Month: May 2016

BOSS: Spelled Backwards

On May 31, 2016

In business team building exercises, Continuous continuous improvement, employee engagement, employee motivation, empowerment, Engagement, Facilitation, improve organizational performance, innovation, intrinsic motivation, manager as motivator, Organizational Development Tools, people and performance

Boss. In organizations, a lot of people know precisely who that is. And that can be a positive or a negative, as I will try to explain.

My dad owned a small trucking company in South Jersey for nearly 50 years and he was the boss, for sure. He made all the decisions, ran the office, did the collection, gave his customers bottles of hooch every Christmas and ran the company as a one-man band. He had a half-dozen trucks and he did well enough to buy a summer house that gave our family a place to be at the beach, boats and cars and all that. From that perspective, my dad was a good boss.

On the other hand, there is an aspect of BOSS that is not so good. You would sometimes see it in how he might interact with a driver. Orin was always stopping in on prospects to generate new business and my dad generally never wanted to talk with him, telling me to tell Orin he was not around, for example. Or if there was a problem, the conversation tended to be one-sided. My dad did not generally appreciate the thoughts and ideas of the guys who worked with him.

“I’m the boss, here” generally infers complete control and a bit more yelling and telling than asking and listening. Boss translates to Ruler, the Decider, someone who has all the bucks and they stop right there. I see the word “autocratic” in the management haze, the imperial-ness of the boss as a person.

I see The Boss theme happening in an organization where 60% of the employees feels that no one listens to their ideas or respects them for their work or personal accomplishments.
I see The Boss theme in organizations where 10% or less of the employees see themselves as actively engaged but the vast majority rating themselves as un-involved or even “Actively Dis-Engaged” and choosing not to be involved and engaged, with the correlated high levels of absenteeism and turnover. And even some sabotage (see this post of mine).
And, I see The Boss as someone who simply knows that they have the right ideas and approach and that they could not possibly benefit from any training on listening skills or engagement or innovation facilitation.

In those cases, BOSS spelled backwards probably is a pretty good explanation of their overall attitude and approach to employee involvement and engagement.

John was one such animal. He was The Boss, president of a company that asked me to help improve their customer service. We did some initial work and then had one of their first ever Manager’s Meetings, an all hands deal at a golf resort where we had scheduled some work sessions around some golf. You might have guessed that John was a Big Time Golfer, which is why a golf course was selected for a business meeting, and why meetings were actually scheduled around his tee times.

And, in that meeting, John actually said, while sitting there going through his mail (I was so shocked that I wrote it down!) as we were talking about employee ideas for improving the organization,

“That’s like asking the vegetables
how to design a refrigerator.”

John obviously saw himself as, The Boss.

And my one-liner back is,

“Boss spelled backwards is self-explanatory.”

John was not there the following year, since his charter by the board of directors to improve operations and customer retention was not going that well regardless of what we tried to do at the lower levels.

A Customer Service Fundamental:

It’s hard to care for customers
if you don’t feel the boss cares for you.

Perceptions are important, and if workers don’t feel right about the company, it is hard to get them to do those things that exceed customer expectations. It is hard to get them to feel motivated to perform at moderate to high levels. Sure, the top performers perform, but they always do that for intrinsic reasons until they burn out and leave. Note that average employees are often involved in Presenteeism. the situation where they show up and accomplish the minimally accepted level of work and performance competence.

Aldo note that the poor performers are actively un-involved and sometimes intentionally sabotaging the work. Why not choose to do some things differently to get a result that is #morebetterfaster?

So, you might simply reflect on the simple themes in, “Hey Boss!” Asking for and listening to ideas from your people does not involve a lot of training or skills, just the positive intention to treat them effectively.

It can look something like this:

Any questions? Just ask me, because I am The Boss!

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Jobs Demands-Resources Model explained with Square Wheels

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 30, 2016

In Change Facilitation, employee motivation, Engagement, improve organizational performance, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator, Organizational Development Tools

In a really solid interview of Dr. Arnold Bakker, David Zinger (@DavidZinger) asks about the Jobs Demands-Resources Model that is being used to clarify the understanding of workplace issues of motivation and engagement. I encourage you to look at the interview as well as the explanation of the model to gain your own ideas about how things work and what things can be done differently to impact employee engagement.

But also understand that the two articles referenced in the interview are heavily referenced academic descriptions of models, issues, interactions and comparisons of studies of these topics. You might find them an intellectual challenge to decipher, as I did, although the basic messages are quite clear.

David, who is the organizer of the Employee Engagement Network, feels that Dr. Bakker’s work on people and performance is top shelf and I would agree.

My interests were focused on a couple of things that were said as well as the overall operational structure of the model and how to use it, Bakker said, in part,

My first action would be to create ample opportunities for the exchange of job resources between employees, by creating structural working conditions and processes that foster the exchange of feedback, social support, ideas, communications, etc. These resources would foster work engagement and build cohesion among employees.

David also asked, “If HR practitioners or CEOs were to read just one or two of your articles, which one/s would you recommend?” to which Bakker suggested:

Two articles come to mind. The first I would recommend offers an overview of the Jobs Demands–Resources Theory. This article explains how job demands and resources have unique effects on job stress and motivation. And the other I would suggest covers the daily fluctuations in employee work engagement. Here, I examine the predictors and outcomes of daily engagement, and how individuals can advance work engagement from one day to another.

He also said:

Fortunately, we can influence our own daily levels of employee work engagement by proactively optimizing our job resources. Some examples include talking to enthusiastic colleagues, creating our own positive feedback, and starting new and challenging projects. My current interest is, not surprisingly, particularly in the latter self-management behaviors people use to influence their own work engagement (e.g., job crafting, strengths use, mobilizing ego resources, resource exchange, team boosters).

I read all of the above as “by having a good mental model to reframe our work into making progress forward, we can use our own resources to improve our own resources.” And my view of the model, a bit less detailed than Bakker’s, would actually appear something like this:

After all, the reality is that the Round Wheels are already in the wagon and that sometimes we simply need to step back and reflect in order to reframe our thinking and to get out of the ditch and back up on the road.

If people work together with each other and management, and they take the time to discuss issues and opportunities, realities and best practices and ideas for workplace improvements of any and all kinds, you cannot expect them NOT to be more engaged and involved.

Nobody ever washes a rental car, and people with ownership involvement can be expected to treat things differently than those who are simply showing up, (what I call Presenteeism).

Remember that The Manager is the Motivator when it comes to improving the interactions of people in the workforce. This is NOT a task that can be accomplished by HR or Training and it is a daily occurrence, something that Bakker discusses in his interview and his second article.

I hope this is somewhat thought-provoking,

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Please Wait – a thought on Innovation and Improvement

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 29, 2016

In Change Facilitation, employee motivation, Engagement, improve organizational performance, innovation, intrinsic motivation, manager as motivator, people and performance

I was playing in my pool league and there was an old plastic sign that someone had stuck on the wall that I had been seeing for a dozen years but never thought about it. This time, I sent a note to myself and here is how that sign expressed itself in my thinking about how things really work in the process of continuous continuous improvement and organizational improvement.

Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There!

is another framework for this process of involvement and engagement. People feel that few managers actually take the time to listen or consider their ideas. And that does not engender involvement or build ownership.

Take the time to ask for ideas and listen for ways to improve,

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Innovation and Change: BIG Sale on Square Wheels!

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 20, 2016

In Change Facilitation, employee engagement, implementation, innovation, Innovation Implementation, intrinsic motivation, Metaphors for business improvement, productivity improvement, workplace performance improvement

A conversation turns into an idea and then an illustration is produced. That seems how creativity and innovation flow around here. A comment about buggy whips and top hats becomes an image about change and survival. Take a look at this simple illustration, but do take a moment to actually consider the realities.

DO take a moment and consider what is happening…

The two stores on the left are closed because the business simply disappeared. Somewhere, someone is making buggy whips because there are still a few horse and buggy wagons rolling around. Heck, one company makes LED whips for your off-road vehicle so it can be seen in the dark! Another “buggy whip store” sells men’s clothing in Nebraska and they do not even have a website but only a FaceBook page. So it looks like that business buggy whip business has kind of disappeared…

Scan to the right and you will see The Big Sale going on at Harry’s Square Wheels Wagonry Store. Harry has been in business for a long time, has a great inventory of new wheels in a variety of colors. He can probably even order you chrome ones!

But note that his former employee, Susan, has opened up a new store, one selling tires. Susan and her partner Sally have limited inventory and small volume at this point. Susan and Sally got the idea one day when at work, and they decided to act on their idea and make these things more available. (Yeah, Harry has met Sally, finally.)

It was actually a big moment for the ladies, and they thought that they could capitalize on that idea and make round tires into a business. Personally, I have to wish them a LOT of success, because the idea is great, but having the ability and resources to implement the idea is what is important. Asking questions and generating involvement is a key success strategy for implementation.

We offer The Stupidly Simple Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit for a meager $25 and we are nearly ready to launch our LMS MOOC to share some ideas and frameworks for how to use these simple illustrations and this direct approach to involve and engage people for workplace improvement.

Click here to read about Presenteeism, the reality that about 50% of most workers in most workplaces are “In, but Out” when it comes to their active involvement or the thinking that their boss listens to their ideas. It has been a workplace statistical constant since I started in the people and performance business in 1978.

The ONLY way to address the issues of un-engagement of the majority of a workforce is to involve and engage the Supervisors in the involvement and engagement process of their people to align to organizational visions and values and to focus them on improving their own workplace. I have never seen even a single workplace where people did not have good ideas for improvement.

It is NOT within an HR capability to fix this, nor one of Training and Development. It cannot be addressed with a survey or a videotape of the CEO talking about these things. LOTS of things can be done, but the rubber meets the road where the supervisor sits with the people.

It is a simple concept of providing them with bombproof tools and asking them to ask for ideas. Why not?

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on themes of People and Performance is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Presenteeism – They are IN but they are OUT

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 12, 2016

In Change Facilitation, dis-un-engagement, employee motivation, Engagement, Facilitation, improve organizational performance, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator, people and performance, productivity improvement, workplace performance improvement

I was reading some news feeds and came across the word, “Presenteeism” in an HR thread. The term was new to me, but since I was gathering some notes around the theme of involvement and engagement, it resonated. The common use is seemingly around working while sick and is seen as the opposite and related problem to absenteeism.

I think the term is much bigger than that and that presenteeism is much more prevalent than commonly thought. I want to expand and relate the term to issues of people and performance in general.

Repeatedly, we see that only about 1/3 of workers are engaged with work. Others are not engaged and some are even anti-engaged to the point where they are actively working against the organization. You can see a bit more on this if you read my blog about sabotage or if you google “workplace sabotage” or even search on issues around part-time employment problems. Those anti-organization workers are few in number and often known, since they tend to actively act and speak against the company and its management (but not always).

Individuals suffering from Presenteeism are a more common issue. I remember back in my college fraternity years that when we wanted to take a break during an active beer drinking game, we would announce, “I’m in, but I’m out,” effectively saying that we were still playing but that we were going to take a break for a bit.

The concept is actually getting a good bit of study from the academics. Wikipedia offers:

Scholars have provided various other descriptions of the concept. For instance, Simpson claimed that presenteeism is “the tendency to stay at work beyond the time needed for effective performance on the job.” Aronsson, Gustafsson, and Dallner wrote that it means attending work even when one feels unhealthy. In a recent review of the literature, Johns highlighted the lack of agreement between the many definitions. The author claimed that many of the definitions lack utility and that the term is most often defined as going to work while ill. He further noted that definitions of presenteeism, which are centered on attending work while sick, have received more evidence of construct validity. In other words, when defined as coming to work while sick, presenteeism seems to relate more to logical outcome variables and correlates.

I am going to expand the concept to refer to the employees who are, IN but OUT when it comes to their everyday active involvement in their workplace, to the large percentage of people who are not at either end of the engagement curve, the ones that are not actively engaged or dis-engaged. These people in the middle are the people that organizations should be focused on, the ones who can contribute a bit more to the results than they currently choose to do. They have the skills to perform, just not the motivation or peer support.

SO, how does one reduce Presenteeism in their organization? There is a LOT of research that says that the concept is pretty simple and straightforward and I will summarize it in four simple rules:

Ask them for their ideas
Ask them for their ideas
Ask them for their ideas
Ask them for their ideas

Visually and operationally, presenteeism reduction can look something like this:

Stop the everyday pushing and pulling of the wagon and let people sit down and play with ideas for a bit of time. They will often discover or share new ways of doing things that might make an impact on processes but will surely make an impact on engagement.

My simple rule of thumb is that the activity of management asking their people for ideas about improving their workplace, and then dealing honestly and openly with suggestions is the most straightforward way to deal with presenteeism. (This is not about doing some survey where everything in anonymous and results get buried but the active, face-to-face interface of supervisors and workers or managers and supervisors.)

If you feel that the boss cares for you, you are much more likely
to care for your work and the work of others.

If you would like to see a short video about how this can actually be accomplished, click on the 13-second video offered below. We are trying to keep this simple and easy in regards of how it can help motivate and engage people:

Your efforts to dis-un-engage people can be very straightforward – you can act to get them more involved and you can help them remove perceived roadblocks.

‘For a more detailed, operational overview of these ideas, take a look at this more elaborate, explanatory video below. Note that you can do that by exposing YOUR workplace wagon and asking people for ideas about what things might work better and what ideas and resources might already exist. Again, the research on this suggests that 2/3 of the people in workplaces feel their boss is not interested in their thinking, a prime causal factor of Presenteeism:

You can find our simple toolkit for decreasing workplace Performance Presenteeism by clicking on the image below:

My goal is to provide simple but effective tools for impacting people and performance, and I am not sure how I can be any more simple and straightforward. It is up to YOU to be more effective,

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+

– you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

How many people have seen Square Wheels illustrations?

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 6, 2016

In Change Facilitation, employee engagement, employee motivation, Engagement, Facilitation, improve organizational performance, intrinsic motivation, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator, Organizational Development Tools, people and performance

Got a problem with motivation, engagement or productivity and looking for a simple and bombproof, proven tool? Take a minute and read this. And Think!

A team of us are working at building our online teaching resource wrapped around the idea of “stupidly simple facilitation” through the use of my Square Wheels® theme. The project has gone through a number of phases and Dan Stones in Melbourne has jumped in to help us drive all of this forward. Expect some fun stuff as we continue to rock and roll.

As we were chatting, Dan asked me the simple question,

“How many people have seen or used Square Wheels?”

That is a really good question, for which I have no clue. History shows I have been presenting the theme at conferences and workshops since 1993 when I started using the main cartoon, Square Wheels One, done in black ink by my friend Roy Sabean. A few presentations later and I had 4 and then 7 different illustrations. When I got to 13, people started asking me for copies to use and I started selling a set in a brown envelope as colored transparencies and black line art.

Then, they wanted me to explain how to use them. Really? “Just do what I do or do your own thing,” I said, to no avail. They wanted me to write that stuff down, which resulted in a book with photocopiable masters. That was back in 1993, with the first book published in 1994.

By 2004, we were in our fifth edition of The Big Book, a package containing descriptions for using more than 200 of the illustrations and for making transparencies. I am guessing that I still have a 3 or 4 foot stack of transparency versions of these materials in different places in the house!

So, I did not have an answer for Dan. Since 1993, I have presented workshops in 38 countries and dozens of conferences, including more than 10 trips each to places like Singapore and Hong Kong. And we have sold a lot of a variety of books and electronic toolkits since we started all this more than 20 years ago. My squarewheels.com website went up in 1998!

But I just saw a statistic that is relevant, one that I blogged on in a different place. There, I said:

For what is probably my 40th year of viewing this same statistical reality, here we go again: Leadership Management Australasia’s LMA survey summary, April 2016 shared this stunning commentary:

Communication and connection are the cornerstone of relationships – a quarter to a third of employees believe their managers seldom or never listen to them, understand their issues, seek their input and ideas, or help them to resolve the issues and challenges they face.

Okay. So one thing I am pretty sure of.So, here is my tongue-in-cheek but serious answer to Dan’s original question:

Two-thirds of the employees worldwide have NOT had their manager use the Square Wheels theme in a discussion about improving their workplace involvement and performance.

If they did, things would probably be different. Square Wheels really are everywhere and the round ones are already in the wagon. Communications would have HAD to improve!

There ARE some things you can choose to do now:

We believe that managers should be motivators, and that engagement comes directly from active involvement and communications about issues and opportunities, about goals and expectations. It is about teamwork and shared perspectives as well as about ideas for improvement/ We think “this engagement and motivation stuff” is pretty straightforward and that people are intrinsically motivated when they feel a sense of ownership involvement.

A solution? Consider using our $25 Stupidly Simple Toolkit to generate a conversation in your workplace. Or wait until we get our online MOOC up and running where we can teach and support you in your improvement initiative. The choice is yours and we will guarantee it will work for you to help involve and engage your people, improving communications in many ways,

For the FUN of It!

Connect with Scott on Google+

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Stupidly Simple Engagement and Motivation

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 5, 2016

In Change Facilitation, employee motivation, Engagement, Facilitation, manager as motivator, Performance Feedback

One gets whacked in the head, but maybe not often enough. No, let me change that to say that workplace whacking should be a lot more common and that every manager of every manager should be whacking their people about this problem. At some point, realistically, you would think managers would finally step back and see the stunningly obvious reality of how things are not working in workplaces to engage and motivate people. Or not…

For what is probably my 40th year of viewing this same statistical reality, here we go again: Leadership Management Australasia’s LMA survey summary, April 2016 shared this stunning commentary:

Seriously? Two-thirds of the workers (or more) in another national survey feel that communications in their workplaces stink? Still? This is what I remember addressing back in 1978 when I first started organizational consulting on people and performance.

What boggles my mind is that this is one of those “forever” problems. Is it a training issue? NO, because if you put a gun to the head of the manager and threatened to blow her brains out if she could not communicate, you would actually SEE her communicate with her people (this is the Bob Mager Test, not mine, so do not blame me for any workplace violence — it is just a metaphor! Do NOT bring a gun to your leadership development programs unless you are in Texas.)

This is NOT a skill issue; training is not needed. But it might be a “tools” issue, and that might be readily solved. So, here is my proposed solution to this global communications issue, with me trying to keep things stupidly simple and obvious:

This persistent and incessant gap in communications is simply numbing.

The manager should be the motivator and the communicator. After all, who else has the connection to the workers?

This is such a persistent problem that we are going to develop an unnecessary but apparently critical actual online MOOC training course to teach people how to use this stupidly simple communications tool, the Square Wheels metaphor, complete with worksheets and training and collaborative support across a global community of people wanting to improve motivation and engagement. Overkill, probably.

But we are going to eliminate the excuses for people not talking,

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Images that Changed The World – 1972 and 2016

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 3, 2016

In Change Facilitation, employee motivation, Engagement, Facilitation, Involving and Engaging People, manager as motivator

The image of The Blue Marble, taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew on its trip to the Moon, is one that changed the view of the Earth forever. It is an iconic picture, and one that has appeared in zillions of places and seen by billions of people:

This image of our planet has inspired so many people to care for Mother Earth, and has been used for recognizing Earth Day and in so many other tools to drive awareness of our planet over the years. And perspective will show that we need to continue to focus on our world. (You can read a bit about its history here, in a nice article on the Adobe Create newsletter site that stimulated me to post this blog. That article also talked about the Stuart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, of which I still have a copy (1971) on my bookshelf.)

Images can be inspirational. Images can help to end wars (like Vietnam) or generate charity or to basically influence people and performance.

On that note, I keep communicating about an image that could similarly affect workplaces, in particular the issues of improvement, engagement, innovation and communications. That image is this one:

along with the simple idea is that we can find all sorts of things to improve if we just step back from the wagon and talk about what is or might be happening. Talking through the illustration is easy and bombproof. Facilitating a workplace improvement process that involves and engages people is very straightforward, as well as cheap (we sell a $25 toolkit with the image and the worksheets.)

Anyone can help change their world!
It is about having relevant conversations!

Pass this on if your manager needs to better involve and engage the people in your workplace. Gallup shows that 34% of people are actually engaged in US businesses and it is generally lower than that in other countries (2016). We can do better than this if we just focus on making things work better.

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on themes of People and Performance is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group