The Optimized People Development System

Tag: Systems Thinking

  • Can Your System Achieve Employee Engagement?

    Can Your System Achieve Employee Engagement?

    For over a quarter of a century employee engagement has been dismal. Difficulty in defining the concept has had a lot to do with this stagnation. However, a shared vision of a truly engaged workplace by all stakeholders is possible with an attentive people development system. A PDS intent upon moving the needle on this stubborn but important metric.

    When the phrase appears, employee engagement generally implies that an individual has a deep level of commitment, a strong willingness to be involved, or a high degree of dedication to being a part of the team and excelling at their work. The word excitement often shows up in the definition, sometimes the word motivation, and happiness might also appear.

    Some explanations seem to border on the concept of achieving a state of mental flow, suggesting that engagement is being fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about the job. Some days, yeah. Some days, no. Several people that I’ve worked with in the past who were very much bought into the success of the company could seldom be described in these terms. Nevertheless, they understood their connection and responsibility to the team, and they did, on a regular basis, contribute a great deal.

    It’s a complicated concept; one that has changed over the years. Tony Martignetti and Moe Carrick, business leaders and authors, compellingly argue that employee engagement is being replaced by a sense of employee connectedness. Pointing out that the move toward connectedness has been driven by social and cultural forces that have obvious impacts in the workplace.

    Along those lines, I prefer to think of employee engagement as a mutually beneficial harmony reached when both employer and employee recognize and accept their responsibility for the success and well-being of the other. It takes all parties to achieve this harmony, and it takes a responsive PDS to promote and protect it.

    A Shared Understanding.

    Since all stakeholders have a vested interest in this, it seems like a good idea to start by understanding employee engagement very clearly. And though it sounds simplistic, getting all PDS stakeholders on the same page is a good first step in building stronger allegiances.

    It is talked about so much in certain circles that it can lead to assumptions that everyone knows what engagement is and how it matters, which is obviously not the case. Getting everyone’s mental models of this vital connection out in the open and agreeing upon a unifying model can reduce misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the concept.

    Leaders of organizations, just like individual workers, have the right to think about engagement what they will and to have certain expectations about what it takes to achieve this state of harmony. There may be very little distance between the two ideals, or there could be a chasm. Alignment of expectations and agreement around everyone’s responsibilities could mean the difference between dismal performance for another quarter century and levels of engagement that are truly beneficial for all.

    How Far Apart are We?

    One of the primary roles of the PDS is culture building. An engaging culture connects people, shares openly, clarifies goals, promotes learning, and ensures that stakeholders share responsibility for outcomes.

    An optimized PDS helps create space for dialog and allows the whole team to debate the definition of engagement and agree on ways to improve it. This falls easily under the training and development function of the system.

    Start by creating small cross functional teams and share the data – turnover, average tenure, survey results, etc. Let the team know how these numbers impact both the organization and every individual within it. Then ask the teams to help improve the numbers. Everyone benefits when these indicators improve and self-interest is a powerful motivator.

    Part of the retention efforts of the PDS should be to bring senior leaders into community with frontline workers through one-on-one coffee breaks, lunches, or small group brainstorming sessions. These are perfect times to bring up the topic of engagement. Ask questions about engagement, extend the dialog created in the cross functional groups. Discuss the roles that each stakeholder plays and then help them play those roles well.

    These interactions are also great opportunities to further explain how being engaged is in everyone’s best interest. Thanks to the proverbial grapevine, these conversations will find their way back to the entire team. Done well, this can feed into other positive conversations, helping to drive higher levels of commitment.

    Of course, this means that the leaders must be educated on those impacts and trained in having these coaching/development conversations. Another job for the optimized PDS! To be effective, leaders must understand how important employee engagement really is and how they impact it.

    Measure it…But Differently.

    Employee engagement is usually measured via a survey asking people about their state of mind at a particular time. Which can skew the results dramatically, depending upon moods, circumstances, and other life situations.

    Instead, look for and measure individual behaviors that tend to be driven by a higher level of buy-in or consensus. These might include:

    • Number of teams/groups individuals have joined,
    • Number of requests individuals make for development opportunities,
    • Levels of development attained (individual development plans are great for tracking this!),
    • Number of ideas generated per individual,
    • Involvement in and contributions to events (improvement events, community-facing events, peer support events, etc.),
    • Relationships developed (social connections with co-workers, coaching, etc.),
    • Willingness to be part of initiatives,
    • Changes in attendance patterns,
    • Personalization of workspace.

    Keep doing engagement surveys, one on one encounters, and peer evaluations to assess the harmony. Even better, be creative in identifying other more meaningful metrics, realizing that being engaged influences several behavioral and personal performance indicators. Share these measures liberally with the team, encouraging them to value these outcomes.

    Old Systems Will Struggle.

    According to Martignetti and Carrick, “To build connected organizations, leaders must shift from driving engagement to designing relational ecosystems and from motivating individuals to strengthening networks.” Here’s a pressing question; can the organization’s internal people development system support this shift in thinking?

    Look more closely at the system level for opportunities that can move the conversation in the right direction. Systems thinking is one of the three guiding principles of the Optimized People Development System framework because the PDS is a dynamic system and difficult to see. It is also the most important organizational system for fostering connections and relationships.

    Employee engagement has languished far too long. Establishing a shared definition and innovative measures of employee commitment and their wellbeing can help move the numbers in the right direction. An optimized PDS, one that fosters a new mindset around engagement and connection can help keep that movement going.

    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

  • Time to Challenge the One-Sided Employee Engagement Push

    Time to Challenge the One-Sided Employee Engagement Push

    Stickiness hasn’t changed in the last quarter of a century. According to Gallup’s long running, annual surveys, employee engagement has remained around 30% and active disengagement around 17% since Y2K was a thing. Gallup’s surveys and others confirm that getting people to consistently participate at a higher level desperately needs to be improved.

    Employee engagement is a prime area where improvement can benefit everyone. People are frustrated. Money and productivity are being lost due to low engagement and the negative impacts of a disengaged workforce show up at multiple levels beyond just the workplace.

    Why haven’t we been able to move the needle on the levels of engagement? It’s not like we haven’t been trying. I, and many of my workforce development peers, have been preaching to employers for years the need to create an engaging workplace. And most have been sincere in their attempts to do this demanding work. Still, we hear very regularly that these same employers are struggling to find people who want to work, people who will stick around long enough to see the benefits and advantages of being on the team. Some, including the MikeroweWORKSFoundation, have lamented the loss of the will to work. Maybe we’ve been focusing too much on only one side of the equation.

    Limits to an Engaging System

    Each team member is a system, just as the organization is a system. When these two systems are integrated, both are impacted. So, the probability of success by the organization in building an engaging environment will be limited if the newly integrated systems do not share a common goal around, or even a unifying understanding of the purpose and value of work. If the individual system is unaware of how to engage, unable to engage, or unwilling to engage, how successful can the organizational system’s attempts at engagement be?

    Focus on the Other Part of the Equation

    Here’s a potentially controversial solution – let’s help individual team members appreciate the many values of work and why engaging at work is in their best interest. There are distinct and powerful reasons for individuals to pursue being engaged at work.

    Beyond the obvious economic benefits, work is good for the health – physical, mental, and yes, spiritual health. A good day’s work influences positive feelings toward life. Workplace stress is well documented. How much of this might be relieved with a healthier view of work? Family life benefits when things are good at work. A different mindset about work could help promote this.

    Work is an integral part of the human experience. Always has been, always will be. But it goes beyond just the part of work we get paid for. The theme of work runs all the way through the Christian scriptures starting with the first verse of Genesis. I’m no religious scholar, but a cursory search indicates that work is pretty prominent in many other belief systems as well. We need to help people take a holistic view of work. The whole person comes to the job, so the whole person should be taken into consideration, including the spiritual side.

    Other Benefits

    In future posts we’ll unpack some more details of the benefits and values of work. Looking at the definition of engagement is helpful. So too the way we measure it. Engagement at work is very much an emotional reaction. How do we feel about the work, the people, the mission, and vision of the organization? It is emotionally intelligent for everyone to engage at work. How might we bring EQ into the solution to this challenge? Other topics might find their way in as well. Your thoughts and insights could add immeasurably to this exploration, so I invite you to opine as we explore.

    For years we have, in my opinion, pushed employee engagement mostly from the employers’ side of the equation. Certainly, there is still work to be done by employers; however, the other stakeholders must also take responsibility and do their part to engage and be engaged.

    An Optimized People Development System can be a strong vehicle for change in this effort. Examining the concept of engagement while looking closely at the internal system we depend upon to find, train, and retain people can offer strategic opportunities for improvement. Improvements to the system and the philosophy under which it operates could certainly help the organization and each individual within it, stick together longer over a shared appreciation for the true scope and amazing values of work.

    Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

  • Patience is a Virtue, and Soon, a Crucial Leadership Skill

    Patience is a Virtue, and Soon, a Crucial Leadership Skill

    It’s ironic that a technology that drastically speeds things up will require people to slow down in many areas of their work. Leaders in the AI era will have to develop something that we’re not typically known for…patience. In a sped-up world, the ability to play the long game will be a needed leadership trait.

    This Fast Company article is a great read for leaders, highlighting the need for different ways of thinking in the fast paced world of artificial intelligence. This new approach to leadership will also require ways of measuring certain outcomes differently. Outcomes that may take some time to materialize.

    Most business leaders have been conditioned to chase short term measures – this week’s production numbers, this month’s sales, this quarter’s financials. Generations of managers have been trained this way, and this has filtered down and out across the workforce.

    McDearmid captures the frenetic tension quite well. “For years, we filled our calendars, stayed visible, and kept the machine moving. Our worth was measured in hours, output, and presence. It had to be. Humans were the system, and the system required us to keep it running. We didn’t question it because that was how things got done.”

    The repetitive stuff was the work, and the measures by which the work would be gauged. Fueled by numbers relatively easy to get, requiring minimal patience. However, the human work of curiosity, collaboration, and changing mental models can be slow to unfold. Exploration can take time. Intentionality too.

    The article describes the directional change that leaders will need to make. How their focus must change from tasks to direction setting, seeking clarity for the initiative, and clarifying vision with the team, to name a few. It also points to the fact that leaders will need to be able to think differently about how long it will take to see some important deliverables.

    “AI has taken the repetitive pieces off our plates and has given us back the chance to think, create, and build with intention. It gives us room to lead.” In this new, redesigned space for leadership the ability to ponder and contemplate could be useful skills. Leaders with imagination and a gardener’s mindset will have an advantage. Systems thinking will be highly prized. Because ushering slow moving change through a system previously built for speed will require a shift at the system level.

    It may seem counterintuitive to work on the skill of slowing down in a sped-up world. However, learning to wait calmly for important and often subtle changes is a skill that itself takes time to develop. The sooner we start training leaders to slow down and wait, the faster we can realize the advantages of AI.

    Image by Annette from Pixabay

  • A Strong Start to a Long Journey: A PDS Sweet Spot

    A Strong Start to a Long Journey: A PDS Sweet Spot

    We often use the journey metaphor when talking about starting a new job. And if you’ve ever had a bad start to any journey, you know how the beginning can impact the whole trip.

    TalentLMS and BambooHR recently presented a research report titled Next-gen Onboarding: Redefining the New Hire Journey. While this paper points to generational differences and to the prominence of AI, looking closely at the findings can also help leaders identify system designs and system behaviors that, with targeted improvements, could help people stay for longer journeys.

    Ensuring that new team members get a good start is what makes the onboarding portion of an organization’s people development system so very important, and a prime area for system optimization.

    6 questions to ask of your PDS.

    1 – Is our onboarding approach still heavily orientation focused?

    The paper points to the need to invest more time and effort into this early stage. If your approach to integrating new hires is speed oriented – get it done and get to the workstation – then you are probably going to continue to struggle to keep new hires. Orientation is different from onboarding. Many organizations miss this opportunity. Spread the onboarding process out over a long period of time and drop the firehose.

    2 – Is our onboarding process informed by and shaped by our retention and training processes?

    “65% of employees view onboarding as the start of a continuous learning journey…” So, what happens after onboarding? Does the initial phase of the plan connect seamlessly with the other PDS systems – retention, training, performance management?

    Speaking of that continuous learning journey,

    3 – How does the new hire know how we will help them grow?

    If you’re not using development pathways, now’s the time to start. Share the map of the journey since they are at the starting point. Having an AI assistant involved at this point could be highly effective.

    The survey found that during the onboarding process, 39% of new hires admitted to having second thoughts about their decision to join the company. For the youngest generation it was 49%.

    4 – Does our onboarding approach instill confidence?

    Full customization to suit each person may not feasible, but some adjustments that consider generational differences could help drive success rates higher. An exploration in this area could be very fruitful.

    5 – Does our PDS support growth for new hires?

    According to Talentlms.com onboarding can often fall short. “When it comes to skill-building, new hires are rushed, left without follow-through, and handed training that doesn’t match their role. If companies want new hires to grow, they need to design onboarding that actually makes room for it.”

    Aligning with the onboarding, an optimized PDS supports growth by using personalized development pathways. These help communicate the potential growth, keep team members on track and motivated to achieve the growth, and ensure that all parties benefit from the growth.

    6 – Is the communication in the recruiting process supporting onboarding success?

    The conversation that began at the recruiting stage should grow and take firm roots in the onboarding process. Showing the prospective team member a template (the development pathway) is also a great start to a successful journey. Communicating with the other PDS stakeholders so they can continue the conversation is also vital.

    The onboarding process can often be overlooked when considering continuous improvement opportunities for the people development system. This is a helpful report for teams searching for ways to make improvements to this critical system. It validates the need to understand the supporting elements of the full people development system. Here’s to starting more journeys off well.

    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

  • Yes, AI Will Change This System Too

    Yes, AI Will Change This System Too

    How will artificial intelligence change the internal systems that companies use to find, train, and retain people, what we call their People Development System (PDS)? It will involve more than just the AI tools manufacturing workers use; it will fundamentally change the way the PDS will need to support a culture that embraces AI.

    “The NAM (National Association of Manufacturers) recently proposed a series of policy recommendations for policymakers to drive AI development and adoption in manufacturing, which includes a recommendation on developing the manufacturing workforce of the AI age by supporting training programs and career and technical education institutions.”

    New training and strong partnerships, yes. But what must also happen within the company, especially small to midsized makers, for these new changes to make a meaningful difference?

    An optimized PDS will need to be able to support AI by:

    • Promoting systems thinking for all team members.
    • Creating new job descriptions (and then appealing job postings…these are two different things!) that identify new AI and advanced manufacturing skills.
    • Rethinking training approaches utilizing AI tools for certain but also training team members on new ways to think about utilizing AI.  
    • Recognizing the need for new leadership approaches for AI empowered manufacturing teams.
    • Developing new mindsets that allow people to think about and utilize AI and other technologies on the factory floor.
    • Creating a strong culture of learning and experimentation.
    • And so much more.

    AI will change the way manufacturing systems operate. Including the one system that manages the people who operate within those systems.

  • People Centric Workplaces

    A strong people development system within any workplace exists among other systems. Here’s an article I recently wrote as part of a University of Tennessee initiative that underscores the importance of seeing these systems within systems. The impacts are far-reaching.

    People-Centric Workplaces

  • The Milieu of Leadership

    The Milieu of Leadership

    We ask a lot of leaders. They are guides, managers, problem solvers, and organizers. They are caretakers and decision makers. Leaders are also integral parts of several important organizational systems, and we ask them to make decisions and choices within the circumstances and contexts of those systems. Systems that are unique to each organization and behave in certain ways. Typically available, generalized leadership training may or may not add value if the systems that leaders belong to are not considered; or worse, are not fully understood.

    According to Cambridge Dictionary online, a milieu encompasses the people, physical and social conditions, and events that provide the environment in which someone acts or lives. The leader’s milieu would necessarily include the way the organization recruits, trains, and seeks to retain people. This of course is what I refer to as the organization’s people development system or PDS. The leadership skills exercised in this particular system fall within these contexts – training, recruiting, onboarding, retention, performance management.

    I’m most interested here in leadership at the frontline, in the trenches, and in the middle, not so much in the upper ranks. Although, they too work within a system that they should thoroughly understand. C Suite and upper management teams generally get most of the training and development though.

    Obviously, a significant portion of what leaders do in front and middle operations is tied to their team’s performance. Meeting deadlines, producing results, and simply getting things done. Though much of this is managerial in nature, the way that leaders get things done requires that they use leadership skills like emotional intelligence and proper communication techniques.

    There are many generic, widely taught leadership training courses available covering important subjects such as communication, emotional intelligence, delegation, etc. For these leaders-in-training an important consideration is, how are these matters generally handled in their current organizational systems?

    Imagine that a newly promoted manager completes a workshop to improve their delegation skills. When, in fact, the people development system that they work within does not really focus on developing and training people. Nor does it have a well-defined and properly utilized performance management process. Delegating successfully in many regards becomes challenging in these system dynamics.

    Perhaps the organization needs to expand its capabilities and wants to be more innovative. So, leaders are given some basic training and asked to lead the team in this new direction. Only, their PDS isn’t structured to promote a learning culture or foster creativity, so the training only frustrates the team.

    What if the company’s leaders bring in a consultant to teach leaders how to be coaches, but the PDS doesn’t effectively facilitate relationship building? This would also be an important system consideration regarding more EQ training for leaders.

    No doubt, leadership training is valuable. However, if these leaders do not understand the PDS they are a part of, or if this important system is not well run, the value that training could bring will be limited and will most likely fail to have the desired impact.

    In conjunction with leadership training classes or workshops, the whole team should strive to understand how their internal workforce development efforts are designed and implemented.

    What are the tools used across the PDS? What data is captured and analyzed to understand system performance? How well connected are the five functional areas of the PDS? How does communication across this system work? Among the most important considerations is how well each PDS stakeholder understands their role in the system.

    The milieu of leadership is complex. And while training for leaders is important, it is also important to understand the system to which they and their team members belong. With this understanding they are more likely to be successful in all the important things that are asked of them.

    Image by Daniel Roberts from Pixabay

  • Searching for Leverage

    Searching for Leverage

    How do you move a team? An organization? Not so much in the physical sense but in the sense of motivation. How do you move people toward change? Setting the vision for their team is one of the more important tasks leaders have. Theirs is the challenge of identifying those key aspects or that most influential of things that will have a positive, lasting impact and ultimately help the team achieve its goals. Sometimes the best options for exerting the forces necessary for that movement are not so obvious, even to the people deeply entrenched within the organization’s systems.

    The Lever

    Leverage points, for leaders, are those opportunities that can exert force against the norms. A very powerful lever was identified at the world’s largest aluminum company in 1987. 

    In The Power of Habits, Charles Duhigg recounts The Ballad of Paul O’Neal. It’s the story of when O’Neal, an unconventional choice for the role, took over as CEO of Alcoa and informed shareholders that to turn the ailing company around; he intended to focus on one key aspect – safety – not profits, not investments, not acquisitions, or growth. The goal was zero safety issues across the whole company. Duhigg describes the reaction of the shareholders (and his own reaction) as something of a stampede for the exits. Most thought O’Neal had lost his mind. 

    The lever he chose was of common interest for everyone concerned with the organization. Ultimately, O’Neal’s safety program leveraged this common bond to improve morale and engagement, increase innovation, and drive quality.

    Even before accepting the job, O’Neal searched for something that would “transform the company.” Safety was not the big, shiny lever. Nor was it the most widely accepted lever. It was, however, the company-wide habit that influenced a host of other habits across the organization. Change this one thing, and several other dominoes would fall. And fall they did. Profits hit record highs, net income rose, and market capitalization soared.

    O’Neal’s reasoning fits easily into Duhigg’s observation that “Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers” (p. 101).

    The Fulcrum

    If O’Neal surmised that the keystone habit of safety was the lever, he also understood that systems thinking was the fulcrum on which it operated. Their system was broken. It wasn’t living up to anyone’s expectations. Remarkably, as the force exerted by the new focus on safety rippled through the organization, feedback loops began to send different signals and internal connections began to alter and improve.

    Changing this one keystone habit did, in fact transform Alcoa, moving it to a much stronger position foundationally and fiscally. The complex collection of systems known as the Alcoa Corporation began to move toward its shared vision.  

    Systems thinking urges us to consider the far-reaching impacts that levers might have if and when they are pulled. Peter Senge said, “Vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there” (p. 12).

    Paul O’Neal helped his team gain an understanding of the forces they had to master to reach their vision. He did this by identifying a less obvious point of leverage that had the greatest potential to impact the whole system.

    The search for those less obvious, impactful levers is not always easy. Leaders have to learn to look deeper and wider. It isn’t enough to be a visionary leader. It requires learning to see relationships, understand connections, and to follow the important system patterns where some powerful levers of influence quietly wait to be discovered.

    References

    Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random House, NY.

    Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday, NY.

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