This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
CEO
The theory & reality of town halls
On a recent trip to Vermont Michael and I were listening to the Vermont Public Radio president on a town hall with their listeners. And I noticed something. It just didn’t work. The president listened and chatted with those that called in. The conversation seemed more like ‘she says’/’he says’ than a real conversation. And, at the end of the show the president closed nicely and I realized she hadn’t specifically responded with an action to a single listener’s feedback.
It seemed a far cry from Obama’s town halls. Or what I’ve heard from my friends who live in Vermont, a state that may have invented the town hall, about the meetings that their very small town, Newfane, runs regularly to discuss all matter of issues and opportunities facing the community. Or my recent experience attending a town hall for a “programme particulier d’urbanisme” that has the potential to change the face of downtown Montreal. These are lively discussions. Both the politicians and the electorate care about the issues being discussed. And at their best there’s clear action to be taken at the end.
And yet, the Vermont Public Radio town hall seems a familiar scenario for those of us doing internal communications. So what’s going on?
Employee town halls after all are supposed to humanize organizations. They create one of the few opportunities for interaction and discussion between our executives, managers and employees. So, why don’t they generate meaningful discussion? Why aren’t they more lively? Gosh why don’t we even get questions, unless we plant them [manipulation – for another blog] more than half the time? Why does it seem more like a shareholder meeting rather than a scrum?
Here are some thoughts:
| Political town halls | Employee town halls |
| It’s a democracy | It’s not a democracy |
| Audience has the power | Speaker has the power |
| Politicians to listen and defend their position | Executives to talk and assert their position |
| There’s something to discuss that people care and want to discuss | There may or may not be anything to discuss and employees are ‘mandated’ to participate |
| There’s an opportunity to influence decisions | Little or no real opportunity to influence; decisions have already been taken or |
Given these differences, what can we learn? Can we re-frame the Corporate town hall to achieve our goals of humanizing, engaging and creating meaningful conversations that further the business? Love to hear what you think.
Random Posts:
Random Posts:
Great idea # 3: Building pride – The Hudson Bay Company story
An occasional post on a really great idea for employee communications
– simple and high impact.
For those of you who don’t know, The Bay was incorporated “…by British royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay” making it “… the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world.” [source] I grew up knowing it as The Hudson Bay Company. Somewhere along the line it became HBC and The Bay.
And somewhere along the line the adventure was over. The Bay had become a tired and dowdy department store owned by venture capitalists. You couldn’t even find a Hudson Bay Company Point Blanket anywhere in the store.
And somewhere along the line over 70,000 employees and millions of customers had lost the spirit. Products were uninteresting. And the service was nonexistent or surly.
Enter Bonnie Brooks, Chief Adventurer (aka President and CEO), The Bay, Hudson’s Bay Company. The store, here in Montreal, looks the same from the outside. But inside there’s a lot going on and it’s all good.
In the two years since she was named, Bonnie Brooks has managed to transform this dying department store. And she’s done it by going back to basics: Building pride in the founding spirit of adventure and discovery. The things that connect the business to this incredible 400 year history that had been lost. And, she’s managed to take mostly hourly minimum-wage employees with her by building their pride – in the institution, in leadership and in the work they do for customers every day. Genius.
She’s “invited employees on a mission”. A mission to engage with the business and their customers. And they are. Their pride in the company and what they are doing is palpable.
She’s managed in a very short time to reignite pride in the institution and the heritage and tradition of the past. She’s changed the employee experience. And in doing so she’s changed the customer experience.
A simple idea. Incredibly well executed. Good for employees. Good for customers. And good for The Bay.
Congratulations Bonnie!
PS: The iconic blanket stripes are now trademark protected and you can now find the Hudson Bay Company Point blankets, pillows and other gift items that reflect the traditional bay colours and spirit in their in-store boutiques.
Random Posts:
What’s with “strategic pillars”?
Well, it’s that time of year again. It’s the time of year when institutions of all kinds check-in on their progress against their current strategies and/or announce new ones. It’s the time of year when thoughts will turn inevitably to the 3, 5, or 12 strategic pillars. [Just Google “strategic pillars” and you’ll see what I mean. I got 3,340,000 results.]
Why pillars? They are static and heavy. They hold something up, but can be knocked down. Remember Samson? So why do we insist on using this tired cliché to describe something that we want to motivate employees and engage them in action?
Isn’t it time we gave a little thought to how we’re communicating organizational strategies?
Random Posts:
What is it about share price?
This morning thanks to CommScrum’s Kevin Keohane, I read “Internal comms at IBM shift from creation to curation”. It’s an interesting perspective on the changing role of the internal communications function. And, IBMs thinking about their intranet would have made the Great Ideas posts here, but for one thing…
“You cannot remove our share price from the home page,” Ben Edwards, IBM’s vice president of digital strategy and development says, “because we believe you should pay attention to our share price.”
Why do they think employees should pay attention to share price? I just don’t get it.
Employees don’t have any direct control over share price [who does?]. Share price doesn’t help employees do a better job. It doesn’t give them feedback that would help them serve customers better. Or become more efficient. Or design better products and services.
It’s another example of the pressure on short-term thinking that isn’t connected to vision. It’s like asking watching a score board for another game while you’re playing a tennis match [or for my CommScrum friends, playing football].
Why, oh why, do organizations as smart as IBM think that it is the measure that matters for employees?
Random Posts:
“Leadership makes all the difference”
Robert Fritz’s work on Structural Dynamics began over 20 years ago after he observed something pretty odd: “Success does not succeed in organizations” and asked “Why not?”
As those of you who follow this blog know, I studied with Robert Fritz for over 8 years. The principles of Structural Dynamics remain the foundation for the work I do in communications and change management. Last month, he and the other founding members of Innovation Associates – Peter Senge, Charlie Kiefer, and Peter Stroh – were invited by the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference to talk about the work that originally inspired them. Robert’s talk – “The Structural Dynamics of Leadership” – is a great primer to the work that has inspired me for years. So, for those of you who are interested, here are some highlights from the talk that may provoke some thinking and questions:
- Leadership is critical
- Leaders are subject to the structures they are in. Structures are created by elements in relation to each other and lead to specific behaviours – oscillating [structural conflict] or resolving [structural tension]
- Without a change in underlying structure change efforts will be reversed [i.e., where the structure is an oscillating one]
- Structural conflicts that drive oscillation can be addressed through hierarchy. The hierarchy is a leadership decision. [i.e., Where there are competing systems there needs to be a decision about what is primary]
- Structural tension can be designed in
- Shared vision is good. Shared structural tension is even better
- Structural tension as an object gives direction and coordination. Working with structural tension can take the complexity and organize it very simply to a unified and aligned direction while providing for all the freedom in the world to express your talents, creativity and imagination
- Leaders need to think in terms of outcomes not problems
- Workload to capacity is one of the key issues of leaders today. Leaders need to build capacity for the future.
- Leaders are pressured into short-term thinking. Short-term thinking without a sense of vision will hurt the organization
- The purpose of a company is not shareholder return on investment. Maximizing profits undermines the company’s ability to grow and better compete in the marketplace
- Business strategy is about generating wealth. The key to business strategy is making an offer that can’t be refused
- Composing the organization aligns resources and systems to a common direction
- The senior person needs to have an executive team that is aligned and masterful at implementing strategies. Too often the executive team is the first to undermine the alignment
- Where senior people are doing their jobs then dissemination, multiplication, amplification of leadership becomes available to the organization. That is golden.
And here’s the full talk [80+mins]. It has lots more provocative thinking including some thoughts about the difference between command and control, self-organizing and compositional organizations that are very convincing and worth a listen just for that.
http://www.robertfritz.com/tsd_of_leadership.mp3
Does success lead to success in your organization? If not, why not? I’d love to hear what you think.
Random Posts:
Learning from Indian royalty
I just saw an amazing exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario – Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts. The role of the royal procession in Indian culture is a key element of the exhibit. It is at least as rich and opulent as you would imagine. Stunning.
In the first room a Maharaja talks about the power of the royal procession. I admit that I expected him to talk about how the procession is designed to position the Maharaja as a powerful god-like being. Whether the turbaned and bejewelled Maharaja is riding in a gold and silver ‘howda’ on the back of an elephant dressed in highly embroidered ornaments or in a silver and enamel landau carriage [yes silver!] or in a aluminum on saffron and Phantom II Rolls Royce, the royal procession is a spectacle. And, it’s designed to be spectacular [start at 3 minutes on this video].
But, what the Maharaja said made me stop. He said that the real power of the procession isn’t the spectacle. Instead, it’s a profound reminder of his responsibility to the people in his kingdom.
Now, I know your CEO is no Maharaja. And our organizations are not feudal kingdoms. But, are there any events or moments in organizational life that connect senior executives to employees in a way that gives them a powerful and direct understanding of their responsibility? If so, what are they? And if not, should we be thinking about how we can better make that connection?
For those of you interested in what it took to dress an elephant for such a procession [no irony intended]:
Random Posts:
“Buckle down. Get on with it.”
Today’s post is inspired by the girls at Underworld’s on Coronation Street [yes, I watch them all]. Things are going badly for the business. Carla has just come back to save the day after two ‘bad’ characters have apparently left the business in shambles. No Christmas for the girls at Underworld’s. As one character points out ‘Just because the owners have done a bad job why won’t we get our Christmas party?” Why are they being punished because of the failings of the owners? Well life [and certainly work life] is not fair.
Just buckle down and get on with it.
The CEO and his team want you to be “engaged” in a ‘big change’…
- But, by the time they tell you about it it’s either wrapped with a big bow or it’s still so conceptual you can’t make head nor tail of it. You just buckle down and get on with it.
- But, in order for the change to happen you will need to take on new projects. Your performance objectives haven’t changed. Your ‘day job’ priorities haven’t changed. Your client needs are still the same. The length of your day is still 24 hours [I actually heard an exec tell another senior manager that]. So, you layer on this new work onto your current work. You just buckle down and get on with it.
When “change” came every now and then it was manageable. But today we’re asking employees [and I admit it may be even worse the more senior you are] to do back-to-back sprints instead of marathons.
Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? What’s really changing?
Random Posts:
“Enthusing, encouraging and enabling”
Gary Hamel has started a movement over the summer designed to rethink management.
The other day, he and Veneet Nayar, CEO at HCL spoke about a cultural transformation that has been going on at HCL over the past 5 years. It was very thought provoking. [for more including a link to the webinar]
HCL began their journey with one assumption – “Employees first. Customers second.” And, that got my attention.
His logic is that the value in the business is created at the interface between employees and customers. And, according to Nayar the main way to maximize organizational value is to “enthuse, encourage and enable employees”. And what they realized very early on was that they had delegated that role to the Human Resources function.
For management to add value they were going to have to change their focus on control to a focus on actively supporting employees. Of course, there would still need to be control. But, whereas in the past it focused one way, the accountability would now be shared between management and employees.
Now this is where it gets really interesting. They didn’t just invert their hierarchy and redraw their organization chart. They didn’t just say the words and leave it to the organization to figure out what it meant. They started experimenting with different ways to build a culture focused on employees first.
It has not been an easy or short journey. According to Nayar they’ve made “some big mistakes”. But over the past 5 years they’ve achieved significant growth, seen double digit improvement in employee and customer satisfaction and learned how to better support and engage employees.
As I mentioned in my last post, I think Hamel and Nayar explore many of the themes that have been preoccupying us and bring something new.
Much to learn and think about here. What do you think?
Random Posts:
Something’s in the air
There’s something in the air and it’s not just that crisp smell of a Canadian fall. I’m noticing more than the usual reflection on what’s not working in organizations and how to fix it. And, there’s not just more reflection, it seems deeper and maybe even profound.
Many of the themes are very familiar for those of you who follow this blog and/or my friends at CommScrum:
- Think and act from the inside-out.
- Take a system rather than a functional or professional view
- Stop thinking that communications is about crafting and pushing messages
- Get out of your cubicle, off the executive floor and learn from employees and others outside your function/profession
- Empathize. Bring a deep human understanding to your profession.
Have I missed any?
Today I followed a talk that brings many of these ideas together and takes us someplace new. Standby.
Sign up for mailing list
Recent Posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
Authors
Recent posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
- Staying in touch with reality
- “Just hire a Dalek”
Categories
Archives
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010