Building a Team of Leaders to Increase Employee Commitment

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Nearly 30 years ago, Richard E. Walton wrote in the article From Control to Commitment in the Workplace as published in the Harvard Business Review:

Especially in a high-wage country like the United States, market success depends on a superior level of performance, a level that, in turn, requires the deep commitment, not merely the obedience—if you could obtain it—of workers. And as painful experience shows, this commitment cannot flourish in a workplace dominated by the familiar model of control.”

Despite Walton’s long-ago words of wisdom, companies today continue to only use either a strategy of control or one of eliciting commitment to build employee commitment. And they do so already knowing that when employee commitment isn’t built, they will pay an enormous price.

Here are a couple of startling stats to show the danger of such a lack of dedication by employees. In the  2012 SHRM Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey, only one out of two employees in the U.S. reported that they were completely plugged in at work. Meanwhile, the Gallup’s State of the American Workplace: 2010-2012 report found that disengaged employees cost the U.S. as much as $550 billion per year.

Those are very telling statistics in regard to the sorry state of how committed employees really are nowadays in the workplace. But do realize that there’s a better way. A way to get them plugged in and one that will help reduce such wasteful billions.

Why Do Companies Struggle with Employee Commitment?

These days, although there is clearly a growing recognition that in order to compete in the 21st century, companies must have employees who are engaged and committed. In our new book A Team of Leaders, we present our belief that companies struggle with employee commitment because of two primary reasons:

1) Many organizations continue to choose a strategy based on controlling employees.

2) Those that choose a strategy of eliciting employee commitment are doing a poor job of implementing that strategy.

We believe that the first strategy, which involves all-knowing supervisors controlling their subordinates and telling them what to do, is generally doomed to fail. So, we will focus this article on the second strategy, which can be wildly successful. Yet it’s not an easy maneuver to pull off.

The reason why it’s so difficult is because you are trying to change an entire organization’s or team’s culture from top to bottom. This can’t be done by fiat, and it can’t be accomplished by making employee commitment the flavor of the month. Many companies have tried to do just that. Then they have often wondered why it did not have the desired effect.

The answer is simple: Organizations are perfectly designed to get the results that they get. So, unless you change your organization’s design, you are not going to get the results you desire, or even need.

And that is precisely why employee commitment programs don’t work. They merely scratch the surface of your organization or team in a vacuum. They don’t properly affect or influence all of the support systems and processes that must be aligned and in balance. Without that, there’s no true change to your business culture or positive impact to your bottom line.

On the other hand, if you build teams of leaders, you can truly change your culture and produce great results.

Teams of leaders are comprised of employees who all step up and provide leadership. They are responsible for planning and achieving the team’s goals. They are cross trained and well developed. They are highly committed and engaged.

They are built through a careful planning and implementation approach. This approach ensures that all of the systems and processes work together in a holistic manner to produce the right culture and results.

In other words, teams of leaders need to be perfectly designed to get the results that you want.

Are you struggling with employment commitment issues? What strategies have you used to build employee commitment? To get a deeper knowledge about these challenges and the right answers to these questions, go now to download a FREE Chapter from our book A Team of Leaders: Empowering Every Member to Take Ownership, Demonstrate Initiative, and Deliver Results.

About Paul and Stew

Paul Gustavson is an organizational design consultant and founder of Organization Planning & Design, Inc. (OPD). He is the co-author of “Running into the Wind”. He can be reached anytime on Twitter and  LinkedIn

Stewart Liff is an HR and visual management expert, and president of Stewart Liff & Associates. He is the author of “Managing Government Employees” and co-author of “Seeing is Believing”. He can be reached anytime on Twitter, LinkedIn, or via email.

7 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement Through Work Design

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Recently, there was an article published at Forbes.com entitled How the Best Places to Work are Nailing Employee Engagement. The article, written by Sylvia Vorhauser-Smith, discusses how engaged workers are likely to be motivated and committed to their organization and remain focused on achieving their business goals and driving the organization’s future. On the other hand, disengaged employees can suck the life out of others and have an adverse impact on everything from customer service to ROI, quality, output, and everything else that matters to running a productive business.

In our newly released book, A Team of Leaders, we believe that unless employee engagement flows from your overall work design and supporting systems and processes, you will have to constantly struggle to build this into your culture.

If you properly design a team of leaders, whereby the supervisor only serves as an occasional advisor to the team and everyone takes on a leadership role, is involved, accountable and well-developed, you will build employee engagement into your culture. When that happens, and the team is at its highest level (what we call a Stage Five team), you will have a self-motivated and engaged team that produces great results.

Why Work Design Is Important?

The reason why so many organizations struggle with this issue is because of the way work is designed. That is, as long as employees work under a design where there is one all-knowing boss who tells everyone else what to do, resulting in people working primarily on an individual basis, they will struggle to find ways to engage their employees.

As a result, while some may come up with extraordinary ways in which to address this issue, as long as these approaches are out of line with the organization’s overall work design, employee engagement will suffer.

Using Work Design to Improve Employee Engagement

Here are seven ways organizations can leverage to transform themselves into a team of leaders and increase employee engagement through work design:

1. Know what employees are thinking. As part of the design process, teams conduct a culture analysis. One part of that analysis is identifying whether the employees’ individual needs are being met.

2. Intentionally design their culture. The culture analysis is one of three major analyses that are conducted prior to the design work. The idea here is that a team’s results flow from the team’s culture and the knowledge of its members, which flow from its systems and other design elements.

3. Recognize big and small contributions. An aligned rewards and recognition system is one of the hallmarks of designing a team of leaders.
4. Communicate in an open and honest manner. As a team begins its transition, it uses a communication process that enables team members to appreciate their differences and communicate effectively.

5. Support career development. This refers to mentoring and other approaches, which ensure that employees have professional goals and can connect with their colleagues. During the on-boarding process, we recommend that all members be assigned a mentor. Moreover, a well-designed team will ensure that there are strong connections among team members.

6. Facilitate social interactions outside work. Due to these strong connections, especially in the later stages of development, team members frequently participate in social events outside of work.

7. Communicate the organization’s stories. Through the use of visual management, which involves using a team’s physical plant as another design element to reinforce the direction the team is going, teams of leaders use their space to, among other things, celebrate all of the great work that they have accomplished.

Is your organization designed for low employee engagement? Do you desire a more engaging environment? Keep in mind that organizations are perfectly designed to get the results that they get. By designing a team where employees are engaged and committed, organizations will get the results that they want.

About Paul and Stew

Paul Gustavson is an organizational design consultant and founder of Organization Planning & Design, Inc. (OPD). He is the co-author of “Running into the Wind”. He can be reached anytime on Twitter and  LinkedIn

Stewart Liff is an HR and visual management expert, and president of Stewart Liff & Associates. He is the author of “Managing Government Employees” and co-author of “Seeing is Believing”. He can be reached anytime on Twitter, LinkedIn, or via email.