WEBINAR: From Employee Engagement to Employee Experience

Quick pitch for a FREE Webinar that I am co-presenting along with the nice people from Globoforce this Tuesday, Feb. 23 (that's TOMORROW), at 1PM EST titled Changing the Conversation in 2016: Moving from Employee Engagement to Employee Experience. 

Here's the quick pitch (as if you needed one to get on board with this idea):

Surveys consistently show that only about 30% of employees consider themselves 'engaged.’ And improving engagement in a meaningful way has proven elusive for many organizations. What if instead HR started focusing more on the overall employee experience?

It’s time we stopped treating branding, onboarding, coaching, and development as separate entities. By approaching these employee interactions in a more holistic manner, we have a huge opportunity to really “wow” our employees.

Join Steve Boese (that's ME) and Lynette Silva from Globoforce as they discuss how recognition plays into engagement and some useful metrics for measuring the employee experience.

What you’ll learn: 

• How to think about the employee experience from a customer experience point of view
  • 3 primary components of the employee experience
  • Errors in how we’re pursuing engagement (and how to fix them)
  • Specific ways to elevate the fundamental value you offer employees
  • And lots more...

This is going to be a fun, and pretty lively conversation with some (hopefully) good ideas you can use in your own organization to begin to create the kinds of 'wow' experiences that marketers strive to create for their customers.

You can register for the FREE webinar, Changing the Conversation in 2016: Moving from Employee Engagement to Employee Experience on Feb. 23 at 1PM EST by clicking HERE.

Hope you can join us tomorrow!

HRE Column: Rethinking Culture and Strategy

Here is my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech and that archives of which can be found here.

As usual, the Inside HR Tech column is about, well, HR Tech, (sort of like I used to write about all the time on this blog), and it was inspired by a recent HR Happy Hour Show that Trish McFarlane and I did with Anthony Abbatiello from Deloitte, and that focused (primarlily) on the connection between organizational culture and business strategy. This was a great conversation, and I encourage you check it out.

On the show, Anthony also talked about a new software product from Deloitte called CulturePath, designed to help organizations not only understand and assess their culture, but to also help HR and business leaders with the critical task of aligning culture with business strategy. Since I thought the show was so interesting, and the product incredibly interesting, it was the topic of my latest column for HR Executive.

Here is an excerpt from the HRE column, 'Rethinking Culture and Strategy': 

From HR Executive...

The "Culture is King" folks sometimes would make us think that a "fun" or "flexible" or "inclusive" culture (or whatever other adjective you prefer that connotes some kind of healthy or desirable culture) is all, or at least nearly all, any organization needs for success.

This point of view conveniently ignores the idea that, no matter how much free food, foosball tables and flexible-work arrangements an organization has, if they don't have a compelling product or service that meets a true market need, and have recruited and retained the "right" set of talented people to execute on the strategic plans, then all the great organizational culture in the world will still result in failure.

Plus, it ignores the fact that, for just about every successful organization, the business strategy was formulated first, and then the culture developed around that strategy and through the organization's people.

So what I am really saying is that culture can't  -- and doesn't -- exist in some kind of vacuum. It has to co-exist and be in alignment with the organization's strategy and resonate with the actual people who inform the culture and execute the strategy.

My belief that we can't consider culture alone when thinking about what makes an organization successful is probably why I am really impressed with a new technology solution I have recently become familiar with: CulturePath, from the consultancy and advisory firm Deloitte. This solution represents an interesting and important evolution in how we think about culture, strategy and people in the organization.

The CulturePath solution surveys employees in the organization and then analyzes the aggregated data to measure the organization's cultural attributes across a spectrum of core indices such as collective focus, external orientation, and change and innovation, as well as differentiating indices such as courage, commitment and shared beliefs. The goal is to assess how well the attitudes and behaviors of employees align with, and support, the desired business strategy...

Read the rest at HR Executive... 

Good stuff, right? Darn right it is. Ok, just humor me...  And be sure to check out the HR Happy Hour Show where Anthony Abbatiello from Deloitte talks culture, strategy, and technology.

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and take your dog out for a walk or dig your car out of the snow if you do sign up for the monthly email.

Have a great day and rest of the week!

Competing not collaborating - check this before your next leadership retreat

Put enough smart people in the room and you are sure to work out a problem, devise a solution, or otherwise come up with a bunch of great ideas to cure whatever is the crisis du jour at your organization, right?

I mean, it seems like both common sense, and is backed up by most of our personal experiences that if you have a group of intelligent, motivated, and capable folks that at least some kind of solution or direction can be agreed upon. We have all been in these kinds of sessions and meetings - probably hundreds of times. It's not really all that complicated - get the right people together, let them collaborate, and good things generally happen. And usually the 'right' people are ones with some differing yet complementary skills, have a wide range of perspectives, and most of the time, have distinct power levels, either officially or unofficially in the organization. That proverbial mix of generals, captains, and soldiers if you get my drift.

But what happens if the room is filled with only generals - or in your case, a group of leaders who are more or less peers in the organization?

Well, according to a recent study from the University of California and covered in Quartz, it could be that in these 'leaders only' sessions collaboration gives way to competition.

From the Quartz piece:

Corporate boards, the US Congress, and global gatherings like the just-wrapped World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are all built on a simple theory of problem solving: Get enough smart and powerful people in a room and they’ll figure it out.

This may be misguided. The very traits that compel people toward leadership roles can be obstacles when it comes to collaboration. The result, according to a new study, is that high-powered individuals working in a group can be less creative and effective than a lower-wattage team.

Researchers from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, undertook an experiment with a group of healthcare executives on a leadership retreat. They broke them into groups, presented them with a list of fictional job candidates, and asked them to recommend one to their CEO. The discussions were recorded and evaluated by independent reviewers. 

The higher the concentration of high-ranking executives, the more a group struggled to complete the task. They competed for status, were less focused on the assignment, and tended to share less information with each other. Their collaboration skills had grown rusty with disuse.

There's more to the review in Quartz, and of course you can access the full paper here. But the big 'gotcha' from this kind of research is the reminder that just because you assemble the collective 'best and brightest' in the organization to work through some kind of tough challenge, it does not mean that you can assume everyone in the room won't have their competition and self-preservation antenna way, way up. 

And it is also interesting to note that the researchers found that while individuals power hampered the group's ability to collaborate effectively, it did not detract from any one individual's ability to reason cognitively.  Said differently, the group of leaders studied performed worse collectively that they all would have individually.

Competition at work is sometimes, maybe lots of times, a good thing. It can serve to raise the performance bar in an organization. But be careful what you wish for when you put too many powerful, competitive leaders in a room and expect them to work out the best decisions for the collective.

It's said that power corrupts. It might also be said that too much power in one room amps that power and competitive nature of these people so far that not much good will come from it.

Be careful out there.

Goal alignment sounds boring, but it can get you fired (NBA coaching edition)

My favorite sport is basketball, my favorite league is the NBA, and my favorite team is the New York Knicks.

Yesterday, my beloved Knicks relieved their head coach, Derek Fisher, of his duties about 2/3 of the way through his second season as head coach, with the Knicks currently possessing a 23-31 record, good (or bad) for 12th place in the NBA's Eastern Conference and about 5 games out of the 8th place, and the final playoff spot in the East.

There were various reasons for Knicks' team ownership and management to make the move to release Fisher, but I want to focus on one in particular that has been cited in many of the reports of Fisher's firing. It's a classic HR/Talent Management concept as well - dull sounding goal alignment - the basic, but as we will see overlooked in the Knicks' case, idea that organizational goals should be defined, communicated, and understood throughout and down the organization. Playoffs? Playoffs?

The goal in question that at least partially served as a catalyst for Fisher's demise: for the team to finish in the top 8 places in the Eastern Conference and make the NBA playoffs, one season (and a few new players) removed from last year's franchise worst 17- 65 record, and dead last finish in the East.

Here's an excerpt from one report on the firing on how management and Fisher's boss, Knick team President (and NBA coaching legend), Phil Jackson were disapponted in some recent comments from Fisher regarding the Knick's goal of reaching the playoffs this season:

More importantly, however, ESPN reports that Fisher wasn't developing as a coach quick enough for Knicks management. Some of that pressure may have been because the Knicks, for stretches, looked like a playoff team. Yet in the midst of a rough patch, Fisher, during an interview, said missing the playoffs wouldn't be a "disappointment."

"No. Disappointed in what?" Fisher said in an interview on ESPN radio. "We’re a developing team with a ton of new players. ... We have to be reasonable about who we are and where we are and accept what is and not get caught up in what we should be and allow other people to define what our success is."

Let's unpack that a little, exspecially for folks who don't follow the NBA as much as I do, (everyone).

At the start of the season the Knicks were incorporating several new players, their best player (Carmelo Anthony), was working his way back into form following an injury/surgey last year, and after only 17 wins a yar ago, probably could not have been reasonably expected to compete for a playoff berth this year. Jackson and Fisher, both veterans of the NBA, had to have known this, even if they said different things publicly.

But then a few things broke in the Knicks favor in the first half of the year. Anthony rebounded well from injury and was playing some good basketball, rookie Kristaps Porzingis was MUCH, MUCH better than anyone would have expected, and several new players made contributions to the team. The team was actually in contention for a playoff spot until their recent swoon - losing 9 of their last 10, culminating in the firing of Fisher yesterday.

So the organizational goal at the beginning of the season was probably something along the lines of 'Let's be better than last year, let's develop some new players, and let's figure out which players are not going to cut it.'

About half way in the season, due to some unexpected and better play, at least to Jackson and managment the goal shifted to 'Let's make the playoffs this season.'

But somehow Coach Fisher either didn't get the message, or, didn't buy in to the new goal as one that was reasonable, and one upon which his performance should be evaluated.

Against the first set of goals for the season, even at 23-31, Fisher's performance would have at least been 'acceptable.' The team is better than last year, rookie Porzingis has been a pleasant surprise, and (mostly) Fisher has found a way to be competitive game in and game out.

But against the revised or re-calibrated goal of making the playoffs this season? Well it seems almost certain after losing 9 of 10 that the Knicks are not going to achieve that. Fisher publicly stating that missing that goal 'would not be a disappointment' said to Knicks management that their was a disconnect between what the organization was working towards and what one of its key managers, (Fisher), had in mind. And so Fisher had to go.

It's ok for leaders to change course, set a new goal mid-stream, or ask even more from people who are performing well. But if those folks you are asking to do more and be better are not fully on board? Well then you have pretty different definitions of 'success' in the organization, and that ultimately will drive a wedge between leadership, management, and employees.

Note: I have probably watched 45 or so of the Knicks 54 games this season. I don't think they are a playoff team either.

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 233 - Knowing Your HR Potential

HR Happy Hour 233 - Knowing Your HR Potential

Recorded Thursday February 4, 2016

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane recorded a podcast of a rehearsal on the day before a webinar that actually happened last Friday. I know that might be a little confusing, but just think of the show as the audio track for a webinar for the Cleveland SMA called 'Know Your Potential', (slides have been loaded up to Slideshare and are embedded below), that Steve and Trish delivered last week.

The webinar (and this podcast), covered a range of topics, trends, and tips for HR, recruiting, and talent professionals - all aimed towards getting the most out of your potential for excellence in 2016.  So on the show we talk about some of the important trends for 2016, why they matter for HR and Talent pros, and how to leverage these trends in your professional life. Additionally, we shared some advice and tips on maximizing the value from online, social, and professional networks - an always interesting and rapidly changing space. Finally, while the webinar, (and attached sldes), covered some emerging HR and recruiting technologies, we cut the podcast short before this topic, as we will revisit it on its own show soon.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or using the widget player below (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through).

The slides we used for the webinar and podcast can be found on Slideshare here, as well as embedded below.

Know Your HR/Recruiting Potential from H3 HR Advisors

 

This was a really fun show to do, and many thanks for checking it out, and to the Cleveland SMA for having us on the webinar.

Reminder: you can subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on iTunes or using your favorite podcast app for Android or iOS. Just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to add the show to your subscriptions and you'll never miss a show.