Brian Gareau Engaging High Performance Blog

New High Performance Survey Says...

7/31/2014

In June, my organization teamed up with ADL Associates to conduct research on a new High Performance model. The new model leverages concepts discovered during Six Sigma’s evolution and 30+ years of corporate experience. The model has four major components – strategy; organizational culture processes; individual accountability; and employee engagement.

A diverse group of more than 30 organizations, based in the U.S. and Northern Ireland, participated. In total these companies represented more than 310,000 employees. Participants included: Amazon; AutoZone; Bombardier Aerospace – Northern Ireland; Caterpillar; Conway Freight; Menlo Logistics; PetSmart; and Public Storage.

Here are some key highlights:

More than half of the participating organizations rated their Strategy, Organizational Cultural Processes (OCP), and Accountability average or below.
Cultural processes that “Inform” were viewed most effective. Those that “Teach” average and those that “Reinforce” least effective.
Only 70% of the organizations viewed Accountability favorable.
88% of organizations who reported Financial Performance below expectations had flat or declining engagement
When Engagement was viewed as a “Nice to do”, 66% of the time those organizations met or exceeded Financial Performance. That percentage increased to 77% when Engagement was considered a “Need to do”.

So here are three sets of questions to see how your organization compares against our latest research:

Overall our employees believe our strategy has:
- The necessary human capital capacity allocated to it?
- Has strong conviction by ALL to act on it?
Organizations have a number of key “cultural processes” (OCP) that INFORM, TEACH, and REINFORCE the behaviors needed for strategy execution excellence. How would you rank each cultural process per grouping, from most to least effective, in your organization?
- INFORM (Communication; Policies & Procedures; Processes; and Measurement)
- TEACH (Learning & Development; Leadership; Decision-making; and Onboarding/Orientation)
- REINFORCE (Performance Mgt.; Recognition; Reward; and Selection)
Are mistakes, missed targets, and errors perceived as “fatal” to individual performance and career opportunities?

I’ll share our research findings on these questions in my next blog. Until then, remember becoming and sustaining high performance requires a strong strategy everyone champions and a culture that consistently reinforces specific behaviors.

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What’s Your Employer’s BCD?

7/9/2014

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Every organization has a culture. Some manage their culture. Others let culture manage them. Culture impacts an organization’s brand, reputation, effectiveness and efficiency. It also influences many critical things for employees including how - work is conducted; priorities are determined; challenges and problems are solved; and relationships are created and sustained. It’s the behavioral blueprint for what ultimately is tolerated and reinforced. Bottom line – research continues to reinforce that business culture:

Can have a significant impact on performance,
“Eats strategy for lunch,” and
Differentiates an organization from other prospective employers

So, what’s your Employer’s Business Culture Differentiation (BCD)? Is it sustainable? Is it balanced?

Today’s competitive, global economy has put extreme pressure on some historical, Employer BCD elements including:

Wages
Benefits
Rewards and Perks

Many of these BCD elements have had to be reduced and/or severely limited. It has become financially challenging, if not impossible, to sustain being the #1 or “the best” in these historical BCD elements. So how do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace and ultimately attract, develop, engage, and retain critical human capital?

One very successful option is to keep historical BCD elements competitive and complement them with non-financial BCD elements including:

Ethics and Values. A Stanford Graduate School study found “a substantial number of MBAs were willing to forgo some financial benefits to work for an organization with a better reputation for corporate social responsibility and ethics.”
D&I. Corporate Leadership Council’s research indicated that “companies high in diversity and inclusion of its people have better results on discretionary efforts (+12%), intent to stay (+19%), team collaboration (+57%) and team commitment (+42%).”
Leadership. MSW Research reinforced that “a manager’s ability to build strong relationships with employees, build strong team interaction and lead in a ‘person-centered’ way creates an engaging environment in which employees can perform at the highest possible level.”
Recognition. According to O.C. Tanner research, “more than twice as many employees are highly engaged amongst those who receive performance recognition compared to those that do not.”

Today, more and more companies offer “competitive” wage and benefit packages. High performance organizations must continually differentiate and distinguish themselves for current and future employees. One key way to do this is to evaluate and address your Employer’s BCD.

If you are interested in assessing your business culture and discovering what really makes you different, then let’s chat.

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New High Performance Survey Says...

What’s Your Employer’s BCD?

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