Employee Engagement: The New Meaning of Gamesmanship

Employees love to be involved in the business and one of their biggest concerns is the health of the business, because it determines the security of their jobs.

Many companies hold “all-employee” or “Communication” meetings on a regular basis to share results or to discuss topics relevant to all employees, such as safety.  For the managers, it means sharing data (which some hate to do) and time away from what they perceive as more important tasks.  For the employees, it often means an hour of incredibly boring statistics and lecture from the management.

It can be difficult to see how well employees absorb what they’ve been presented, but I’m certain employees retain little of what they’ve seen and heard from these meetings because they’re overwhelmed by the masses of numbers that have been thrown at them.

I tried a different approach at one company.

To present my sales and business development numbers, I structured my presentation around the concept of the game show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”.

We gave a few employees from the floor the opportunity to be “contestants” so they could answer questions about business development.  There were several questions along the lines of “How many new customers did we develop in the latest quarter?”  Each question had 4 possible answers.

Our contestants had support opportunities like “Lifeline”, where they could have a friend help, or “50/50” whereby two incorrect answers were eliminated.  Programming to do this in PowerPoint actually wasn’t all that hard, and it was more than adequate to re-create the gameplay.

When we did the presentation as part of our quarterly communications meeting, the employees ended up getting right into it.  Contestants had the audience shouting out what they thought was the right answer, and it really recreated the atmosphere of the TV show in our cafeteria.

Even though our segment was only supposed to run about 10 minutes, it was the segment the employees voted as most interesting.  They had some fun.  They were involved in the presentation and everyone got to participate in some way.  Best of all, they remembered the statistics we had presented.

Presenting data to employees can be a waste of everybody’s time if the message gets ignored because the way it’s being presented is overwhelming or just plain boring.  To some, it may be hokey to use the game show approach (and it probably isn’t appropriate for some topics), but the WAY in which the information is presented can have a dramatic impact on attentiveness and retention of that information.  If work can be fun, it no longer is drudgery.

Employee Engagement: Learn to Walk the Line

A couple of years ago, I interviewed for a job as a General Manager for a manufacturing company.

When I was briefed about the position, I was told their employees were on strike and that I'd have to cross the picket line for my first interview.  I'd never crossed a picket line before, but there had to be a first time.

On the day of the interview, I drove out to the plant, and allowed some time to get there early enough that I could see the picket line and observe the procedure for crossing it.  The company had told me to allow 15-20 minutes just to get through the picket line.

The strike was an issue for the company.  They asked me if it would have any impact on their ability to acquire new customers. I told them it would, in my opinion, convey a company that was dysfunctional.  Even more so because the strike had gone on for two years without a settlement. The union involved in this case was the steelworkers, and I knew they had a reputation for being nasty.

I approached the picket line with trepidation.  One of the picketers came over to my car and formally told me there was a strike in effect and that I would have to wait for 15 minutes before I could proceed to the parking lot.

At this point, I thought about what I should do.  These picketers could potentially be employees I would have to work with on a day-to-day basis.  I could stay in my car for the 15 minutes or get out and talk to the picketers to see what I could learn about the strike.  I chose the latter.

Having told one of the picketers I was there for a job interview, I asked what the strike was all about.  They were very open in explaining the key issues behind the strike.  I asked them how they managed to cope with living having been out on the strike for such a long time and I heard stories about how some moved into other jobs or companies to be able to support their families.  They told me about what they had to sacrifice to make ends meet.  Somehow our conversation segued into talk about golf, football and other things.

The 15 minutes went by pretty quickly and the picketers gave me the go ahead to drive to the parking lot and gave me directions on how to find the entrance to the office.

The formal part of the interview was comparatively tame - a plant tour and discussion with the plant manager and the company's HR manager.  I was subsequently invited for a round of interviews at the company's corporate offices.

For this phase of interviewing, I met with people from R&D, Finance and Sales.  My final interview of the day was with the CEO.

He asked me how the day had gone and about my interest in the position.  Eventually, he got round to asking about the strike. The CEO proudly stated the company had brought on replacement workers who were exceeding the productivity of the union employees and the company was able to keep pace with demands of exiting customers.  He asked, as I'd been asked before, if I felt the strike would adversely impact their ability to attract new business.  

I told him the strike definitely WOULD give potential customers some concerns about the company's ability to supply them in a reliable manner.  Settling the strike had to be the top priority for the new GM.

The CEO told me, in no uncertain terms, he had absolutely NO intention of settling the strike.  They'd made offers to the union and the union was unable to sell those terms to their members, so the union was the problem.

From my viewpoint, I now had a clearer idea of why the strike had gone on as long as it had and who was responsible for that situation - and it wasn't the union.  At this point, I made up my mind that this was not a position or company I wanted to work for.

The Leadership of a company sets the tone for how it runs.  In this case, the leadership of this company was confrontational and this had created an atmosphere of distrust among the employees.  As it turned out, the plant I interviewed at was closed down and sold off within a year of my visit there.

They may be picketers, but they still are people.  If you treat strikers on an adversarial basis, you'll probably get a lot of push-back. Approaching them as people and showing some empathy helped me make the best of what could have been a bad situation. My approach was to treat crossing the picket line as a first interview.  I was almost 100% certain there would be some feedback to the company about how I behaved on the line, and I wanted that feedback to be positive.  I think I took the right approach.

Employee Engagement: Get Out of Your Office

It's been a long time since my last post - partly because I've been working and partly because I was working on one of my other blogs, Packaging: The Forgotten Medium.

My inspiration for this post - and for the next few - came from a meeting I had yesterday with a person in Human Resources, and we were discussing taking employee relations a step up into employee engagement.

When I moved from the world of Consumer Packaged Goods marketing into B2B sales and marketing, the general manager of the company I then worked for brought me into his office and gave me some of the best advice I've ever received.

He told me to buy some safety shoes and spend 30% of my time on the shop floor.  I asked why, because I  thought sales and marketing people needed to be out on the road in front of customers.  He said I needed to know everyone in the plant on a first name basis because, as part of the management team, we would be going out just prior to the Christmas break to extend our holiday wishes to all employees, and he wanted it to be more than just a perfunctory handshake.

Our plant had two unions and a history, under previous ownership, of bad  management-union relationships.  There'd been a few strikes in the past and the current owners wanted to make a fresh start.  Our GM told me that, in the past, it was like there were two worlds in the plant - shop floor and office - separated by a wall.  We needed to break down that wall and make the management more accessible and responsive to the union personnel.  Knowing everyone in the plant on a first name basis was an important part of this.

I followed his advice and remember putting on my safety shoes in preparation for my first time on the shop floor by myself.

I'd already been introduced at an all-employee meeting as a new member of the management team, so everyone knew I was the new kid on the block.  I'd also been around through the plant a number of times, but never on my own - usually giving customers a tour with my boss.

I walked up to the first of several laminators we had in the plant and approached the operator.  I asked him what this machine could do and how it worked.  For the next hour, I was taken on a thorough tour of the machine by the operator and learned a lot!  I appreciated the tour and what I could see was a sense of pride the operator had in his machine centre and a willingness to share that.

This was the start of a process of learning how to make a plant work more effectively, and my next few posts will be structured around this topic.

Publicly Speaking

One of the things I do while I'm in transition is to facilitate or chair meetings for HAPPEN, a networking organization in the Toronto area. The meetings are usually about 3 to 3-1/2 hours and include a keynoter speaker and new member introductions.

Whether it's facilitating or introducing new members, I've had many people come up and tell me what a great job I do and how easy it seems for me to do so. They say, "You're such an extrovert!"

It's interesting how people associate ease of speaking in public with extroversion. Speaking in public is also something most people fear more than death.

The truth is that I'm an introvert. I'm not the extreme type of introvert who's afraid to come out of a shell, just someone who won't dominate the conversation. In the Myers-Briggs model, I actually sit near the cusp of introversion-extroversion scale.

When I was young, I was terrified of reading a report in front of the class. My palms would sweat. My mouth would get dry. I'm pretty sure some part of me was trembling. Most of you can probably relate to these symptoms.

After I did my MBA, I had to do a presentation at a sales meeting for the company - to an audience of about 400. This was a big challenge!

However, I was lucky to develop a friendship with the owner of the company that did our meeting planning and audiovisuals and he was a terrific coach. We'd had training on doing presentations but, to have someone give you tips on how to relax in front of an audience or how to make eye contact so everyone in the audience feels engaged was invaluable.

The main thing is that speaking in front of an audience is largely a learned skill. Some people have natural talent for this. Others - introverts for example - can be trained to make a memorable presentation. Here are five important things I've learned.

1. Planning. Don't try to wing it. Work out or write a script to speak from and practice in front of a mirror or by talking into a voice recorder. I've found if I try to wing it when I'm cold calling I stumble or have troubles finding the right words. When I script it out and practice it, I become much smoother and, eventually, I'll have internalized the script so well I don't have to read the words and have a much easier time personalizing the script to the listener.

2. Believe in Your Material. You always will come across as passionate and persuasive when you really believe in what you are talking about (or selling). When you truly believe in what you talk about, it's much easier to express emotions that will help engage your audience so they share in your enthusiasm.

3. Connect with the Audience. One of the tips I got early in my career was to look around the room and make eye contact with a few people at different locations. Most people are comfortable speaking on a one-to-one basis with other people, so this technique diverts your focus from the size of the audience to a series of one-on-one conversations. By speaking to people in different parts of the roon, there's a bit of a "halo" effect. In other words, the people sitting near the person with whom you make eye contact have a sense of you making eye contact with them, and this is a powerful way of engaging your audience.

4. Be Yourself. If you're comfortable being as you are, you're more likely to come across as natural and genuine. More importantly, if you're being yourself, it's a lot less stressful than trying to be like someone else.

5. Modulate your voice. It's part of being yourself. when you speak, your voice naturally rises and falls in tone and volume. From the audience's perspective, it's a lot more interesting to listen to, and the changes in tone and volume help provide emphasis on certain points you want to communicate.

So, I hope you can see that it's really not that difficult to make a presentation to an audience. It's a matter of planning and practice.

And, if you still have that fear of public speaking, the best approach is to confront that fear and make an effort to get up in front of an audience. It may not be perfect the first time, but you'll be surprised at how quickly you can improve with practice and experience.

Volunteering Adds Value

I’ve heard the excuses many times.

“I don’t have the time.”
“I just can’t make that kind of commitment.”
“I don’t know what I can contribute”

However, volunteering can have tremendous payoffs at the personal and career level.

My exposure to volunteering came several years ago in the High Park area, where we had a crime problem. There was a public meeting with the police and our city councillors to get input from residents in the area and the councillor in my ward, Derwyn Shea, asked if anyone in the audience was interested in helping organize a Neighbourhood Watch program. Along with a half-dozen other, I introduced myself and said I didn’t know what I could do, but I had experience in marketing and advertising.

Next thing I knew, I was appointed chair of the Neighbourhood Watch program for West-end Toronto.

Over the next two years, our committee developed an active program to educate block captains in the area about crime prevention. We learned a lot about crime statistics and crime prevention from our police community liaison officer, who was a delight to work with.

We put on seminars each month and reviewed crime statistics and had speakers come in to inform the block captains about locks, vacation planning, burglar alarms etc. I also wrote a column every two weeks in the Villager, the local newspaper, so we could share what we learned with everyone in the community.

We got results. Break-ins declined – the biggest concern to people in the neighbourhood. Offsetting this was an increase in crack houses, but the Neighbourhood Watch program helped the police set up surveillance by getting individuals to share intelligence with the police and give them places to set up their surveillance teams.

During the period I was involved with Neighbourhood Watch, our children were 4 and 6. But they learned the value of volunteering.

Our daughter studied forensic technology at Sanford Fleming College. Before she began her program, she volunteered to work in the genetics lab my wife worked in as a way of getting experience.

That summer, she did not receive any cash compensation, but she demonstrated she was the highest performing among all the interns and was invited back the following summer with a fully paid internship.

She excelled in the DNA and lab portions of her program in both years and, on completion of her diploma, she was hired to work in the DNA lab at Hospital for Sick Children.

While the first summer as an unpaid intern was financially difficult for her, it paid dividends in getting paid jobs the following two summers in a prestigious research facility. The experience also paid off in her studies because she picked up knowledge that went far beyond the college curriculum.

Our son wanted to be a math teacher. He did a degree in computer science at Queens and a year at OISE to get his teaching degree.

The last two years of his undergrad program, Ross volunteered to work as a teaching assistant after his exams ended in April. He spent tow months working at his old high school and the next year went to another high school in the area.

While at OISE, he was sent out for his practicum to “difficult schools” such as Western Tech, but his experience from volunteering helped him a lot.

While many of his classmates had difficulty finding teaching jobs, Ross interviewed with Peel Board of Education and landed a job.

I remember he came back from the interview saying he didn’t think he’d done well. However, he got a call back from the Peel Board indicating they liked how he had volunteered and he was hired to teach Grade 10 and 12 math at Lorne Park Secondary, a very prestigious school in Mississauga.

Along the way in his job hunt, he had a couple of coaches to help. One of our neighbours was a retired superintendant from the Peel Board and the keyboard player in my band was a principal at another high school in southern Mississauga. The networking also contributed to his success.

This year, Ross was placed on the hire list for Toronto District School Board.

The message from these experiences is that:

Volunteering gives you an opportunity to gain experience in a field in which you have interest. For new Canadians, that can help overcome the “Canadian experience” issue. For others, it can be a helpful strategy if you are changing careers or industries.
Volunteering gives employers a low-risk opportunity to assess your abilities before making an offer.

These first two worked big-time for our son and daughter.

Volunteering gives you some positive experiences that help motivate you and help you maintain your enthusiasm while you are in transition. My volunteer work with HAPPEN helps keep my presentation skills sharp and it keeps me involved with people – both of which have helped me maintain a positive attitude in my job search.
Volunteering can also be an excellent way to develop a network. For example, serving on the board of a NFP organization brings you in contact with other like-minded business executives. Demonstrating your skills and developing such contacts with them can help you uncover job opportunities.

The first time I was laid off, I joined HAPPEN’s sister organization, EARN, in Toronto. At my first meeting, one of the members gave me advice I will never forget. He told me, “The best way to find work is to volunteer to work on one of the committees”. I joined the marketing committee and all eight of us got jobs within three months of each other.

By volunteering, you’ll feel more involved in the organization and the volunteer work you do looks good to a recruiter or potential employer because it speaks to teamwork and initiative.

Regardless of the organization, get out and volunteer your way to your next job.

Role Models in Sports

I think most people would agree that athletes, in addition to being entertainers of a sort, also can be held up as role models for young people.

When I was growing up, I had sports heroes, too. And, as I grew older and entered the workforce, I began to develop an appreciation for the people BEHIND the bench – the coaches and managers. This is what I’ll be focusing on in this posting.

In school, and the early days of my career, we learned about legendary coaches like Vince Lombardi and Red Auerbach. Maybe it’s a reflection of my growing up in Canada, but my managerial idols have Canadian ties.

Felipe Alou became manager of the Montreal Expos baseball team in 1992. The Expos were perennial cellar-dwellers, though they had a great farm system that spawned some excellent players. The Expos never garnered the attention or respect of teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers, so the “stars” on the Expos were relatively obscure compared to players on other major league clubs.

Alou's goal as manager was to develop younger, less well-paid players into outstanding ballplayers, since, throughout the 1990s, the Expos cut costs by trading higher-paid players to other teams. His strategy paid off.

He transformed a weak club into what became the best team in the major leagues in 1994 and was named Manager of the Year, winning more games than any other manager in franchise history. (He also was the first Dominican-born manager in MLB history.)

The Expos had an excellent shot of winning the World Series that year. But the players’ strike came in the way of achieving this.

This was especially remarkable considering that the Expos had the second-lowest payroll in the National League at the time of Alou's recognition as Manager of the Year, with only two players over the age of 30.

He stressed the fundamentals of baseball – conditioning, pitching, base running and assembled a collection of talented youngsters and journeymen veterans into a cohesive unit.

Under his guidance, he had stars such as Larry Walker, Dennis Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Marquis Grissom and John Wetteland. These players went on to even greater fame when the Expos traded them away to fund rebuilding efforts. Ultimately, the Expos folded because they were unable to field a winning team and baseball was not the first love of Montrealers, who lived and breathed hockey.
How did he accomplish this?

Marquis Grissom described the Alou era as follows, “Felipe came in, and the first thing he told us was that he would take the blame for all losses. He said if we lost 10 in a row, he might be fired, but none of us would lose our jobs. He stopped all of that military stuff. It never bothered me, the military stuff, but it bothered some guys. It's much nicer now. You make a mistake, you know it's a mistake. No one has to tell you. That's what Felipe knows. That's how he treats us."

To me, it sounded like Felipe Alou nurtured talent by not resorting to locker room histrionics and blaming. Focusing on fundamentals also meant everyone had to participate in the turnaround, not just the stars. And the stars were not spared the drills because of their talent, so everyone was treated equally.

What I found profoundly inspiring was his ability to take players who were considered damaged goods by other teams and discover their potential – even later in their careers. Dennis Martinez had had problems with alcoholism, but Alou and his coaches made Martinez one of the most respected pitchers in the game.

It seemed he had a talent for looking inside people and seeing what others could not see.

Another role model for me has been Claude Julien, coach of the Boston Bruins hockey team.

After the Bobby Orr era, Boston floundered. Often they were in contention for the playoffs, but somehow could not make it far past the first round.

When Claude Julien came to the club in 2007, the Bruins weren’t expected to make the playoffs – just another mediocre team.

I think there was some expectation in Boston that Julien would bring some of the magic of the legendary Montreal Canadiens franchise to the Bruins. In fact, Julien was coaching Montreal when the Canadiens eliminated – upset, even – the first-place Boston club in the first round of the playoffs in 2004, coming back from a 1-3 deficit to win the series.

A key watershed occurred in March, 2007, when the Bruins general manager, Peter Chiarelli, kept his team together at the trading deadline, producing zero trades in the Hub of Hockey. And then he told the players why.

"He said he believed in this team," said Bruins forward David Krejci, "He said we have good chemistry on the ice, and that's why he didn't make any trades."

What a vote of confidence from the management! They basically told the players they had great potential and it was important to keep them together to realize that potential.

The players rewarded the management’s confidence by taking the high-flying Montreal Canadiens to 7 games in the first round of a playoff series Montreal was expected to take 4-0 because the Bruins had not beaten Montreal the entire season. (In fact, Montreal had an 11-game win steak against Boston) At one point, Montreal was up 3-1, but the Bruins came back to tie the series and force the 7th game.

They may have lost the series, but the comeback they mounted probably inspired the team, who have been leading the Eastern Conference of the NHL this season.

The Bruins’ success did not come about from just inspiration. Julien focused the players on the fundamentals. They achieved the second-biggest defensive turnaround in the league in the 2007-2008 season, and mostly with a roster of relative unknowns and no real marquee players.


So, what can we learn from these examples.

· In both cases, we see teams that did not have to rely on highly paid star players to be successful. The team was greater than the sum of its parts.

· The making of a team is founded on discipline (process) and fundamentals that allow the younger players to thrive and contribute and develop as players.

· The managers both had the ability to connect with something in the players’ makeup that allowed them to come closer to achieving their potential.

· In the case of the Bruins, no trades meant they all felt valued as players, a huge boost to self-confidence.

· Success breeds success. As the players learned to play effectively as a team and began to win games, each win boosted team confidence and made the team, overall, more resilient. So, when they might find themselves behind, they also could find something in themselves that allowed them to come back.

Ron

DS al Coda

A couple of weeks ago, my band played a gig at a club we hadn't played before.

Unfortunately, the day of the gig, our keyboard player said he was unable to come (despite saying the night before that he'd be there for sure), so we had to fire him.

We didn't fire him just because of this single incident. He'd missed practices and had showed up drunk for a previous gig.

None of us wanted to fire him. We'd given him several chances. He was a really good player and a nice guy.But all of us were agreed we had to have people in the band we could rely upon.

Sound familiar?

As a result, the night of the gig we had to meet early to set up and re-arrange nearly 3 dozen songs to either drop or create in some other way the keyboard parts. We dropped a couple we simply could not perform without keys and added in a couple of reserves.

We managed to get through the night. Fans were really appreciative - one of the best audiences we'd ever had. I think the enthusiasm of the audience helped stimulate us to do even better than usual and the manager of the club booked us for another gig in 6 weeks.

So what can we all learn from this kind of experience?

Sometimes you have to have the stomach to make drastic changes in personnel when some employees are disruptive to the point it puts the organization's performance at risk. In doing so, you also have to be prepared to find other ways of performing a fired employee's function. It could be via replacement with a new hire or promotion. Or it could simply be a restructuring.

I guess we restructured.

You need to have and be able to draw upon reserves so , in the event of unforeseen circumstances, you can continue to operate.

Although playing in the band is essentially a hobby we all share, we approach running the band as if it were a business. (From what I've heard, this is the model Mick Jagger has with the Stones.) It's amazing what a learning experience it all is.

Ron