Entries by gmader

Talking About What You Are Not Talking About

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What do you consider to be the key drivers of your group’s effectiveness? Is it their ability to raise and address difficult issues? Is it their skill at being able to come to alignment on common goals or objectives? Perhaps it’s their ability to subordinate their personal agendas for the common good? Regardless, the prerequisite for all of these is the ability to have open, honest and straight conversations. It’s not what you can talk about that makes a difference at work, it’s what you can’t. It’s always what you are not dealing with that’s controlling and shaping your team. If you want things to be different in your organization, then you have to develop […]

4 Steps To Creating Total Strategic Alignment

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Most leaders believe that it takes between six and 12 months, or longer, to develop a strategy. They mistakenly think that the criteria for a meaningful strategy are the amount of research and market analysis that goes into it, and the time spent vetting it with experts. But our observation is that how well communicated a strategy is, is far more important than how logical or well researched it is. The effectiveness of any strategy is directly proportional to the level of ownership, commitment and accountability among the executive team. A strategy is only as good as the levels of commitment the people who are accountable to fulfilling it, possess. Here are the essential fours steps […]

4 Ways You May be Undermining Employee Engagement

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This looks at the four most common ways leaders undermine employee engagement. 1. Not saying thank you: Managers who only criticize and find fault with their employees’ performance run the risk of creating an unhappy – and less productive – workforce. Rarely saying something as simple as “good work” or “thank you” creates an environment where staff feel unappreciated and taken advantage of. 2. Recognizing the same people all the time: Some leaders single out the same staff over and over again for recognition and praise. No matter how deserving these employees may be, repeatedly acknowledging one small group of individuals can create an environment of exclusion, which leads to a negative backlash within the […]

Appreciation and Employee Engagement

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Managers often think that the source of employee engagement is providing staff with material rewards and privileges such as more money, bonuses, stock incentives, promotions, titles, etc… While these things are important, their impact tends to be overestimated. A huge dimension in employee engagement is the quality of relationship that exists between management and staff. Employees feeling they are known, accepted, appreciated, valued and trusted goes a long way toward getting employees on board with a company’s vision and strategy. Many of the leaders we encounter seem either blind to this point — or worse —simply don’t care. By not listening to and recognizing employees which is a critical part of their job, managers are […]

From Human Resource Manager to Chief Commitment Officer

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In our work, we often hear HR executives lament about not having a seat at the table when it comes to being part of the strategic decision-making process. They frequently speak of the desire to be true strategic partners with their peers, rather than merely comp and benefits administrators or purveyors of training programs that may or may not contribute to the bottom line of the business. The good news is that the time has never been better for HR execs to reconstitute their role — by shifting from Human Resource Managers to Chief Commitment Officers. What CEOs and business leaders want and need more than ever is employees who are 100% engaged and committed […]

Six Steps To Make Your Meetings More Effective

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In this week’s post, I offer six approaches you should consider in making your meetings more commitment driven. 1. Before planning an agenda, ask yourself the key questions that will allow you to make your meeting meaningful. What do we want to accomplish? Who should attend the meeting in order to accomplish what we intend? What do we want people to leave the meeting with? What could we do during the meeting to achieve the desired objectives? How much time do we need in order to achieve the objectives? 2. If appropriate, include a cross-section of individuals who will be attending the meeting in the agenda-planning phase. Getting these folks involved from the start will […]

Why Agenda Driven Meetings Don’t Work

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A key principle of generating total alignment and engagement is ensuring that you are always working backward from a deliberate, desired future — rather than merely extrapolating or perpetrating business as usual. When it comes to meetings — which consume enormous amounts of most managers’ time — this principle can make the difference between meetings that make a big impact, and those that waste valuable time. To begin with, most meetings are designed backwards. The agenda planning starts with the questions: How much time do we have? and What do people think we should talk about? The reason we say these meetings are designed backwards is because the time allocated for the meeting should be […]

What Can Executives Do To Drive Employee Engagement?

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In the last three posts on the topic of organizational commitment we looked at evaluating your companies level of commitment, the way two different CEO’s handle commitment and examined the warning signs for lack of employee engagement and commitment. In this final post of the series we asked a few other authors to give us their take on the topic: WHAT CAN EXECUTIVES DO TO DRIVE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT? Here’s what they had to say. “Manage your inner control freak.  You can’t — and won’t — inspire employee engagement and commitment unless you loosen the reins and let go of control.  As a leader, you are there to champion the vision and keep people focused on […]

Six Warning Signs You Lack Employee Engagement and Commitment

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In the past two blog posts regarding this topic I explored the problem of lack of commitment and looked at two case studies. In this post I examine what to do if you want to tackle your commitment problem. Where do you begin? What are the most effective ways to assess if and where there are commitment problems? Here’s a list of some observable indicators: 1. People don’t speak up even when they know things aren’t being dealt with honestly and directly. This is relatively easy to spot, especially in meetings. Everyone knows important issues are not being addressed. Yet they fail to speak up because of fear or cynicism. 2. Missed commitments met with […]

A Tale of Two CEOs and Employee Commitment

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In a previous blog post on this topic, I outlined the problem of CEOs mistaking compliance for commitment. In this next post, I show the profound difference that owning the commitment problem makes, by comparing two CEOs of $1+ billion-plus organizations, leaders in their respective industries, one a manufacturer and the other a services firm. Both had significant commitment issues to deal with – weak trust and alignment between levels and functions that were undermining ambitious growth plans. The CEO of the services firm, who rose to his position after having been one of its best salespeople, was a proud but arrogant leader. Despite repeated attempts by senior managers, including his direct reports, to convey […]

Does Your Organization Have a Commitment Problem?

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Organizational commitment to a CEO’s strategy is a key factor in how successful that strategy will be. How far employees at all levels will go to execute the strategy — what we call their “strategic commitment” – doesn’t just make the difference between stellar and mediocre results – it can be the deciding factor in producing any results at all. But in many organizations, such commitment is often lacking, and executives don’t even know it. When revenue and profits are suffering, these managers rarely look to a deficiency in commitment as the culprit. As a result, many CEOs avoid dealing with commitment problems simply because they assume they don’t have one. They believe that if […]

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

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Last week, the Conference Board research group released its latest report on job satisfaction. The results are pretty grim; only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work, the lowest level ever recorded in more than 22 years of studying the issue. Experts say the drop in workers’ happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades. Quoting Linda Barrington, managing director of human capital at the Conference Board, who helped write the report, “It says something troubling about work in America. It is not about the […]