together to see if they can figure out a way to make the company even better. Companies need employees who are actively engaged in their work. In my firm's leadership trainings, one of the things we do religiously is to ask participants to measure the level of commitment in their organization. Doing so achieves two goals. First, it clarifies whether this is an area that is worth their leadership effort—it usually is! Second, it helps clarify what exactly we mean by commitment. Here are some of the statements we use to describe commitment in that exercice (which is called POLO, short for Profile of Leadership Opportunities). Would you say that your employees - care deeply about the success of their organization and its work? - are doing productive work right now? - are interested—their work does not bore them? - feel a strong connection to their work group? - feel personally responsible for at least some of the organization's results? - are highly motivated by their work? If you can give a hearty "yes" to each of these statements, then you have a wonderfully high level of employee commitment. What if your answer is a "sort of" or "not really"? That is not bad either, because it means that you have just identified a leadership domain that presents clear opportunities for your leadership efforts. Focus on building commitment and you can expect to see some solid results in your bottom-line measures of sucess. How do you generate high commitment? There are a great many clever ways to tackle this challenge. Hiring Initiative One good way to achieve high employee commitment is to look for commitment and motivation when you screen candidates. Yet companies usually seek people to fill positions based on qualifications—ensuring that candidates have the training and experience to do the job. If you think about it, this simply means we find people who can do the job well, but we don't really know if they will. (I like the distinction between can and will. Commitment is all about the will to do something—which if strong makes up for a lot of "can".) When it comes time to evaluate qualified new employees after they are "in the saddle" we often find ourselves wishing they had a more gung ho attitude, that they took a little more initiative and tried harder. These are the intangibles that determine whether someone will achieve their full potential. That seems to be what motivates Jim Ansara, CEO of Shawmut Design and Construction (Boston, MA). Ansara describes what he looks for when interviewing job candidates. "I'm most impressed when someone has really dug into who we are and what we do. I'm turned off by someone who claimed to have looked into our company, but has done very little preparation. There's no better clue that someoone has no idea why they're here than when they tell us they're really interested in design. Our name is Shawmut Design and Construction, but we haven't done any design for over five years. (San Francisco Chronicle, December 30, 2001) Ansara's approach could be adapted to many firms. Here are some thinking points to consider before you hire: what clues could you look for to find out how much initiative and effort a candidate has put into his or her approach to your firm? Does your current approach allow people to become serious candidates without having to try hard or demonstrate initiative? If so, could this be setting you up for commitment problems later on? Find the "Actively Disengaged" Here's an amazing fact: 20% of all employees (1 in 5) are unclear on what they are expected to do, lack the materials to do their work, or are waiting for information from their boss. As a result they are actively disengaged, meaning they are not doing anything productive right now in their work. A Gallup study revealed this unexpected problem and its most common causes.. Now that we know many people are disengaged and waiting to be put back on track, the obvious leadership action is to keep a sharp eye out for this employee problem and when found, make sure these people get what they need to be productive again. Here is a minichecklist of questions to help surface disengaged employees. Use it when you do a periodic walk-around. Ask yourself, Does the employee: knows that is expected of them? has the materials needed for their job? has anything important they should ask ot tell their manager? If you can't check all three boxes off for every employee, then you know you've got a problem. Now that it is visible, it shoudn't be hard to fix. Give Knowledge and Authority Teams are formed frequently to improve quality and cut errors and costs from work processes. In fact, the improvement team is the most durable take-away of the quality movement and a majority of businesses use such teams. But often they get stuck. They run into a wall and can't seem to make productive changes. Conflict arise, attendance slips, and employees want out. When this happened at a Whirlpool factory's dryer assembly unit, the team was turned around (with the help of consultants at R.V. Armstrong and Associates) by giving team members more authority to self-manage their work, plus giving them additional training in practical tools and techniques needed for process redesign. The team went on to cut overhead, eliminate quality defects, and increase productivity by 70 percent. These sorts of results demonstrate the power of teams without sufficient training exemplify the old adage, "Give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves." But when the authority to make decisions is combined with the knowledge to make good decisions, something magical and everybody wins. Combating Boredom What can you do to increase interest and encourage mental engagement with the work, especially if you sense that employees are falling into a boring routine or are finding their work dull and repetitive? This is a question we often address in leadership trainings my firm runs. Want to try your hand at it? Imagine you have a group of employees who value excitement, and who sometimes feel their work is getting dull and repetitive. How might you use assignments, recognition, rewards, activities, or other treatments to pump up things and add some fun and excitement to their worlplace? Come up with at least six ideas. Here are some ideas we've generated in past workshops. You could purchase one of those relatively inexpensive coupon books (for restaurant, stores, movie theaters, etc.) then cut out a dozen of the best coupons and put them in a box or hat, and have a drawing in which each employee gets a coupon. Then you could have a bnonus round drawing in which one employee wins an extra $50. You could also ask two of your employees to make up a scavenger hunt, hiding clues and prizes for the others. Change for Change's Sake at General Electric Have you ever heard of the "Hawthorne Effect"? At a GE plant in Hawthorne, New Jersey many years ago, researchers experimented with changes to the work environment to find out what might boost productivity. Surprisingly, they found that change itself seemed to have a significant effect. For instance, when they lowered the level of lightning, productivity went up for a while. Same when they raised it. If people are bored, almost any change may help them! Help Employees Develop Strong Ties with Each Other Professor Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School and director of the Center for Human Resources argues that teamwork can help build employees'commitment to each other and thereby boost motivation and retention. In his words "It is easier for employees to feel a commitment to other individuals rahter than an abstract entity such as the company. Leaders like to think that people have a strong sense of loyalty to their employer but that is rarely the case today. A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words To give employees clear, up-to-date information on how things are going, creat a poster-sized graphs or charts in public spaces that treack key measures of success like profits, sales, and quality indicators. If you don't have time to keep charts up to date, ask employees to volunteer or rotate the responsibility. Let Employees Choose Their Bosses The Madison, Wisconsin police police department tried letting employees choose their bosses, and it seemed to work well. A decade ago they introduced a system in which officers are given the opportunity to choose their sergeants and sergeants can select the lieutenant they want to work under. Book, $10.95, signed by the author, reg price $19.95  |
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