For the last ten days my blogs have been about what employees should feel if the organisation they work in has a high performance culture. The feelings I suggested they should have are:
1. Purpose
2. Hope / Belief
3. Commitment
4. Responsible
5. Valued
6. Challenged
7. Courage
8. Fulfilled
9. Peace of Mind
10. Pride
Expressing it in a different way, you could say that these are the feelings organisations should seek to create in their employees. It struck me yesterday as I was writing part ten that a summary would be helpful, so this is it. The first point I want to make is that these are the feelings that are appropriate in order to create a specific outcome i.e. that the organisation has
a culture of high performance. The outcome the organisation is seeking will of course influence the feelings it should seek to create. For example, if an organisation is wanting to create a culture wtih innovation at it's core then evoking a feeling of curiousity might be appropriate. Just as it's important that the culture of any organisation should support delivery of the business
strategy, so it's also important that what employees feel is also aligned. And the experience they have of working there must also be aligned. Put simply:
Strategy should drive the desired culture;
The desired culture should drive what employees feel;
What employees feel should be created by their experience;
And their experience should be designed and delivered deliberately.
That's the second point - that what you want employees to feel has to be deliberately and intentionally designed in. It doesn't just happen. Some companies would consider doing this 'touchy feely' nonsense. It's not. It makes sound business sense. The quality of our lives is determined by whether the feelings we have on a day to day basis are primarily positive or
negative. Positive feelings result in us feeling good and when that's the case we tend to perform better. It's common sense that feelings influence behaviour and results. So it's good business practice to consider employees feelings and to seek to make them 'the best that they can be'. I use that phrase intentionally because of course sometimes unpleasant decisions have to be taken
which are negative and produce negative feelings, but even when that's the case, the aim should be to make the people experience the best it can be in the circumstances.
One of the key reasons change programmes fail is that they are often designed and delivered very rationally. The project plan covers all the bases in terms of what's going to be done, by whom and when and this is all communicated out to the business - and yet it fails..... because there's no recognition of the emotional elements of change. People connect with change rationally AND
emotionally and both areas need to be designed intentionally if it's going to be embedded and sustained after the programme closes down.
The emotional elements are sometimes ignored because a) they're too difficult or b) they slow the project down or increase the cost. Neither are true - there are tools and techniques which can be used within a project to do this effectively and efficiently. It's also not true that time or cost are
impacted. It make take slightly longer to incorporate both in the planning phase but this is usually time saved during implementation. And doing it produces better results in terms of the quality of implementation and delivery of anticipated benefits.
Don't be persuaded that there's no point doing it - it's always worth the effort.
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: accordengage
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