One of the root causes of disengaged employees is what we call “organizational hypocrisy” … where organizations say one thing but do another.

They say that employees are their greatest asset, but axe them without reservation as soon as the economy sours.

They say that the customer is number one, but don’t even measure customer satisfaction.  Worse yet, they don’t confront the brutal facts about their delivery performance issues because fixing the problem will cost too much.

They say one thing in their core values, but the resource allocation decisions say another.

They say that teamwork is essential to success … and even take the management team to a ropes course, but the executive bonus plan rewards only individual performance.

They preach excellence, but practice mediocrity.

Frankly, employees are rightfully cynical.  They witnessed so much dysfunctional behavior that they tune out the words.  It is just executive blah-blah-blah.

If you are serious about building a high-performance organization, focus more on your actions than your words.