Unstructure

In the summer of 1987, Art Schneiderman faced a dilemma. As Quality Improvement Director at Analog Devices, he had been asked by CEO Ray Stata to develop a new annual planning process that focused on the non-financial drivers of quality improvement. Stata was interested in innovation and how the organization and its people worked. But alongside him, COO Jerry Fishman was more focused on financial performance and the bottom-line. Insiders referred to the Stata-Fishman partnership as “the two-headed monster.” As Schneiderman noted, “Opposites work very well together.” Except when you’re in the middle. And it became very apparent to me early on that I was in the middle. I had to not only manage Ray, but Jerry as well.”

The differing approaches of the company’s two top executives were abundantly clear at the monthly business meetings, which were chaired by Schneiderman. He always put the non-financial performance measures first on the agenda, followed by the financial measures, and Fishman would switch them around.

Fishman challenged Schneiderman to find a way to make them both happy. A few days later, while at home in the evening, Schneiderman saw a television commercial that emphasized how Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were a combination of two different products: peanut butter and chocolate. As he recalled, “Suddenly the light bulb lit: combine the financial and non-financial metrics as a single agenda item. So I added a small number of key financials at the top of the scorecard, and the problem was solved to everyone’s satisfaction.”

Schneiderman’s new reporting system became known as the Corporate Scorecard inside Analog Devices. A few years later, Harvard Professor Robert Kaplan wrote about Schneiderman’s endeavors in a 1993 Harvard Business Review article titled “The Balanced Scorecard” (though Analog Devices was not actually named), leading to the popularization and widespread implementation of the concept. Today the Balanced Scorecard is one of the most widely-used management tools in existence.

This story of the origin of the Balanced Scorecard is typical of how innovations in management practice happen—a combination of conducive circumstances, personal initiative, and serendipity. There is no standard formula for making management innovation happen, but there are certainly things you can do to increase the likelihood that you will succeed in making changes to your Management Model.

It goes without saying that change in an established organization is slow and difficult. It is hard enough to introduce new products and services that represent a departure from the way things have traditionally been done. It is even harder to introduce new management practices where their potential benefits are so subjective and unmeasurable. It takes an enormous amount of effort and personal conviction to move an organization out of the deep grooves of established practice and onto a new track.

Who are the dramatis personae in this play? We have the CEO, of course, who carries ultimate responsibility for the long-term success of the company. Ray Stata at Analog Devices was not the originator of the Balanced Scorecard, but he gave Schneiderman the space to experiment, and he endorsed the idea when it was put forward. But there are also hundreds of mid-level executives in any medium- to large-sized company who, like Schneiderman, have a point of view on the future direction of the company and useful insights into what should be changed to achieve success. I call them “Change Agents” because of their vital role in making things happen.   There is also a third set of actors, the external consultants and experts like Robert Kaplan, who often play a useful supporting role in helping Change Agents like Art Schneiderman.

Change Agents are entrepreneurial by nature: they don’t have the formal authority to act, but they see an opportunity and they choose to proceed anyway, perhaps by doing something within their sphere of immediate influence, perhaps by building a coalition of like-minded people, perhaps by pushing their boss to do something new. Recall the famous words of the American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” This is true in the domain of social change, through the efforts of such individuals as Aung San Suu Kyi, Mohammad Yunus, and Bono. It is also true in the domain of corporate change, where successful business ideas often emerge through the championing efforts of mid-level managers who succeed despite the formal system, not because of it. Well-known examples of products that have emerged through the efforts of bottom-up innovators include Sony’s Playstation, HP’s Laserjet Printer, Ericsson’s mobile handset business, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

So, how should you focus on your role as a Change Agent, in envisioning and promoting Management Model innovation inside your company? What changes in management practice would you like to see? Where should you start? Whom should you work with? You may not have the formal authority, budget, or breadth of perspective of a Chief Executive Officer, but you have a very practical understanding of what is preventing your company from realizing its potential, and you typically have more degrees of freedom in enacting change than you might realize.

In my new book “Reinventing Management” I’ve discussed this in detail. My research suggests that Management Model innovation is typically driven by the efforts of three sets of actors: mid-level change agents, top-level executives, and external partners such as consultants and academics. Here are five lessons I discuss in my book on the subject of change agents:

1. Figure out your degrees of freedom and use them. Most managers have far more space to try new things than they realize. As the old saw says, it’s often easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
2. Build a team of allies inside and outside the company. One approach is to build a group of colleagues inside the company who can collectively get things done. Another approach is to tap into external sources of insight to help build legitimacy for what you are doing.
3. Take an experimental approach. Experimentation is a good way of overcoming internal resistance, because it gives your colleagues and your boss the right to say no.
4. Give it a name. Your project needs a name that your colleagues can hold onto, to help them understand why they are taking part in it. A great name makes people curious to know more and will help it to rise above the noise.
5. Seek out support from above when it takes shape. The biggest challenge you face is to sell your project to those above you in the organization. As always, the best advice is to build on small successes and to use your allies inside and outside the company to create some momentum behind the project, so that your boss has no choice but to endorse it.

Rethink, Redesign, Refine

We are challenged daily to solve plentitude of problems and issues. We strive to find new ways, new ideas that will make a difference, stand out and bring the success. It is demanding and tough work. We are stuck behind computers trying to crack problems, uninspired by the killer application, so called excel.

We fear intuition as it has a hard time to fit into power point slides. Inspiration has a hard time to break through the thick walls of silos of competences we’ve build around. Who said we can’t be creative?! It is time to rethink, redesign and refine the concept of being creative.

Rethink

I wonder how often you speculate why some people can quickly and easily solve their everyday problems while you sit in front of the computer screen asking yourself how to conceive the new and brilliant idea. You think all I need is a stroke of creativity and out of the sudden the ghosts of the past and their genius paralyzes you. Dealing with a genius makes you think about the exceptional and non-ordinary skills to which your mortal don’t have access. You tend to believe creativity is not your cup of tea, so you have to leave it to “the creative people” in funky glasses and with messy hair.

Wait a minute! Have you ever wondered how many issues you face throughout your day and how may problems you solve every day.

Get back to your childhood. How did you manage to deal with thousands of small problems while you were a kid? You had neither the experience nor knowledge. You had a great, creative and reliable mind. And you know what you still have it. We all have brilliant brains that are able to be creative and innovate. Being able to create is the part of our human nature, it just requires moving from the owner of the brain state into the user of the brain state.

The challenge is also to rethink what creativity means. We tend to perceive it as the act of creation, as a form of artistry. In fact creativity is breaking the routines, merging the old elements into something new, breaking the structure of our thinking in order to get a new perspective, the fresh look on the problems. Creativity is problem solving that leads to novelty and utility.

Redesign

How thinking outside the box killed creativity?

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s think outside of the box. Now. Thinking outside the box is like a cherry on a pie, add on to problem solving rather than way of thinking itself.

Thinking outside the box is what kills creativity. Stepping out of the routine in the conference room without windows and no fresh air for 45 minutes will not bring anything new.

Good ideas don’t appear by themselves. Thinking outside the box is not the magic spell that will bring creativity in us. Good ideas are the result of hard work, redesigning the way we approach problems, our motivations and inspiration.

The road to creative problem solving and ideas is through experimentation, acceptance of variety, taking risks and having open mind, eyes and ears. Sometimes the tiniest and the least expected thing like a movie, an article, a scene on the street can inspire us and lead to unexpected solutions.

It’s a bit like getting back to being a kid and stop believing in “one right answer”.

Redesign your approach to problem solving:

1. Don’t sit still. Get out. Talk to people. Despite what many may believe Google doesn’t have an answer to anything.
2. Bite your pencil. Think with all of your senses…and write down all your ideas.
3. Ask. Be 3 years old again. Wonder and keep on asking why over and over.
4. Color outside the lines. Find inspiration other places.
5. Play with matches. Take risks. You may be surprised.
6. Imagine. If you let yourself, there will be nothing you can’t do.
7. Have fun. Laugh.
8. Take a nap. Nothing triggers creativity more then rested brain.
9. Put the hours in: “Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.”*
10. Ignore everybody: “The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.”*

Small changes that will make the cracks in daily routines will help you on the way to being creative. Those small cracks will make the room for inspiration to leak through.

Refine

This is process. Let the flow take you. Keep on adapting and improving. Have your daily inspiration fix. Don’t be afraid of making the mistakes. Accept that it will never turn up, as you would wish. So adapt and question. The chances that you will be right are much higher this way…

And if you ever have the slightest doubt, watch this:

Inspired by:
*Ignore Everybody, Hugh McLeod
The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelly
Thinking for a Living
Technique for Producing Ideas, James Webb Young

My lovely “kids’ gang”

The Author, Daria Radota Rasmussen is Strategic Director, Vizeum Denmark
This post was originally featured on Aegis Zoom News and is also available on her blog.

At the outset let me thank Julian for the invitation and giving me a chance to participate in this interesting discussion. Thanks also to Venessa Miemis for a well written note on the future of work. The slideshow link is superb and really opens your minds to how the future of work will pan out.

Although the future of work is impossible to predict I would like to identify one key input which will drastically change the way work happens. The advent in technology both in terms of computing speed and bandwidth will make it possible to work and contribute virtually from anywhere. This would mean that employees may not need to be in office and that they may not even need to live in the vicinity of the office. Things like commuting and going for a vacation will have new meanings and connotations. Employees could literally log in and out and be present as per their convenience.

A big challenge in this scenario will be the ability to measure output. While this could be easy in the case of a person taking customer calls it can be very difficult in the case of a person doing creative work like writing a report. New techniques of measurement will have to be introduced as this will be critical to keeping your employees motivated. A good measurement system may not motivate an employee but will definitely demotivate her.

With a significant change in the way we live and work our drivers for motivation are likely to change as well. As we move into a world which does not have people living below the poverty line and where people have the basic necessities like food, clothes and shelter the definition of musts and wants is likely to change. This will lead to a change in both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

People will value freedom and flexibility. They are also likely to be more worried about the kind of people they work and interact with. The culture created in the organization may become a key motivator.

My comments are not based on any research but are extensions of the way I see the new world evolve.

As part of London Social Media week, Alan Patrick and David Terrar organised a session titled “Social Media In Enterprises: The Real Elephant in The Room”. I was due to join a rather illustrious panel but was held back by unforeseeable problems. Here is my 10-minute “firehose”.

My work is about solving strategic problems for customers in “highly regulated industries”. In these industries, strategic options and choices are often heavily constrained by various regulations.  So my comments come from recent and for the last couple of years, recurrent conversations with customers and prospects in these industries.

Parlez vous meine Sprache?

This may sound like nitpicking to those who spend their lives evangelising “social media” to consumer businesses and in communication or media firms. But enterprise customers don’t like the term. That is not news. So should we talk about “Enterprise 2.0″? The term has been criticised as being too corporate, managerial. In other words, stuck up. Now here is news. From the vantage point of smaller, nimble consulting and communication outfits, most, even most of the apparently nimble enterprises, really are stuck up.

But the question is: do we want the door opened to us or not? If the answer to that is “yes”, we need to speak their language. While “social media” and Enterprise 2.0 mean not much to many, saying “Enterprise Identity and Collaboration” seems to float many a boat.

I am not advocating obfuscation or the use of heavy jargon. But objectively, to a n00b, “Enterprise Identity and Collaboration” is self-explanatory. It even suggests “progression” from what the enterprise does rather than some kind of revolutionary change, and is hence an easier “sell”. If you disagree, don’t hesitate to tell me why.

It is neither technology, nor culture. It is entirely something else, something I cannot control: regulation.

Let’s consider businesses in sectors – and certain processes inside certain highly regulated industries – where heavy regulation is not an issue. In those contexts, it is easy to adopt collaboration tools inside and outside the firm’s boundaries. For instance, the US$ 20Billion manufacturing group Emerson Electric has a subsidiary called Emerson Project Management in Leicestershire. Their 800-strong team in Pune, India helps them bid for and deliver global projects, each of which may be worth several hundred million US$. They achieve an efficient and effective level of collaboration through extensive use of open source tools to create project based wikis, to share information before, during and after the bid process, to deliver the project and to capture learnings at every stage of the long process.

On the other hand, consider pharmaceuticals and banking, where I have had ongoing discussions.

A BigPharma, within the firm, can use enterprise collaboration tools and in some functions, including pipeline development and project management, the employees do. But let’s imagine an “enterprise identity” project. As generic competition grows, it has never been more important for BigPharma to have some relationship with the consumer, the patient. Kapow! Here BigPharma is hamstrung by regulation, such as Direct To Consumer advertising. The nuances of the regulation are many. The price to pay for any trangression is considerable. The regulation is country specific, while interwebs are anything but. It is tricky and it is a legitimate concern in adoption of any “2.0″ tools. Likewise, consumer banking has a quagmire of regulation guiding, nay watching over, every interaction between banks and consumers. Just think data protection requirements and the need for audit trails.

So, what IS the real elephant in the room?

Well, I’d ask “do you understand their problems or are you just another “social media guru (!)”?

The real elephant in the room is little overlap between “people who understand 2.0 tools and technologies” and “people who understand complex industry processes and strategic imperatives”.

The real elephant in the room is that selling the “Enterprise 2.0″ thing as a culture shift is too big a sell, and selling it as a technology solution is too meaningless a sell. The real sell is complex and subtle.

The real elephant in the room is regulation, and that the tools and technologies are just not ready.

Are we ready to ride the elephant yet?

Thanks to everyone who commented on my recent piece on employee motivation. I believe we can quickly agree on two points: First, high levels of employee engagement are vital to the long-run success of knowledge-intensive firms; and second, employee engagement levels are nowhere near as high as they could be, or need to be.

But in terms of how firms increase engagement there are understandably a lot of different perspectives. My last posting focused on the analytical approach – identifying the drivers of motivation, and suggesting ways that companies can utilise these drivers in a fairly mechanistic way. Some comments argued for a more natural approach – essentially focusing on putting in place high quality managers who enable others through their own personal skills. Both approaches have their merits.

Let me take a slightly different tack in this posting. Rather than consider motivation and engagement at a very generic level, I would like to think about them in the context of technological change.

As we all know, Facebook and similar sites are frequently banned in the workplace. For example, as many as two-thirds of UK companies have banned employees from on-line social networking during the working day. It is seen as a time-wasting activity, a breeder of gossip, and a security concern.

This type of knee-jerk reaction is understandable, because it happens every time new technology enters the workplace. But it is also dead wrong. Research has uncovered an important correlation between commitment to a job and social interaction in the workplace. “Work hard, play hard” has been the mantra of Silicon Valley start ups for years. And enlightened industrialists like William Lever and George Cadbury understood it more than a century ago. But it takes on new meaning in today’s workplace. Not only are the media for social interaction changing, we also have a new generation of employees – the so-called Generation Y or Millenials- with new demands and expectations about what they can expect from a job.

Think about what we really mean by work hard, play hard. If your employees take a “social networking” slice out of their work day, does that mean the “value added work” slice becomes smaller? Or does it help to grow the size of the pie? I would argue it is the latter – if people are allowed to do social things at work, they are likely to engage more fully, and for longer, than those who are not. So why does the pie grow? Here are three plausible arguments.

First, by condoning play at work, you are changing the psychological contract with your employees. The message is: I trust you to do the right thing, and I will evaluate you on your outputs, not on your inputs. Your employees will appreciate the space you give them, and will likely repay your trust with more creative and more thoughtful outputs.

Second, the more your employees engage in social networking at work, the more the boundary between work and home blurs. Some people like to keep the two worlds separate and usually the more creative or playful part of their personality is hidden at work, only coming out at night or at the weekend. Other people, often working in start-ups or for themselves, are happy to interweave their home and work lives. They bring their whole selves to work, and they put in the effort that is needed to get the job done. Their behaviour, in other words, is shaped by the physical and social surroundings in the workplace.

Third, the emergence of a new technology typically has far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. No-one guessed that paging technology, originally invented to alert doctors to emergencies, would spawn an entirely new form of social interaction, text-messaging. The value of new technologies emerges over time as users experiment with them and link them with other technologies. Social networking may look like a look like an enjoyable waste of time today, but the chances are it will spawn new applications and inspire new and productive ways of working in the not-too-distant future.

What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of encouraging employees to use social networking tools at work?

Motivation is a hugely interesting, but in many ways mysterious topic. We’re all human and so are driven by the same underlying basic needs, yet many managers often scratch their heads to the bone wondering how to motivate their staff.

Julian Birkshaw recently raised this issue, commenting that a mere 20% of employees are fully engaged in their work. He posed that that, in order to effectively motivate their staff, managers need to employ a complementary mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational strategies, appealing to people’s material, social and personal needs.

While insightful, an observation to add is that, while we are driven by the same needs, what these needs look like, varies from person to person, and particularly from generation to generation. Lancaster & Stillman in their 2003 book When Generations Collide, explain that each generation in the workplace, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y, are motivated by similar underlying drivers, but these desires are manifested very differently, according to the needs of each generational culture.

With regards to intrinsic needs, for example, their vast numbers means that Boomers are often competitive and a so motivational symbol of success might be an impressive title and a corner office with their name on the door. Having had to struggle by themselves in harsh and unstable economic climates, a pleasing reward for independent Gen Xers might be time off so they can go travelling and tell stories upon their return of climbing the Himalayas barefoot, or traversing the Sahara on a camel. Gen Y, on the other hand, growing up in a globalised and technologically connected world, may find motivational the opportunity to work from home or to be provided with a Smartphone so that they can keep up-to-date with work wherever they are, while simultaneously sharing online videos with friends.

From this perspective, it is clear that managers can develop practical yet effective motivational strategies if they not only recognise the cultural nuances of each working generation, but that many (referring to Julian’s article), if not most material and personal needs have their roots in social needs. Why do we want to win competitions (material) or to show our expertise (personal)? Because we want to impress our peers, to strengthen our social standing within our chosen community, to validate our presence and identity at work. Boomers, Xers and Ys seek to validate their social status within the confines of their generational norms, implying that social intrinsic motivation is possibly one of the most powerful forms of motivation.

Thus, if you are a manager seeking to motivate your team, consider to what generation, to what social communities they belong. What represents social success in those groups? If you discover this, then you have the key to long-term motivation and sustainable productivity.

In the new age where employees are becoming the center of almost every facet of business strategy, the influence that they cast on the ways of working is tremendous. Today, with strong peer networks and open dialogue directly with the management, it is hard to ignore the power and impact that one individual has. As organizations grow bigger and flatter, their success is going to be largely dependent upon the decision that that one individual makes. In fact the term “Employee” today has been replaced by successful Intrapreneurs who are taking the lead and creating their own ecosystems within an organization.  A large number of our workforce today comprises of impatient youth who believe in the power of the present. We are in the age of boundary-less communication. The world has shrunk to the size of a Twitter page. Information is exchanged, processed and made redundant within a few minutes. Therefore, it is only natural that today’s workforce is far better informed and connected as compared to those in the past.

We now have individuals, rather than employees, coming to work and bringing their own selves- their unique thoughts, emotions and ideas. What we have therefore, is a diverse workforce, each attempting to stand out from the crowd. It is this assortment of beliefs and values that poses both as a threat and an enabler for organizations. How do you channel all their energy in one direction without losing out on those very characteristics that make them unique?  This brings us face to face with fresh challenges- increased workplace conflict and dangerously low employee engagement and morale.  Since individuals spend a large part of their time at work, it is essential that there is greater understanding between them and their peers/managers, etc. A conflict amongst any of these groups affects communication and performance. A disgruntled individual has no choice but to leave. Study has shown that when an employee leaves an organization it is largely because of the conflict between his/her values with that of their co-workers and more specifically the manager [for the manager is largely responsible for setting the culture of a team], and has rarely anything to do with the organization as a whole.

Workplace culture, therefore, plays a crucial role today.  It is, however, being defined by these very individuals who are also shaping our business strategy. How do we align the two so as to ensure that there is minimum conflict and high engagement? The answer is simple. Find out what drives them- what are these individuals or Intrapreneurs really passionate about. Moving one step ahead of engagement and discovering what the passion drivers are for each individual helps them focus on each one of their strengths – it tells them that they are unique in their own way and the organization recognizes and appreciates this fact. Workplace culture improves because passion fuels passion. Peer interaction becomes healthier because each one learns something from the other.

To illustrate, here is an example based on my own experience; I’ve caught on to this variant philosophy and attempted to decode the passion here at HCL with the help of an Employee Passion Indicative Count program. This assessment tries to enable each value creator at HCL to identify their own unique passion drivers. Given the success of the program (over 57% participation), it was evident to me that today’s workforce demands a sensitive organization that caters to their specific needs.

Therefore, I believe that having a passionate workforce, instead of a merely engaged one, results in an organization moving in one direction without losing out on its diversity.  We managed to successfully build a culturally rich workforce because we understood that only when there is plurality amongst individuals can they drive business performance to greater heights.

I would love to hear of other successful programs that managers are implementing to harness employee passion at work. How do you work the diversity factor to advantage? Where do you draw the line? Also, how have these programs impacted your business?

This article is cross-posted on emergent by design, in response to Julian Birkinshaw’s post, Will the role and influence of the employee be different in the new world of work?

Berkinshaw’s article focuses heavily on analyzing motivation and its drivers as an approach to discussing new management models. Defining motivation and breaking it down into categories is fine, but as Marc Buyens (@mbuyens) said in the comments section, it may be a way of overcomplicating a relatively simple concept.

We know that humans are driven by some motivation for every action that is taken. In terms of how to motivate workers, it seems like it can be simplified into a sentence:

People want to perform work that matters to them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Firstly, thanks to Julian for the invitation to contribute to the discussion he has eloquently started here on the role of employee motivation in the changing dynamic of today’s business environment. This in part follows on from Arne van Oosterom’s Made With Care discussion on Wenovski.

In support of his discussion of how managers might support employee Motivation, Julian leverages the same Self Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000,2004) that has formed the basis of my own research. His coverage of the Material, Social and Personal drivers of Motivation need little further coverage as I referred to them on this blog and associated discussions using Deci and Ryan’s original terms of  Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence. Julian suggests that managers should utilise these three aspects of human psychological capability to help turn ‘extrinsically regulated‘ organisational objectives into ‘identified‘ personal motives of employees. In otherwords, managers should use the prospects of material, social and personal rewards to encourage employees to take ownership of organisational objectives and become more personally intrinsically rewarding. I would also supplement this with Valerand’s, (2003) definition that motivation occurs on “global, contextual and situational” levels of recursion.

As I’ve mentioned in the discussion on Wenovski a great example of an organisation doing this is Zappos, an American online retailer, that uses it’s employees to amongst other things model the clothes they sell. Specifically this example is appealing to an employee’s underlying Relatedness and Competence ‘needs’ and allowing them to fulfill those ‘needs’ on behalf of the organisation, which in turn benefits the organisation’s own Relatedness and Competence objectives, by providing customers with a familiar, down to earth and empathetic marketing touch point. Literally in this case the employee is embodying the organisation. This, if successful, and it is proving very successful for Zappos, will in the long term also enhance the organisations global Autonomy by boosting sales (the material outcome) as well as it’s social outcome (what customers think) and its personal, or personnel outcome by enhancing its relationship with its employees.

As one of the commenters on Unstructure Marc Buyens said, “these are not new concepts”, but I think the difference is that re-conceptualising these as motivational constructs or regulatory mechanisms can have quite a powerful effect on the way an organisation manages them. The above diagram indicates another few ways from the literature of conceptualising both how and why to target ‘management interventions’. For example, these help determine at what stage you are energising as opposed to directing employee/customer behaviour and whether or not you are doing so to instil awareness of issues or to reaffirm employee confidence or satisfaction.

Indeed, motivation is all around us, it is the root of our every behaviour and that’s a critical point I’d like to bring to this conversation, motivation whether positive or negative (demotivation) will occur whether you want it to or not. Within your organisation, your staff and colleagues, and yourself. Deci and Ryan’s theory is an organismic one, that is, it perceives that we as humans are naturally predisposed to grow and organically adapt to our environment, seeking out new challenges, responsibilities and recognition in order to fulfil these underlying psychological needs. The question to managers is perhaps best asked, not might you support motivation, but rather how are you currently regulating motivation within your organisation? How are you directing or maintaining the energisation of the behaviour in your organisation?

A very innovative approach to this I discovered yesterday, came via the Swedish TV Licensing Authority with their Tack (Thank You) campaign. Allowing individuals who upon paying their tv licences can submit a picture of themselves and be integrated into a well highly produced and aspirational “thank you” video. Actually, anyone can have a go, which does kind of undermine the point a little, but its powerful stuff – underlining the point that for managers the best way to motivate your employees is to integrate them into the middle of the organisation and allow them to take ownership and participate in the critical issues of the organisation and become an evangelist for them.

From a Self Determination perspective at least, every employee has those Personal ‘Material, Social and Competence ‘Needs” Julian mentions, fulfilment of these results in happiness for the individual. However, because of the nested and recursive nature of self determined behaviour and societies, organisations also have ‘Material, Social and Competence‘ ‘Needs’. The obvious question for managers then is how are you facilitating the fulfilment of both of these first order (happiness) and second order ‘needs’ (success) and in doing so creating a motivated, energised and purposeful organisation? As I shared on Twitter yesterday:

“Success is getting what you want (contextual/global – extrinsic). Happiness is wanting what you get (situational – intrinsic).”

Seems that interest in this subject has been renewed in these times as it is becoming an area of tremendous impact in today’s businesses. Can an employee be an evangelist and what qualities must he have to play this role? Are companies doing enough to convert employees to evangelists? Are employees up to this challenge in today’s situation? How do employee evangelists impact the bottom-line? Can employee evangelists lead to customer evangelists? …

I recall that my grandfather was one of the best evangelists I’d ever known for the Indian Railways. Being the station master [more than 40 years ago] of the little South Indian town of Wellington – a wonderful holiday destination in the hills, he was an evangelist par excellence. It never occurred to us to use any other mode of transport [unless absolutely necessary] when he was around. Punctuality, discipline, service… at work, and at home. I actually developed a mental picture of the Indian Railways based on what I thought of him. And it was good. I saw the Railways as reliable and dependable, efficient, disciplined …it was as if he was the railways and vice-versa – atleast in my mind at that time.

This seemed to be pretty common back then; when people worked in companies they loved for more than 15 or 20 years. Growing with the establishment – becoming extensions of it. Yes, quite natural when I look back at my teachers, my parents, other authority figures… they absolutely loved what they did for a living. [Atleast I never got the impression otherwise]. And as a result, we chose to go to their schools, buy their company’s products over others in the marketplace, conduct business with their companies solely based on the trust we had in them….

Could this, then, be the key? The basis for the entire concept of the “employee evangelist” – A strong sense of individual purpose.

I believe that all the effort in the making of an employee evangelist – training, involvement in company activities, remuneration, investments in growth, gauging the impact on business and the bottom line…etc, etc will still fall short if the employee has no basic sense of purpose – I mean as an individual, before he/she becomes part of a larger group. Having a sense of purpose drives people to choose certain careers/jobs and companies that share their vision. It is this kind of group that makes not just good, but excellent evangelists; because their sense of purpose goes far deeper than just product/brand knowledge. And nowhere can this authenticity or steadfastness of purpose be gauged more astutely, than at the customer’s table. Sensing purpose, the customer opens up and an engagement begins – not just a one way marketing promotion.

The challenge today, therefore, as I see it, is not whether companies are investing enough to convert employees into evangelists – [it’s certainly a lot more than in the days of my grandfather] -   but whether they are ready to enter into deeper realms [while recruiting and otherwise] of identifying individuals of purpose, and then successfully mapping their roles according to their areas of interest/strength. A happy and productive employee doesn’t need heavy investment to become an evangelist – he already is. And his own new sense of purpose gives him a powerful incentive to see the company succeed.