Manage to Engage. Pamela Hackett
early December 2019, when the pandemic was still nothing but an isolated bug, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, was busy rallying his Davos cohorts into backing the Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.2 He acknowledged that we needed a more all-encompassing declaration that included all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and the planet. This followed the Business Roundtable, announcing a few months earlier the release of a new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. It was signed by 181 CEOs who “commit to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders.” Something was abuzz. “The American dream is alive, but fraying,” said Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and chairman of Business Roundtable. The Roundtables website continued with the rest of his quote: “Major employers are investing in their workers and communities because they know it is the only way to be successful over the long term. These modernized principles reflect the business community's unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans,” or the world, you could continue. This was being espoused from the highest echelon of corporations.
By mid-2020 when the pandemic had taken hold of the world economy and impacted the health of some 16 million people, Gallup,3 the analytics and advisory firm, reported employee engagement at an all-time high: some 40 percent of employees surveyed, reported to be engaged and 13 percent were said to be actively disengaged. The headlines espoused the unusual jump in engagement. Unusual scores for unusual times. There was just one problem. A whopping 60 percent were still underengaged. And the numbers trended down again as the pandemic continued.
No Connections in Range
Our connectivity levels, a precursor for engagement, are far from ideal. The research shows that people are not willing to invest discretionary effort at work. Our internal sensors are continuously searching for and failing to find a connection, and this is costing businesses billions – in poor productivity, lost profits, accidents, theft, weakening brands, and lost opportunity. It's also costing people their emotional well-being. People feel they are flatlining at work. This disconnect to the world of work is a crisis of epic proportions. Whole populations of underengaged employees are sapping our economies, our health and their own happiness, and ultimately our success as individuals, communities, and even countries. While we know deep down that wellbeing at work affects every aspect of our lives, the answer to improving it remains elusive.
This must change. We cannot come out of a global economic meltdown and health crisis with a workforce feeling this underenthused. We can't change it if they remain that way. After the 2007–2008 financial crisis, our global business environment had fundamentally changed. And it has continued ever since:
1 We must run leaner operations and be more innovative and creative to address business and customer needs concurrently. An attitude of spending money consciously must be built into the fabric of an organization. Innovation and creativity demand this too. Focusing solely on cost-cutting and productivity has come at the expense of engagement. It cannot: a balance must be found. Maximizing all value must be the mantra.
2 The workforce itself is a force of change. Different employee values are emerging. The employee-employer relationship has changed. We must work with people differently as a new connected generation emerges and old work values disappear. Post a health crisis of the magnitude of COVID-19, the workforce is thinking fundamentally differently about work.
3 Learning how to collaborate with new and different partners within and outside the organization is driving change, with new sources of value creation and new structures. And yet, many of our businesses remain rigidly attached to the traditional structures. Companies have been drawn into a more collaborative world, an engagement economy where managers are no longer gatekeepers but guardians creating the context in which connections are formed.
4 Growth has slowed in many traditionally high-growth markets, and it may not recover for some time (if at all). The pandemic stopped growth in its tracks for many industries. This environment changes the way that consumers act, employees behave, and companies compete. How you engage employees in this conversation will plot your next trajectory.
5 More stringent regulatory conditions and transparency requirements will persist as the world continues to adjust to the fallout of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. Risk management topped the business agenda at every level and function. We see this again. We know we must be more flexible and collaborative in both business and management models but still deliver on what feels like ever more constraining regulatory controls. These two opposing forces must be reconciled.
6 We must rebuild confidence and trust within and outside our businesses. Our personal and professional reputations require it. It is not just about the “greening” of businesses; we must be socially responsible to each other – doing good by doing right by people and the planet.
7 Sustainability has become a common operating term, but many companies still need to learn how it will affect their businesses. We know we must have a demonstrable social conscience. In that vein, engagement becomes a societal problem, and while the biggest consequences are felt in businesses (where it's easier to assign metrics), the deeper consequences are felt by people in their health, happiness, and well-being at home.
These are fundamental changes, not cursory adaptations. They will continue to deepen, and new, more pervasive issues will arrive. We must accept today is different. It is a new reality and less a new normal. With these changes, we must change the way we manage, lead, focus, and inspire our people. The way we engage must be different. Our management models, the way we motivate, connect, collaborate, define our strategies, develop our objectives, and make our decisions, must change.
Seeing People as Value and Valuable
We expect the underengaged people who routinely live through tumultuous times and crises to be the same people to lift us out of crises and deliver better results in this changing world. These same people are the silent workforce who kept our world moving, delivering our day-to-day needs such as health care, groceries, and bus rides so we could stay home and stay safe when so much had shut down during the great rolling lockdowns. They stepped up when the chips were down.
Unless we want a world in which people feel grossly undervalued, we must build businesses that are fit for people, where people can thrive. We need to manage to engage.
In this emerging “engagement economy,” creating value may be the key to financial success, but making people feel valued at work is the key to unleashing passion – that raw ingredient needed to spur individuals’ willingness to help their companies bounce back from recessions rapidly and build future success. Managers must help people invest their discretionary effort.
This book aims to help managers do that. It aims to help you routinely tap into people's discretionary effort – the effort employees consciously volunteer at work, to create value in your business. It is a call to action, a reminder that the future of business is (still) people.
We Need a New Scorecard That Drives Results
I will explore this through a formula that I call MI-9 tools of engagement: the nine key drivers available to a manager to manage to engage, improve their team's performance, enable people to do great work, and achieve remarkable results.
MI is an acronym for Management Innovation but is also MY because only we can control how we manage to engage.
The 9 refers to nine tools that are at our disposal daily to trigger engagement. They are not just required in organizations to improve results, but also necessary for people if everyone is to bring their best to work each day. Importantly, they mostly cost nothing but your time.
Seen