Leaders of organizations would be wise to follow the advice of Michael Kanazawa and Robert H. Miles in their excellent new book entitled Big Ideas to Big Results. The book lays out their ACT process for organizations that want to implement three to four major initiatives each year.
The authors developed the process to combat corporate ADD and employee disengagement when it comes to executing organizational initiatives. Based on my more than 25 years experience in business as well as my expertise in employee engagement, I completely agree that these are major problems in organizations today and the solution the authors propose will go a long way toward solving them. The ACT process is also entirely consistent with the employee engagement research we have conducted at E Pluribus Partners. The process helps meet universal human needs for respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth and meaning. When these needs are met, people thrive, individually and collectively.
Strong leaders will recognize many of the best practice steps that are a part of ACT. What makes this book valuable is the way the authors integrate the best practices into a step-by-step process and add ideas of their own. I especially liked their descriptions of annual high employee engagement cascades with tablework and quarterly mini-cascades. It’s worth buying the book just to learn more about these practices alone.
Big Ideas to Big Results will be popular with corporate leaders. It’s a quick and easy read with a process that is practical to implement and will help move organizations from identifying big ideas to producing big results. Congratulations to Kanazawa and Miles for developing an important new contribution to process innovation and describing it in an accessible way.
