An article, “The High Cost of Employee Disengagement”  (http://www.wistechnology.com/articles/983) is not only informative, but also quite startling.  As a leader of your organization you are also likely to find the content disturbing because it presents such a challenge to us as leaders.  I suspect we all think we are doing a better job than we really are. 

I am in the midst of an organizational assessment for a regional professional service firm.  Fortunately, I am finding the vast majority of their employees are engaged which is demonstrated through their hard work and committed to results.  Further, the great news is the leaders want to know how the entire organization can be more successful, thus the request to conduct the assessment. While most of their employees are already engaged, I want to help them see the ROI potential they have by providing the direction and culture through which ALL the employees can become fully engaged.

The Gallup Organization’s most recent Employee Engagement Index reports:

• Active disengagement costs the US $300 billion a year in lost productivity at a time when we cannot afford it (just imagine the positive impact on our economy if we could turn this around)
• 17% or 22.5 million workers are actively disengaged (unhappy, busy acting out their frustrations, angry, alienated, poisoning others, involved in idle chatter, etc.)
• Each one of these disengaged employees costs their employer $13K per year in lost productivity
• Only 22% of workers are truly engaged working with passion and commitment to their company
• At least 71% are on cruise control

So why do 7 out of 10 workers feel a high degree of apathy? And, more importantly, what can you as a leader do to avoid this drain on your organization?  

For decades, employees have been saying the same thing in almost every employee survey report.  Their lack of engagement comes primarily from managers whom they perceive do not care about them, lack of clarity about the goals of their organization, poor communications (lack of information needed to do their job well, about company performance, and about their own personal performance), the perceived inability to influence the results of the organization, and weak accountability.

Those of us in the organizational development (OD) profession would say the source is the lack of an effective organizational culture. A culture that lacks leadership, a clear vision of where the organization is going, an appropriate organizational structure, accountability and measurements of success, an intentional communications systems, etc.  When employees have clarity about where the organization is going and how they can add value, when they believe their manager cares about their welfare and their contribution, they feel respected, valued and are rewarded appropriately, and when they have the information and tools to do their job well, the vast majority of the time they will be engaged, committed and contribute positively.

So if you have an abundance of ‘water cooler conversations’ going on in your own organization, take a quick assessment of what might be missing from your culture that is allowing so many employees to spend some portion of their time unproductively.  Leading by example and holding everyone accountable for results are critical to producing results through highly satisfied employees. 

http://www.peakperformancecorp.com

http://www.joycefriel.blogspot.com

A very wise Japanese proverb says that ‘Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”  A current twist on this proverb could be “Averting a disaster without a plan is a daydream.  Disaster without a plan is a nightmare”.  Recently, we’ve seen how true this is in a number of natural, world-wide disasters. 

 So what would your organization be like if a disaster struck? Just picture the confusion, mess, and frustration, not to mention the loss of productivity and business.  We know we have the equivalent of weak levees, old worn out rusted pipes waiting to break, and economic tidal waves occurring, but what are we doing about it?  We all get caught thinking ‘that was someplace else…it will never happen here’.  But are you aware of and are you planning for any type of major impact on your business that is coming more subtly, but no less disastrously. 

I’m speaking of the impact on your business of the retirement of the baby boom generation.  The US has a co-dependent relationship on this generation – we’re all banking on our 401K’s and other government and IRS-sanctioned retirement programs while the economy is banking on our continued spending.  Even though those that are still in the work force won’t aren’t as likely to leave as soon as they had hoped and some may come back for part-time positions, now is still the time to prepare for the eventual impact of large numbers of retirements from your organization.  Consider this series of questions and just imagine the preparation you need to be doing NOW.

• How many of your senior leaders will be retiring in the next 5 years?
• How many individual contributors in critical roles will be leaving?
• Are the sales people who really make your sales numbers in this generation?
• Do you have a leadership development plan which identifies and grooms the next generation of leaders?
• Are the skills you need to develop in your next generation of emerging leaders quick and easy or do you need to plan for a long development period or on making strategic hires?
• If you need to make strategic hires, where is this talent? Do you know where to find these individuals and what it will take to hire the skill sets and talent you will have to replace? Are you sure these talented replacements are even available?
• Do you have a robust, complete, up-to-date set of policies, procedures, and practices in place so that new leaders coming in know ‘how things get done here’ and so continuity of service won’t be lost in the process?
• To what degree will your product and service development suffer as this generation of expertise leaves your organization?
• Have you planned ahead for the impact on your financial position to provide the retiree benefits your organization offers? Due to your current financial situation and the cost of supporting larger numbers of retirees, do you need to rethink your retiree benefit package?
• And the big one, what if the person who will be retiring is the owner, President, GM, CEO or YOU. Do you have a succession plan and, if so, are you using the plan you have to replace the top person.

Hopefully, you have a solid answer for every one of these questions. Well run organizations do.  My point is not to scare you, but to prompt action if you aren’t already well prepared.  Just like when Katrina hit New Orleans, the Army Core of Engineers knew the levees were weak, the City of New Orleans knew it didn’t have an adequate disaster plan, considerable investigation had been done following 9/11 about disaster preparedness, but plans and the ability to execute them were not in place.  Don’t let your organization get caught in the ‘disaster without a plan nightmare’ situation.  

http://www.peakperformancecorp.com

http://www.joycefriel.blogspot.com

What is wrong with your IT budget?  Is it too high?  Too low? Or worse yet, maybe you don’t know.  Now more than ever it is important to analyze the spending activities that comprise your IT budget.  As an IT leader and business consultant, I can confidently state that assessing a blanket xx% cut across the board is not an effective method to optimize an IT budget and leaves too much to chance.  While it may be effective at getting the necessary haircut, it does not rank the importance of IT activities and puts critical revenue generating functions at risk.  Additionally, it strains the relationship between business and IT leaders.  The business side claims that IT is too expensive and the technology side claims that the business side does not sufficiently understand what it takes to keep the systems maintained and available.

Business and technical leaders both have a responsibility when it comes to the IT budget and therefore both sides must come together to agree on how to optimize the IT budget.  First and foremost is gaining transparency and understanding of the activities in the IT budgets.  This is critical to minimizing wasteful spending and to optimize the IT activities which support revenue generation.  Business leaders need transparency and understanding of the technology that supports their areas.  IT leaders can help by categorizing their activities.

• 1. Keep the Lights On. These are the activities that are necessary and required in order for the system (I will use the term ’system’ to broadly describe applications, databases, networks, etc. whether hardware or software) to run and be available in accordance with the users’ expectations (24/7, 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, etc.). It is important that this does not include activities (described below) that enhance or change the system in anyway. This does not include organic growth or other capacity planning. It only keeps the system running in an “as is” state.
• 2. Regulatory and Compliance. Whether required for compliance by your internal compliance team or by an outside regulatory agency, these are the activities that are necessary to update or change the system to comply with these requirements. These changes usually have a deadline associated with them. You can further break this category into group A (external agency) and B (internal agency) if you need to more closely understand the nature of these activities.
• 3. Upgrades and Updates. These changes are strongly recommended by hardware and software vendors for proper maintenance. These are updates to the system that might be necessary because of a product version change or other end of life event that forces the current version to become obsolete or go “out of support”. It does not mean that the system comes to screeching halt, rather it means that without it, the system becomes outdated and either performance is compromised or repairs become more difficult.
• 4. Growth. This category describes the activities needed to keep pace with the organization’s growth.
• 5. System Enhancement. Technology groups tend to enjoy this category the most because of their passion to see and work with the latest and greatest. As a business leader, be careful not to discount the value associated with enhancements as many times there is a valid business case that is simply not articulated in business or revenue generating terms.
• 6. Projects. Project activities could result from business needs or from IT needs, however, they both are grouped in the same category and both need to evaluated against the discretionary budget and the value they bring to the organization.

With a common way to parse and describe the often indescribable IT budget, business and technical leaders can effectively optimize the IT budget, improve their working relationships, and foster greater understanding of each other’s worlds.

by: Joyce Friel, Peak Performance Consulting

Life is full of early warning signs.  Unfortunately, we all too often overlook them or ignore them altogether until it is too late.  We all know about health indicators which give us warnings, weather forecasters forewarn danger, any number of financial indicators give us warnings, but what warning signs do you have as organizational barometers or warning signals?  This article is about the barometers in your organization.

If you answer ‘No” to any of the questions below, consider these ‘early warning signs’ of potential organizational weaknesses or areas where problems may emerge in the future.  Hopefully you are able to response with a “Yes” to all these statements.  If not, don’t despair.  Select one or two of the items you answered ‘No’ to that are of most importance to your organization and work on closing the gap.  Then work on the next one or two until you’ve made progress.  Exceptional organizations focus on doing a 1,000 things 1% better, not doing 1 thing 1,000% better.  Best of luck on your self-assessment!

WARNING SIGNS

Strategy and Governance

• Do you have a written statement of the organization’s Vision, Mission and Guiding Principles or Values?
• If you have a Vision, Mission and Guiding Principles or Values statements, how do your employees know what these are?   
• Do you have a strategic plan?    
• If you have a strategic plan is it shared with everyone in the organization?
• Do you have stated target goals for this year’s critical performance initiatives?
• Do you have metrics which track organizational performance throughout the year against these targeted goals?
• Are the targeted goals and metrics shared with everyone in the organization?
• Are the organization’s financial goals integrated with internal processes, customer needs and the development and growth of employees?
• Does the organization have a governance policy which the Board and senior manager must follow?

Communication

• Does everyone in the organization know what they have to do to help the organization reach its goals?
• Does the organization have all employee meetings or another method of keeping everyone informed of organizational results and progress, as well as, challenges as they come up throughout the year?
• Does the organization tailor the style, method and frequency of communications to the audience and message content?
• If the organization expects mid-managers and supervisors to communicate information to their units is there a communications strategy and method for ensuring the message gets delivered consistently and to everyone?
• Does the organization have mechanisms and processes for employees to communicate up the channel?
• In the organization does information flow freely both up and down the channel?

 Leadership Development and Training

• Does each employee receive a performance review at least annually?
• Does each employee have a personal development plan which is reviewed at least annually with their supervisor?
• Do employees receive training each year which is specific to their current job or a position they are preparing for in the future?
• Does the organization track the results of training so that what is learned gets applied on the job?
• Does the organization have both supervisory and management training for people in these roles?
• Does the organization have a succession planning process which identifies key positions and emerging leaders?
• Do those individuals in the succession plan get specific mentoring, coaching and development in order to be able to step into key roles when needed?
• Does the organization have a specific methodology for leading significant change?
• Does the organization spend intentional time developing the ability of the senior leadership team to work effectively together?

Accountability

• Do employees (including managers and supervisors) take responsibility for issues when they come up or is it “someone else’s” problem?
• Does the organization have job expectations and standards for all positions?
• Are people held accountable for achieving results?
• Are employees rewarded and recognized for work well done and coached when they fall short?
• Does the organization proactively eliminate those employees who infect others with negative attitudes and who don’t contribute?
• Do those employees who truly are exemplary get the recognition and promotion they deserve?

Certainly the above list is not exhaustive. There are hundreds of things that can be warning signs of impending peril.  However, if you were able to honestly answer ‘Yes” to the vast majority of these statements, you are well out of harms way and likely doing much better than your competition.  Congratulations!  If you had a lot of ‘No’ responses, what are the one or two items that are most important to your organization?  What actions are you going to take very soon to eliminate these potential dangers?

http://www.peakperformancecorp.com

http://www.joycefriel.blogspot.com

Have you ever had two reports of “the same” data land on your desk and wonder why the bottom line is different?  If you don’t trust the data in your company, whether in a report, a database, or an email, you are not alone.  In fact, the problem is so pervasive that companies waste millions (insert exorbitant dollar figure here) building redundant islands of data in order to access and control data they trust.

As a society we are comfortable finding and relying upon information provided by others without explicitly knowing the origin of or without directly controlling that data; think how many times you Google something and rely upon that information.   So, why don’t we trust the data within our own companies?  Myriad reasons come to mind and the problems can certainly be many fold, first and foremost are differences in the definition of a piece of seemingly identical data, especially in large organizations with multiple, disparate systems that generate and process data.

Don’t despair.  There is hope.  And you don’t have to be technically savvy to save your budget dollars, help contain the problem, maintain control over the data, and (bottom line) trust readily available data. 

Before embarking down a path to build your own data island, first understand the definition of the available data.  While there are a few lucky ones with an easily accessible repository of data definitions that you can quickly reference (like Wikipedia for your company data), the rest of us need to ask a few key questions, because you won’t get the complete answer if you just ask for “the definition”.

Here are the important points to review with your technical partners to get the whole definition and business relevant context and to maintain control and trust in the data. 

Data Definition and Context (also known as metadata):

• Understand whether you are getting data from the transactional source system directly or from a database that takes snapshots of the transactional source system data and stores it.
• Find the source of the data. Know the system name, the screen name, and the exact field on the screen that produces this data.
• Understand the source of the source. Example; human data entry (free text, multiple choice), automated entry (date/time stamp), calculated system entry (sales tax), or system reference entry (zip code = city and state)
• Know the possible, valid, or system allowed values Example; Yes/No, Married/Single/Other, Alphanumeric 16 characters.
• Ask about any transformation rules. If the data from your source moves was it changed or filtered in anyway. Sometimes these can be rule based, for example customers with California zip code in the primary mailing address are assigned to the Pacific Sales Region. Other times these can be converted to make database storage more manageable. Example; Yes/No was converted to Y/N, a check box was converted to Y/N, or First Name, Middle Name, Last Name was combined into Name.
• If there are transformation rules, find the administrator of the rule. You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) to find that many times these rules are created by the programmers or analysts that move or manipulate the data and there is no formal change management or notification. To control the data, you need to control these rules so find the person or team who implements these rules and enforce your change management and change notification criteria.
• Understand the update frequency of the data (how often is a snapshot of the data taken and stored)
• Persistence (part 1) Understand the historical transaction record. Does more recent data overwrite older data or is every snap shot stored?
• Persistence (part 2). How long is the data stored? What happens when it reaches “end of life”? Is it deleted permanently or stored offsite? For how long?

It is critical to understand the context and definition used to describe data, and unfortunately terms like metadata are thrown around without a business based understanding of how it can be relevant to sales, marketing, or operations.  Asking these questions about your data can help you take control of your data destiny while maintain shareable data the greater organization can leverage as well.  Resist the temptation to build a data island and know that the grass is not always greener on the other side (or on your own island).