Category Archives: Inside Out E-Column

Inside Out E-Column

Getting aligned on alignment.

Leave a comment

One day about 15 years ago, I was talking with a guy from a large agency about the need to build marketing strategies on a strong foundation of employee engagement.  Then as now, I believed the two have to go hand-in-hand if a company wants to match its marketing promises with what they actually deliver.  “Oh yeah,” he replied. “We’re calling that brand alignment.”

Up to then, I had only heard the word alignment used routinely in reference to straightening the front end of a car.  The way he said it, though, I suspected it would become a prominent buzzword on the business communication landscape. And so it has.

A different kind of “shop talk”
No problem with that – alignment is a good word.  Trouble is, people have fairly diverse interpretations of it.  So I’m going take a crack at building some unified meaning around it – but not by trying to define it.  Instead, I’m going to show what alignment looks like in a hypothetical conversation among three people who are the heads of different departments, working together in ways you rarely see in organizations.  There’s Mary in marketing, Tom in human resources and Jane in internal communication.  Let’s hear what they say.

“I think we’re all on the same page about our goal,” said Mary.  “We want to get everyone on board with next year’s marketing plan.  If we’re going to make the most of it, all employees need to see how they fit into the picture.  So how are we going to do it?”

“Whatever we do, it’s important to go beyond doing presentations,” said Jane.  “Just previewing our new ads and going over the media schedule isn’t enough.  We need to get people involved in substantive conversation about their individual roles if we want them to get really tuned in and engaged in what we’re doing.”

“You’re right,” Mary replied.  “We should start by getting employees together to make sure they understand the rationale for our promotional plans and what we’re trying to accomplish.  Then we need to get their input on how to make it happen.”

“We also have to determine what they need in terms of learning and development so they’re equipped to do what’s going to be asked of them,” said Tom. “Without the right tools and knowledge, we can’t expect them to deliver on the promises we’re going to be making out there in the market.”

Start the conversation
That’s just a glimpse of how the discussion might sound, and it could go in lots of different directions.  But you get the idea.  Now here’s my question.  When was the last time you heard a conversation like that – if ever?  If it’s common in your organization, count yourself among the fortunate few.  If not, I invite you to take the first step.  Get your marketing, internal communication and HR people together for a planning session.  Then start by asking yourselves this basic question: When it comes to delivering on your marketing promises, how do you make sure your organization is walking the talk?  You might be surprised at the results – inside and out.

#         #         #

Learn more about the Landes & Associates approach to Aligning for Results.

Inside Out E-Column

Gaining the edge with customer relations.

Leave a comment

We’ve all seen the data that shows it takes far more effort and expense to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.  So why do many marketers persist in investing so much more heavily in the attraction side of the equation – mainly advertising – than the retention side of customer relations?  Likewise, why do they invest comparatively little in employee engagement efforts that reinforce customer satisfaction and loyalty?

The answer lies partly in the traditional emphasis on promoting name recognition and brand identity.  That’s important, but it’s just part of the broader definition of marketing we use at Landes & Associates: To create, sustain and continuously improve relationships with the organization’s key stakeholders.

So here’s a crucial question.
If the holy grail of effective marketing and branding is to differentiate a product or a service or a company from the competition, are ads really the best way to do that?  Or is advertising mainly a leveler to make sure that the brand shows up on the playing field as a contender for people’s attention?  More to the point, how much does advertising really affect dedication to a company, product or service?

Ask yourself about your own purchasing patterns.  When was the last time you seriously considered changing the toothpaste you use or the coffee you drink because of advertising?  When it comes to personal care services, the case is even more striking.  How often does advertising sway you to a new hairdresser, banker, doctor, dentist or auto mechanic?  If you’re like most folks, you rarely switch unless you get upset.  Bottom line, choices like that almost always come down to the quality of the relationship.

To differentiate, relate.
No doubt, some consumer behavior is shifted by advertising.  What’s more, it reinforces the “smart choices” people make in purchasing the products and services they’re already using.  So advertising does promote some degree of brand loyalty.  But when it comes to being a differentiator, customer relations
has the edge over advertising for three main reasons:

  • Customer choices are affected more deeply by experiences than promotions
  • Most organizations make a relatively small investment in customer relations compared to advertising, so it’s easier to stand out from the competition
  • Customer relations strategies are not as easy for the competition to see and copy as it is with advertising

And where does employee engagement fit in?
In “The Customer Comes Second,” author Hal Rosenbluth puts it this way.  “Only when people know what it feels like to be first in someone else’s eyes can they sincerely share that feeling with others.  We’re not saying choose your people over your customers.  We’re saying focus on your people first because of your customers.”

The role of customer relations is clearly more critical in some industries than others. Still, if differentiation is the goal, especially in a bottom-line conscious economy, every organization should take a hard look at shifting more attraction dollars to the retention side of the business.

#  #  #

 

Inside Out E-Column

WITH versus AT marketing.

Leave a comment

Remember when organizations used to talk about the “internal customer?” You still hear it sometimes, but it’s mostly fallen on the trash heap of yesterday’s useless business jargon – another example of a cutesy idea turned into a misguided metaphor.

You could argue that the proponents of that idea had their hearts in the right in place – i.e., coworkers should treat one another with the same regard and cooperation they give to customers. But think about the flipside of that comparison. One defining characteristic of a true company-customer relationship is this – if a customer gets sufficiently unhappy with the product or service they’re getting, they’re outta’ here.

We like to think we’re fostering the kind of customer loyalty that will give us some wiggle room to recover if we screw up. But anyone who believes the typical disgruntled customer is going to stick around for long while you “work things out” is sorely mistaken. In fact, according to research, for every customer complaint a company gets, 25 more people have a similar problem, but instead of saying anything, they just quietly walk away.

Now, is that really the kind of relationship we want co-workers to have with one another? When things get tough and tensions run high and solutions are hard to find, do we want colleagues to bail out and say c’est la vie? Hardly. Fact is, we got it ass-backwards in the “internal customer” days. Instead of thinking of employees as customers, we should be thinking about customers as partners.

Luckily, we’re moving in the right direction. Unless you’ve been on another planet in recent years, you’ve seen the shifting tide in employee communications – moving away from creating messages for an employee audience to engaging employees in conversations as partners and stakeholders. As it should be. After all, isn’t it a bit weird to think of the people who make everything happen in an organization as an “audience?” They ARE the organization. They certainly are NOT a passive recipient of messages – or at least they shouldn’t be.

But what about customers – the people communicators subject to a constant barrage of sales and marketing messages? Surely, THEY are an audience, right?

Not according to the authors of Grapevine, who advocate WITH versus AT marketing. “AT marketing is about targeting, capturing, and one-way communication,” they say. (I won’t quibble for now over the faux pas of “one-way communication,” which is sort of like clapping with one hand.) “WITH marketing means that companies and consumers work with each other. They (companies) cease to think of consumers as targets. They find ways to … partner with them. In WITH marketing you don’t talk about capturing. You talk about listening. Targeting is a concept from the old days. Now it’s about engaging.”

Different organizations will take different approaches to engagement, to be sure. But the underlying premise is the same – messages don’t build relationships, conversations do – whether your partners are inside or out.

#          #          #

Inside Out E-Column

It’s not about the money.

Leave a comment

Remember the movie, Jerry McGuire, and the classic line, “Show me the money?”  That may have been a big motivator for Cuba Gooding’s character, but like I’ve said before in this column, financial incentives are not the main motivators when it comes to employee engagement.  If you doubt that premise, check out a presentation made at this year’s renowned TED Conference by Dan Pink – a leading expert in the science of human motivation.  It’s 18 minutes long, and it’s worth every second.

Using research and humor, Pink makes a compelling case for the premise that financial incentives usually produce the opposite result you’d expect on engagement and performance.  He starts with research dating back 60 years from an experiment created by Karl Duncker called “the candle problem.”  Basically, people are challenged with figuring out how to attach a candle to the wall in way that would prevent wax from dripping on the table.  Duncker found that most people struggled due to what he called functional fixedness – a “mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.”  For example, if you need a paperweight, but you only have a hammer, you’ll have a hard time seeing it as a tool to hold down paper.  Most people eventually figure it out, but it takes them a while to get it.

People aren’t always striving for the “prize.”
Years later, another researcher, Sam Gluxberg, decided to see how a monetary incentive would affect people’s performance on the candle problem.  He told one group if they were among the fastest 25%, they would get $5.00.  If they were the fastest in the entire group, they would receive $20.00.  So naturally the people offered the incentives completed it faster, right?  Wrong!  In fact, they took an average of 3 1/2 minutes LONGER than those who were simply asked to perform the task as fast as possible, explaining simply that their results would be compared with the test standard.

As Pink points out, though, what these studies prove and what organizations do in response to that information are two different things.  After decades of evidence from scientific studies like these, guess what?  The main technique that’s used to boost performance today is still the usual array of bonuses and other financial incentives.

If money isn’t the answer, what is?
Pink says that intrinsic motivation will outstrip extrinsic motivation every time when it comes to boosting employee engagement.  And the three main intrinsic motivators he’s identified are:

  • Autonomy – people want to have some sense of independence and control over their work
  • Mastery – they are motivated by opportunities to improve and excel
  • Purpose – they are driven by what matters to them deeply and personally

Still don’t believe it?  Check out Pink’s video – and then try your own experiment.  Be prepared, though.  You may have to change the way you think – or keep believing that extrinsic motivators are the keys to engagement, and hoping you’ll get lucky enough to beat the odds.

#  #  #

Inside Out E-Column

Getting to the heart of people.

1 Comment

Most professionals who work in the people side of business have heard about psychologist Abraham Maslow and his renowned hierarchy of needs.  It’s simple on the surface, yet significant in its substance.  All human beings have needs that begin at the most basic level of survival and rise ultimately to what Maslow called “self-actualization.” What’s more, he stated, people must have their needs met at the lower levels before higher needs can be satisfied.

Even though I’m a fan of Maslow’s theory, I talk about it in simpler terms.  For me, it comes down to two main needs – security and self-esteem. If people have those things, they’ll usually perform well.  If they don’t – they won’t.  You can argue that one has to come before the other or one is more important, but that’s like arguing what’s most essential to driving a car – the motor or the steering wheel.  It’s a pointless debate.

Find Out What Matters Most

Still, it’s helpful to examine those two basic needs more closely when it comes to creating a high-performing workplace.  A study was done in 1999 by Dr. Kenneth Kovach of George Mason University that produced interesting findings.  He surveyed thousands of people nationwide to find out what they wanted from their jobs.  Then he took it a step further.  He compared their responses to what their bosses thought was important to the employees.  Take a look at how the responses differed.

Employees Ranking

Motivational Item

Bosses Ranking

1

 Interesting work

5

2

 Appreciation of work

8

3

 Feeling “in on things”

10

4

 Job Security

2

5

 Good wages

1

6

 Promotion/growth

3

7

 Good working conditions

4

8

 Personal loyalty

6

9

 Tactful discipline

7

10

 Sympathetic help with problems

9
Tune in to What Motivates

Who’s surprised, right?  Besides the obvious disparity in the responses between employees and bosses, Kovach drew two main conclusions from the data.  First, what employees want most from their jobs can be handled mainly by their supervisors; and second, they are pretty easy and cheap to provide.  Kovach also created a set of questions that managers should ask themselves if they want to create an environment that’s tuned into employee motivations:

    1. Do you personally thank staff for a job well done?
    2. Is feedback timely and specific?
    3. Do you make time to meet with-and listen to-staff on a regular basis?
    4. Is your workplace open, trusting, and fun?
    5. Do you encourage and reward initiative and new ideas?
    6. Do you share information about your organization with staff on a regular basis?
    7. Do you involve staff in decisions, especially those that will affect them?
    8. Do you provide staff with a sense of ownership of their jobs and the unit as a whole?
    9. Do you give associates the chance to succeed?
    10. Do you reward staff based on their performance?

It’s really pretty simple when it comes to understanding employee motivation.  Put yourself in their shoes, and you won’t even need Maslow to figure out what matters most to them.

#    #    #

Inside Out E-Column

Trust me on this.

Leave a comment

It’s ironic, isn’t it, that one of the surest ways to raise suspicion about someone’s motives is for the person to say, “Trust me on this?”  That’s certainly true when it comes to employees and customers.

In the workplace, few challenges have obsessed and perplexed the business world more than the issue of employee trust.  The reason is obvious.  With it, virtually any obstacle can be overcome in an organization.  Without it, every day is filled with uncertainty and anxiety, no matter what else the organization does right.

In the marketplace, few things are treasured more passionately than loyal customers – those people who come back time and again, and even refer new customers to enjoy the same experience.

When you get them both right, it’s business paradise.  The crucial thing to understand is that the two go hand-in-hand.  Without employee trust, customer trust suffers, as well.

Management Credibility Factors
One reason organizations fail to foster a culture of trust is because they focus mainly on interpersonal factors.  They’re important, to be sure, and here are key behaviors that managers have to exhibit to gain employee trust:

  • Caring – Genuine concern about employee wellbeing is where it has to start.
  • Honesty and Openness – Dance around the truth or hide important information, and people tune out and turn away.
  • Responsiveness – Listening and taking action on what you hear tells people you’re sincere.
  • Competence – If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s hard to win a following.
  • Reliability – Can people count on you to do what you say
  • Apology – If you can admit mistakes and apologize sincerely, trust goes way up.

In a recent article I wrote for Communication World called “Cracking the Culture Code,” the communication VPs for Southwest Airlines and Enterprise Rent-A-Car talk about how their companies observe those behaviors in their extraordinarily successful cultures.

People-First Systems
But…that’s only half of the equation.  You also have to design the systems, policies, and processes in a way that tells employees unequivocally that they are trusted.  We call those People-First Systems, and they fall into five main categories:

  • Measurement
  • Rewards and recognition
  • Communication
  • Learning and development
  • Continuous improvement

Of course, many organizations have some type of mechanism in place for all of those areas.  But do they really demonstrate to employees that they are trusted?  Do they truly reinforce the oft-heard mantra that people are our most important asset?  Fact is, systems in most organizations are designed to protect against the miniscule number of irresponsible people, and those constraints wind up stifling the vast majority of employees you can count on like clockwork.

Bottom line, you can’t have performance excellence without sincere trust and belief in people.  If you have doubts about the merits of that philosophy, consider the wisdom of renowned statesman, Henry Stimson, who said, “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”

#    #    #

Inside Out E-Column

Closing the distance.

Leave a comment

My friend and colleague, Richard Barrett, wrote a book several years ago called “Liberating the Corporate Soul.”  It’s exceptional on many levels, as I wrote in a review that is posted on Amazon.com.  One remarkable quality about Richard’s book is how it is both wonderfully inspiring and technically rigorous.  Marcello Palazzi, Co-Founder and Chair of the Progessio Foundation said that “Liberating the Corporate Soul achieves the impossible: it integrates the intangibles of ethics, vision, and consciousness into a tangible measurement system.”

 Much of Richard’s work is rooted in his experiences from when he worked at the World Bank.  During his years there, he developed a strong conviction that the institution needed to focus more of its attention on the issue of human rights in its monetary policies and decision-making.  Since he was a mid-level manager with limited influence, he decided that he would need to take a less conventional approach if he wanted to reach the ears – and hearts – of senior management.

Building Leverage Over Lunch

He began his quest by inviting a handful of friends to join him for a “brown bag lunch” to discuss the role of the World Bank in addressing human rights issues.  At the end of their lunch, the group agreed that they would meet again – and invite others who might share a similar interest.  They continued this “pyramid” approach of attracting like-minded colleagues until after a year the group had grown to more than a hundred people.  Eventually, it attracted the attention of senior management – some of whom also began attending the luncheons.  Not long after that, human rights found its way onto the bank’s agenda of top priorities.

That experience led Richard to do more work in the areas of values and human development in the workplace.  He eventually left the World Bank to pursue a career in consulting that led to the publication of “Liberating the Corporate Soul.”  I’ve often cited a quote from his book that has significant implications for professional communicators, as well as HR and organizational development people. . .

“Nearly all the tension and all the fear in the world originates

from the sense of separation we have from one another.”

 For me, that quote speaks volumes about what it takes to achieve a level of trust that sparks meaningful employee engagement – that gut level drive for people to willingly, even eagerly, go the extra mile for the mutual benefit of the employee and the company alike.  For professionals in the “people business,” that phrase can serve as a touchstone and a mission for their work – to close the distance that separates people from one another in the workplace.

 Over the years, I’ve collected and created a number of quotes that I’ve found thought-provoking or inspirational about employee engagement and communication – including Richard’s.  I’ve compiled some of them into a 4-minute “moviette.”  You can see it by clicking on the title I’ve given it as a tribute to Richard and his work – “Closing the Distance.”   So find yourself a bag of popcorn…sit back…and enjoy.

# # #

Inside Out E-Column

They’re not your people.

Leave a comment

Have you ever heard a manager ask, “How can I motivate my people?”  It’s a familiar lament, and the sentiment behind it is easy to understand.  After all, managers need to get the work done, and if “their people” aren’t motivated to do it, managers are up a creek – right?  Maybe so, but the answer to the question is not the answer to the problem.  In fact, the question reveals a basic misunderstanding of human nature in the workplace – on at least three levels.

People Have Brainpower – Use It
First, what managers typically mean when they ask that question is, “How can I get the people who work for me to do what I want them to do in the way I want them to do it?” One reason that kind of mentality can backfire is because it conveys the impression that managers have all the answers, and the job of employees is to do what they’re told. If there’s one clear lesson that came out of the quality movement, it’s that every body in the workplace also comes equipped with a brain. Any organization that fails to take full advantage of everyone’s heads and hearts as well as their hands is diminishing the potential of its employees to help the organization excel.

People Motivate From Within – Build on It
Second, people cannot be motivated.  That’s becausemotivation is intrinsic. You can give employees extrinsic incentives, but if those incentives don’t resonate with what people are already motivated by, they will have little effect.  That’s why managers have to tune in and respond to the uniquely motivating spark that exists within each person in order to produce optimal performance.

People Deserve Respect – Give It
Third, if you’re a manager, you need to understand that unless you’ve taken in slaves, or God has taken you in as a partner, employees are not “your people.”  They are independent, competent adults who expect respect, and they don’t respond well when they’re treated like children or chattel.

People Want Success – Count on It
Once managers come to terms with those basic ideas, then they can ask the more relevant and appropriate question: “How can I get the best that people are willing and able to contribute to the success of this organization?”  Here are some keys to achieving that goal:

  1. Make sure that a person’s aptitude matches the requirements of the job. In other words, don’t try to put a square peg in a round hole.
  2. Get clear alignment on responsibilities, goals and expectations.
  3. Offer meaningful rationale for decisions and actions that answers the ever-present question, “What’s in it for me?”
  4. Provide well-defined, functional processes and accessible resources that people need to do the work they are expected to do.
  5. Establish a “guidance system” with relevant, understandable metrics and a visible means of communicating about them.
  6. Use “constructive accountability” when things go wrong, and always approach people as the source of the solution rather than the cause of the problem.

While employees are not “your people,” most of them want the same thing the company does – success.  Organizations that treat employees like partners rather than property in a common effort to succeed are more likely to get there.

#  #  #

 

Inside Out E-Column

Are employees really an audience?

Leave a comment

A few years ago, The Journal of Employee Communication Management published an article entitled “Employees Are Not an Audience.”  It was written by Glynn Young, who currently heads the Issues, Employee and Electronic Communications function for Monsanto Company.  His basic premise is simple yet significant – the job of organizational communicators should NOT be mainly to create and deliver messages to the employee audience, but rather to facilitate conversations within the employee community.

That distinction is more than an exercise in semantics.  It goes to the heart of why organizations struggle – and often fail – to generate meaningful employee engagement.  It also explains why organizations get caught in the wrongheaded notion that they need better “two-way” communication.  Seriously – is there any other kind?  Bottom line, if it isn’t two-way, it isn’t communication. It’s message distribution.

Community of Professionals
Even if we’re not conscious of it, we know in our guts that employees shouldn’t be treated as an audience when it comes to communication.  Just look at another metaphor often used for them – team.  Can you imagine how Michael Jordan or Tom Brady or Albert Pujols or other sports team members would react if their organizations communicated with them like an “audience?”  Pretty weird, huh?

But they’re different, right? After all, those people are “professionals.”  Consider for a moment, though, how an organization might run its business and communicate with its employees differently if they viewed employees as a “community of professionals” – professional accountants, professional order entry clerks, professional maintenance workers, professional production line workers — and so on?  You get the picture.

Sure, the challenges are different when you’re communicating with 12 to 50 people instead of 12,000 to 50,000.  But the need for people to feel that their organizations are communicating with them as professional members of a team is much the same.

Shifting from Messages to Conversations
Admittedly, logistics are more complex with larger groups, and the options for communicating differ from one organization to the next depending on numerous factors.  What’s more, truly interactive communication simply isn’t possible in all circumstances.  If the building is on fire, for example, that’s no time to engage an employee discussion group in considering various options on how to respond.  Still, organizations of any size and circumstance can and should shift from “sending messages” to “facilitating conversations” wherever possible by operating on two basic principles:

  • Stop using the phrase “communicate to,” and replace it with “communicate with.”  If the best you can do is send a message, say so – but don’t call it communication.
  • Where it’s feasible and appropriate, frame “messages” as “conversation points,” and create systematic ways for employees to converse and provide feedback on those topics.

While those principles are important for everyone in management to understand, it’s vital for people in charge of internal communications to follow them if they want to get employees truly engaged and strengthen working relationships within the “employee community.”

 #          #          #

Inside Out E-Column

Don’t let intuition fool you.

Leave a comment

In the last issue of Inside Out (Proof for the profitability of engagement), I talked about what it takes to get employees engaged in systematic continuous improvement.  I also cited recent research that proves the huge bottom line impact you can produce from doing it effectively.

After 15 years of benchmarking and refining a process that’s been used by several Baldrige Award winning companies, we’ve found that some of the “tried-and-true” principles for accomplishing that goal aren’t really so true after all.  In fact, what actually works – what makes an improvement process a fully integrated system instead of a one-off activity – is somewhat counterintuitive.

“Bigger” isn’t always “better.”
One classic flaw in most suggestion programs is the emphasis on hitting “home runs.”  It seems like it makes sense to focus on the big wins at first glance, but there are two problems with that notion.  First, big things are hard to plan and implement, and not many employees are equipped to take them on.  So it limits participation.  Second, when employees get bigger incentives for bigger improvements, that’s where they tend to focus their attention – and they wind up walking right past hundreds of smaller ideas – the “base hits” – along the way.

The counterintuitive key is to set up the incentive structure to value every idea equally regardless of its size and impact.  In our ImaginAction Continuous Improvement System, we use a random drawing to accomplish that goal.  For every approved improvement that an employee implements (not just suggests), his or her name is entered once into a bi-weekly drawing.   Depending on the size of the organization, approximately 10%-20% of the names are pulled each time.  Importantly, the value of the awards is very modest – usually no more than $50 – regardless of whether the idea saved $100 or $10,000.  The value of the award has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the improvement.

That approach works for several reasons:

  1. People aren’t wasting time trying to cost-justify a lot of small improvements that any well-trained supervisor can see right away will make things work better, faster, cheaper, cleaner, easier or safer.
  2. It keeps employees focused on the little things that they have control over.
  3. It emphasizes the intrinsic merits of the improvements and the inherent motivation that everyone has to make things work better rather than the “prize money.”
  4. In the end, the most motivating factor for employees is that someone is actually taking their ideas seriously, helping them get those ideas implemented, and thanking them for their contributions.

Committees aren’t close enough to the action.

If you want to make sure that employee suggestions get evaluated and implemented, set up a suggestion committee to review and approve everything – right?  Wrong!  Dilbert would have a field day with that notion.  Setting aside all the jokes about committees in general, let’s look at how that process typically works.

An employee comes up with an improvement idea and submits a suggestion.  After going to the supervisor and probably to a manager, the idea eventually works its way to the suggestion committee.  That “team” gets together maybe once every month or so to review a slug of suggestions.  Of course, they’re doing double-duty.  Not only do they have their own jobs to do, now they have to take on another load.  What’s more, they often don’t know much about the improvements that are being proposed, so they have to do some research.  By the time they finally make a decision, it’s been weeks or even months.  Employees lose interest, and they aren’t very motivated to submit additional ideas.

So what’s the alternative?  Keep it local – focusing most decision-making where the improvements will be implemented.  You make it the job of every supervisor to review, evaluate and approve or decline the vast majority of improvement ideas.  You also make it the responsibility of employees to get their ideas implemented.  If they need help from their supervisor or someone else, they can get it – but they “own” it.

Here’s another benefit of that approach.  It bolsters the role of the supervisor as a coach.  To optimize that role, supervisors need the right kind of skills, of course.  They have to learn how to evaluate improvement ideas, lead process improvement meetings, encourage employee participation, help people get their ideas implemented and acknowledge them for their contributions.  Those duties also need to be included in the supervisor’s job description and assessed as part of their performance reviews.

While the principles are basic, making the shift from a “suggestion program” to a more viable and vital “improvement system” is not easy or “intuitive” for most people.  But when that system produces dramatically more implemented improvements than a traditional program, the rewards far outweigh the effort.

 #  #  #