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A culture of change
Five key steps to get your employees involved for greater creativity, productivity and bottom-line results
Youve heard the saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it drink." Well, the same is true of your employees.
No matter how aggressively you tug them toward the water (your goals), they wont drink (comply with your wishes) unless they really want to. Yet too many business leaders use the same old coercive tactics again and again, and then wonder why they cant achieve that all-too-elusive goal: employee involvement.
"Its understandable that so many professionals long for it," says Robert Pater, founder of Strategic Safety Associates and the MoveSMART safety and motivational program. "High-level involvement is a vital key to success. Managers attempt all kinds of tricks and games to activate participation but, for many, involvement is the Holy Grail of organizational leadership. Tremendous turnarounds always seem to be ignited by, or at least accompanied by, a high level of participation and involvement."
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Three keys to eliciting involvement
1) Mental key: Design jobs to be practical so workers see their tasks as reasonable and useful. Get input from everyone. Develop strong and active process improvement committees that have a mission and high expectations, and are highly trained with a reasonable budget for furthering their plans. One committee might focus on improving customer relations, another on developing competitive advantage, a third on reducing losses to people and products. Rotate people so a large array of workers sits in on the committees within a short time.
2) Emotional key: Help others become truly enthusiastic/excited about their work. It's not enough to just do a job mindlessly or reflexively asleep at the wheel. In general, threatening people with dire results rarely engenders interest or a positive response; peak performance only grows out of interest and excitement. Work doesn't have to be drudgery or wear people down. It can be about living your life alive, full of energy and interest, feeling good about yourself and what you do, getting better at what's important to you, feeling the active support of others. Motivate people positively, not negatively. Show them that what they practice at work can help them with what's important to them off the job.
3) Strategic key: Activate change top-down and bottom-up. Too many people get involved in debating the advantages of change starting by top managers or forged by grassroots staff. They're both right and both limited. Employ a "scissors" approach that simultaneously enlists management top-down and line workers bottom-up. A sharp knife might cut through a sheet of paper, but two edges working together can more easily slice through. Always plan beyond an initial intervention. Even a strongly accepted rollout must be fed and maintained in order to build momentum and enhance credibility. As the sage Lao Tzu said, "That which is not growing is dying." Plan on developing involvement from a small flicker to a well-established flame, one that burns away apathy, sparks morale and ignites a culture of high performance.
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Here are some of Paters key steps in creating a high level of involvement among employees:
Encourage creativity and the generation of ideas. Creativity is a numbers game; the more ideas proposed, the more likely some will be genuinely useful. And, often times, what starts as a "silly idea" or incomplete suggestion can be developed by others, piggyback fashion, into a highly helpful one. In this intensely competitive world, it's critical to harness all available resources, especially the expertise and experience of focused employees, toward organizational strength. Gone are the days when one genius or a very small braintrust knows enough to out-think its organizational opponents who band together numerous minds and hearts.
Engage the staff as part of the process of improvement. When changes are being implemented and new plans are in the works, employees may shun them if they were left out of the process. Staff should participate from the beginning: from brainstorming to creative planning to task completion and end results. If they participate in the creation (i.e., are involved in the process of improvement), they are more likely to embrace change, even when they didnt initially agree with the proposed direction.
Learn how to better direct attention. Help your employees learn how to focus, oncentrate and direct their attention spans. Attention is a crucial and often-hidden element in performance, productivity, safety and level of involvement. It is part of all decision-making processes. Involvement, on all levels, combats the check-your-brain-at-the-time clock, mind-numbing nature of some jobs or the Im-doing-the-work-of-three-people overwhelmed feeling of others. When people see that what they do is part of a larger process, one they both value and feel a part of, they focus more on their tasks without losing sight of the overall mission. The lights are on and somebody is home.
Understand how employees learn. On an individual level, involvement entails enlisting as many of a persons senses as possible. For example, everyone processes information/learns in different ways. While people accept information in all three modes, each of us has a preferred channel. Some are auditory learners they best receive and remember information by hearing descriptions or stories. Others are visual, predominantly retaining information by watching demonstrations, visual aids, movies, etc. A third group is kinesthetic, relying on physically participating in order to learn. This last group prefers not to read manuals or instructions; instead, they dive in and figure it out by trial and error. In reality, all of us learn.
Tailor to employees learning styles. Studies show that, in North America, 10 percent of the population is auditory, 24 percent is visual and 65 percent is kinesthetic. Yet in many organizations, most training and other communications is hearing-based. If the studies are correct, such communication is geared to the smallest group of people. Because you wont likely know others processing styles, the smartest approach is sending out all messages three different ways. Tell them stories/anecdotes and explain why change is needed (auditory); show them pictures, video or eye-candy-colored charts (visual); and strongly solicit their questions, ideas, mockups and demonstrations (kinesthetic).
"Many people long to be a functional part of a high-performance, cutting-edge team, one that's making a positive difference in the world," says Pater. "Focus on your organizational mission. Remind people that everyones work goes toward furthering that mission. In a winning sports team, no member plays alone and wins. Each staff member is highly involved and has a specific role: the quarterback can't be victorious without receivers and defensive protection; star defensive tackles rarely get the ball to the end zone; and receivers must have someone throw them the ball. When everyone is involved, working together as a team and appreciating the vital role each plays, the results are spectacular."
Robert Pater is managing director of Strategic Safety Associates Inc., a management and safety consulting firm. He is also the author of "Leading From Within: Martial Arts Skills for Dynamic Business and Management" (Park Street Press). For more information, visit www.movesmart.com.
MRO Today. Copyright, 2000
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