Category: Engagement

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Engagement

Free Gifts for Nonprofit Managers

Here are several resources you can use now and in the New Year to help advance your organization’s mission:

These are gifts that are meant to be shared … enjoy!

 

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Engagement Marketing

Quality Service Marketing Joins the World Wide Web

I’m happy to introduce my new website! Until now I resisted the idea, using this blog in lieu of a separate website. So why now – especially given social media’s blending of internet marketing tools?

The decision to have my own website was necessitated by two key factors:

  • the growth of my business – in the past several years since my book was published, I’ve been researched and contacted by more organizations interested in employee-customer care. While my blog contains a wealth of such content written over the past six years, prospects told me they preferred a site where they could get a quicker overview of my work.
  • the growth of social media and my involvement in it (including my recent foray in Twitter) – here, again, I needed a better way to convey my brand to new network contacts.

Special thanks to Spectyr Media for designing and developing www.qualityservicemarketing.net. Yes, Spectyr Media’s principal is my son, Jason … and yes, I insisted on paying him for his professional services and web-hosting. Just don’t ask him about the extra pay he deserved for his patience in putting up with my technophobia!

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Customer service Engagement Marketing Training & Development

What Still Matters: Three Years Later

I’ve been so busy traveling the past few weeks, I forgot to celebrate the third anniversary of my book’s release. Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care was published in October 2007, and sales are still going strong – despite the economy and because of it. As companies struggle to hold onto their business in this downturn, employee and customer engagement are more critical than ever.

In the past three years I traveled coast–to-coast to speak with business and nonprofit professionals who want to strengthen this engagement through internal marketing. What surprised me most is that while I met with marketing and human resources staff (as expected), my audiences were also filled with engineers, nonprofit managers, social workers, association executives, healthcare practice managers, municipal administrators, educators, and software consultants. They willingly shared “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of workplace engagement. (Little shocks me anymore … at the same time, I continue to be encouraged to hear what works.)

Looking back over the past three years, here’s what I’ve learned from these diverse audiences:

  1. Engaging employees and customers with internal marketing is intuitive, but not intentional enough – managers need reminders to “take care of employees to take care of customers.”
  2. Even with restructuring/downsizing/hierarchical flattening, too many organizational silos remain – employees continue to feel disconnected and disenfranchised.
  3. Management-by-wandering-around (MBWA) is making a comeback – while this practice isn’t as popular as it used to be, it hasn’t gone out of style.

Employees want and need to feel their work matters. Together with customers, they want to know that they are respected and valued.Why is this so difficult?

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Engagement Marketing

Workplace Success Starts Here

A strong culture depends on leaders who strive for success from the inside out. They truly recognize and respect their employees and are diligent in engaging and partnering with them. Unfortunately, some CEOs only recognize their people as a “most valued asset” in the company’s annual report.

Note: Debra Semans and I will address how to build a strong workplace culture at the Internal Branding & Internal Marketing: Strategic Integration for Market Leadership program we’re presenting this week in San Francisco and again in Atlanta in February 2011.

“Companies that had a strong culture going into this terrible time over the last 18 months and companies that really do care for their employees are the ones that did much better through this difficult time.” 
– Diana Oreck, VP-Ritz-Carlton Hotel Global Learning & Leadership Center,
Marketing News interview

Re-Engage authors Leigh Branham and Mark Hirschfeld said it best:

“If you begin your branding process by declaring an ‘aspirational brand’ without aligning it with the reality of employees’ daily work experience, you are in danger of writing a check your culture can’t cash.”

 

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Engagement

Engaging Employees in a Market-Focused Culture: Interview with Chris Brown (Part 2)

Here’s the continuation of my interview with Chris Brown, MarketCulture Strategies.

QSM: Cross-functional collaboration and support are also necessary for employee engagement. Do you find the lack of collaboration in companies is related more to the organizational structure itself, especially those with entrenched silos? Or is it with problems related to internal communications – lack of management communications training, internal politics that impede information sharing, etc.?

Chris: Poor internal collaboration results directly from poor organizational structures: rigid groupings, polarizing reward systems, competing interests, etc. Employees work and live within these structures. Their behaviors reflect them, not the other way around. It is management’s job to build and shape these structures in a way that creates adequate collaboration.

For example, W. L. Gore, the maker of GoreTex™ fabric and other specialized materials, has largely done away with formal structures. It’s one of the 200 largest private firms in the U.S., but outside the c-suite, employees do not have official titles. Work sites are kept small, below 200 employees. In lieu of formal structures, employees build informal relationship lattices to get work done across the organization. It’s a lot of work, especially for leadership, but it results in rampant collaboration by employees. To borrow a line from the “Field of Dreams”, if you build it, it (collaboration) will come.

QSM: What are some creative approaches to improving internal collaboration?

Chris: It’s a mixture of informal and collaborative structures. For example:

  • Creating cross-functional meeting structures that require regular interaction
  • Rotating employees for short periods of time to allow them to live in the other “silo”
  • Mixing functions and groups during breaks, lunches, and in the workplace layout
  • Engineering cross-functional/cross-group interdependence into reward and evaluation systems
  • Group newsletters/circulars/blogs.

Collaboration like everything else needs to be designed on purpose. It is up to the leadership to work out how to create the right conditions for it to flourish.

QSM: These are great ideas, Chris. Thanks for taking the time to share a bit of your expertise with us!

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Engagement

Engaging Employees in a Market-Focused Culture: Interview with Chris Brown (Part 1)

I’m delighted to feature Chris Brown, CEO of MarketCulture Strategies, who works with companies to create customer-focused cultures. I met Chris recently and was intrigued with his company’s mission (“Help leaders measure, enhance and maintain a strong market culture as a means of competitive advantage”) and vision (“Spark and sustain a cultural revolution that inspires employees, delights customers & rewards shareholders”).

MarketCulture offers the Market Responsiveness Index, a web-based benchmarking tool that evaluates companies on key characteristics of business performance and competitive advantage. Two of these characteristics are critical to employee engagement:

  • Strategic Alignment – how well employees “understand and enact the vision, mission, objectives and strategic direction of the company”
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration – how well employees “interact, share information, work with, and assist colleagues from other work groups.”

[Note: this is the first of a two-part interview that focuses on corporate culture and strategic alignment.]

QSM: Chris, let’s start with the big picture. How does corporate culture impact a firm’s success?

Chris: Corporate culture shapes what we do (behavior) and how we do it (performance). Culture is a tough concept for many people to get their hands around, so a simple way to think about it is ‘the way we do things around here.’ Ultimately, it is like an invisible but powerful set of expectations that influences the way people work in organizations.

QSM: Engaging employees requires that they have a clear “line of sight” to the company’s strategy, goals, and objectives. In your experience, what do you find is the biggest obstacle to achieving this strategic alignment?

Chris: The reason alignment can be an issue is simply because of change. The dynamic nature of markets means that companies need to change quickly to lead or adapt to market shifts. Strategic alignment is illusive for most because our success breeds failure. It’s human (and organizational) nature to rely on what has worked in the past. When we are successful, we don’t want to change what we are doing. Instead, focus is often shifted inward toward maximizing dollars from our current alignment. But then once the market shifts, we’re stuck focused inwardly. We’re not ready to respond, so we miss the boat.

[Note: This interview continues in my next post with Chris sharing ideas on effective internal collaboration.]

 

 

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Engagement

Observing Boss’s Day: Celebratory Lunch or Lawsuit?

Just in time for National Boss’s Day, October 16, 2010 – I know of an insurance company and law firm who are co-presenting a seminar entitled: “Suing the Boss – A Guide for Prevention.” This timely topic is based on an increase in employee-employer lawsuits spurred by the recession.

Despite all the “how-to-be-the-best-in-business” books, workshops, and executive coaches available, there are still many bad bosses. (Maybe that’s why we have all those books, workshops, and coaches?!)

Consider this conversation about a boss pushing back on the subject of employee engagement.

Boss: “It’s not my job to make my employees happy!”
Consultant: “It’s not your job to make them miserable either!”

My suggestion to the bad bosses out there: get your act together – if not because it’s the right thing to do, at least to minimize your liability.

And my suggestion to those employees fortunate to work for good bosses – let them know you appreciate them every day, not just Boss’s Day.

[Source of boss-consultant conversation adapted from Re-Engage by Leigh Branham and Mark Hirschfeld.]

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Engagement

The New Strategic Imperative: Stop Before You Start

“Leaders don’t stop. Leaders don’t remove. Leaders just add to the things they expect to be done, and then are surprised that people feel hopeless and disengaged.”  – Jim Haudan, author of The Art of Engagement

I’ve seen this situation in many organizations – both for-profit and nonprofit. Struggling to do more with less to cope with economic pressures (including with fewer employees), management tends to keep adding strategic directives without taking any away. The combination of increased workload, information overload, and multi-tasking to keep up with it all, is a dangerous condition resulting in employees feeling overwhelmed at not making any progress. Is it any wonder that they disengage before they withdraw or implode?

In some organizations, management seems to have a limitedattention span as it follows a strategy-du-jour. In some nonprofits, the situation may also stem from initiatives that seem to take on a life of their own, in which management continues to automatically sink resources in such programs/events/activities without stepping back to address “Why are we doing this? Is it still relevant to our mission and our market?”

The best way I know to help prevent piling on strategic initiatives is to STOP – FOCUS – and LISTEN.

  • Before initiating any new strategies, take the time to STOP and consider what you’re asking of your employees. For example: Are our new plans realistic given our organization’s resources and capacity? Will our employees be able to handle the organization’s new initiatives without undue burden?
  • FOCUS your strategic intent by asking: What resources and/or trade-offs are necessary to secure employee commitment? If we weren’t already doing this [existing program or activity], would we start now?
  • LISTEN and take into account employee ideas and concerns: Do employees clearly understand our new direction and the rationale behind it? What ideas/suggestions do our employees have to effectively execute the new plan(s)?

So “do not pass ‘Go’ and do not collect $200” if you’re not prepared to STOP-FOCUS-and LISTEN …  unless you want a “monopoly” of employee disengagement and burnout.

 

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Engagement

The Legacy of Poor Management Communications

How long lasting are the effects of poor management communications? They may be longer than you think.

That was the takeaway from a recent executive retreat I facilitated for a client. The current management team is relatively new – comprised of a few VPs who came from outside the organization and several who came up through the ranks and had reported to members of the previous administration. During the retreat, this “new” team focused on improving internal communications.

In their discussions, they acknowledged their frustration in continuing to deal with the erosion of trust and related fallout from poor communications by previous administrations that tended to play politics with each other to achieve personal agendas. Some of the former VPs were also inconsistent in sharing information with their respective divisions. I recall one former VP who proudly declared he shared limited information on a “need to know” basis only – so his employees were left to fend for themselves when it came to learning most top-down information.

The cumulative result of poor management communications is that the current management team is challenged in dealing with the “working wounded” (including some of the VPs themselves). Among the problematic issues they face, they cited:

  • employees’ reluctance to express their opinions or ask questions
  • inconsistent sharing of information between and within departments
  • “political fiefdoms pushing agendas,” and employees’ lack of understanding of how the new management team operates (different from the old guard’s penchant for playing politics).

How will they meet this challenge? By working to create a “safe place” for discussion … being willing to engage employees in discussion … listening and responding to employee ideas and concerns … and demonstrating trust and respect in all their communications with employees and each other.

Knowing my client’s commitment to improving organizational communications, I’m confident members of the current administration will be able to turn the situation around. They’re also smart enough to know that it won’t happen overnight – re-building trust takes time and patience.

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Engagement

“The Art of Engagement”

I scout out and read a lot of employee engagements books to recommend in this blog and my workshops. My latest recommendation is The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gaps between People and Possibilities by Jim Haudan, CEO, Root Learning. This book provides a framework to bridge the great divide that exists between organizational strategy and execution: specifically, how to effectively implement strategy “through” (rather than “despite”) people by ensuring that people actually understand and embrace a company’s business strategy. (What a concept!)

Setting the foundation for his engagement framework, Haudan explores the roots of engagement as being based on four qualities that people want:

  1. to be part of something big, something special, so that their work is associated with a “sense of substance, importance, pride, and direction”
  2. to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of connection
  3. to go on a meaningful journey, so that their work is invested in something that matters
  4. and to know that their contributions make a significant impact or difference, that their efforts matter.

He also uncovers the reasons for disengagement and disconnection based on listening to employee “voices from the trenches.” Employees can’t be or stay engaged when they:

  1. feel overwhelmed with too many or conflicting directives from management
  2. don’t understand what the business is all about, what’s expected of them
  3. are afraid that their work isn’t valued or don’t feel it’s safe to speak up
  4. don’t see how the various parts of the business connect (“the big picture”)
  5. don’t have a sense of ownership of business issues and aren’t fully involved in problem-solving and offering ideas.

Haudan recognizes that every organization has major gaps (“canyons”) between its leaders (“who see what need to be done but don’t have their hands on the levers of change”), its workforce (“who have their hands on the levers of change but can’t see the big picture”), and its managers (“hopelessly caught in the middle”). Here’s a great description of the situation:

In reality, leaders almost always conceptually outrun their engagement and execution supply lines. … Leaders spend months and months developing a strategy – considering, contemplating, contrasting, and dismissing all the alternatives and possibilities for future success. When they’re finally done, they usually craft this into a “strategy-in-a-box” and ship it off to their people. Then the leaders wonder why their employees don’t get excited about it immediately. Their employees can’t realize how critical the strategy is because they have no idea what went into its creation.”

So, how do you bridge these canyons? Haudan provides specific recommendations for leaders, managers, and individuals that include:

  1. creating a “line of sight” that links organizational strategy to employee efforts
  2. connecting individual – team – and organizational goals
  3. developing capabilities at all levels of the company so it can execute strategy.

These recommendations involve helping employees understand the organization’s reality by creating visual “learning maps” of the company’s internal and external pressures – so they can better see and connect to the “big picture” of where the company is and what it needs to move forward, building employee ownership in the process.