VIDEO: 56 seconds to drive home the importance of manager engagement

If you have not yet seen the 'Target manager fires up the employees on Black Friday' clip (it made the rounds pretty widely this week), then take literally one minute and check out the short video (embedded below, Email and RSS subscribers will have to click through).

The manager (Note: I could not verify 100% that he actually is the store manager, but from the content itself and the fact that no one else tried to stop him, I am going to assume he is in store leadership in some capacity), from a Target in Maryland, prepared his fellow employees for the start of the Black Friday 'battle' with a speech that echoed the stirring "This is Sparta" speech from the movie 300.

"Whatever comes through those gates, you will stand your ground with a smile on your face. They come here with bargains in their heads and fire in their eyes and we shall give those bargains to them."

Pretty cool stuff, if a little bit goofy. But the short speech illustrates, I think, a fantastic point about one of the topics that can be overly dwelled upon - employee engagement.

You, me, everyone else has written, seen presentations, and talked about employee engagement for years. And thanks to our friends at Gallup, (no comment on whether or not we should care about Gallup, just making a point), we are reminded, annually, that NOTHING WE EVER DO impacts overall engagement levels all that much.

And yet we continue to debate, discuss, even obsess about engagement.

But in all this copious amounts of words and attention paid to engagement we don't seem to think or talk or consider manager engagement all that much. And not managers as just another employee too whose engagement or lack thereof gets tallied up by Gallup or whomever runs your survey.

But manager engagement as it directly impacts, influences, and even helps change engagement levels of their teams - often, as is the case in this Target store, the front line staff that is the last mile in customer experience and satisfaction, well it seems to me we don't think about that much (or enough anyway).

This little one minute pep talk from the Target manager is a great example of the how one person's high engagement has the potential to have a multiplier effect on the team. He may have swung one or two or maybe even ten of the employees to get charged up to perform at a high level, to take care of the customers, and to even get engaged themselves.

Managers have the ability to influence a disproportionate number of staff every day. We should talk about manager engagement as much as we talk about employee engagement I think.

Have a great weekend! 

Pass it on: Connecting Engagement, Community, and Results

Earlier in the week I co-presented along with Trish McFarlane on how HR and leaders can use social tools and technologies to empower their organizations and engage employees, (because you know 'empowerment' and 'engagement' are important buzzwords). Kidding aside, we do have continuing evidence, even if it is mostly observational and anecdotal, that connecting people to each other, creating environments where they are free and also challenged to collaborate, and linking these efforts to greater organizational and/or personal goals are likely to lead to increased capability, engagement, and (trust me), operational results.

One of the examples we used in the presentation, and that I'd like to highlight here, is global financial giant Aon's 'Pass it On' program. The program, (home page screen shot below), is described in Aon's words as:

A multi-faceted, global program that combines elements of employee engagement, community service and client partnerships to demonstrate to the world how Aon's 60,000 colleagues in over 120 countries focus every day on empowering results for their clients and communities.

The program also leveraged Aon's jersey sponsorship and relationship with world famous football power Manchester United, in an interesting 'pass it on' project, where three Man United footballs were 'passed' around the world amongst Aon's offices and where local Aon employees recorded videos documenting the ball's journeys throughout the world, (one example is below, email and RSS subscribers need to click through)

Sure, Aon is a huge corporation, and has obviously poured pretty significant resources into the Pass it On project, but I think there are some simple and repeatable lessons that smaller companies can learn from this project.  One, is to connect an employee engagement initiative to the organization's external and perhaps better known market persona. Next, the introduction of a contest across the Aon regions played into the competitive nature of Aon employees and drove participation. Last, the awarding of the winner's prize of $10,000 to be donated to a charity of the winning team's choice further enhanced the value of the program and better connected local Aon offices to their local communities.

Finally, I was just glad we found an example to talk about in our session that wasn't Zappos or Google or LinkedIn.

Finally, finally - the link to Trish and my presentation is here.

The Other One Percenters

The entire '99% vs. the 1%' is now a well established concept (thanks to the 'Occupy' movement), or method of describing in very broad terms the income, (and some might say opportunity), disparity that exists in the US economy. When you hear these terms, you immediately understand the concepts, take your own position on the merits of each point of view, and sometimes self-identify with one group or the other.Let's hug it out

But recently I read an interesting piece on the AdAge Digital site about a different kind of 1%, (that was an awkward transition, admittedly), specifically the 1% of a company or a brand's social media fans that seem to actively engage with said company or brand. The article, titled 'Study: Only 1% of Facebook 'Fans' Engage With Brands', recounts a recent piece of research conducted by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute that claims to show that only about 1% of the self-identified 'fans' of a brand on Facebook, (certainly not the only social platform, but indeed the largest), actually 'engage' with the brand by commenting, tagging, sharing, etc. actively with the brand and the content.  The vast, vast majority, the other 99%, simply identify as fans, get exposed to some of the brands' content, and continue on with whatever else they were doing.

While seemingly offering a really low return on investment to marketers, at least according to the study's authors it doesn't paint a totally bleak picture. From the AdAge piece:

"I don't think it's a bad thing," said Karen Nelson-Field, senior research associate for Ehrenberg-Bass Institute who describes herself as a "Facebook advocate." "People need to understand what it can do for a brand and what it can't do. Facebook doesn't really differ from mass media. It's great to get decent reach, but to change the way people interact with a brand overnight is just unrealistic." 

In this understanding of the marketing and media worlds, social is just another media channel useful for its reach rather than any notion of engagement.

While this article and the study it refers to are in a strict sense focusing on consumer brand engagement, I think they offer some food for thought for the Human Resources and Recruiting professionals who are increasingly looking to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create interest, conversation, and dare I use the word again, engagement for their own purposes. The main point, that an engagement level of 1% might be the baseline is instructive as HR pros create their forecasts and plans. 

But the second point the AdAge piece brings up is even more thought provoking -  namely whether or not social platforms like Facebook are truly brand engagement platforms, or just another marketing and messaging channel like newspaper ads, company web sites, or large job boards.  I know we like to think that with social all or at least many of the traditional rules no longer apply, but this study (and others), suggest that maybe the change is not happening so fast.

What do you think? Does the 1% number hold up in your experience? And does it even matter?

The Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy - Part VI

Now that our long national nightmare, (the NBA labor impasse that resulted in almost a two-month delay in the start of the 2012 NBA season), is over, and a hectic, condensed schedule of 66 games is in full swing, it was only a matter of time before the next installment in the popular 'Jeff Van Gundy' series.JVG

Since it has been some time since the last dispatch in the JVG catalog, perhaps a brief re-set is in order.

Jeff Van Gundy, (JVG), is a former head coach of the NBA's New York Knicks and Houston Rockets. After leaving coaching in 2007, he embarked on what has been a successful career as a broadcaster, providing expert analysis for ESPN's NBA telecasts. JVG excels as an analyst not only for his basketball expertise, but for his good nature, wry humor, and keen insight into motivation, leadership, team dynamics - exactly the kinds of challenges faced every day in the corporate world. 

I have been watching NBA games forever, and chronicling just some of the Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy here on the blog for a while. You can catch up on the previous installments in the series if you wish here -  (Parts I, II, III, IV, and V).

So for this latest installment of the 'Wisdom of JVG' series, I call your attention to an observation JVG made in this week's Dallas Mavericks v. Boston Celtics game, a sloppy, uneven contest eventually won by Dallas. As the game wore on, and the poor play from what seemed like two tired teams continued, JVG offered this insight when talking about the Celtics' veteran star Ray Allen, a player known for a high work rate and dedication to the game.

Look at Ray Allen work. He has natural energy. No one has to 'motivate' him to run hard or to cut to the basket with force and purpose. He doesn't need to be prodded or pushed to give that level of effort. He just does it every night. 

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JVG went on to talk about Allen's teammate Kevin Garnett in similar terms. But the larger point was that when the star players, the leaders, the team members that others look up to, set an example of pride, discipline, and dedication that it creates an environment where an expectation or a standard is set that in order to fit in, everyone else, who might not have all the physical gifts of Allen or Garnett have to follow. 

Organizations talk a lot about leadership development, building leadership pipelines, and the importance of leadership in the modern age. And while formal leadership capability is certainly important, I wonder if informal, in the trenches, and demonstrated by example leadership from those key players on the team that don't really have formal leadership titles or responsibility is equally important.

It's fantastic when the organization has an inspirational, charismatic, and effective leader at the top of the org chart. But it might be more important and influential in the long run to have more quiet leaders sprinkled throughout the organization that have that natural energy, setting the example for the rest of the team to follow.

For me, I'm just glad the NBA is back so I can try and mine for more 'JVG' posts!

Have a great weekend!