Reflecting on our favorite moments from the WBENC 2017 Summit & Salute in New Orleans. Reflect on… Relationships, why WBENC, the future of healthcare and consumer products and retail: http://bit.ly/2mJEl3f
Summit & Salute is one of two national events where the WBENC network comes together to create and develop dynamic relationships while also taking time to celebrate the successes of our Women’s Business Enterprise Stars and America’s Top Corporations. The Summit engages participants in a two day program focused on the future of various industries, business networking and development opportunities. The Salute! Dinner is a festive evening that highlights our 2016 America’s Top Corporations for Women’s Business Enterprises.
On the Same Page is proud to be certified as a Woman-Owned Business by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and honored to support our clients’ commitments to maintain a culture of diversity – inside their organizations and with their external partners.
Messages about cost out and growth may seem contradictory. They’re really not – if the company and its leaders are extremely clear in communicating the direction and they see the link in freeing up resources from one area in the company in order to fund growth initiatives in others.
Communicate openly – employees deserve it…and they can handle it. The most successful leaders practice three simple and fundamental principles when it comes to engaging their employees around these priorities.
While these practices are always important, the complex and sometimes confusing dynamics operating within most organizations today make them downright indispensable. We find that while employees may not agree with all of a company’s decisions, particularly the ones that have a negative impact on them and their co-workers, they’re far more likely to respect their leaders and do what is asked if they understand the basis for the actions. Leaders often forget that employees are adults who in many cases run their own households. They understand the basics of revenues and expenses, and most are actively involved in addressing their own life challenges while balancing their household budgets.
Companies that rank high for employee engagement are more profitable, more productive, have better customer ratings and fewer safety incidents (Gallup).
Here are five tips to help fire up employees engagement.
Before you take any of these steps, consider this a building exercise. In other words, these steps should be taken sequentially and over the course of a year or so, with each step building on the progress and momentum created by the ones before. This will protect from immediate rejection (too many new practices to absorb at once) and lead to a sustainable culture change.
1. Connect with employees. This starts with telling the story – this is the big picture vision of where the organization is going and why this particular company is uniquely able to get there. In addition, leaders should explain the roadmap – the plan for achieving their vision, including what it means for employees and their jobs. Establish an open communication environment by inviting, acknowledging and responding to employee questions, concerns and ideas. Importantly, leaders must keep the dialogue – and their visibility – going so that it becomes “the way we do business around here.”
2. Establish expectations. Set the workforce up for success by establishing behavioral expectations for managers and employees and providing the necessary resources and recognition to win. Objectives should include general business metrics (e.g., gross margin, productivity) as well as those reflecting key drivers of success, such as customer service levels and loyalty and recordable safety cases. Training in communicating and engaging employees can be provided to managers who wield the most influence over employees’ behavior.
3. Develop a Customer First mentality.Introduce the customer as the company’s “raison d’etre” (reason for being) by bringing them – and their ideas – into the company. Invite groups of employees to observe focus groups of customers and competitors’ customers discussing the pros and cons of the organization’s products or services. Hold follow-up meetings with the same employees to hear their reactions and brainstorm how the company can incorporate some of the new ideas. Ask these employees to go back into the workforce to assemble teams and see which team can come up with the most suggestions. Celebrate all of the suggestions by inviting all employees to a “Customer First” party.
4. Share best practices. Establish a mentoring program, matching high performers with those who are not as high performing (but don’t bill it this way publicly!). Ask the partners to identify and focus on two things that each partner can work on to improve, and ask them to commit to specific actions and monitor progress.
5. Make it personal. Engage employees in building a winning team by holding a “What’s the coolest part of working for ABC organization” contest. Submissions should be posted in a highly visible, high traffic area, such as the employee entrance or break room and employees can vote for winners in categories such as Most Creative, Most Practical, Most Customer Focused.
Read more about practical actions companies are taking to sustain workplace engagement from the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
Looking for more ways to drive employee engagement? Schedule a Complimentary Clarity Call with me today to identify where to shine the light and spring clean, and what to amplify, so you can level-up your impact — and that of your team.
After a failed first attempt, #Starbucks#CEO Howard Schultz’s second departure announcement went much smoother. In a post for The CEO Magazine blog, I share why effective communication during a transition means more confidence from your stakeholders.
Here’s a preview of the post. (Visit the full blog post here.)
The steps necessary to mount a successful transition depend on whether the new leader comes from inside or outside of the organization. In both cases, investing time to understand and build on the relationships of the business is crucial.
Here are five keys to success for any new CEO:
Carefully respond to and set expectations.
Connect with employees.
Identify and exploit quick wins.
Get to know the influencers.
In dire situations where market share is evaporating or where a company is losing money, a new CEO especially must act quickly.
Reorganizations? Transformations? Is your company planning change in 2017? In the latest issue of AMA Quarterly, I share tips on how to make change easier and more successful for all parties involved.
Here’s a preview. (You can read the full article here on pages six and seven.)
As companies work their way through change initiatives, reorganizations, and more, employees and leaders are reporting increased levels of change fatigue. How can we make change easier? A plethora of research exists to tell us what makes change initiatives successful—and certainly success is one way to alleviate the stress that comes with change.
So whether your organization plans to revamp processes or people roles or launch a large-scale transformation, it will help to keep the proven lessons and practices of successful change initiatives in mind. Here’s what some of the research shows:
Understand that openness and honesty about all aspects of the change build trust in leaders and organizations.
Walk the talk by role modeling desired behaviors.
Prepare for the many emotions and reactions expressed during layoffs.
At On the Same Page, we help clients explore and deliver improved performance through employee engagement and communication. Never is this process more crucial than when an organization is in the midst of change.
For many U.S. voters, today (Inauguration Day) is a day of reckoning. Depending on your perspective, it’s the day you’ve been longing for or the day you’ve been dreading. If there is one thing to be learned from this past U.S. Presidential election, it is this: As a society, we haven’t been listening. And, as a result, we also haven’t been heard.
Business leaders have noted that election results have fragmented their companies. PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi said that her employees were “crying.” Some CEOs have even encouraged such division; GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney said Trump supporters weren’t welcome in his company. Now that the outcome is a done deal, what can CEOs and other business leaders do to heal such divisions and move their companies forward?
When people are denied a voice, for whatever reason, they begin to feel marginalized. That feeling of being unseen and taken for irrelevant, can build in intensity, and over time, lead to hostility or worse. PepsiCo’s Nooyi said that the real issues that face us as a country “such as technological unemployment, global trade, immigration” were not addressed in the lead-up to the election. Instead, the focus was personal and emotional.
Lacking dialogue about meaningful, substantive topics that affect us all has created a deep divisiveness that is not surprisingly finding its way into companies and other organizations. Unmitigated, leaders risk this deeply personal and vindictive energy overtaking the corporate narrative. In that kind of environment, divisions run even deeper and lead to employees becoming disengaged with their company’s purpose, strategy and outcomes. That’s not good for their customers, their shareholders, or our economy.
The most important lesson we can take from the surprising outcome of this election is that open, civil and thoughtful consideration of divergent perspectives is the glue that binds any society – be it a country or a company. And that presents a spectacular and critical opportunity for today’s business leaders.
Strategy #1: Dust off some fundamental communication skills
The road to healing requires leaders to practice four skills as part of their everyday interactions with colleagues:
Active listening: Make a choice to listen for understanding rather than simply listening to hear. This means clearing your mind of your own thoughts, preconceived ideas and agendas in order to thoroughly consider what is being shared.
Model constructive dialogue: Repeat key ideas that you are hearing in your own words to confirm alignment and ask probing questions to dig for deeper understanding. Adopt the mindset that you are studying for an exam rather than ramping up for a debate.
Provide context: When sharing your thoughts, decisions or direction for the business, frame the issue thoughtfully. Many leaders forget that employees have not been immersed in analyzing an issue as thoroughly or for as long as they have and jump straight to the punchline. This robs the workforce of the opportunity to make the mental journey with you, arriving comfortably (or at least rationally) where you have.
Create forums for open, hierarchy-free dialogue: Activate a mix of contemporary, digital platforms and traditional, in-person ones so that employees across the demographic and preference spectrum have opportunities to participate. Participate regularly in these forums, and clearly share with direct reports your expectation that they do so as well.
Strategy #2: Check your ego
Participating in the respectful exchange of views and ideas is one of the most humbling activities a leader will undertake. To be genuine, you must relieve yourself of the notion that you have all the answers. Isn’t that how we got here in the first place?
Forty percent of executives say they spend between half a day and one full day every week managing communication that has no value.
The reduction in workforce productivity caused by email and information overload has become a well-documented fact at many organizations. When it comes to the sheer number and quality of emails sent and received, the cost to employee productivity and engagement can be staggering, including an inability to make decisions, process information and prioritize tasks.
In 2017, tame your inbox, so you can spend more time being productive and building the relationships that really matter. Here are six tips to help you:
When crisis strikes, leadership turns to Legal, Communication and Human Resources professionals for guidance. Invest time now in planning how you manage a crisis. You hope you never need the plan, but if you do, it’s too late to initiate the process once something catastrophic happens. Rapid response is critical in times of business crisis.
Here are the guiding principles, the DOs and DON’Ts of effective crisis management:
1. All responses should start with a focus on safety (employee, customer, community, environmental).
2. Cooperate with authorities and emergency personnel.
3. Plan to do more that what is needed in order to build back goodwill with employees, customers, partners, vendors, other stakeholders and the community.
4. Communicate quickly:
Be open and honest about what is happening or has happened.
Remain calm. Don’t retaliate. Don’t react to abrasive remarks.
Focus on safety and protecting the rights of employees (for privacy) and the company (legal rights).
Avoid waiting until you have all of the information to communicate. Say what you know now or today. Do not speculate, guess about what happened or offer your opinions.
Everybody makes mistakes. But having a solid plan in place to address the negative whiplash or complaints in a timely and transparent manner will not only help preserve your company’s reputation, but confirm yet again that you are a business that cares about its customers and willing to go an extra mile to make them happy and live up to your reputation.
One person can change the world. Just look at inventors, politicians, political activists, religious figures, business leaders… History is full of people that have made a difference – for better or worse. What do these people have in common? Is there a formula for their success?
While many people may have wonderful ideas that could change the world, there is a core set of characteristics that define successful change makers. They are:
Curious and Creative Problem Solvers: Change makers become passionate about solving a problem (or problems). Inherently, they ask questions and look for creative ways to find solutions.
Risk Takers with Confidence and Courage: Instinct and intuition as their guide, change makers trust in themselves and preserver into new frontiers or against popular opinion.
Open-minded with a Positive Perspective: In order to succeed, change makers are optimistic about their results and success, and are open to different and new perspectives. This positivity and openness is what helps them see the solutions that lead to great change.
Engaging communicators: By the nature of a change maker’s passion for the change they seek, they must be able to inspire and motivate audiences for support. Change makers are storytellers that inspire action.
Doers with Ambition and Drive: Because of their passion for results, successful change makers will roll up their sleeves and dig into the work. They set up lofty goals and are willing to put in the hours until they reach them, very committed to success.
To become a Change Maker, you’ll have to learn to trust yourself. Check out this piece from Healthline to learn how.
Who is your favorite change maker and what should we learn from him or her?
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the primary indicators used to gauge the health of a country’s economy. It represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period. (Definition from Investopedia.com.)
The higher the growth rate of our GDP (the more we’re producing), the better the outlook is for our economy.
Where are we today? Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO of General Electric said earlier this year that, “In a world of 2 percent G.D.P. growth, you really have to be good at everything you do.”
What does “being good at everything” mean? How has work – and focus – changed in a lower than typical GDP world? Here’s what we’re seeing:
1. Focus on one thing. Organizations are refocusing on the one thing they want to be good at moving resources there. What’s your one thing? Your company’s?
2. Look at where your industry is headed and prepare now for the future. Think Artificial Intelligence (AI). Think digital industry. What’s changing and what do you need to know/do to be on top of those changes?
3. Change is a constant. Learn and practice the skills you need to be agile and flexible amidst constant transformation and ambiguity.
4. Be a business person first and a functional expert second. Understand the needs of your business, your customers and your team, and apply your functional expertise to meet those needs.
Google “gratitude in business” and you’ll wind up with thousands of results. And not just because it’s November – a month in which the topic is top of mind for Americans preparing to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s because, as it turns out, gratitude is good for business. And that is because, as neuroscientists have discovered, gratitude actually changes our brains.
According to a Huffington Post round-up on gratitude and the brain, here are three of 10 ways gratitude affects our performance at work:
Gratitude improves social behaviors which makes it easier to network. Studies show that those who are 10% more grateful than average had 17.5% more social capital.
Gratitude stimulatesgoal achievement. In one study, participants instructed to keep a gratitude journal for two months reported more progress toward their goals.
Expressing gratitude in the workplace helps leaders create connections (between actions and outcomes, effort and performance) and build relationships (among team members and with others more far-flung in the organization).
Like working any muscle, with repeated practice, the behavior becomes more natural. Here are three ways to make the most out of the gratitude you offer every day – in person, by phone or via a hand-written note:
Be specific about what you’re thankful for, e.g. “Thank you for taking the recent uptick in cost of quality so seriously, and for the focused analysis you provided in your process review.”
Explainwhat you liked or the next steps, e.g. “I learned two things from the perspective you provided and believe we can make significant progress in reducing defects.”
Continue to build the relationship, e.g. “I’ll take this work forward to the Quality Council and let you know what next steps we put in place.”
Research shows that those who practice gratitude every day live longer, sleep better, experience increased productivity and live happier lives.
We could all use more gratitude in our lives, and especially in the workplace. My challenge to you… smile more and thank someone today.
Here’s a look at what some of our team members are thankful for:
Connect with me today to learn how to use gratitude in the workplace to level up your team’s performance.
There’s a lot of confusion between the terms digital workplace, intranets, portals and hubs. To me, they all describe the same thing – a collection of digital tools, and/or a common digital space, that helps employees stay focused and on top of relevant information, provides access to the work tools that keep them efficient and which also connects them to the colleagues they need to interact with, no matter if they are around the corner or around the world.
Here are the five keys for a successful hub or portal:
Strategy: The most successful hubs have a strategy – a reason for being – that matches business objectives. Without a clear, workable strategy your hub will quickly dissolve into chaos. It needs that business reason for being which will keep the site on point.
Collaboration: This is where a true digital workplace comes into play. Your hub needs useful tools and designated space for online collaboration. This space is where teams will do their work and where innovation and knowledge transfer will take place. What kind of tools? Which types of space? Your strategy – and your audiences – will tell you that. But you have to ask, and listen.
Governance: We’re often asked who should “own” the intranet? The answer is: Everyone and No One. Intranets work best when they have clear and simple policies. Good governance means active representation from all functional groups, most especially Communications, Human Resources and IT. And yet Everyone must have a stake in contributing and maintaining the content, or No One’s needs will be filled. Effective hubs are not a service provided to your employees, they’re a healthy collaboration and mix of relevant content and open space to create.
Relevance: Content is still king. If you can’t provide relevant, compelling content that meets your users’ needs, your hub is already dead. Spend time thinking through what content and tools employees need to be effective, and continue to be interested, and then organize the hub so they can find them. And assemble cross-functional teams to keep it going.
Customization: Or What’s in It for Me (WIFM). The ability to customize a portion of a common corporate homepage leads to better and more frequent usage of a hub. Set aside room for a user’s local and/or business unit news, and allow users to choose links for the homepage to the tools and resources they use most often. It’s their hub too; let them mold it to their own hands.
A final word – on mobile apps. Mobile apps are the new buzz word. Everyone wants one because our smart phones let us choose our own apps and so, hey, why can’t we have fun apps like that at work? When looking at mobile app development, you want to be sure that: (a) the app meets a business need; (b) it links back to your intranet or hub, (c) it’s extremely easy to use, (d) you have tested it with a pilot user audience before launch. Mobile apps work best when they are highly focused and do no more than three things. For example, an HR app might provide 1. paystub information, 2. a link to job openings and 3. enable benefits enrollment. A retail manager app might provide a dashboard that tracks three key items and/or compares that store’s metrics to other stores in the region.
These are just the top notes. How you use your portal, your hub, or what you design a mobile app to do, depends on the make-up, the business needs and usage of your audience. That can be a daunting task. You don’t have to go it alone. Consider partnering with us here at OTSP. We have the experience, we have the skilled technical partners, we can help you benchmark with others, and we will be beside you as you navigate through the process, from strategy to development to launch. You can reach me via email at: Kim@on-the-same-page.com.
mpanies that rank high for employee engagement are more profitable, more productive, have better customer ratings and fewer safety incidents (Gallup).
After a failed first attempt, 
Reorganizations? Transformations? Is your company planning change in 2017? In the latest issue of 
For many U.S. voters, today (Inauguration Day) is a day of reckoning. Depending on your perspective, it’s the day you’ve been longing for or the day you’ve been dreading. If there is one thing to be learned from this past U.S. Presidential election, it is this: As a society, we haven’t been listening. And, as a result, we also haven’t been heard. 
hen crisis strikes, leadership turns to Legal, Communication and Human Resources professionals for guidance. Invest time now in planning how you manage a crisis. You hope you never need the plan, but if you do, it’s too late to initiate the process once something catastrophic happens. Rapid response is critical in times of business crisis.
One person can change the world. Just look at inventors, politicians, political activists, religious figures, business leaders… History is full of people that have made a difference – for better or worse. What do these people have in common? Is there a formula for their success?
Google “gratitude in business” and you’ll wind up with thousands of results. And not just because it’s November – a month in which the topic is top of mind for Americans preparing to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s because, as it turns out, gratitude is good for business. And that is because, as neuroscientists have discovered, gratitude actually changes our brains.
There’s a lot of confusion between the terms digital workplace, intranets, portals and hubs. To me, they all describe the same thing – a collection of digital tools, and/or a common digital space, that helps employees stay focused and on top of relevant information, provides access to the work tools that keep them efficient and which also connects them to the colleagues they need to interact with, no matter if they are around the corner or around the world.