Day 89: People and Laws and Questions

I wanted to share a favourite image of mine - it's from the inside cover of "Factory Physics" - and I have it posted on my office door:









They are simple laws and yet how often are they ignored? Or forgotten? Or devalued?

What have I done today to ensure that I avoid failing my team in these areas?

I often think about the "Gallup 12" (from 12: The Elements of Great Managing) - 12 key questions that can be used to effectively assess employee engagement within any organization - as follows:

1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right? 
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? 
4.  In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work? 
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person? 
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development? 
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count? 
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important? 
9. Are your fellow employees committed to doing quality work? 
10. Do you have a best friend at work? 
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress? 
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

I love this set of questions - I think they are very revealing questions to ask, even if employers don't really like the answers they receive. The results then allow you to slot employees into one of three categories:

• Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward. 
• Not-Engaged employees are essentially “checked out.” They are sleepwalking through their workday. They are putting in time, but not enough energy or passion into their work.  
• Actively Disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish. 

Since most North American organizations have a very small population of engaged employees, I have to imagine that my organization may be very similar. So how likely am I to convert a "Not-Engaged" to an "Engaged" employee? 

What are the chances? Are they 50-50?

Let's take 99 people, and say they fall into equal thirds in each group. 33-33-33. If I convert half of the middle third from Not-Engaged to Engaged then I am left with 49-18-33.  Converting from Not-Engaged to Engaged takes time and work on the part of management.

But let's say I take a different approach. Let's pretend I am the Ice Queen and I wield a big ax. What if I let the bottom half of the Actively Disengaged staff go, so I am left with 33-33-18. That's out of a total of 84 people. That means that I go from 33% Engaged to 40% Engaged.  Is that progress? 

While it is never good to keep Actively Disengaged employees within an organization, the cost and effort to move the Not-Engaged to Engaged is not trivial. So if I had full decision making power, and I could clearly identify those employees that are truly Actively Disengaged, I would consider a third option: letting ALL Actively Disengaged employees go, so I can spend my remaining resources on the Engaged and Not-Engaged.

Sound harsh? It is. 

Let me give you some insight into my rationale.

I used to be a Corporate Security Officer, responsible for the security of people, material, facilities, and information that had national security implications. The number one risk to any industrial security programme is an Actively Disengaged employee. I cannot stress this enough - an employee who actively undermines the organization's purpose will be the biggest risk to its security. Security, in the original context, was about securing information or material from illegal use or transfer. But in a broader context, Actively Disengaged employees are the rot deep within the organization. They not only consume resources with no appreciable positive return, they can - if allowed to operate unchecked - affect those employees who are Not-Engaged, perhaps making it even more difficult for leaders to convert those Not-Engaged employees to Engaged. 

50-50? Not even close - if you don't address the Actively Disengaged.

AMac