The 11 questions that will tell you if your behaviour is collaborative

From the industrial age of business the concept of coordination has ruled the way people work together. Driven by directive and a singular focus on return to the ownership structure it is not based on trust or on team work, but often focused on a narrow short term cost based goal.

In the more modern knowledge area cooperation started to become more important. Although still a directed mandate it requires a higher degree of personal investment and motivation from the individuals participating. However cooperation still works inside the frames established by the operating logic of the company.

Neither works well when innovation or disruption are needed, which is why collaboration has emerged in the recent years. Collaboration is driven by mulutal self interest and requires a high level of trust and commitment for each party. It requires highly engaged people that are willing to challenge authority and status quo to unlock new value to the benefit of all parties.

These 11 questions will give you an idea if you are currenlty working in a collaborative way:

1. Are you unselfish and do not pull rank
2. Are you Inspirational and positive
3. Are you Committed to the team and the challenge
4. Are you Curios and have an open mind
5. Do you Participate but do not dominate
6. Do You Build trust and create a safe environment
7. Are you adaptable – not Dominant
8. Are you honest but with respect and tact
9. Do you Listen with the aim to understand
10. Do you Respect other persons and their views and ideas
11. Are you focused on Value Creation not value extraction

Are you still involved in skilled based recruitment?

For many years through the industrial and knowledge age, skills have been imperative when recruiting people. Are they capable of operating the right machine or be part of the right department. However work is changing and people are now entering corporations with a job title that are not likely to survive many years – we don’t even know what will be needed a few years from now. Marketing has gone from paper and television to online and mobile at a blistering pace rendering the entire skill base obsolete. The same thing is happening in sales, where customers has access to more information than the salespeople and are capable of identifying the best deal without even calling.

“Companies are running 21st-century businesses with 20th-century workplace practices and programs.” Towers Watson

Need for specific skills are changing at a rapid pace.

If the obsolescence of skills is accelerating, it does not make sense to hire for skills alone anymore. A better way is to combine skills with attitudes and behaviours when recruiting. Define the attitudes you want in your company – they are likely to interact with your values and culture and the basic belief system your company is based on. They should also be the first evaluation process that existing and new people are evaluated against as attitudes are hard to change. A very imortant point is that the attitude of an employee is going to decide if your culture and operating logic is able to create engagement - a key element of motivation.

"Getting an employee with the right skills is not the same as getting a motivated employee"

Secondly it is needed to look defining the behaviours you want. On LinkedIn it is possible to get a good idea of behaviours of a candidate that can be explored through the interview phase. Even though you would like certain behaviours it is more important to look for the potential of behaviour you would like to have in your company as behaviours can be coached.

Skills should really have the last priority and you need to be looking for the potential to acquire the necessary skills and the ability to acquire future skills. Whatever you are looking for right now is going to be obsolete faster than you can believe.

Pulling it all together will help you identify your high performance A Players that exhibit the desired Attitudes, Behaviours and Skills you are looking for. B Players that have the potential to become A Players and finally C Players that does not have the potential.

Using the 3 Gate process will ensure that you get the right potential people into your organisation but not that they are motivated and engaged. Engagement is an emotional relationship between the employee and the company that the company is responsible for creating. It is not a characteristic of the employee.

"With high levels of engagement, firms can see revenue growth 2.5 times that of their peers and a 40 percent reduction in expensive staff turnover" HayGroup

The 3 dimensions of Fairness that Impacts Employee Engagement

What is fairness really?

When most people talk about fairness, they talk about the concept as an absolute and objective term, things are either fair or they are not. This is also how people behave although it is blaringly obvious that even two people can disagree on what is fair. If fairness truly was objective we would have no wars, sufferings or extreme inequality – there would be enough for everybody.

Fairness is a very subjective concept and it is shaped by age, culture, religion, age and a whole host of other dimensions. Fairness also changes according to context; in scarce situations like who should have the last bottle of water in a desert, people’s perception of fairness changes dramatically.

Anybody that has been in a situation they deemed unfair knows that the response is instantaneous and can be quite powerful. This reveals that fairness is hardwired in the emotional parts of the brain, in particular the amygdala – where also anger gets trigged and the two often works in concert.

Why fairness impacts Employee Engagement

For companies the fairness concept really is a tightrope that needs to be walked. If you trip, you risk getting a powerful emotional response from people that can have a dramatic and instantaneous impact of the engagement levels – disengagement can increase very fast.

Fairness is also a positive engagement factor but it builds slowly over time as the company demonstrates that it is a fair company. Communication strategies cannot only be built around rational business strategies and decisions – it will need to respect the fact that fairness is emotional in nature.

The 3 Dimensions of fairness

Taking a deeper dive into the concept of fairness, reveals that there are three dimensions that needs to be considered when dealing with Employee Engagement and the fact that they interact.

Fairness towards Self

The relationship between the employee and the employer can be seen in the light of fairness. The tangible elements of fairness are what the employee gives in terms of presence and effort compared to what the company gives back in pay and benefits. The tangible elements of fairness are closely related to satisfaction but not much to motivation and engagement.

The intangible elements of the relationship, like how you are treated, trusted and listened to combined with other leadership and cultural elements has a high impact on how motivated and engaged the employee is. Engagement is not about money – it is about how you treat people.

Fairness compared to others

Another dimension of fairness is when employee compares their situation to those of others. This could be colleagues, leaders, similar groups outside the organisation. When employees start to compare their situation to others, their perception of fairness can change very rapidly. What they were happy with a second ago is now completely unacceptable when they have seen what the others get. This is key in designing engagement, you need to either be transparent and up front or be secretive if you have very differential pay or treat people very different.

Fairness towards others

The last dimension is about how fair the company treats others and can have a significant impact on the engagement. Companies that only focus on shareholder value are typically short term oriented and see conflicts between the shareholder and other stakeholders like workers, customers, society and the environment.

Fortunately a lot of the younger more successful companies are built on a foundation of a strong worthwhile purpose and know that serving multiple stakeholders eventually benefits the shareholder. If a company treats all stakeholders well and respect them their reputation, brand and image as an employee grows. This can significantly increase employee engagement.

If you want to create engagement in your company you need to be able to manage fairness along the three dimensions

Everybody talks about Employee Engagement - can anybody define it?

There are many definitions of Engagement, some more academic than others but one of the simplest was made by David McLeod in his report to the British Government of the state of engagement in the UK: 

“You know it when you see it”

It would be very easy to accept the term “Employee Engagement” as a more modern or advanced description of Employee Satisfaction – a term we all understand. This assumption makes most people misunderstand the concept and power engaging people.

The CAB model highlights some of the key differences between Employee Satisfaction and Employee Engagement:

Where Employee Satisfaction is a rational state that is based on what the employee deliver in terms of work compared to the benefits received, Employee Engagement represents an emotional relationship. This relationship is not only to the company itself, it extends to all the company’s stakeholders and to the company’s purpose.

This also reveals that Engagement is not only about the exchange between the company and the employee but also about other exchanges between the company and its stakeholders – exchanges that does not directly impact the employee.

As Engagement is a complex relationship it challenges the traditional industrial HR view of the world. It is not viable to identify humans that “have engagement” therefore it is not possible to hire and fire your way to Engagement – you have to create it. You have to change from selecting and changing the employee to fit the corporation to change the corporation to fit humans.

Gallup that regularly surveys the state of engagement worldwide defines engagement as different emotional states employees are in.

They highlight that not only is Engagement and opportunity, it also represents a threat as disengaged employees are working to sabotage the organisation.

The Institute of employment studies has a definition that highlights it is not only about what you do, but also how you do it:

“A positive attitude held by the employee towards the organisation and its values. An engaged employee is aware of the business context, and works with colleagues to improve performance within the job for the benefit of the organisation. The organisation must work to develop and nurture engagement, which requires a two-way relationship between employee and employer.”

Engagement is strongly connected to motivation – especially intrinsic motivation like passion, purpose and personal growth. Extrinsic motivators like pay and working conditions can impact negatively but does not have a positive effect.

This also means that Employee Engagement can be seen as a hierarchy  – like the surgeon model to highlight the impact that Employee Engagement has on the subjects – be it customers, colleagues or patients.

What is needed to bring employees from Disengaged to Engaged is very different from what it takes to move them on to Actively Engaged.

This also highlights that the creation of Engagement is not a prescriptive process that can be standardised like most people processes. Engagement is a strategic process that depends on people’s current level of engagement, the company, the market situation – it has to be tailored.

The creation of Employee Engagement is extremely important as it impacts: Motivation, Company performance, Learning, Knowledge and Innovation.

Additional Definitions of Employee Engagement:

"Full discretionary effort and living up to their full potential and doing what it takes to help their organisation succeed." Towers Perrin

"Engagement is a positive fulfilling work related state of mind that is characterised by vigor, dedication and absorption." Schaufeli et al

"Engagement or passion for work involves feeling positive about your job as well as wanting to go the extra mile to make sure you do your job to the best of your ability." Truss et al

"The extent to which the employees commit to something or someone in their organisation, how hard they work and how long they stay as a result of that commitment." Corporate Leadership Council

The Surgeon Model of Employee Engagement

If you were facing a serious operation and you were offered a choice between different surgeons, all equally technically qualified, what other information would you like to have?

If you were told that research has shown that there was one important data point related to the surgeon that could predict his performance – would you like to know?

What if you were told that the hospital did not investigate this parameter? How would you feel?

This is in reality what happens in most companies today. Companies relentlessly measure employee (and customer) satisfaction as it allegedly predicts employee retention and productivity – or at least it used to in the old industrial ages. Today most companies have high average satisfaction levels and satisfaction is not a competitive element anymore.  Employee satisfaction does not predict performance.

Gallup research has shown that organisations with high Employee Engagement outperform organisations with low Employee Engagement on all financial parameters, have lower absenteeism and fewer accidents and quality issues.

 Still very few companies have started to measure Employee Engagement and the ones that do, have difficulties in translating the results into actionable strategies. In average engagement levels are 15 to 30% depending on country and industry. This is much more difficult to deal with than the normal employee surveys that yield 80% satisfaction levels and cement Status Quo.

             

The difference between highly engaged people and the rest are has a significant impact on performance. With 50% less accidents and 41% quality defects you might be interested to know what level of engagement your surgeon has.

The 4 different levels of engagement:

I am a hostage (Hope your procedure is really simple)

The actively disengaged employees are company assassins; they are actively trying to sabotage the operation. The main drivers of dissatisfaction are often the direct manager, pay, fairness, personal values versus company values or individual incidents. People often want to leave but cannot for some reason. They stay on as hostages which is good for the HR retention KPI but lethal if they deal with customers. Their focus is escape

It is a Job (Don’t get operated near a shift)

This is normally the highest group of employees. They are satisfied employees and believe there is a fair balance between what the company asks and what they deliver. They are however not inspired to do their best and will try to do the minimum acceptable activity to keep their job. They see their job as a way of financing their leisure time in which they can express themselves themselves with something meaningful. Their focus is self interest

It is a career (Hope you don’t have an interesting condition)

The engaged employees have a high degree of focus on personal and professional growth which gives them great potential. They will however put their growth and their mastery ahead of the company and its purpose whenever there is a conflict. When dealing with customers their focus can be more about being right (which they are most of the time) rather than winning the customer relationship and the order. Their focus is Mastery

It is a calling (Hope this is your surgeon)

The actively engaged employees are closely connected to the purpose and values of the company. When dealing with customers they create strong customer engagement and directly impacts revenue and profit levels, especially in a service environment. Most companies do not utilise this great resource but treat their service departments as a cost and outsorce it to a cheap jurisdiction. As a customer you want to be serviced by actively engaged employees as they focus on you. Where would you prefer to invest?  Who do you want to be operated by?

“One great employee equals three average employees” 

Kip Tindall, Container Store

They are willing to go the extra mile and even break the rules to do the right thing for the company. Focus is on helping and providing value to others

How is Engagement created?

The current HR toolbox of “processing people” does not work well when the aim is to increase engagement. The main reason is that engagement is not an attribute of the employee – you cannot hire and fire your way to Employee Engagement. Engagement is an emotional relationship between the organisation and the individual and needs to be addressed at an organisational level.

Another issue is that the creation of Engagement is different from company to company and from situation to situation. The starting point has to be a survey evaluating the individual drivers of Engagement combined with interviews of select employee representatives to understand what really goes on.

Once the situation and drivers are understood for each individual group and engagement level in the organisation, the strategic development can begin. It is quite important to involved people in the strategic process. Far too often the senior management team close the door and cook up a strategy that has no connection to people. By involving people in the strategic development engagement is created and the implementation of the change process will be easier. For more on the strategic process: You cannot separate strategy and implementation

“Employee Engagement is not about changing people – it is about changing organisations”

Top 10 dangers in your BIG is BEAUTIFUL Strategy

To want to grow and become a bigger company is a normal objective for most businesses, but in some companies it becomes the main purpose – above and beyond becoming a better company and creating value for the company’s stakeholders. 

Like revenue and profit, size is really an outcome – it is a measure of how much your customers are willing to pay for your services and how inspired your employees are. Both are shaped significantly by the way the company treats its other and often weaker stakeholders.

If customers and employees are just plankton feeding your corporate whale you can use the shortcut of an acquisition strategy.

Unfortunately the BIG is Beautiful thinking has been accepted as a commandment in the corporate religion not to be challenged – only good things comes out pursuing BIG. It is well documented that large companies have scale of economies and can do a lot of things cheaper than smaller companies. 

BIG companies can compete more effectively in traditional markets and squeeze smaller players out of the distribution channels and outspend them. This has worked in the industrial age and to a degree in the knowledge age – but the global business environment is changing:

• The average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has declined from 70 years in the 1920s to 15 years today. 

• More than half the S&P500 companies from year 2000 have disappeared. 

• There are 40% less public companies in the US than in 2000. In UK it is 50% less

If large corporations were a species – we would call it endangered - Lynn Stout, UCLA

If companies manage to get into fortune 50 they are almost guaranteed not to grow. So treating  growth and size as a married couple is wrong – they are not even dating!

Contrary to the BIG is Beautiful thinking it is not the asset builders that have dominated the most recent future – it is time to look at the dangers of being big.

Top 10 dangers in your BIG is BEAUTIFUL Strategy

1. Takeover targets are not just about tangible assets anymore.

To buy acquire a company you have to pay more than it is worth and find synergies (short for axing management and all staff functions, marketing and sales). This worked well when assets mainly where brick, machines, products and other tangibles but this has been overtaken by intangible values like knowledge, brand, engagement and networking capabilities. 

2. Asset hoarding is not the most effective business model anymore

The companies with the most effective business models seen from a revenue and profit perspective is not relying on the traditional logic of buying competitors or squeezing them out of markets. The new network companies like Google, Apple (in its app store driven version), Amazon and their likes are connecting manufacturers and suppliers with consumers and buyers in a massive scale.

The central goal was not to buy their way to big but to create massive value for users with radically useful products. Big was certainly an outcome.

3. Acquisitions are not as profitable as they used to be

 Few in numbers the network companies normally create markets rather than fight the incumbents in their well-defined little market sandboxes with set rules about who own the toys. In the process of creating new markets they destroy old markets. The incumbents in the mobile phone market fell as a result of the appstores – not the smart phones. The newspaper industry lost half its advertising revenue to Google in a few years and Amazon is closing brick and mortar stores. 

Being big in a market that is being disrupted does not protect a company; it just means a larger and more smelly carcass.

It is also well known that acquisitions are a reset button that can mask a company’s true performance. When the balance sheets merge the CEO gets a new lease of his corner office making it impossible to really measure the value of an acquisition.

Asset builders are not the largest animals in the jungle anymore and the networking companies don’t want to buy them or even compete with them. They will be outmaneuvered.

4. When you buy intangibles they might not work in your company.

This became obvious when McDonalds bought Chipotle and although they expanded the chain dramatically the Chipotle sustainability brand grew faster outside McDonalds. From a valuation of 1.5B$ in 2006 when it was sold to 23B$ today – this McDonald could not unlock. As knowledge become more generally available more value is locked in the engagement created with employees and customers. Both can walk out the door at any time.

5. A takeover destroys massive amounts of value

If an acquisition is driven by being “BIG” rather than synergies with the existing organisations the value extraction process becomes painful as cannot buy a company for what it is worth – you have to pay more. The headcount stripping exercise is only seen as impacting cost when in reality it affects all areas of the business – people have a lot of knowledge that is not captured in systems. A long time after the CEO declares the acquisition a success and completed customers and employees are still suffering from lack of knowledgeable people that could have intervened when the poorly integrated systems fail. Before the systems are up running the next acquisition will be lined up.

Synergies are often internally driven not market driven

If an acquisition was treated like a product 

6. Measurement often destroys more value than it creates 

The growth imperative often forces organisations to take a very short sighted approach. Acquisitions and other “getting big” initiatives have to be successful and results demonstrated immediately. Anybody that has been through a merger knows that it often take many years before the merger is settled – not quarters.

Large organisations also tend to measure the wrong things. Typically the focus is on the easy rather than the important measures which lead to a cost centric culture. Creating value and innovation is a long term process that cannot effectively be managed through cost control. Finally large companies tend to use the measurements for the wrong purpose. Measurements are typically used to control people and not to develop and motivate them.

“No measure does less damage than wrong measures or measures used for the wrong purpose” Jeffrey Pfeffer

7. Innovation and creativity declines as corporation grows

Most of the truly innovative companies of our time did not exist a few years ago and they claim to fame is not innovative products it is innovative business models and thinking. This kind of innovation rarely happens in large corporations.

Larger corporations also have difficulty tapping into their people creativity as the executive suite gets isolated from their people, from customers and society at large and frankly they often don’t believe in the organisations value capabilities

In a survey of 400 CFOs 80% stated “they would reduce discretionary spending on potentially value creating activities in order to meet short term earnings targets”   The Boston Consulting Group

8. The illusion of bigger means more diversified and lower risk

The prevailing wisdom is that when companies diversify they also lower risk although the financial crisis should have eradicated that assumption it still lives on. Markets are not safe isolated lakes where the larges fish rule – disruptors empty these lakes fast. 

Many companies rely on some commodities that seriously impact their business either as raw goods or as finished products. These markets used to follow demand and supply models before the derivatives markets started to dominate. Today every $ of commodity traded Is multiplied by hundreds of dollars of derivative contracts that are controlled by algorithms rather than people – perfect bubble economy conditions.

9. Corporate Silence, Effectiveness & Psychological distance

The larger a corporation becomes the more it follows the conventional wisdom it has created. There is no consent and all views are convergent with the logic of the corporation and its industry. This is coined corporate silence. 

In large scale organisations efficiency becomes the focus rather than actually investigating if processes create the desired output. Effective is forgotten and finally the psychological distance between large corporation managers and ordinary customers and customers becomes so large that they really fail to understand each other.

10. Large organisations have lower engagement

As Gallup has demonstrated, companies with a high level of engagement outperform their low engagement peers on all revenue, profit and quality parameters. 

At the same time they can demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between size and engagement levels.

Is it time to rethink your BIG IS BEAUTIFUL strategy?

Interesting data about your Employee survey

Officevibe has some very interesting data on the view of employee data. It is obviously not enough just do a survey.

• 25% of employees think that their manager views an engagement survey as a tick box exercise

• 30% is the average response rate for employee surveys

• 20% is the abandon rate for surveys longer than 8 minutes

• 29% of employees found the survey pointless

• 80% did not believe their manager would act on the information

• 47% of managers spend less than 5 days a year related to activities of their surveys

• 20% said their managers never responded to concerns raised

• 27% of managers never reviewed survey results

• 52% of managers reviewed results but took no action.

• 48% of senior managers found surveys highly valuable

• 45% of employees found little or no value in surveys

http://www.officevibe.com/blog/employee-surveys-infographic