2012 - The Year of the Dragon, and AAPCIMAR?

Monday of this week we recognized the celebration of the Chinese Year of the Dragon. Many people are looking forward to what this year will bring, as the dragon is such a powerful symbol in Chinese astrology. Did you know that it’s the only animal in the Chinese zodiac year that is not real? It’s quite special and very much revered and is believed to get its power from being made up of parts of different animals such as a tiger, a fish, a snake and an eagle. Rather than threatening, the Chinese dragon is a symbol of power, superiority, wisdom and rule.

As most business community leaders and workers are looking for some signs of good news and confidence about the future – perhaps this is what we’ve been waiting for. The Economist posted the following interesting data on Monday:

This Chinese new year could bring good fortune to stock market investors.

Chinese people across the world ushered in their new year on January 23rd, which according to 3,000 year-old Chinese astrology is the year of the dragon. …Physignathus cocincinus, to give its Latin name, is associated with power, authority and good fortune.

For those looking for good news among the grim January headlines, this could bode well for stock market fortunes over the coming year. Between 1900 and 2011, the nine previous dragon years have seen America's Dow Jones Industrial Average price index increase by an average of 7.7% in real terms, the second-best historical record of the 12 zodiac animals. Such fortune may be short-lived however; next year's animal, the snake, has the second-worst historical record.

As organizations take steps to get their hands around what changes to implement in order to take advantage of an economic turnaround, whether brought on by the Year of the Dragon or something else, I thought it might be helpful to post a few tips for managing change successfully. Organized and planned change initiatives help leaders navigate the abundance of land mines strategically planted along the journey ready to blast and derail advancements towards change objects.

• Be clear about where the organization is headed. This vision should be easy to articulate, understand and remember. It should be one that engages and excites stakeholders.
• Fully understand the current and future environments. Recognize the benefit of working with an unbiased third-party to assess the AS IS and TO BE states to help identify gaps and the strategies necessary for closing them. It’s dangerous to build a change plan strictly based on assumptions of internal leadership; get confirmation first, then do your planning.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. Be open about your interest in gathering opinions and making the changes required for the organization to continue to be competitive and survive. Help employees and other stakeholders understand how your plans will benefit them. Provide schedules, even if tentative, on how the change initiatives are expected to move forward. Provide multiple channels for communicating about change in all directions within and outside of the organization. Train leaders and managers as Change Leaders and strengthen their communication and presentation skills so they can properly address questions even when a clear answer still hasn’t been determined
• Provide leaders of change with executive coaches to assist them with their own personal transitions while they lead others.
• Construct a plan that provides opportunities for as much stakeholder involvement as possible. Understand how various stakeholder groups would like to be engaged and design those possibilities into the plan.
• Be mindful that change doesn’t happen quickly, and be prepared with patience and realistic time lines.
• Celebrate successes, as well as lessons learned from actions that didn’t hit the mark. Empower stakeholders to assist with the change strategies and acknowledge their journeys. Lots of great organizational stories will be available along this journey – don’t keep them to yourself.

So What’s Next?

I think what’s next is AAPCIMAR!   Never heard of it?   Read on.

We all know, unless you’ve been working under a rock, that to be successful in this "new, normal," "21st century," "whatever-you-want-to-call-it" economy we can’t approach business the way we did in the past. It doesn’t really matter what business function you’re responsible for – i.e., accounting, human resources, information technology, engineering and research, operations, etc. - expectations are that workflow and the people working within each system will be efficient, effective and produce results that support the value proposition the organization has with its stakeholders. Achieving that success requires: Assessing, Analyzing, Planning, Change Initiatives, Monitoring, Adjusting and Repeating…AAPCIMAR.

AAPCIMAR requires consistent attention to the external and internal environments in which an organization functions. It also involves a strategy for integrating changes into the organization’s strategic plans. More than ever, I believe our personal and organizational abilities will be tested for flexibility and agility. In the instantaneous world we now work in, leaders and employees will be evaluated differently. For example, we all need to be comfortable making decisions faster while working with changing boundaries: global rather than regional, and home-based rather than cubicle. Our expectations that colleagues will be down the hall and approach work "like us" has been transformed into virtual and global settings with peoples of all types of experiences, backgrounds, educations, nationalities and dreams. Skill sets and experiences associated with managing change will be mandatory; certainly for executive leaders, but also for those in management and supervisory positions. The more we can expand managing change techniques and awareness in the workforce, the faster our organizations will be able to respond.

It’s a different world and a different year. The year of the wise and powerful Dragon is here. What’s your next move?

I welcome your comments to my posting. Please click below. If you found this article to be interesting and helpful I’m very happy for you to pass it along to others. Have a great week.

This article was written for you by Deborah A. King, SPHR, CEO and Sr. Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team can help your organization navigate the challenging journey of individual, team and organizational change.   Contact us for more information: www.evolutionmgt.com or 770.587.9032.

Sunni Brown

What’s Driving the Disconnect Between Job Seekers and Recruiters?

I’ve been hearing a lot of recruiters say for the past few months that they have openings they are trying to fill, but they can’t find the right talent. "How can this be?" we’re all asking when there are a lot of people out of work and actively looking for jobs. There’s also a large population of employed workers, 74% according to a recent survey by Harris, known as the "silent majority," who have acknowledged they would consider changing jobs if they were approached. And together with the voices of recruiters who say they can’t find qualified talent, I hear from job seekers who are just as frustrated about responding to openings they are qualified for, only to hear nothing back. So what’s the problem? What’s causing the disconnect?

May Not Be One Factor
Over the last six months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a few firms pulling teams of consultants together to work on change and human resource (HR) projects. One common problem recruiters involved with organization development (OD) projects experience is rooted in the fact that there isn’t one clear definition of what OD is. As HR is becoming more strategic rather than transactional, I’m wondering if this transition in describing competencies is also becoming a problem when recruiting for HR positions. Is the disconnect we’re experiencing in the job market a reflection of non-qualified candidates, or is the root problem something else, or possibly a combination of factors?

Consider the problems caused by non-standard jargon, especially in professions such as OD and HR. Some companies refer to their learning and professional development programs as OD, while others look beyond training and consider all people and organizational changes experienced by a transitioning business unit to be OD. It’s the same with change management expertise. One recruiter might be searching for a candidate with experience managing one specific aspect of a merger and refer to that as change management, while another may only consider it sufficient change management experience if the expertise includes all aspects of the holistic merger project. HR recruiters not familiar with the experience and expertise required for strategic HR positions might easily overlook someone with the right qualifications and label them as "overqualified" for a position requiring OD, change management or skills supporting conflict resolution and influencing change.

Linking my personal consulting experiences with the frustrations I’m hearing from recruiters, as well as job seekers, I’m wondering what the impact is when the recruiter’s role expands to areas where he/she doesn’t have specialized expertise. So often I find individuals in recruiter roles who have backgrounds in a certain area of HR, such as benefits or training, being asked to source and identify talent in HR and OD - areas they have never worked in. In situations like this, without specific detailed profiles and examples of qualifications, how can they adequately decipher the experiences and knowledge being shared by interested job seekers to determine transferable skills and backgrounds for the position?

We’re living in a world of instantaneous expectations and I wonder what impact this perception is having on the recruiting process? Have we shortened the cycle too far, so that it now appears to resemble "speed dating" rather than sourcing and recruitment? How much can we really get to know an individual’s work/life experiences and how they transfer to the "new" normal of work in 15 or 20 minutes?

So What's Next?
The profession of sourcing and recruitment is changing. Although the world is speeding up as it gets smaller and smaller, perhaps it’s time to slow down the process of matching required talent needs with available talent. Maybe the process of evaluating fit should include more than a 20 second review of a resume or a successful number of matches of keywords. Perhaps until we get more sophisticated with language and our abilities to understand how skills transfer, we need to encourage slowing down the recruiting process and taking the time to really understand how past experiences translate to meet the current day needs of the organization. There’s no doubt that some percentage of job seekers don’t have the up-to-date skills required to address marketplace needs, but the rest of the population is an available resource that we need to learn how to connect with. This situation provides organizations and the HR profession with an opportunity to establish training courses or university-style programs to develop the skills they are looking for and to structure some type of interview feedback or job opening profile that indicates specific trainings and experiences that are lacking in order to raise the job seekers’ awareness that his/her skills are no longer up-to-date.

I recently attended a SHRM-Atlanta Chapter meeting. Sitting with me at my table of eight were four recruiters. All four confirmed they had a staggering number of job openings for HR talent, more than they’ve had in the past few years. And in a room of over 300 HR professionals they were declaring they couldn’t find the right talent. We’ve got a disconnection and we need to fix it, as 2012 sounds like it might just be the year for getting people back to work.

I’m curious about your observations. Do you think we have some disconnections in our recruiting processes? Please share your comments below. I’d also encourage you to share this email with a friend so we can expand the conversation.

Update Your Orientation Process

The Colors of the Holiday Season: Red and Green; Pink and Blue

We all know the #1 goal of a for-profit organization is to make a profit. The additional objectives, such as treating employees with respect and fairness and being a good social and global steward, are hopefully priorities met along the way to the profits.

My experience about how executives approach the final quarter of the year echoes what I hear colleagues mentioning - most organizations have their eyes on two things: the financial performance for the year ending, and the strategic goals for the new year. Finding the right balance between profits, quality performance, future consumer demands, staffing levels, workload, and advancing technologies is quite a leadership art. CEOs usually find the solution for balance wrapped in organizational assessments and restructuring activities focused on integrating new processes and technologies in order to provide greater efficiencies while reducing costs. Unfortunately, this often results in cutting jobs.

As if on cue, earlier this month we began to learn of plans within the semiconductor industry to address a downturn in business through layoffs and the closing of plants. The first announcement came from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) on November 3rd; ten percent or approximately 1,400 positions being eliminated through restructuring efforts. Next, Adobe Systems announced it would be restructuring and reducing its workforce by seven percent. Additional semi industry firms are reportedly also anticipating layoffs, and who knows how the domino effect will play out across other direct and indirect industries. To get an idea of how far-reaching the impacts of layoffs can be, check out the creative, interactive Domino Effect posting on my Whiteboard at the end of this blog. It specifically addresses the housing market, but you’ll get the idea.

So What’s Next?

The new norm for annual planning appears to be a hand-in-hand combination of business assessment along with strategic and workforce planning. This newly-established partnership between operating executives together with finance, organization development and human resources leaders seems like a "dream team." Get the right people in the room with the right information about future expectations and facilitate a creative and innovative exploration of practical options for achieving the appropriate balance between financial, stakeholder and employee expectations. As I wrote in my book, Learning to Live With Downsizing, layoffs are not the only solution – but in order to identify others, the team needs the leadership and courage to explore out-of-the box alternatives, along with the likely risks associated with each.

The simultaneous timing of organizations’ strategic planning and restructuring framework with a holiday season of personal reflection and connections with friends and family in a spirit of love and kindness seems ironic. While employees are being thankful for what they have and sharing with others less fortunate, the rug may be about to be ripped out from under their feet.

I believe as a result of this emerging trend in planning and subsequent layoffs during a season framed in kindness and celebration, organizations should pay particular attention to the emotional needs of the employees being let go, as well as those remaining. Both will be impacted by the changes the organization is introducing; albeit in different ways.

As organizational leaders, we have a responsibility to employees who have contributed to the journey so far to be as fair and respectful as possible with the process of separation, and the process they face for moving on. In a blog I published in July 2010, I addressed this specific issue. I felt it might be helpful to repeat it here, so here is a link to Separation – Do It with Grace.

If your Year-End To-Do List includes an event that will impact employees such as restructuring, layoffs, rebranding, mergers, etc., consider these pillars in framing your approach:

1. Promote honesty and openness – tell the story of why the event is necessary for the success and/or survival of the organization.
2. Prepare to communicate, communicate, and then communicate some more – not everyone will hear the entire message the first time, or even the third time. Remember, if you don’t tell them, they’ll fill in the gaps with their own ideas.
3. Don’t ever say "that’s the end, we’re done" – you just can’t know what’s around the corner. So if you have to initiate layoffs, don’t announce that there won’t be more.
4. Prepare your managers – this type of organizational work gets personal and can be painful. Decisions being made will impact the lives and families of your employees. Managers may need assistance to deal with their own emotions and should be prepared for reactions that most likely will be emotional. Use EAP and outplacement experts, as appropriate.
5. Offer assistance – the re-employment process is not impossible, but in this market it is very challenging. Offer as much assistance to separating employees as possible. Firms such as ours offer books, coaching, workshops, webinars, and one-on-one sessions to meet the needs of employees and managers. Remember, employees will be watching and judging how friends and colleagues are treated, influencing their future engagement and motivation levels.

Economists are suggesting that 2012 will continue to be a challenging time for business, and perhaps we won’t see any clear signs of a strong recovery until after the November elections. If that’s the case, what advice would you add to improve the success of restructuring and layoff processes?

Tim Logan and Josh Renaud

Is Your Zero-Tolerance Training Program Working?

This week the topic of harassment is again front and center in our workplaces, schools, and political arenas. As an HR professional dedicated to ensuring that the workplace is welcoming and respectful to everyone, I found myself questioning "Where did we go wrong? After all the years of training, coaching, and sensitivity training, provided by firms of all sizes, why are we still having conversations about inappropriate behaviors? In addition to our training efforts, have the laws also failed?"

As many women who went to work in the 70’s and 80’s can attest to, it was not unusual at that time for bosses (primarily male bosses) to make passes at and disrespectful comments to women in the workplace. The workplace culture up until that time was primarily male dominated, and they didn't seem to think they were doing anything wrong. But the diversity of the workplace changed, and that laid the groundwork for the culture changes to come.

Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that sexual harassment was a discriminatory action and a violation of federal law, organizations didn’t pay much attention. It really wasn’t until 1991 when Anita Hill gave a face and a voice to the oppressive behaviors and negative impacts of harassment in the workplace that organizations began to look in the mirror. What they found was the demographics of employees had changed and the new workforce was demanding a shift in the status quo of male-dominated workplace cultures and behaviors. The workplace could no longer be the "club" for off-color jokes, bad language, inappropriate advances, or promotions for those bullied into granting sexual favors. Analyzing the claims of harassment that began to be more frequently reported, researchers helped us understand that sexual harassment and hostile work environment weren’t really about sex, but more about power.

The Intentional and Unintentional Consequences

The basis for harassment today remains the same, someone with power taking advantage of someone with little or no power. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website contains information on both harassment and sexual harassment; both illegal and punishable by fines.

With courts seeing many harassment cases over the years, they now place the burden on the employer to prove that the harassment did not occur. The courts have come to the realization that people will be people and therefore, employers should be aware that some form of harassment could be occurring within their workplace at any time. Based on that assumption, each employer is required to take the appropriate steps to ensure their workplace is free of harassing behaviors, and that processes are in place to report it, investigate it and stop it. However, even with clarified roles and responsibilities regarding harassment, the EEOC reports that nearly $100M in legal settlements were paid in 2010.

Although we have gained a greater awareness of actions that make others uncomfortable and behavioral changes have occurred to improve respectful workplace relationships, unintended consequences have also resulted from attempts to stop harassment in the workplace:

• Individuals often don’t want to report the incident for fear of embarrassment or retaliation.
• Individuals have learned they can get a lot of people stirred up, create moments of media fame, and often profit financially by reporting false accusations of harassment.
• Some organizations have adopted the view that "settlements" are a cost of doing business.
• As our workplaces have grown with diversity, so have the number of ways harassment can occur; as a result, claims of harassment are on the rise.

So What’s Next?

I’m sad to share that a recent national study, to be released next week, conducted by the American Association of University Women finds that 50 percent of 7th to 12th grade students reported experiencing sexual harassment in the last school year! Eighty-seven percent of those who reported being harassed also reported negative effects such as absenteeism, poor sleep and illness. These students, harassed by other students who had more "informal" power at school, will soon be in our candidate pools. What does this growing trend in high schools across the country mean to the orientation, on-boarding, training, mentoring and performance programs in our organization?

We are exposed, if only for a nano-second of a sound bite, to the realities of workplace vulnerabilities when they impact business leaders, celebrities, athletes or schools and universities dealing with claims of hostile environments or sexual harassment. Often our tendencies are to bury our heads in the sand, not wanting to face what might be happening within our own cultures and sub-cultures. Perhaps the reemergence of harassment in the news should be viewed as a wake-up call to investigate what our organization is offering in the form of training, coaching, hotlines, etc.

Yes, people will be people, but every CEO is responsible for setting the tone for appropriate and respectful behaviors. Boards need to be holding the CEO’s responsible, and HR should be orchestrating training, surveys and coaching programs aimed not only at raising awareness but also at helping individuals unable to change behaviors on their own. Certainly offenders who do not improve their behaviors with colleagues should be fired; obviously they are not a match for the values and culture of the organization.

Today the courts are seeing more male-on-male harassment, but that doesn’t mean that women being harassed by males has been eliminated. Nor does it mean that hostile environments due to religion, age, race, color, disability, or national origin have been curtailed. Technology and the journey we have taken to a 24/7 environment also opens up opportunities for harassment in the form of text messages, social media postings, etc. (Don’t miss the Textual Harassment video on my whiteboard below). Some experts speculate that the true picture of harassment is being masked by the recession; people wanting to hold on to their jobs, regardless of the circumstances, are not reporting abuse.

I believe, especially with the conditions of a struggling economy, businesses should not take their eyes off the need to gear up and update zero-tolerance training programs. Harassment or bullying, as it’s called in the schools, is alive and well. Businesses need to be cultivating cultures of respect, engagement, and sustainability. Claims of harassment played out in the courts, newspapers, internet and around the water cooler can quickly call into question and destroy a strong and credible reputation. Strategies to ensure that inappropriate comments, behaviors and practices are not tolerated are an investment in the future.

It’s hard to believe that people don’t know how to respect the differences and values of each other, but statistics show us this problem continues. But you know what they say – if we keep doing the same thing, why should we expect a different outcome? So my question is:

If we haven’t achieved the level of success we were looking for with the training and awareness programs we’re currently utilizing, what other actions should we consider to eliminate harassment in our organizations? What’s your organization doing?

Please share your comments below.

 New Method of Harassment

Collaborate for a Solution

www.evolutionmgt.com

770.587.9032

Corporate Culture: Intentional or Accidental

A recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the Southwest Airlines and AirTran Airways merger had me examining the question, "Do most organizations have the cultures they intend to have, or is their culture more 'accidental' in nature, dictated by voids in leadership?"

The organization development profession has come a long way to have an article dedicated to the challenges of culture on the front page of the Business section. So in a way I’m glad to see the progress of organizations relating to the importance of culture; but at the same time, I’m concerned that executives hearing so much about culture and not familiar with its relevance to successful performance may discount it as the next "flavor of the month" business trend. We need to be careful to continue our educational efforts on this topic.

The term corporate culture was coined by the McKinsey organization. There are many definitions, including: "how we do things around here" and "real-time reflection of an organization’s rulebook." An important element of the latter is the "organization’s rulebook." Who wrote yours - the owner of the business, the management team, or the strongest subcultures within your enterprise? It’s not a given that management and employees are working out of the same book.

What Do We Know About Culture?

For this blog I’m assuming that culture is the "stuff" that:

• influences how work gets done
• impacts whether or not the company is viewed as a high performer to be benchmarked against
• orchestrates the processes to determine who fits in and who doesn’t
• controls the overall tempo and mood of the enterprise

We often observe the "stuff" by the way language, stories, rituals, symbols and power are displayed on a daily basis as tasks are completed. Although efforts to guide the culture are attempted by publishing handbooks, P&P manuals, job descriptions, annual reports, and a host of other corporate documents, culture "stuff" goes beyond the written word.

It’s great to have so much research on culture today to help guide organizational performance improvements. Even the Defense Acquisition University has written, and is teaching about culture because of its impact and importance to government agencies. We most often hear about culture when organizations are merging, such as the Southwest – AirTran example. But the importance of recognizing, understanding, and working with culture is a skill set all leaders need in anticipation of future acquisitions, as well as restructurings, and the need to re-conceptualize work as a result of change. Certainly there are examples of mergers where the integration of the cultures has worked. But on the opposite side of the scale are the outweighing mergers that didn’t work: Novell/WordPerfect, Daimler/Chrysler, Matsushita Electronics/MCA, Inc., to list a few.

How Do We Assess and Change Culture?

Whether you are considering merging or planning for changes to improve alignment with the needs of 2012, here are a few steps you can take to improvement your culture. In 1992 Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes developed The Cultural Web. This model identifies six interrelated elements that create the pattern (Paradigm) of the work environment. Using these steps you can analyze your current culture and identify what’s working and what needs to be changed, as you consider the gaps between what the culture currently is and the culture you want in the future:

1.  Assess the current culture:

• Ask about and listen to stories – what past events are people talking about? 
• Observe the rituals and routines of daily work behaviors, signaling "acceptable" behavior.
• Study the symbols most pronounced in the organization - logo, marketing, website, social media, dress code, office layout and decorations, etc.. What do they tell you about the organization?
• Identify how power and influence are used to accomplish those activities and outputs valued by the organization. Look closely at the formal organizational chart, as well as the many informal factors influencing outcomes.
• Review the written day-to-day control processes involving finances, quality, performance management, and other metrics the organization monitors and reports on. Do the activities match the procedures?
• Identify those individuals and groups within the organization that have the most influence on decisions, operations, and the strategic direction the organization seems to be headed in.

2.  With the assessment of the current culture complete, follow the same process to identify the culture desired for the organization in the future.

3.  Comparing the themes of the current and future culture assessments, identify the differences between the two. Examining these gaps will lead to a list of strategic steps to be taken in order to eliminate the gaps, or at least minimum the differences.

4.  Prioritize the required changes and develop a plan for implementing a cultural transition.

So What’s Next?

The tagline for my business is Transforming Human Behaviors Through Cultural Evolution. I seriously believe that we can’t expect employees to perform any differently if we don’t address the environment they work in and the "stuff" that influences how they do their jobs. Culture change requires a realistic change management plan and the patience to implement it. It doesn’t happen overnight because you’re striving for a collaborative process where employees and stakeholders embrace the changes and participate as much as possible. Culture change is something that can’t be rushed.

Often organizations seek OD consultants and experts to assist them with culture assessments, change readiness capabilities, planning and implementation of the rollout. I don’t want to sound like a commercial, but often internal views are distorted by what they want to see. The eyes and ears of an outside expert are valuable in taking an unbiased approach to mapping and navigating the path to cultural change. Experts share experiences and knowledge to revise performance expectations and the workplace environment in which individuals can flourish. They provide strategies for introducing an updated vision, mission and values, along with appropriate changes to systems, policies and procedures.

Kelly Yamanouchi reported in the AJC that Southwest and AirTran are hard at work implementing their Plan to blend more than 8,000 AirTran employees into the culture of Southwest. Keep in mind that Southwest Airlines views their culture as one of its most valuable assets. Trying to integrate their culture with another organization would be difficult enough. However in this case, they are layering that job with the task of integrating it into a unionized environment. Talk about challenges!

Training is underway to assist AirTran employees with understanding and embodying the personality of the Southwest culture into their everyday routines. Each AirTran employee received an "Embrace It! Recognize It! Live It!" wristband. Repeated communication and training will continue in an effort to drive the expectation for individual acceptance and transition to the Southwest business model. It won’t happen overnight, but with the right planning, continued assessment, and patience, success is possible.

Successful organizations considering acquisitions or organizational change as a result of current economic and global conditions will be wise to consider a similar approach to cultural integration as this highly visible merger has. From the research I did this weekend, it doesn’t appear that studies over the past few years found many organizations considering the importance of culture in their strategic planning processes. Hopefully we can help them re-evaluate that approach. What are your thoughts about intentional and accidental cultures? What have you experienced that works as organizations attempt cultural change, and what should be avoided? We all look forward to you joining the dialogue by posting your comments below.

Two creative videos examing organizational change using music as a metaphor.

Prescription For A Healthy Organization: A Daily Dose of Human Connection

I've recently realized that I am observing more and more "problems" surfacing in client workplaces that have to do with a lack of personal relationships. Investigating the root cause of the situations, the conflicts are most often anchored to behavioral reactions associated with feelings such as a lack of trust, isolation, or a disconnection from feeling part of the team. At a time when organizations should be fostering engagement and designing workplaces that support retention, are business strategies associated with technology, improved efficiencies and work/life balance working against our success?

In a Harvard Business Review article originally published in 1999 and republished in 2010, Edward M. Hallowell wrote about what he termed the "human moment." In 1999 Hallowell was concerned about the problems he was seeing and hearing about from business executives he was counseling in his psychiatric practice. If he was concerned with the impact of the technologies of a decade ago - stop for a moment and consider how much greater the impact of current technologies are on this issue today!

Rather than hold face-to-face meetings with teams, suppliers or clients, it's much more cost effective today to conduct a web-based meeting. Instead of holding monthly staff meetings in the conference room, it has become quicker, easier, and less costly to communicate through conference calls. Training workshops which offered opportunities for colleagues to network and get to know each other while they learned new skills together have been replaced by cost effective and time saving webinars. And the need for office space to centrally locate employees and work teams has given way to new work designs like teleworking and flex offices. There's no doubt about it, technology advancements are providing great opportunities for faster, cheaper work alternatives, but what's the cost of the significant lack of human connections?

The Human Moment
Dr. Hallowell defined the human moment as an authentic psychological encounter that can happen only when two people share the same physical space. The prerequisites for the human moment to occur include people's physical presence, as well as their emotional and intellectual attention to the moment. Yes, the opportunity to create human moments does require energy and an investment in time and travel. However, what we're learning about the brain continues to support the idea that a deficiency of human contact leads to workers feeling lonely, isolated and confused about work assignments, direction and mission.

Emails, text messaging, instant messages, and voice messages are all opportunities for us to communicate with each other. However these communication channels don't provide for the key essential of communications - body language. We've always heard that we hear more though our eyes than through our ears and that is demonstrated time and again as we rely less on face-to-face engagements and more on the convenience of technologies.

What Hallowell's research found was that the lack of human moments results in worry. He wrote about "good worry" that leads to constructive planning and creativity and "toxic worry," which is anxiety. Hallowell found that anxiety immobilizes workers and leads to indecision or destructive actions. He concluded that toxic worry is among the most debilitating consequences of vanishing human moments, and the source of the misunderstandings that result from misconstruing communications.

So What's Next?
Thinking about this dilemma, which I'm assuming will only get more intense if we don't start paying more attention to it, my memory replayed a TV commercial from many years ago. The scene is a corporate conference room. The meeting participants are concerned and worried about why the meeting has been called, especially in light of the downturn in their business. The camera focuses on the boss, who is standing at the head of the table. The boss begins to speak and announces that the decision has been made to get back to valuing their customers. He holds up a hand full of airline tickets and announces they're returning to their roots to improve business: face-to-face customer meetings. He was selling more than United Airlines services - he was selling the power of human connections. Today, not only do we need to be careful not to be too virtual with our customers, we also have to be attentive to adequately connecting our employees.

Many organizations that promote teleworking also require their employees to come into the office on a frequent basis to attend staff and/or team meetings so teambuilding and relationships can be forged. These organizations know that workers are more productive and efficient when employees know each other personally and can tap into that relationship, trust and familiarity to avoid misunderstandings.

With the increasing advancement of technologies encouraging less need for working face-to-face, organizations need to be mindful to craft opportunities for personal interactions into their processes. Perhaps the idea of "open" meetings with pizza and snacks once a month to discuss business and project issues that members are interested in could spark connections.  Or promote lunch and learns to share skill building or project updates to offer another forum for individuals working together to meet each other face-to-face.  Ideas for gathering employees together for the specific purpose of getting to know each other and building relationships they can tap into in the future are more important now than ever. We need to encourage and plan for events focused on human interactions

The Human Resource and academic professions are hearing loud and clear from businesses complaining that entry level candidates are coming into the workplace without strong interpersonal and communication skills. The cause of this may be their personal interaction with technologies, as well as habits learned while at school. I fear this lack of abilities to interact with others will only complicate the struggle organizations are already confronting resulting from the lack of human moments available in each work day. As leaders within our organizations, we have a responsibility to improve productivity and profitability. Could improving opportunities for building human moments at work be a key to meeting those business goals?

What do you think - is the human moment important? If yes, what are some of the techniques your organization supports for making personal interactions happen?

Peter Clayton

Collaborate for a Solution

www.evolutionmgt.com

770.587.9032

Branding Isn't Just for Marketing

This morning while enjoying my three-mile walk, I passed a service truck with the advertisement "We Protect Your Brand" painted on the sides. Branding of course is a critical business element, so it caught my attention and I wondered how they did that – protect your brand?

As I considered the tagline, I couldn’t imagine how a vendor could provide this protection. Shouldn’t protection be provided by employees? Thinking about how employees understand and protect brand strategies, it occurred to me that unless the organization does a good job of communicating the brand strategy, it would be difficult for the employees to protect it. Those thoughts led to others focused on the best practices for ensuring employees "get" the brand and acknowledge their responsibility to promote it, as well as protect it - something I’m not sure we’re always paying attention to.

Why Branding is Important

I think when most people think about branding, they think about a logo. The American Marketing Association (AMA) goes a little further as they define a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers." Businesses focus a lot of time and money on the creation of the appropriate brand because it can give them an edge in an increasingly competitive market.

The brand is the organization’s promise to its customers. Not only does it help an organization differentiate itself from others, it also assures the organization’s customers of what they can expect from products and services. The foundation of a brand is understanding what the customer needs and is usually anchored through the company’s logo and then builds throughout the marketing and communication channels: website, marketing materials, packaging, and promotional products.

However, another key area where branding is critical is human resource engagement. It’s a very logical connection – recruiting and hiring processes are very similar to the processes used by marketing to attract and retain customers. We want talented individuals to understand what the company’s vision, mission, goals and values are so they can evaluate if the organization is a fit with the type of philosophy and culture they believe in, and can excel in.

Building the Brand through Employees

The objectives of a good brand which should consistently be applied to marketing and communication efforts, as well as human resource management activities, include the following:

• Clearly deliver the message of what your company stands for
• Confirm the credibility of your organization
• Connect with customers, as well as employees on an emotional level
• Motivate action – to buy – or to come to work
• Solidify the loyalty of the customer or the employee

Integrating the importance of understanding and demonstrating brand into human resource processes can be accomplished through the following eight practices:

1. Ensure sourcing and recruiting materials are consistent with the brand messaging
2. Provide training and certification for internal and external recruiters so they understand and can clearly communicate the brand before they begin talking with potential candidates
3. Include values, goals and mission statement information on the career opportunity section of your website
4. Incorporate the company’s mission and values into the interviewing process by asking open-ended questions to identify if the candidate’s personal values align with the firm’s
5. Integrate brand messages into the on-boarding process and help the new employee understand the responsibilities for demonstrating and protecting the brand
6. Periodically offer employee training on business ethics including case studies challenging brand protection and re-enforcing how to appropriately handle business and ethical situations 
7. Include a focus on brand in development goals and executive coaching engagements
8. Align the strategic business, marketing and human resource plans with the brand messaging

It takes more than just a talented individual to help your organization be the best that it can be. That individual of course must do a great job, but they also have to do that great job with the passion and commitment to deliver on the promises you’ve made to your customers. Your brand is derived from who the organization is, who the organization wants to be, and who your customers perceive the organization to be. Your employees are on the front lines. Help them understand how their personal actions reflect brand. For example, if the brand is focused on quality services, it’s imperative that employees do what they say they are going to do. There’s a complete mismatch when the organization says they deliver quality, and then employees consistently do not return phone calls or respond to emails.

I have an excellent example of such a mismatch of brand values from a shopping trip the other day at my favorite grocery store, where I am a loyal customer. Usually this store employs staff who go out of their way to ensure that you find everything you need. The cashiers, especially, engage with shoppers to produce a personalized and "we’re so glad you shopped with us" experience. This gentleman unfortunately didn’t engage with anything or anyone, other than his poor attitude. There was nothing about my experience working with him that matched the brand. On my way out I commented to the manager and she knew exactly who I was speaking about without me even mentioning his name. Her comment was, "We’ve been trying to work with him to see if he’s going to be a fit."

Even in an organization where the recruiting and hiring processes are focused on aligning with the brand, some mistakes are made. Once it’s obvious the values of the employee do not align with the organization’s brand, it’s best to reassign the employee to a job away from customers, develop a performance improvement plan, or terminate the employee. Misalignment of personal and organizational brands results in lost customers! I’ll go back to that store because I know that wasn’t the usual experience, but if I was a first time shopper there, I would definitely find a different store!

So What’s Next?

The recession has complicated the marketplace. There are many organizations redefining their brands as customer needs and expectations have changed. If your organization is reexamining your brand, make sure the process and final results are communicated not only to customers, but existing employees as well. Help job candidates and employees understand how to communicate and demonstrate the new brand through successful performance interactions. The success of the organization rests on their performance. Take immediate actions to review your Human Resource processes to ensure you are sharing the most appropriate information about your expectations for how the brand looks and sounds in the everyday workplace.

It turns out the truck I saw belongs to an organization that calibrates scales used in the distribution of food products. After I researched the company and understood the service they were providing, the tag line makes complete sense. They help ensure that the public can rely on the quality, consistency and trust of the products their clients sell.

There are many voices out there competing for business in my profession and yours. Defining our brands is a journey of business self-discovery. I’m curious, what practices are you employing to ensure that human resource strategies align with company branding? Post comments, questions, ideas below.

Brett McQuinn

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