Motivating employees to align their behavior with the organization’s strategy (strategic alignment) and give their best efforts (employee engagement) is one of the challenges of senior leadership. Typically, leaders and stars feel connected to the organization but research shows that 75 percent or more of the employees do not. Because they don’t feel connected, over time they gradually stop caring, they stop aligning their behavior with organizational goals, they stop giving their best efforts and they stop fully communicating. One serious consequence of the break-down in communications is that decision makers don’t get the information they need to make optimal decisions. These conditions lead to underperformance at both individual and corporate levels.
Free Download for GAO
Today I’m speaking at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington, DC. The GAO is known as “the investigative arm of Congress” and “the congressional watchdog.” It supports the U.S. Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and helps improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. (Note: The free download was open for two days which has now expired.)
Employee Engagement Conferences
On October 26-28, I’ll be the chairperson for the Human Capital Institute’s Employee Engagement Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. HCI has lined up some great speakers for the event. I hope you’ll check it out and join us.
As a reminder, another great conference on employee engagement will be held in Chicago on October 14. “Think Tank” is sponsored by the Forum for Performance Management and Measurement, the research center for the Medill Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. At this conference, I’ll be giving a keynote speech on the links between leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation. You can learn more about the program by clicking on employee engagement.
Employee Engagement: Assessing the Evidence
Frequently I’m asked if I can produce research that proves employee engagement affects economic profits. My answer: social science research can’t prove it with certainty but the sheer amount of evidence makes it “beyond a reasonable doubt” that some causation exists. The challenge with social science research is that it’s impossible to isolate the effect of one factor. To get a sense for some of the supporting research, take a look at these links to research summaries from Winning Workplaces and DDI (see “Building the Business Case” on pages 5-6).
Speaking at NASA and the GAO
Next month, my colleague Jason Pankau and I will speak about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Exploring Leadership Colloquium. We’re excited about this in part because, as several NASA employees I recently spoke with said, “we do cool work.” We also believe our work is very relevant to NASA. In our book, Fired Up or Burned Out, we wrote about how knowledge traps contributed to the Challenger and Columbia accidents. I wrote a blog post about it entitled “When Failure is Not an Option.” If you are interested in this topic, take a look at the outstanding National Geographic video special entitled “Challenger: The Untold Story.”
Next month I will also be speaking at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in DC. I’m thrilled to be speaking there too. First of all, I’m a former auditor (at Texas Instruments). I also know how critical the GAO’s work is to our country. Checks and balances, including a strong audit function, are required to keep people honest, a topic that Montesquieu wrote about in his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws.
Jim Blasingame Interview: Learn From Great Leaders
Today Jim Blasingame and I discussed how leaders can learn by reading about the stories of other great leaders from business, government, the social sector and sports. Our conversation was broadcast on Jim’s popular, nationally-syndicated radio program “The Small Business Advocate.” You can hear the interview by clicking on the “listen now” button below:
Think Tank to Stimulate New Ideas About Human Capital
The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement announced its annual Think Tank. Here is the press release on the event:
Think Tank to Stimulate New Ideas about Human Capital
FORUM’s Oct. 14 ‘Who’s In Charge Now?’ event features
author, CEO Michael Lee Stallard
August 18, 2009 NAPERVILLE, Ill. – Today’s economy requires businesses to pay ever-closer attention to the value that people bring to their organizations and their role in the human value connection that bonds companies to their employees and customers. The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement offers business leaders an opportunity to explore these issues and find solutions at its second Think Tank symposium titled, Who’s in Charge Now? Thriving in an Employee Led Economy, on Wed., Oct. 14, 2009 at the Union League Club of Chicago.
“The 2009 Think Tank is designed to provide education and insight on how people performance strategies can have a positive impact on their organization, and to create a networking opportunity for individuals who have a shared commitment to strategies that support people in the workplace,” said FORUM President Michelle M. Smith, CPIM, CRP. The target audience for this year’s event includes both high-level corporate executives and a broad panel of academic researchers specializing in people performance issues.
Smith noted that the FORUM has signed a dynamic expert in management-employee relations, Michael Lee Stallard, as its “Think Tank” keynote speaker. Stallard is co-founder, president and CEO of E Pluribus Partners, a consulting firm that specializes in helping leaders create “Connection Cultures” to form strong bonds among the management, employees, and customers of an organization. Clients have included Wachovia, Lockheed Martin, and UBS.
In addition, Stallard is the primary author of the book Fired Up or Burned Out, and contributing author of the book What Managers Say, What Employees Hear. Stallard is former chief marketing officer for businesses at Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab. For more on Stallard, visit his web site at http://www.michaelleestallard.com
A key feature of the conference is that participants will have ample opportunity to discuss the topics most important to them with peers, as well as with academic and people performance experts.
The event includes a reception on the evening of Oct. 13. Registration fees are $250 for corporate participants and $150 for academic/student participants. For more information on the FORUM Think Tank, call (630) 369-7780 or visit http://performanceforum.org/Think-Tank.97.0.html
The Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement (www.performanceforum.org) is a research center within the Medill Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) graduate program at Northwestern University. A central objective of the Forum is to develop and disseminate knowledge about communications, motivation and management so that businesses can better design, implement and manage people-based initiatives for inside and outside an organization.
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Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement
1601 N. Bond Street, Suite 303
Naperville, IL 60563
630.369.7780
Health Care Employee and Patient Satisfaction Linked
The Forum for Performance Management and Measurement, part of the Department of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, recently released a research report that shows a positive link between the level of employee satisfaction among health care workers and the level of patient satisfaction. You can download the report here.
On October 14, I’ll be giving the keynote address on leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at the Forum for Performance Management and Measurement’s annual Think Tank held at the Union League Club of Chicago.
Change by Legitimate or Illegitimate Means
Change in organizations can be brought about by legitimate or illegitimate means, with understandably different results. Take a look at this Fast Company article on the methods of consultant Fernando Flores for an example of change by illegitimate means. Typically, coercion, degradation and intimidation are the methods of choice by people I refer to as “Intentional Disconnectors,” individuals who tear others apart for the sake of an unhealthy need for ego gratification. Bob Sutton describes them well in his book The No Asshole Rule.
Federal News Radio Interview
Here is a link to the interview I did with Francis Rose of Federal News Radio.