After winning race, Dario Franchitti came out to the middle of the track, knelt down, and kissed the famous one yard wide strip of bricks that marks the start/finish line.

It is traditions like these that make the Indianapolis Motor Speedway so special.

Great organizations use traditions – like kissing bricks – to build a high-performance culture.

So, if you are trying to improve engagement within your organization, take a careful look at your traditions. There are lots of ways, such as:

• Special on-boarding traditions that indoctrinate every new employee.
• Over-the-top birthday parties.
• Unusual ways of celebrating big sales wins.

In a way, it does not really matter what traditions you have, as long as they are memorable, meaningful, and consistent. These kinds of things don’t cost much, but can pay rich dividends.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

These organizations have used the bad economy as an excuse for lots of misguided management actions, such as:

• Reducing management communications, especially when it comes to discussing poor financial results or layoffs.
• Throwing temper tantrums, such as AN E-MAIL RANT IN ALL CAPS SENT BY THE CEO WHO IS PISSED-OFF.
• Eliminating recognition, even though their people are often doing two or three jobs because of layoffs.

When the economy recovers, these organizations will discover a new meaning of the accounting term, “goodwill write-down.”

In accounting, firms write-down goodwill for the reduced value of “impaired assets.”

In organizations, many leaders will say that their people are their “most important asset.” However, many have behaved so poorly that they have destroyed the goodwill of their people.

Their write-down will come in the form of reduced employee engagement, reduced retentions, difficulty in attracting new talent, etc.

Accountants have difficulty reporting these kinds of things on the income statement.

But trust us, it shows up on the bottom line.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

But, it is equally important to challenge followers with a similar question:

Are you “a follower worth leading?”

In our work, we see all kinds of organizational pathologies.

One of the most damaging is employees who undermine their boss and “throw them under the bus.” This kind of behavior kills organizational performance, and must not be tolerated.

So, what makes someone a follower worth leading?

Great followers:

• Accept (and implement) decisions that they were not included in making
• Highlight their boss’s strengths, rather than criticize their weaknesses
• Express concerns privately and directly, rather than at the water cooler
• Demonstrate loyalty and respect
• Give the boss’s initiatives their very best, even if they don’t fully agree with them
• Keep their word, meet their deadlines, and make their numbers … not one-time, but every time

Great leaders are rare. But perhaps great followers are even rarer.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

“Seventy-one percent of American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive.”

In my experience, one of the key reasons that employees disengage is that they don’t feel appreciated.

Of course, it is great to recognize and reward top performers with special awards.  However, it is just as important to simply say thank you to the 99% of your employees who did not get recognized.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, perhaps all of you should make a special effort to reach out to your teams.  A simple thank you goes a long way.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking…Accelerate Your Results.

However, I have now decided that pronouns play a surprisingly important part in building a high-performance organization.

When employees – especially executives – talk, I listen for their choice of pronoun.

• Do they say, “When you decided,” or “When we decided?”
• Do they say, “Their strategy is to …” or “Our strategy is to …”
• Do they say, “Their goals are …” or “My goals are …”

When I hear people describe things in the third person, I know that they are not fully bought-in. They are holding the organization, its vision, its values, and its goals at arm’s-length. They are reserving judgment. Leaving a way out.

So leaders, I suggest that you start by examining your own choice of pronouns. Are you fully bought-in? Then, start listening for the pronouns that everyone else is using.

You can’t finish in first place if everyone talks in the third person.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

Do you think there is a correlation here? You bet.

As it turns out, this organization has tremendous churn in their customer base. They are able to win new customers, but lose them faster than they win them.

We confronted the CEO with this data, and tried to make the case that employee churn was the root cause of customer churn.

Not surprisingly, the CEO did not buy the argument … and not surprisingly, their revenues continue to decline.

While this organization may be an extreme case, the evidence is clear. Invest in the growth and development of your team, and they will invest their talents in the growth and development of your clients.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

Recently, hundreds of companies participated in the Best Places to Work process, which uses a 37 question survey that measures employee engagement. While 50 companies celebrated, hundreds were confronted with the reality that they were not on the list.

Many factors contribute to an organization’s employee engagement score, including compensation, benefits, job-fit, career opportunities, confidence in the strategy, etc.

It is tempting to think that improving engagement is primarily the job of our senior executives. However, in reality, improving engagement is everyone’s responsibility.

• Everyone contributes to the culture. When you tolerate behavior that is out-of-line, it reduces everyone else’s engagement.

• Everyone is a member of the team. When you disparage your teammates, it reduces everyone else’s engagement.

• Everyone has internal customers. When you miss deadlines or deliverables, it reduces everyone else’s engagement.

• Everyone owns the strategy. When you allow negativity and pessimism, it reduces everyone else’s engagement.

My wife had a choice about getting engaged (thankfully, 25 years ago, she eventually got the joke and said yes.)

Likewise, you have a choice about getting engaged as well. I encourage you to take ownership of your own engagement level and realize that your decision will have a far greater impact on your organization winning a Best Place to Work award than anything our senior executives will do.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

We arrived at this idea after over a year of intense effort, debate, and corporate soul searching. We had early versions that worked well for a season, and constant refinement eventually led us to the big idea.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about the build-up phase (where intense effort yields seemingly minimal gains) followed by the breakthrough (where exponential gains take the organization to unprecedented heights.)

And we are starting to experience the breakthrough!

At BTI360, the Developing Ultimate Teammates idea has transformed the organization. There is piercing clarity. The executive team is fully aligned. Every teammate has a clear development roadmap. Enthusiasm is at an all-time high. We are receiving unsolicited resumes from exceptionally qualified people who have heard about our strategy and want to be a part of the movement.

In an industry that is highly competitive, and frequently treats people simply as “bodies on a project,” BTI360 is a beacon of light. They are proof that being people-driven is an exceptional and differentiating business strategy.

BTI360 is an inspiration to me, and The Dashboard Group is very proud to have them as a client.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking…Accelerate Your Results.

Some organizations “sweep the results under the rug.”  They basically ignore the feedback, often using the excuse that the survey results are rigged somehow.

Some organizations react with anger and retribution.  They are mad at the employees, and go into a rant that “they should be happy that they even have a job!”  The worst offenders even try to identify who the disengaged employees are, and plot some kind of retribution.

Some organizations actually study the results and identify areas of improvement.  Some even convene task forces to work on the issue.  However, in our experience, most of these task forces will fade away, action plans will never get implemented, and the tyranny of the urgent will prevail.

The best organizations see the survey results as a sobering wake-up call.  They share the results with everyone in organization, and develop real action plans to improve.  The CEO has a “conversion experience.” Rather than delegate the issue to a powerless task force, the CEO decides to make employee engagement their number one priority.  They own it, drive it, and get their entire executive team engaged in the process.

Improving employee engagement is really, really hard.  Getting to Best Place to Work levels is a long, uphill climb.  Most won’t try.  Some will try but give up.  A few – perhaps 1% of organizations – will make the commitment.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

These awards are based on the results of the Best Places to Work employee engagement survey, which was developed by Quantum Workplace.  The survey contains 37 questions and used a six part likert-scale model (strongly disagree, disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, agree and strongly agree).

Unlike other workplace awards programs, there is no subjective element in selecting the winners … judges don’t tip the scales based on their opinions or advertising revenue.  The employee engagement score is the only criteria. 

The BPTW program yields tremendous benefits.  In our opinion, an organization’s employee engagement number is a critical one on the Dashboard.  Every participant gains statistically valid data about employee engagement, which can help them improve their performance. 

According to Quantum, organizations with employee engagement scores in the top ten percent experience measureable results, including:

• 87% show increased revenue
• 86% report increased market share
• 57% report lower employee turnover

Congratulations again to the winners.  Full speed ahead!

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust. 

Shift Your Thinking.  Accelerate Your Results.