Category: Good Thinking

Resilience is a crucial characteristic in this unpredictable world

We’re delighted to welcome guest author Kate Feather, executive vice president of PeopleMetrics to our site. PeopleMetrics primary purpose is to enable organizations to systematically take the best actions to secure and engage customers and employees. They are an interesting organisation with an impressive list of clients and a passion for engagement and service. This article was first published on David Zinger’s employee engagement network and we’re grateful to David and PeopleMetrics for permission to reproduce it here. We found the article useful, practical, and enjoyable, and we hope you will enjoy it and use it too.

Resilience is a crucial characteristic in this unpredictable world. Trees survive terrible storms if they can bend in the wind. Species who cannot adapt to new conditions die out. The natural world’s proclivity toward flexibility is also rewarded in humans. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Eventually, resilient individuals can achieve success, sometimes after hundreds of attempts at their dream. At its core, resilience is the spark of determination that empowers us to get up and try again, no matter what the circumstances. We have seen time and again that the most successful businesses are resilient enough to bounce back from any crisis. What’s less clear is how such successful firms encourage resilience in their ranks.

It may seem like all that’s required for organizational resilience is a widespread “Try, try again,” company mantra, but actually nourishing resilience in an organization is much easier said than done. Today we’ll explore various ways of encouraging resiliency. To direct our review, we’ll list a technique or two for each of the characteristics of resilient organizations, as established in our previous post on resilience. Consider the following methods for increasing your organization’s resilience:
a. Resilient organizations have a Clear and Compelling Company Purpose.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins suggests that those who are looking for a compelling purpose ask themselves the following three questions:

1. What am I most passionate about?
2. What can I be the best in the world at?
3. Now, how can I make money?

Although these questions were meant for the individual, they can certainly help your firm develop a clear and compelling company purpose.

As you zone in on the concept that expresses why you are in business, look for things you would do even if they didn’t bring you any money. Aim for a simple, short sentence that expresses your reason for being. A company purpose should be brief, customer-focused (what will you do for the customer?), broad enough to last through technological and societal shifts, and attainable through effort. Here are examples of two effective company purpose statements to get your brainstorm brewing:

Disney: “Keeping alive the magic of childhood.”
Western Union: “Connecting friends, families, and businesses around the world.”
b. Employees at resilient organizations have a Strong Trust in Leadership.

Steven Covey has recently turned his attention to the lack of trust in modern society. According to his article at Leadership Now, “Research shows that only 49% of employees trust senior management, and only 28% believe CEOs are a credible source of information.” In addition to making trust an explicit objective within your organization, Covey recommends that leaders who wish to be trusted follow these 13 behaviors of high-trust leaders worldwide:

1. Talk Straight
2. Demonstrate Respect
3. Create Transparency
4. Right Wrongs
5. Show Loyalty
6. Deliver Results
7. Get Better
8. Confront Reality
9. Clarify Expectation
10. Practice Accountability
11. Listen First
12. Keep Commitments
13. Extend Trust
c. Resilient organizations are defined by their Open Communication.

Your company cannot effectively respond to adversity if employees don’t feel comfortable speaking to one another. It’s no surprise, then, that many of the world’s largest, most enduring companies have an uncompromising dedication to open communication. General Electric has 14 divisions around the world, but it is all tied together through one person: the CEO, to whom all 14 division heads report directly. A clear, established line of command helps GE keep internal communication humming.

One more example: Google is consistently voted one of the best companies in the world to work for. One reason is that employees are given a plethora of tools for communicating internally. As described at Google Blogoscope, Google employees have access to a broad company intranet, a special page for communicating new ideas, a project database to allow employees to see what their peers are doing, and much more. Even if your organization doesn’t have Google’s technological capability, you can still improve operations by smoothing out the lines of communication within your firm.
4. Supportive Management in resilient organizations helps employees solve any problem.

Due to widespread dissatisfaction with management, Boss Day is one of the most lackluster holidays in the US. A recent Adecco survey revealed that 53% of American workers think their boss is dishonest. In the same survey, 89% of those interviewed linked job satisfaction to their relationship with their boss.

Sincerely supportive management, therefore, has a huge impact on your organization’s resilience. If employees feel comfortable with management, they are far more likely to bring up opportunities and problems.

A simple way to encourage supportive management is to increase the amount of positive interactions managers have with employees. How many times a day do managers simply wander through the work space greeting and socializing with employees? When was the last time that managers honestly thanked employees for their contributions? Any recipe for supportive management is based on delivering consistent communication and positive feedback. To learn more about effective employee recognition, see our post on Five Effective Real-World Approaches to Employee Recognition.
5. Employees in resilient organizations have Adequate Tools and Resources to help them produce their best work.

Today’s economic hardships have tempted many companies to scour their books for opportunities to cut costs. Unfortunately, such budgeting often reduces the resources employees have for doing their best work, which usually has a long-term impact on profitability. Slashing employee resources damages your organization in two ways. First, employees who lost their tools for success feel undervalued, and often become embittered about their workplace. Second, there are practical implications of reducing employee resources. Outdated resources may save a few pennies today, but leaders should also think of the potential revenue that is lost by limiting your employees’ output. Leadership in resilient organizations recognizes that investing in employees’ performance yields better products and services in the long run. If you must cut costs, bring employees into the discussion.

As you can see, organizational resilience springs from the general work atmosphere. If employees feel supported and empowered to do their best work, they will see problems as challenges. A common, cherished company purpose enables leadership and employees alike to accurately direct their response to difficult situations. Open communication and trustworthy leadership allows employees to tackle crises confidently. In the end, as all of these factors also contribute to employee engagement, effective Employee Engagement Management may be the most comprehensive approach to encouraging Organizational Resilience.

~Kate Feather, Executive Vice President

Mass Disengagement – But Are We Surprised?

The CIPD says job satisfaction is falling in the UK

the CIPD’s measure of job satisfaction has dropped from a score of 46 to 37 according to the latest Employee Outlook survey of 2,000 staff. More people (42 per cent) reported excessive pressures at work, compared to six months ago (38 per cent), while employees were also more likely to say they have seen increases in stress and conflict at work, as well as bullying by line managers.

The previous survey shown some resilience, based on the premise that people felt “lucky” to have a job. Claire McCartney, the CIPD’s resourcing and talent planning adviser, said: “In the spring we interpreted high job satisfaction in the face of the recession as a ‘fixed grin’, where employees felt lucky just to have a job. In this quarter, the fixed grin is slipping and the temporary goodwill is being replaced with increasing frustration.”

Another interesting figure from the last report in April is a rise from 34 to 40 per cent of staff that ideally would like to change jobs. My own experience shows me that workers with scarce skills are already migrating and there is increasing talk of a war for talent as the economy picks up.

This may come as a disappointment but I doubt it is much of a surprise. For months here at What Goes Around Limited we have been asking business leaders questions like:

How are you going to motivate your people?
How are you going to get them to give the discretionary effort that’s so vital in delivering a great customer experience?
How are you going to get your people to trust you, and each other?

Referencing the first question specifically, experience in large organisations shows us that simple basic recognition is poorly executed. In a global telco, less than 3 out of 10 could strongly agree with the statement “In the last 7 days I’ve received praise or recognition for good work”. That’s despite the fact this statement is widely acknowledged as a critical key in the link between managers and staff.

There is a strong link between the strategy, planning and delivery of change management, and employee engagement. Our experience in organisations which struggle with engagement shows me they also struggle with managing change. In one such organisation I have observed that only 6% of employees can strongly agree with the statement “I feel that change is well managed in this organisation”. Examples of why this is so include;

We don’t finish what we start
We don’t engage, we tend to dictate
We don’t communicate change effectively

We also frequently observe a lack of clarity around job expectations, and too often workers do not seem to have the systems and tools they need to do the job right. And of course, people want to be involved. They want to help the organisation to Stop Doing Dumb Things to Customers. This co-existence is powerful and also rare.

There is some interesting research published by Right Management which supports this connection. According to their recent global study, ninety-four percent of employees who report that change was not handled well in their organizations are disengaged. They go on to identify nine drivers of successful change which in turn support high levels of engagement. They are:

1. Senior leaders implement effective change
2. Safe and healthy workplace
3. Efficient work processes and people systems
4. Fit-for-purpose structure
5. Open and honest communication
6. Employees empowered to make changes to the way things are done
7. Teamwork between business units/departments
8. Resources to do the job well
9. Line managers have appropriate skills

I agree with a number of these points, particularly 3, 4, 5, and 7, 8 and 9. Whilst I acknowledge that senior leadership has its place I am seeing signs of successful change being co-created by workers and customers. Sometimes this has the encouragement of senior leaders but they often have little or nothing to do with its implementation, and quite rightly so. They rarely get closer to the customer or front line staff to have any direct experience, and so they are much more powerful as an encourager rather than a do-er.

Likewise, empowerment is a word often used to encourage people to get involved, or take action themselves. Too often though, the accepted culture is to wait for empowerment to be given, after all we define empowerment as “to give someone official authority or the freedom to do something.” What organisations really need is a culture of getting on and doing the right things for the right reasons, without waiting to be told. This comes from a culture of autonomy, trust and respect, and as my experience shows, can lead to great, sustainable business results.

So how can we make these things happen? A practical thing that one can do at any meeting is to ask, “What have we agreed to do?” and in turn, “What are you personally going to do to help us achieve what we have all agreed to do?” Then listen for a SMART objective. Anyone is more likely to deliver what he or she hears themselves commit to aloud in front of their peers than to fulfill someone else’s draft of the minutes of a meeting long after the discussion. Our experience shows us that commitment and delivery builds positive trust very quickly.

Also, we have a wealth of good practice at our disposal. In a recently published article on HR Zone, we offered up ten practical engagement tips for managers. These were compiled through a series of interviews with top performing line managers at all organisational levels, so they are based on people’s actual experience.

If you want to find out more about how we help engaged people create great customer experiences, then drop us a line from the get in touch page on this site, we’d be happy to help you co-create something special.

Lead the way!

Five Wishes

I just read an interesting article on a great site run by Bruce Temkin. His piece is titled Five Wishes for Customer Service in 2010. The five wishes are:

1 – Forget about average handle times.
2 – Learn from every interaction.
3 – Recover quickly and be proactive.
4 – Make customer service a product attribute.
5 – Engage reps in customer experience transformation.

OK so strictly speaking wish three is two wishes but hey, I’m all for the occasional Wish Once Get One Free. I particularly like number 2, and number 5. I encourage you to read the full lowdown at Bruce’s, it won’t take long and I think you will find it useful.