PART II: One Organization and Their Journey to Enhanced Employee Engagement
Last week we introduced a client case study of a 130-year-old oil and gas organization and their journey to enhancing employee engagement throughout the Finance and Accounting (F&A) organization. In the introductory blog we highlighted one key to more effective employee engagement was to CARE more! Clarity, Alignment, Resources and Enable. To change the current performance environment to better reflect the aspirational culture statements found displayed throughout the organization we had to establish greater clarity to an organizational purpose and align the entire F&A organization to that greater purpose.
This purpose allows people to move past “task-focused” activities to “purpose-driven” action and performance. It encourages everyone to no longer accept the status quo and to boldly challenge the future and transition from silo-ed functional teams to collaborative, connected, and highly engaged teams and individuals contributing to a common greater purpose. We have gained that clarity and alignment by creating employee-led engagement teams chartered to redefine the F&A performance environment and establishing ongoing clarity and alignment through education, connection, and relationship.
Greater employee engagement is already happening with these efforts, but this is only the foundation, the very first step. The key is sustaining and even enhancing this engagement long term. We now move to leverage the 'R' and the 'E' of CARE: Resources and Enablement. The organization is applying resources that develops every F&A leader and employee to “lead where they are”, to enable greater personal and team accountability, to lead change, not manage it, and, to empower personal and team performance. They are turning outdated performance management into the future of performance development. They do this with innovative training, coaching, reward and recognition, and engagement teams that create ongoing reinforcement activities introduced every month that ensure sustained engagement at every level. And they are rapidly moving from the task of compiling spreadsheets and the reporting of numbers to providing compelling insights from those numbers that make a positive and dynamic impact.
The organization is quickly becoming a model for gaining and sustaining employee engagement. You want better employee engagement? You better engage the employees and CARE more!
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
PART I: One Organization and Their Journey to Enhanced Employee Engagement
Last week we faced the difficult truth that most organizational stated cultures are aspirational at best and often do not reflect the true performance environment that each of us walks into each day. So, it was time to “get real” and identify whether our performance environment actually reflects our stated culture. Trust me, if there is a disconnect then it will be very difficult to enhance and sustain organization-wide employee engagement. This week we are highlighting for you one of our client’s path to enhanced engagement and their efforts to align their culture and their performance environment.
Destination Success – For this organization it was time to CARE!
They are a successful oil and gas organization located in Houston, TX that has been in existence for over 130 years, but like most companies in this industry, it is having to reimagine itself to effectively compete for the future. As part of building a new foundation of success they brought in a new CFO with a new vision for the Finance and Accounting (F&A) function.
“We want to move from completing tasks to creating a meaningful purpose. Evolve from delivering “walls of numbers” to providing great insight and impact from those numbers, and to come in each day with the intent to make each other each other great at what we do.”
The F&A organizations' previous year employee engagement scores lagged behind the rest of the organization and where the signs around the building said "We Are Bold" and “One Team,” this CFO saw an organization resigned to the status quo and would over hear statements like “We have always done it that way.” Instead of “One Team,” he experienced functional silos within the group and rather than strategically partnering with the executive and operations teams they were relegated to a back-office support, executing daily tasks and delivering those walls of numbers! Sound familiar? We find pockets of this in just about every organization!
This CFO reached out and asked us what options were available to change a 130-year-old performance environment. Our answer: You and the organization need to CARE more. You need to provide greater Clarity and Alignment to your F&A vision and the aspirational culture the organization is promoting, then we can focus on the necessary Resources to assist in the evolution, and finally determine what it will take to Enable and sustain this performance environment transformation leading to that ever illusive, greater employee engagement.
We teamed up with the CFO and his leadership team on this CARE journey, currently conducting interactive, functional team workshops designed to define what “Bold” is and is not, as well as what “One Team” means and what it will take to enable that. These sessions layout specific action plans including the formation of employee engagement teams that, from the front-line employee level, own the go forward F&A vision and which partner with leadership to redefine the performance environment. We are creating and communicating with greater Clarity and actively gaining organizational Alignment in a number of ways including the workshops and creating a next generation performance environment where every F&A employee is actively leading where they are.
Next week we will highlight the R (Resources) and E (Enable) in the CARE model and how this organization is redefining the work they do, how they do it, and most importantly, the “why” they do it, tied to a meaningful purpose, not just a task to be completed!
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Culture Vs. Performance Environment: Let's Get Real
Ok let’s be honest, how many of you work for, or in the past have worked for, an organization that defines their organizational “culture” by mission, vision, and values statements that are often prominently displayed on lobby and conference room walls and reside on corporate website home pages that tout descriptors like bold, innovative, “one team”, transparent, learning, “customer first”, passionate, and hundreds of other possible words or statements? But when you ask an employee if this is the real work environment, if their organization truly embodies these traits, their eyes roll and respond with statements like, “Yeah right.”, “Are you kidding me?”, and “Those are just words hanging on a wall.” This is when you begin to see very quickly that the actual performance environment eats culture for lunch!
So between us, let’s get real. Just recently we conducted this exercise for a client. We asked, “What is the stated culture of the organization?” and this was the list:
- Innovative
- We are One
- Bold
- Transparent
- Responsible
- Agile
All sound great and anyone would love to work in that culture. But then it got real. We then asked, “What is the performance environment people encounter each day when they come into work”? Here is that list:
- Status Quo
- Siloed
- Paralyzed
- Knowledge is power, so keep it
- Blame and justification rules
- Slow to make decisions
And senior leadership wonders why employee engagement is low to non-existent, results are marginal at best, and involuntary turnover is double digits...
I will say it again, performance environment eats culture for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Over the next 3 weeks we are going to explore ways and highlight examples of organizations that have aligned their culture and performance environment, where employee engagement is strong, results are top tier and sustained, and where people work with purpose and passion and coming to work is both a privilege and pleasure to them.
Come back next week for our first look at these organizations!
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
The Evolution of Organizational Performance: Part Four
Part Four: The Future of Organization Performance - Now
We conclude our blog series on the evolution of organizational performance by looking at the future of performance and how we can align our actions, activities, and behaviors to stay ahead of this complicated and complex landscape of organizational performance.
Let’s first quickly recap our journey to date by listing key characteristics and positives takeaways of each era, as well as a future comparative look.
The future is not developing 1-3-5 year plans. It is about connecting and inspiring people to move and think with you, challenging the status quo, and creating an environment for fast cycle, agile, real time performance. As leaders, we can no longer depend on directing and controlling. We must enable and facilitate success and performance and finally, even though your title may not be manager, our role is to develop, cultivate and lead the environments of performance, accountability, personal/team performance, and disruptive, positive change.
Create team learning workshops, teaching them how to set expectations and review their ongoing performance with their leader each month. Cultivate a performance environment that is caustic to negative people, not where negative people make the performance environment caustic to everyone else. And finally, develop your team to lead change, think disruptively, and always challenge the status quo.
You see, the future performance evolution starts with you today….develop the leader in everyone by making a LeaderShift in you.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
The Evolution of Organizational Performance: Part Three
Part Three: A Change in Focus - The 2000's to Today
Our journey through the evolution of organizational performance has taken us from WWII command and control top down driven leadership, to the age of management of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s where change management, performance management, management by objectives, KPI’s and dashboards were just a few of the performance drivers. As you can still tell in today's climate, most anything and everything that could be measured and managed was, including people. Both the command and control and scientific management era's created performance environments of employee compliance, not employee commitment and engagement.
However, in the 2000’s, a few organizations started to focus less on productivity measures and more on the consumer and creating a different customer experience. Organizations like Starbucks, Netflix, UBER and many others created unique and differentiated customer experiences and changed the competitive landscapes in their respective markets. While operational excellence and standard operating practices are crucial, the key performance focus is on delivering and enhancing the customer experience.
In addition, it's during this era you have seen organizations develop mission and vision statements and many adopt organizational core values. The challenge to proclaiming mission, vision, and values statements is actually staying true to those. In fact, in your organization's, how many people know what they are, and do they support and drive the daily actions and behaviors of all (or at least most) of the employees?
We've also begun to hear about the importance of “employee engagement” in delivering outstanding customer service. So enter in the annual or bi-annual employee engagement survey and the efforts to enhance employee engagement by most organizations today. The challenge is turning that survey feedback into sustained, year over year, increased employee engagement and commitment. Most organizations, unfortunately, fail to move the mark.
In fact, according to the Gallup Organization’s 2017 American Workplace Study, employee engagement has not moved over 2-3 percentages points in the last 18 years.
Yes, you read that right, the last 18 YEARS!
This leads us to where we find organizational performance today. The foundation is set, but what is the next evolution in organizational performance? Next week we explore the future of purpose-driven, employee engaged, leader supported, organization enabled performance.
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For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
The Evolution of Organizational Performance: Part Two
Part Two: The Golden Age of "Management" - The 70's, 80's, and 90's
As we mentioned last week, the performance environment that people experience and work in every day has a profound impact on both personal and team engagement. We started this blog series exploring when and where “command and control” leadership began and the impact that style of leadership has by creating more of a compliant performance environment than committed and engaged.
Just on the heels of command and control leadership came the era in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s of “scientific management” where everything from time, quality, and yes performance, was managed. There were hundreds of books, tools, and theories on how to “manage” your time. You managed work by creating MBO’s (Management by Objectives), and your personal performance was managed by end of year ratings on a “bell curve” or “forced ranking systems” often referred to by many at G.E. as “rank and yank."
Now don’t get us wrong, measurement is a good thing, but taken too far and not having the right focus tends to create a barrier in today’s complex business climate and becomes a de-motivator, significantly impacting overall employee engagement for the worse. Just ask anyone if they think the performance management process in their organization is effective today at enhancing performance and increasing engagement? I venture a guess of highly unlikely.
According to Reuters, 4 out of 5 U.S. workers are dissatisfied with their job performance reviews and want them to better reflect their work.
With the dynamic and rapid pace of organizational performance today, if you are managing change and not leading it you are behind! If you are a leader still reviewing performance and not enabling and pursuing performance, you are managing not leading. And if you are an individual contributor not proactively leading your own performance discussions and talent development you are left to the mercy of others to review and manage you.
So, we ask once again, are there remnants of the “scientific management” era negatively impacting your organizations performance environment? If so let us know and we can assist in evolving your personal and organization’s performance environment. Remember, no one wants to be managed and if you don’t believe us, just ask them!
Next week, Part Three - The 2000's Through Today.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.