STRATEGY CENTRAL

What do you think comes first?  Employee engagement or higher performance?  Are the members of your high performing teams engaged because that’s the team they’re on?  Or is their performance better because they’re highly engaged in the company’s mission or purpose?

This is a critical question for many of us.  Could it make a difference for your organization?   In a study of 2,178 companies it was found that "engagement predicts performance in key areas—including customer engagement, employee retention, sales, and profit—better than performance predicts engagement (p. 155)."  So the questions might be, "How engaged are your employees?"  or "What causes employee engagement?"

I’m finding Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter to be very helpful on this front and it’s particularly good in combination with Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow.

Ever tried to figure out why it’s so hard to keep everyone focused on the mission, get along, and stay within the budget…all at the same time?  One of the most helpful talks I ever heard at Willow was one that Jim Dethmer did on the concept of Community, Cause and Corporation…his way of describing the tension that exists in almost every organization.  Did you ever hear it?  This metaphor is one that your team will find really helpful.

The recording is no longer available…but Jim graciously allowed me to post it here.  It’s in two parts.  Check it out!

Click HERE to listen to part one of Community, Cause and Corporation.
Click HERE to listen to part two of Community, Cause and Corporation.

WARNING: Don’t read this post if you are at all involved in recruiting or hiring and want to sleep soundly tonight

Ok, with that disclaimer out of the way, I can proceed.  If you believe that the performance of your team plays a huge role in the outcome of your mission, here are 5 questions for which you’ve got to have answers (Mavericks at Work, pp. 255-261):

1. Why should great people join your organization?  Hello!  Let’s just say the best thing for most of us will be to stop here and just work on this question.
2. Do you know a great person when you see one?  This may need a little explanation.  What are they driving at?  Here it is.  Do you have a clear idea of how a great team member acts?  What they do when under pressure?  How they respond to a challenge?  Can you describe it?
3. Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you?  This might be a deal-breaker for lots of us.  Based on the assumption that you probably won’t find great team members at a job fair or responding to a classified.  So you’ve got to be able to go find them.
4. Are you great at teaching great people how your organization works and wins?  Based on the assumption that the whole team operates better when they understand how things really work.
5. Does your organization work as distinctively as it competes.  I love this line from the section: "Leaders who are determined to elevate the people factor in business understand that the real work begins once talented people walk through the door."  That’s a big statement.  It says a lot about how important it is to truly go after the best team.

Now, can you read that and just take a nap?  Or do you need to pause and think through these questions?  How will you answer them?

Years ago I was at a conference where the speaker made a point 30 minutes into a two day seminar and then said, "What we should really do right here is just stop.  All of you should take a notebook and get off by yourselves and work through the implications of just that one point.  Working through that one point would serve all of you in a big way."

That’s how it is with these 5 questions.  Any one of them could be a half day away for key leaders.  What do you think?

Are you trying to be something for your customers that you aren’t for your team members?  Think about it.  Are you trying to be a customer-focused organization but your work environment and experience is ho hum?  Have you figured out that in order to reach a certain market niche you’ve got to do things differently…but that hasn’t translated to the way you engage your team?

What if you discovered that in order to really be effective at connecting with the customers you’re targeting…you had to become different from the inside out?  What if you found out that all you’d invested in building a brand would only work if you developed your team first? 

In a great section of Mavericks at Work there is a repeated concept that is so good.  Here’s one quote that captures the idea:

"Any company with a disruptive business model has to be clear about the distinctive work experience it creates to support that model–and how that work experience shapes the customer experience (p. 207)."

Now, maybe you only want to be average.  Maybe you only want to be good enough.  That’s fair.  But if you want to be truly disruptive (I love that word!), if you want to be so different that you really are winning over your target, then you’ve got to create a distinctive feel in your workplace.  And I think it’s not about degree.  It’s all about becoming a different kind of place.

What do you think?

What kind of people are on your team?  We’ve all heard the idea that your senior leaders play a major role in determining who will join later.  Most of the time we hear it expressed that only 10s can recruit 9s.  If you’ve got 6s or 7s in your senior roles they’ll only be able to recruit 5s, etc.  Know what I mean?

In the chapter on The Comapany You Keep in Mavericks at Work there is this paragraph:

"We haven’t met all that many CEOs who could provide a compelling response to a simple question we like to ask when we visit an organization for the first time: why would great people want to work here?  (The answer, we add, can’t be about salaries, bonuses, or stock options.)

Isn’t that a great question?  Why would great people want to work here?    That is a GREAT question!  It is followed up by this one:

"What is it about the ideas your company stands for, its point of view in the marketplace, the ways in which employees interact with customers or collaborate with one another, that becomes irresistible to the best people in your industry?"

If the first question was a great one, that one is AWESOME!  Stop and think about what it would mean for your team and your organization if it became irresistible to the best people in your industry.  That is more than something to dream about.  Isn’t it?  It’s really something to act on.  Why not begin today?  What would have to happen for that to become a reality for you?

I decided last night that after reading the first 75 pages of Mavericks at Work I had to see if I could get a first hand look at GSD&M.  I was so inspired by what I was reading that I asked the cab driver if he knew where it was.  When he told me we were about to go right by it I started thinking about trying to get in and see the place for myself.  And this morning I saw it.  Of course, I didn’t make it past reception…but it was still cool!

I didn’t make it back to the "Roytunda" (an homage to GSD&M president Roy Spence) where their values are written in the beautifully stained and polished concrete floor (community, winning, restlessness, freedom and responsibility, curiosity, integrity) but I did snap this picture of a cool saying that captures the vibe.  Visionary Ideas That Make A Difference.  I like that.

P.S. The receptionist gave me the card of the person who sets up tours.  Wanta come with me?

P.P.S. Check out this Fast Company article for more on GSD&M.

Spoiler Alert:  You’ve got to watch the video at the end of this post!  (But first, read the post!)  The beauty of the blogosphere is that in a few minutes you can connect a lot of dots, you can be influenced by ideas beyond your imagination, you can be exposed to creativity that you’d never even know existed…and it’s really quite an extraordinary thing.  It’s free.  It’s limited only by your own ability to see relevance or connection.  It’s an amazing resource that has the potential to put you right in the audience at the most incredible gatherings of some of the world’s most creative people.  Really, really, amazing.

And it’s easy to begin.  One of the things you can do is subscribe to a few blogs that are outside of your normal niche.  I don’t know what your normal niche is, but the infusion of variety is important for all of us and it’s easy to begin this experiment in the blogosphere.  Right now I have 66 feeds (blogs) that I’ve added to Bloglines (which is a free blog-reader).  I’ve got what you’d expect (strategists, leaders, business writers, etc.).  But I’ve also got blogs by some very different people.  One of the most interesting and enjoyable blogs is by Kathy Sierra, who is a writer in the computer field (that such an understatement but you get the idea).  Her blog is a constant source for some very thought-provoking content.  And you can subscribe to StrategyCentral.  It’s easy.  (Click here and I’ll tell you how to do it)

As an example of the richness of the blogosphere, in Kathy’s post over the weekend she mentions a great presentation by Sir Ken Robinson at this years TED.  What is TED?  You can see what it’s about here.  Honestly, I’d never heard of it.  And I had no idea who Sir Ken Robinson was.  But I’ve read enough of Kathy’s posts over the last year to know that it was at least worth a quick look.  And what a great 15 minutes!  You’ve got to take a look yourself.  Whatever you’re doing, stop what you’re doing and check out this presentation from Sir Ken Robinson.  You can watch it right here.  Let me know what you think!

What are the values of your organization?  Know ‘em?  Are they yours?  Or are they just on some Successories kind of poster as you walk down the hall?

I like ours:

• Courageously engaging the culture
• Practicing honest conversation
• Doing all things with excellence
• Choosing joy consistently
• Building God-honoring relationships
• Giving back tangibly

I do like them.  They’re hard to practice sometimes.  But they’re good.  And they’re not just on the wall.  They mean something.

What about yours?

I pulled back out a really good Harvard Business Review article this weekend: Make Your Values Mean Something by Patrick Lencioni (author of Silos, Politics and Turf Wars and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive).  This is a great article.  Lencioni makes an immediate case for a review of your organization’s values by first listing a great set: Communication, Respect, Integrity, and Excellence.  And then pointing out that they’re Enron’s.

If you’re like me you’ve been around places that have the values statements on the walls but they’re not living it out.  It’s a fake-out.  Know what I’m saying?  The question is, "why is that?"  I love Lencioni’s statement on developing strong values; values that you actually believe and live out.  Check it out:

"Coming up with strong values — and sticking to them — requires real guts.  Indeed, an organization considering a values initiative must first come to terms with the fact that, when properly practiced, values inflict pain.  They make some employees feel like outcasts.  The limit an organization’s strategic and operational freedom and constrain the behavior of its people.  The leave executives open to heavy criticism for even minor violations.  And they demand constant vigilance."

That is a great statement.  "When properly practiced values inflict pain."  Has the implementation of your values inflicted any pain lately?  Or are they only to look at?

Do you ever get the nod?  You know what I mean…the nod that means I’m down with what you’re using (what you’re wearing, what you’re driving, etc.)?  Maybe you’re at Barnes and Noble and you’re sipping on a Peet’s coffee.  That’ll get you the nod.  From another Peet’s drinker.  If you’ve got a love wins bumper sticker you’ll get the nod.  Or maybe you’ve got a strange Hugh MacLeod cartoon on your desktop and another gapingvoid fan sees it.  That’ll get the nod.  ‘Course it’ll get a look of another kind from everyone else!  Check it out:

Actually, that one’ll get you two nods (one for gapingvoid, another for the scoble connection).  Question: is the nod a good thing?  Yes it is.  It is an indication of a larger community.  Can we do things to create opportunities for the nod?  I think so.  Kathy Sierra’s got a great post today on the nod.  Some really good insights.  She says, "To give The Nod is to recognize and appreciate another person who "gets it", whatever it is."  Second question: can we create such a vibe that it would inspire the nod from someone else who "gets it"?

Another key line from her post is that "When we give The Nod to another, it’s NOT about the thing we have in common–it’s about what having that thing says about us."  This has real potential for what we’re doing!  Don’t you think?  Or, what about this line: "It’s NOT about having a remarkable product–it’s about helping our users be remarkable."  This is an idea that could produce a really good discussion.  How can we help our users be remarkable?  What could we do as an organization that would make such a difference in the lives of our users that they’d get the nod from another user?  I think that’s part of our challenge.  Of course, the other key part is inspiring non-users to see the difference in the lives of our users and be drawn to them.

This is a really good discussion to have.  You can check out Kathy’s whole post here. 

Ever been to a Build a Bear?  They always looks very busy.  When you see a whole herd of pre-teen girls walking through the mall with their cub-condos they always are still buzzing with excitement.  After reading the Build a Bear chapter in Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force I’m thinking that I might need to experience it for myself!  Very cool.  And it makes me wonder what we could be applying on our own campus and in our programs.  There is totally a link with how things could be in our children’s programs.  What about in other areas?  Or even on our staff?

For instance, all employees spend three weeks at Bear University where classes impart The Way of the Bear.  Granted, we’re not big enough to have a dedicated three week class everytime we hire a new team member.  But could we initiate an annual or semi-annual culture innoculation that would give our whole team a shot of our own Way of the Coast?  I think we could!  And actually, I think that might be an ingredient that adds tremendous value to our whole team.  The Way of the Coast…what would be the program?  This has a lot of potential.

Out.