Why We Must Fail Every Now and Then

In the following article, Bruce Grierson describes the benefits, and even the necessity of failure:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200905/weathering-the-storm

The entire article is well worth your time, however (in true blog fashion) here are his 9 ways to Fail Better:

1. Lighten up
2. Join the club
3. Feel guilt, not shame
4. Cultivate optimism
5. Ask not what the world can do for you . . .
6. Scale down self expectations
7. Harness the Bridget Jones Effect (keep a journal)
8. Don't blame yourself
9. Act! - - Failure is an opportunity.
   

Resilient or Rigid?

Is your organization resilient, or rigid?

Resiliency is the ability to not only bounce back after adversity, but also to surge in times of opportunity. Resiliency combines qualities and skill sets that strengthen both agility and innovation.

Rigidity, on the other hand, is a stagnant response to change and adversity. Rigid organizations rarely benefit from problems and see solutions as a one time occurrence. Rigid organizations do not regularly consult stakeholders and often make decisions in a bubble.

Resilient organizations:

• Find opportunity in problems and solutions
  
• Embrace change, and know how to facilitate it!
• Will not say - "That is the way we have always done things around here"
• Understand the success and failure is part of the same process of growth
• Continuously learn and develop
• Conduct regular strategic planning sessions
• Strengthen social and organizational networks
• Communicate, listen, and communicate again (then repeat)
• Consult with stakeholders regularly and adapt as is required.

Resilient organizations find ways to overcome and adapt as their competitors flounder!

Bad Manager

In their book Stop Managing, Start Coaching: How Performance can Enhance Commitment and Improve Productivity Gilley and Boughton highlight a few management misbehaviors:

• Failing to conduct performance appraisals
• Failing to provide performance standards
• Failing to delegate work assignments
• Failing to develop their employees
• Lacking patience with employees
• Criticizing employees rather than their performance
• Changing priorities and work requirements
• Creating paranoid working environments
  

Building Resilient Organizations

Resilient organizations are able to bounce back after times of adversity, surge forward in times of opportunity, and reduce risk as a result of their abilit to learn and adapt.

Resilient Organizations

View more presentations from Shawn Evans.

The Company Historian

The other day, while speaking at a conference, I met a person who told me that their "job" among other things was to be the company historian. I understand when organizations hire or have historians chronicle the trials and tribulations of their history, however, the company we were speaking about was ten years old and currently has about 75 employees. When I asked him to explain further, I understood just what he meant by the "Company Historian".

Joe is one of the longest tenured employees with his organization, as a result, he has worn many hat and witnessed a significant amount of change and growth. "At some point people just started asking me things like, where can I find . . ., have we ever . . . do we have a document that . . . how did that contract go with . . ." Slowly Joe became a gatekeeper to a quite a bit of organizational knowledge. At first his willingness to be the go to person for information was harmless, however, as the company has grown his role is now a roadblock to growth and development. Joe knows it, but he likes his role because as he explains it "at least I have some job security because not very many people know where all of the stuff is like I do!"

Job security aside, Joe is effectively routing a vital communication role through him, in the process unnecessarily slowing or even halting the process. Unfortunately gatekeeping is all too common in today's organizations. Instead of using his abilities to help promote company success, Joe wastes his time, and the time of his peers by hording information and processes.

Companies do not need a modified Dewey Decimal System, what they need is a method in which vital organizational intelligence can be created and stored so that everyone who needs access to the information can get it at anytime, without having to navigate through a gatekeeper. A newer technology is allowing organizations to start to catagorize, post, edit, and share information securly and confidentialy. The most famous Wiki is Wikipedia, however Wikis can be easily and effectively implimented in almost any organization that has a need to create, collaborate, and share information.

If you are interested in learning about the potential of Wikis in your organization please contact us and we can help you determine if this is a good option for you.

Now is the time to invest in your employees!

At some level, creating a workforce of actively engaged employees is as much about managing perception than anything else. Creating an atmosphere where employees FEEL valued can often create a culture where employees provide value. Although there are many, many ways in which an organization can manage perception, one of the most effective is to invest in employees' futures.

I would argue that NOW is the time to invest in the future of your top employees. WHY? Because the ROI on your investment today is worth much more than one year ago. Spending a dollar when times are tough is worth much more than spending ten when times are good. The perception capital that you will gain by investing in an employees' future today will pay dividends long after the current economic situation turns around!

Measuring Employee Development

A few months ago I was asked to provide an independent assessment of an employee training initiative. In speaking with the people in charge of the training efforts, I learned that they were aware of, and roughly using Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation.

They had created a typical "smile sheet" (an evaluation that asks if people liked the training - level 1) and managed to collect feedback from every training session. They did not, however, have a solid method for measuring whether or not the training sessions were actually moving people towards changes in behavior (level 3) and subsequently wholesale organizational change (level 4).

I decided to conduct my own assessment of the training efforts to determine to what level the training was leading to true development. Through a series of interviews, focus groups, and surveys I learned that the training was not leading to effective organizational change. We are working on that problem now.

There has been an interesting trend however. During the same time that we are measuring the effectiveness of the training, we are also looking at overall employee engagement. Like most organizations, this organization has about 20-25% of its employees who can be classified as highly engaged - - the rest fall into the categories of slightly disengaged, to fully disengaged.

Here is the kicker! During the latest engagement survey 72% of the employees ranked in the categories related to disengagement. At the same time, the latest training assessment shows that 72% of the employees are not moving past level 1 in regards to the training efforts. So, the same percentage of employees who are disengaged are also not gaining nor providing value from the training, in essence training dollars are being wasted on nearly 3/4 of the employees. This seems like common sense, however, there are rarely connections like this made in organizations and it could mean a tremendous savings in costs associated with employee development.

This is a study in progress - - I have added a few more organizations into the mix to see if the numbers are similar. I will report the results as the become available.