For a leader to fail to embody the values visible and productively is to fall at the very first hurdle when it comes to culture change. If you don’t do it then not only do you lose your ability to role-model what the values mean in day-to-day behaviour but, worse, you lose credibility from that point on. Without credibility, there’s no trust.

It’s not rocket-science but walking the talk requires first that the values mean something to you and second, that you have the courage, awareness and discipline to modify your default behaviour in accordance with them.

The reason why so many leaders don’t do this is the same reason that so many employees don’t want to do it either. It’s hard and it can be uncomfortable in practice.

Our experience shows that a commitment to walking the talk is a ‘win-win’ situation every time.

Tweet This Post

Social media technologies really can make a difference here – but only if business leaders think of them as listening tools first and ways to communicate second.

Time and again we hear from people who believe that their leaders are going through the ‘engagement’ motions when all they want is for their experience to make a positive difference.

What are you listening to? And more importantly, why?

Tweet This Post

And yet ‘us and them’ is also at the very core our economy.  After all, isn’t business all about how our business performs against the competition?

Tweet This Post

The first shows our tendency to put on armour and let our egos slug it out when we feel threatened, and how this gets in the way of service. The second shows the way we can collude to de-risk the language of change. The third shows how hard it can be to see things differently when our thinking keeps us “getting what we’ve always got”, even when we desperately want change. The last image shows what can happen when leaders and employees are willing to step outside their own comfort zones and have more adult-to-adult relationships.

The clash of egos

This picture was inspired by hearing a recent client talking about the behaviour of some senior leaders when faced with the need to create change in the organisation. When change is scary and brings up fear, it’s natural to deny or avoid this feeling and defend against it. The ego needs to be certain and right and on familiar ground. But to adapt to change we need to risk letting go of what we’re sure about to move towards something new. If we’re going to lead change, and genuinely serve people, there’s no place for ego. We need to be willing to drop the defences and to go first into the unknown…

Do you see this happing in your organisation? What would you like to do about it?

The Language Neutraliser

The way change is communicated has a significant impact on employees. We often hear corporate-speak that sounds like it has been through some kind of machine for squeezing out risk. Unfortunately, this also has the effect of squeezing out most of the meaning too.

It may be difficult to be honest with employees but, unless you are, they will see right through your words and become more cynical and distrustful. To gain trust and engagement, a leader needs to demonstrate the courage to to be honest about what is happening. No more euphemisms, no more de-risked expressions – just the simplest, most direct words possible.

What words or expressions have been through the “Neutraliser” in your organisation?

Do what you’ve always done and you’ll get
what you’ve always got

Einstein once said “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. Faced with unprecendented pressure to change, this seems more relevant today than it has ever been, with organisations under huge pressure to perform better with less resources. For many people, this just means working longer and harder but even when they do, little seems to change. Why is that? It’s because most organisations are still doing what they’ve always done and getting what they’ve always got.

How can you make sense of what you don’t yet know? That’s the question. We think that the secret to change is when a leader is willing to imagine that the way forward lies outside of their current way of thinking about things. It takes real courage to ask “what is it that I’m not seeing here?”

Do you recognise this situation? Do your leaders have time and space to step back enough to look at it?

How can you engage a workforce when the organisation has to cut 25% of its combined workforce?

As a leader, you can engage the workforce with this difficult and painful issue through your willingness to get into an honest dialogue about it. The most important thing you could do is to use this situation to create a shift in understanding about what’s happening and why and what it means to each individual.

That means both the leadership and the workforce being invited to explore and question its familiar points of view.  For leadership, these might include “we can’t tell the truth about this, we can’t be wrong, we can’t NOT know…” while for the workforce they might be “we don’t understand the bigger picture, can’t see beyond the detail, it’s them versus us…”

The aim of this dialogue is to bring each side away from its familiar position towards common ground. It can only work if each side is willing to experience some discomfort in order to gain fresh understanding and shared purpose. Because of this discomfort, it also requires external facilitation to make sure that old defensive habits don’t reassert themselves when things get difficult.

What do you think is the answer?

Tweet This Post

I noticed this paradox watching TV news recently, it is such a big issue I often feel powerless  at the impossibility of resolving it. How do you feel about it?

It feels difficult sometimes to work out what is the right thing to do. Holding the tension between conflicting interests and courses of action, having the courage  to take a risk and do what feels right in the service of others are leadership skills I admire. If we don’t take risks nothing will change!

Delta7 pictures are intended to start conversations about things that really matter. Try printing this picture, showing a friend and asking them what they feel about it, and see where the conversation take you…

Tweet This Post

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Most often two of these qualities come together. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!

The quote comes from a manual on military command written in 1933.  If Hammerstein-Equord was a modern day consultant he would have immediately sensed a two-by-two matrix, so we have indulged ourselves and mapped it out.  We’ve found this picture generates some very interesting conversations!

If this diagram tickles you, you might want to follow up by reading Venkat Rao’s trail of posts on “The Gervais Principle” (starting here), which follows a similar idea.  This series has attracted a lot of attention and for good reason.  Be warned – as with all Venkat’s writing, it’s more like reading chapters in a book than reading blog posts.  Worth the effort though.

Tweet This Post

Tweet This Post

These two pictures were inspired by an excellent Quality and Equality lecture I attended a few weeks ago.

Marvin Weisbord, an elder statesman in the Organisational Development field, gave a fascinating talk about its history over more than a century. Building on the contributions of Taylor, Bion and Lewin, he took us through the stages of self-managed teams, systems thinking, group dynamics and lean working, up to his current focus on participative leadership and whole systems interventions.

Marvin shared so many great ideas that I found it difficult to chose which ones to visualize first  (which is my favourite way of learning!). Nonetheless, here are two pictures that seemed to me to be the most interesting and relevant.  The first was inspired by Marvin’s idea that the key building block of all change is the meeting that you’re in right now.  This is a core principle for us at Delta7 and it was good to hear it expressed so succinctly.

The second shows his thoughts on the type of leadership we need in the current complex environment.  In our “hurry up!” technological culture of “faster, cheaper, better”, the quality and rigour of leadership thinking can often go out the window. As our ancient human psyche is being pushed to its limits, we need everyone thinking and leading together in a more democratic way if we are going to  survive and create a better world.

Tweet This Post

This picture was originally one of a series we have produced to visualise the key themes from Bill Isaacs’ Dialogue model, one of several dialogue models we’ve played with over the years.  This picture speaks to the theme of “Voicing”.  Here’s Isaacs’ description:

To speak to your voice is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of genuine dialogue.  Speaking your voice has to do with revealing what is true for you regardless of other influences that might be brought to bear.

To say it’s challenging strikes us as a massive understatement!  Most organisational cultures seem to conspire to ensure that the really difficult issues remain unspoken.  This helps preserve the safety of the status quo, but creates an enormous barrier to change.

Tweet This Post

A regular feature of life in the Delta 7 office is the monthly Visual Dialogue where we get together to discuss something that interests us. We do this because it’s fun – but also because it’s an opportunity to experience and practice the process we create for our clients.

Our pictures are tools to engage people in organisations in conversations about difficult issues. These facilitated dialogues enable people to gain powerful insights about the changes and challenges they face – and come up with responsible and creative solutions.

The starting point for our dialogue was familiar to everyone in the team. “How do I look?”

To begin with, the conversation focused on that uncomfortable conundrum: when is ‘honest’ too honest? Is the truth always the right thing in all situations? We all recognised the experience of holding back on what we said based on what we thought another person wanted to hear. We also all agreed that even though it made things easier at the time, it left us feeling uneasy.

In the end, we concluded that what really mattered to us was for there to be alignment between what we think on the inside and what we say (or do) on the outside. It was clear that congruence was more important a quality than protecting our, or someone else’s feelings.

What do you think? Is the honesty important in your organisation?

Tweet This Post

In Delta7, we fondly call this picture ‘The Blofeld Chair’ – a reference to the archetypal lever-operated chair used by arch-villains in Bond films to dispose of henchmen who have incurred their displeasure.

We’ve heard stories of people who practically roast anyone who dares to disagree but more often than not the threat is less overt and takes the form of a pressure to just agree and not rock the boat. ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’ is a gentle reminder that questioning or disagreement is considered negativity.

Have you ever found yourself sitting in The Blofeld Chair? How did it feel? And what did you do?

Tweet This Post

Last week saw us taking a new Big Picture to the PR Week Engaging Internal Communications conference at the Grange City Hotel in Tower Hill. The new picture is a cityscape depicting what happens when organisations don’t pay attention to the 4 key drivers of employee engagement.

According to the MacLeod report on engagement, these are:

• Strategic narrative - a clear, compelling vision of where the business is going, why and what’s going to have to happen to get it there

• Engaging managers – people with the ability to communicate the strategic narrative in a way that engages, includes and motivates their people

• Employee voice – the willingess to give employees a voice and to seek, listen to and act on their feedback

• Living their values with integrity – leaders who ‘walk their talk’ by embodying the businesses values and who take responsibility for leading by example

Each of the four main buildings represents one of these key drivers and is filled with examples of what it’s like when these drivers aren’t in place.  People running around without any clear idea of what’s going on; people asking for feedback then not listening to it… in short, a range of things familiar to anyone who’s ever worked in a large organisation.

It was an ambitious picture and great fun to make and our artists worked tirelessly to achieve such a striking result, with it’s dizzying perspective. It’s so convincing that people standing in front of the picture reported they felt like they were falling forward into the story.

Which, of course, is just how we like it!

Tweet This Post

“What are the characteristics of an engaged employee?” is a question they’re asking over at David Zinger’s ‘The Employee Engagement Network’

There are many different ways to characterise an engaged employee but one stands out for me – seeing yourself as part of the organisation rather than apart from it.

In my experience, engaged employees are those who care about some (or all) aspects of the work they do. Engaged employees care about doing their part well because they can see how that feeds into developing and safeguarding the thing they care about. They perceive themselves as part of the business and know where they fit in the bigger picture.

Disengaged employees, on the other hand, care more about their pay packet than the experience or importance of what they do – or how they do it. They see themselves as apart from the business, can only see through the view-frame of their own interests and often speak of themselves as though they were engaged in a struggle against the company.

Productivity can come from one of two basic motivations: either external or internal.  If you try to force productivity up through external motivation, you end up with an organisation that can only treat its people like slaves: resources to be exploited and controlled through a range punitive measures.  This approach will eventually create disengagement and at best, compliance.

Since you’re going to need ideas, creativity and willingness to keep productivity and innovation high, it follows that the only motivator that really makes sense is the internal one. Helping people to care about the organisation, what it stands for and to see the part they can play in its success will go a long way towards making that motivation personal – with far higher levels of engagement as the reward.

What do you think?

The Employee Engagement Network is free to join and features a wide range of interested people discussing employee engagement.

Tweet This Post

Clients often talk about the need for more adult-to-adult conversations where the leaders treat employees with respect and listen to and value their views and concerns.  Time and again, however, engagement surveys tell us that this just isn’t happening.  ‘Soft stuff’?  Hardly.  In my experience the ability to have these kinds of difficult conversations is the ‘hard stuff’.

This picture reminds me that the engagement gap is also between HR and the rest of the board. How can HR leaders engage with other leaders diferently?

What do you think?

Tweet This Post

One particular table exercise was to discuss “what HR can do to create employee engagement?”

A theme that came up on several tables was: ‘we need to see people as human beings who are valued and respected instead of a simple resource to be used up’.

That really got me thinking.  So many people share that feeling of not being treated by their organisation as human beings – it’s an unspoken that lies just below the surface.  I made this picture to capture both the intensity and simplicity of this issue.

Interestingly, the problem is clearly embedded there, in language, in the name of that most familiar of organisational job functions: ‘human resources’.

So what can HR do to make an organisation treat its people more like human beings and less like resources to be consumed?
What could I do today that would treat the people I work with more like human beings and less like raw resources to be used? What could I change personally?

At Delta7 we know that in order to treat other people with respect we have to first learn how to respect ourselves. What one thing could you do to treat yourself with more respect today?

We’d like to know how this picture makes you feel. Just post a comment (below)

Tweet This Post

In this picture, the leadership team, excited and motivated by their charts and strategic concerns in the comfort of the well-lit office contrast starkly with the demoralised employee dragging himself to work through the rain and cold.

This picture reminds us that the jargon of leadership, if used in the wrong context, can widen any gulf between leadership and the rest of the organisation.

Tweet This Post

The imminent future is one where social issues continue to rise, fed by increased debt and unemployment, while the pipeline of funding is abruptly turned off. While money could be used to disguise inadequacies in the past, this is no longer possible – public sector organisations are going to have to rely on their own “intangible” qualities to weather the storm.

Tweet This Post

This is one of a series of posters around the Underground that have caught my eye over recent months.

It’s part of a Transport For London campaign called ‘Together For London’ aimed at reducing anti-social behaviours across London’s transport system.  The message is ‘A little thought from each of us.  A big difference for London’.

Rather strangely, a search of the TfL website for ‘Together For London’ gives only this.   Stranger still, clicking the link on that page brings you to this page.  No background, no depth, no accountability, no process and no names.  Just those graphic outcomes.

So who is ‘Together For London’ speaking for?  And who is it speaking to?

According to the website text, the images represent ‘key messages’ chosen by Londoners for the campaign to feature; a ‘pet-hate-list’ of antisocial behaviours endured by the long-suffering public.  The list includes people playing loud music on their iPods, putting their feet on seats, hogging empty seats to stop other people sitting next to them, cyclists who don’t stop for red traffic signals and more.  You get the idea.

This all leaves me wondering: if you’re consciously antisocial (eg. you know what you’re doing but don’t care) will this campaign cause you to change your behaviour?  And if you’re unconsciously antisocial, will this campaign wake you up and then cause you to change your behaviour?

At Delta7, we believe that personal change requires a change in thinking and that this happens through dialogue with others. Pictures can be a powerful catalyst for those change conversations; but they don’t just make change happen.  They act as a doorway to dialogue out of which shifts in understanding can occur and then new actions emerge.  Where is the dialogue in TfL’s campaign?  Where is the doorway?

The effectiveness of any behavioural change strategy can only be measured if the underlying assumptions about – or model of – change are surfaced so they can be tested and evidenced.  The nature and placement of the pictures in this campaign seems to belie a change model that assumes that change will happen as a result of picturing or writing the change you want to see in a stand-alone poster.

Since I’m one of the ‘converted’ (I don’t do antisocial behaviour), I can’t comment on the effectiveness of this strategy.  Only TfL or the perpetrators of antisocial beheviour themselves can tell us.  For that we would need to hear from anyone whose behaviour had been shifted or changed by this campaign.  I will be surprised if TfL ends up with that kind of data.  Certainly nothing currently on their website suggests they will.

I suppose I could ask the next person I come across on the Tube with their feet on the seats or behaving offensively under the influence of alcohol whether these pictures will help them change their behaviour.

Somehow, though, I doubt I will.

Tweet This Post

After many years working with organisations in change, two things have become clear to me: first, that many leaders see change as something they have to get other people to do and second, that many employees think their leaders don’t ‘walk the talk’ or practice the behavioural changes they preach.

A typical change programme in today’s organisations may come packaged as ‘values-based behaviour change’ – with a call to put the company’s values into action in support of the strategic vision.  ‘We need people to act this and that way for the organisation to be successful’ is the underlying ask from leadership.

The problem isn’t the business case for change since this is usually easy to understand e.g. ‘the environment has just got tougher and we need to do more with less’.  The problem is a preference for avoiding the discomfort of looking at and considering changing our own behaviour.  Unsurprisingly, many leaders prefer to support other people and groups to change rather than work on themselves; those other people, in turn, prefer to help other people change … and so on.

The cost of leaders not embodying the kinds of  changes they ask of others is immense for two very simple and powerful reasons.  The first is that when they avoid exploring the discomfort of change before asking others to, they miss the opportunity to equip themselves with the kind of skills, empathy and understanding that would be invaluable for supporting change in others.  The second is that when they don’t work on their own behaviours, leaders lose the ability to lead by example and are perceived as incongruent.

This incongruence creates a lack of trust, diminishes respect and reduces the capacity to lead.  Internally, it can be even worse: the secret knowledge that he/she cannot walk the talk can leave a leader with feelings of shame that erode their sense of self-worth.

Tweet This Post

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has just published a new report by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke on employee engagement.  We wholeheartedly recommend this report – it makes some great points and is filled with useful case studies.  It’s very hard to get to the end and still avoid the conclusion that having an engaged workforce really does improve bottom line results.

But what actually is engagement?  Is it an attitude (e.g. pride, loyalty), a behaviour (going the extra mile) or an outcome (e.g. lower absenteeism)?  The authors amassed over 50 definitions and share three, all of which are a bit woolly.  Many of the contributors just said “you know it when you see it”.  Here’s the definition they end up with for the report:

Engagement is a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.

This is probably a good summary of how the word is typically used in HR and internal communications departments.  There are lots of things to say about it, but my underlying concern is this:  It implies that engagement is something that is done to people.  I want to suggest a different starting point.

The starting point is to notice that “engagement” is a metaphor.  Historically the word means a connection – a coming together.  You use a clutch to engage a gear, armies engage in battle, and of course people become engaged with other people when they buy their services, agree to marry them, or just make an appointment to see them.  The extension of the word into emotional experience is just an extension of this sense of connection.  If I have an engaging experience at the theatre or the cinema, it’s because I’m connecting with something – I care about what happens to the characters, or how the underlying themes are developed.  The same sense is true of engaging books, engaging conversations, engaging stories and so on – they are all examples of connecting with things we find important.

If we take this sense of connection as the central meaning, we get a very clear and simple definition of workplace engagement:  A felt connection between what is important to me as an employee and what is important to the organisation I work for.  A voluntary staff member working for a charitable cause they passionately believe in will obviously be much more engaged with their work than a student working at McDonalds.

By simplifying the definition of engagement down to this level, we can create a clearer picture of what it looks like when people are feeling engaged:

A successful “engagement” intervention is anything that increases the size of the orange overlap in the centre of the diagram, the space in which leadership concerns and workforce concerns connect.  Notice that whatever your role in your organisation – business partner, OD manager, senior leader – whenever you instigate some form of “engagement” activity – i.e. you create this central space – you are taking on the role of a leader.  How engaged people will feel as a result correlates directly with the quality of this interaction:  Its openness, honesty, integrity, clarity, vulnerability and so on.

Tweet This Post