Home: Issue 1 2009 › Lead Story › Harnessing employee energy
Harnessing employee energy
25/03/2009 | Channel: Human Resources
Virginia Merritt explains the role and importance of involving people to make your strategy happen
When it comes to developing an organisational strategy, the vast majority of executives recognise the importance and value of allocating time and resources to ensure they have a comprehensive and effective strategy in place. However, the same people do not allocate the same time and effort to thinking through exactly how to make sure the strategy is delivered.
From our experience, both executives and employees dread the start of the strategic planning process. For many it’s a de-energising experience, rather than an uplifting or affirming one for the business. Typically, it’s a process that is owned and run by a small top team – perhaps with analytical support from external strategy consultants. Employees feel removed from the thinking and the first they know about it is when they are informed of the new direction and priorities that emerge from the process. It’s no wonder that they don’t feel any sense of commitment to making it successful. The challenge for organisations is how to engage all those with a role in delivering the strategy in the thinking and planning process so they feel they have a stake in it, whilst avoiding it becoming an industry in itself.
We have found it useful to help companies rethink the process with the aim of tapping into the energy of individuals, focusing it on what’s important for future growth and success and then managing it as a powerful organisational force for change. We call it ‘organisational energy’.
Defining organisational energy
Organisational energy is the extent to which an organisation is able to mobilise the full available effort of its people in pursuit of its goals. A high-energy organisation not only energises its people but also channels that energy purposefully towards results – i.e. delivery of your strategy.
When it comes to leveraging this energy to make strategy happen, the first step is to identify exactly where the energy is within your business, understand what has motivated people in the past and also how their energy is drained or dissipated. By making the most of this organisational learning, businesses and individual managers can use the lessons from the past to ensure their strategy is successful and employees are fully engaged with the process and its objectives.
Where energy is lost
Organisations can lose energy in a number of ways. We have seen cases of friction between different parts when one division would rather do business with an outside firm than with another division of the same company, because they do not see the benefit of working more collaboratively. In cases like this, energy that should go into serving the customer and beating the competition, or achieving wider strategic goals, is instead directed to petty internal rivalry.
Organisational energy can also be lost in pursuing activities that add no value. People in many large organisations feel deluged by showers of projects and initiatives that seem to divert effort from what really counts. Meetings with no point, reports that no one reads and roles with unclear responsibilities, for example, are all easy ways to squander organisational energy.
Office politics are also a frequent cause of lost energy. In many companies, energy can go into playing political games, watching your back and looking good to senior management. Equally, the failure to engage employees, inspire them and help them to enjoy doing their job well can take the edge off the business, slow it down and impact on performance.
The reasons why this happens are unclear; certainly, nobody deliberately creates these situations. However, their very existence blocks sources of organisational energy and, when it comes to a critical process such as strategic planning, it means that strategies are destined to fail right from the start.
Creating energy for strategy
So what can we do to get the strategy planning process off to a more positive start? One solution is to engage your employees in creating and developing their divisional strategies in the context of the business’ broader strategic priorities. This encourages people to think more corporately and overcome silo thinking or their habit of making competitive bids for scarce resources.
How to create energy in strategic planning
Many organisations follow a default strategy planning process that can become disconnected with the new goals of the strategy. To overcome this, be wary of potential pitfalls and review your strategy – particularly where organisational energy can be lost, as discussed above – to identify issues that could distract from the overall focus and to make sure there are no future risks to the strategy being followed through.
Strategic planning in the Environment Agency
The Environment Agency is an organisation that employs over 12,000 people, all highly committed to delivering ambitious outcomes for the environment. When they developed their first corporate strategy over five years ago, they set out to engage staff, stakeholders and the general public in an extensive consultation to ensure it met the aspirations of everyone involved in delivering it successfully.
Five years on and the strategic direction has been redefined using a similar highly involving process to ensure the Agency rises to the challenge of increased public and political focus on environmental concerns as well as making most efficient use of its available resources. As a result, the Environment Agency has recently earned the highest scores in employee awareness of the vision and strategy in a recent UK Investors in Industry evaluation survey.
The Environment Agency first worked with Stanton Marris to clarify a simple core story to support the strategy development process. Showing how the key strands of the strategy all connected with inspirational environmental outcomes was key, as staff surveys had demonstrated that people working for the Agency were proud of their commitment to making a difference to the environment.
In addition, a series of employee workshops were held to enable people to articulate what the high level environmental outcomes mean for them at a local level – literally in their locality, which made the lofty ambition real and personal. By training the leaders of those events to share best practice and champion the outcomes, they developed the confidence to follow a consistent approach that was tailored for particular audiences. As a result, the Environment Agency’s strategic direction and plans are based on the reality of what can be delivered in local areas and regions, yet also built on their own local vision, knowledge and ambition
In the process of developing the new strategy, people talked passionately about what can get in the way of delivery. This data was captured and used subsequently to frame the organisational development, cultural and behavioural changes required to deliver the outcomes successfully – both locally and nationally. Articulating the changes in language that people can relate to, constantly making the links between achieving the vision and the daily frustrations that can experience in ‘getting the job done’ is now being used as a powerful motivator for strategic change.
A new mindset for strategic planning
We like to compare the strategic planning process with the production process in staging a play. Clearly, early effort goes into writing the script but the play cannot be appreciated until a team interprets it and brings it to life. You need a talented producer but the full impact and enjoyment of the production is only realised through the involvement and talent of a wide group of people – all those who have a role to play in making it a success – from actors to wardrobe managers and lighting engineers. Keep this idea in mind when you rethink your strategic planning process and your strategy will also become an inspired performance, rather than a chore.
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Virginia Merritt is managing partner at organisational performance experts Stanton Marris. Stanton Marris combines strategy and people expertise in a completely different kind of consultancy - the only one of its kind focused purely on making strategy work. By working with the politics, personalities, behaviours and processes, breaking down barriers and making the most of what’s going well, Stanton Marris helps clear the path to results.
For more information on Stanton Marris, please visit www.stantonmarris.com.
From our experience, both executives and employees dread the start of the strategic planning process. For many it’s a de-energising experience, rather than an uplifting or affirming one for the business. Typically, it’s a process that is owned and run by a small top team – perhaps with analytical support from external strategy consultants. Employees feel removed from the thinking and the first they know about it is when they are informed of the new direction and priorities that emerge from the process. It’s no wonder that they don’t feel any sense of commitment to making it successful. The challenge for organisations is how to engage all those with a role in delivering the strategy in the thinking and planning process so they feel they have a stake in it, whilst avoiding it becoming an industry in itself.
We have found it useful to help companies rethink the process with the aim of tapping into the energy of individuals, focusing it on what’s important for future growth and success and then managing it as a powerful organisational force for change. We call it ‘organisational energy’.
Defining organisational energy
Organisational energy is the extent to which an organisation is able to mobilise the full available effort of its people in pursuit of its goals. A high-energy organisation not only energises its people but also channels that energy purposefully towards results – i.e. delivery of your strategy.
When it comes to leveraging this energy to make strategy happen, the first step is to identify exactly where the energy is within your business, understand what has motivated people in the past and also how their energy is drained or dissipated. By making the most of this organisational learning, businesses and individual managers can use the lessons from the past to ensure their strategy is successful and employees are fully engaged with the process and its objectives.
Where energy is lost
Organisations can lose energy in a number of ways. We have seen cases of friction between different parts when one division would rather do business with an outside firm than with another division of the same company, because they do not see the benefit of working more collaboratively. In cases like this, energy that should go into serving the customer and beating the competition, or achieving wider strategic goals, is instead directed to petty internal rivalry.
Organisational energy can also be lost in pursuing activities that add no value. People in many large organisations feel deluged by showers of projects and initiatives that seem to divert effort from what really counts. Meetings with no point, reports that no one reads and roles with unclear responsibilities, for example, are all easy ways to squander organisational energy.
Office politics are also a frequent cause of lost energy. In many companies, energy can go into playing political games, watching your back and looking good to senior management. Equally, the failure to engage employees, inspire them and help them to enjoy doing their job well can take the edge off the business, slow it down and impact on performance.
The reasons why this happens are unclear; certainly, nobody deliberately creates these situations. However, their very existence blocks sources of organisational energy and, when it comes to a critical process such as strategic planning, it means that strategies are destined to fail right from the start.
Creating energy for strategy
So what can we do to get the strategy planning process off to a more positive start? One solution is to engage your employees in creating and developing their divisional strategies in the context of the business’ broader strategic priorities. This encourages people to think more corporately and overcome silo thinking or their habit of making competitive bids for scarce resources.
How to create energy in strategic planning
- Start from the outcomes your want for customers – these are likely to lead to cross-functional streams of work
- Review the strategy all the time – the world moves quickly and you need to move faster in order to keep ahead
- Help teams take responsibility for their part of the performance – including coming up with good ideas themselves
- Challenge teams to commit only to things they will really do – rather than what they think you want to hear
- Communicate the strategy (and progress towards it) in a compelling way – not just tables, matrices and arrows, but more of stories and pictures
- Take an interest in local plans – ask questions about them when you are with front line teams, ask what you can do to make them successful
- De-risk strategy by tackling the things that often get in the way of success – start delivering, bring people together to solve complex organisational issues in creative ways, make change real and relevant so that it sticks
- Make the link between work and values and behaviours and how they support business goals
Many organisations follow a default strategy planning process that can become disconnected with the new goals of the strategy. To overcome this, be wary of potential pitfalls and review your strategy – particularly where organisational energy can be lost, as discussed above – to identify issues that could distract from the overall focus and to make sure there are no future risks to the strategy being followed through.
Strategic planning in the Environment Agency
The Environment Agency is an organisation that employs over 12,000 people, all highly committed to delivering ambitious outcomes for the environment. When they developed their first corporate strategy over five years ago, they set out to engage staff, stakeholders and the general public in an extensive consultation to ensure it met the aspirations of everyone involved in delivering it successfully.
Five years on and the strategic direction has been redefined using a similar highly involving process to ensure the Agency rises to the challenge of increased public and political focus on environmental concerns as well as making most efficient use of its available resources. As a result, the Environment Agency has recently earned the highest scores in employee awareness of the vision and strategy in a recent UK Investors in Industry evaluation survey.
The Environment Agency first worked with Stanton Marris to clarify a simple core story to support the strategy development process. Showing how the key strands of the strategy all connected with inspirational environmental outcomes was key, as staff surveys had demonstrated that people working for the Agency were proud of their commitment to making a difference to the environment.
In addition, a series of employee workshops were held to enable people to articulate what the high level environmental outcomes mean for them at a local level – literally in their locality, which made the lofty ambition real and personal. By training the leaders of those events to share best practice and champion the outcomes, they developed the confidence to follow a consistent approach that was tailored for particular audiences. As a result, the Environment Agency’s strategic direction and plans are based on the reality of what can be delivered in local areas and regions, yet also built on their own local vision, knowledge and ambition
In the process of developing the new strategy, people talked passionately about what can get in the way of delivery. This data was captured and used subsequently to frame the organisational development, cultural and behavioural changes required to deliver the outcomes successfully – both locally and nationally. Articulating the changes in language that people can relate to, constantly making the links between achieving the vision and the daily frustrations that can experience in ‘getting the job done’ is now being used as a powerful motivator for strategic change.
A new mindset for strategic planning
We like to compare the strategic planning process with the production process in staging a play. Clearly, early effort goes into writing the script but the play cannot be appreciated until a team interprets it and brings it to life. You need a talented producer but the full impact and enjoyment of the production is only realised through the involvement and talent of a wide group of people – all those who have a role to play in making it a success – from actors to wardrobe managers and lighting engineers. Keep this idea in mind when you rethink your strategic planning process and your strategy will also become an inspired performance, rather than a chore.
')";>')";>Virginia Merritt is managing partner at organisational performance experts Stanton Marris. Stanton Marris combines strategy and people expertise in a completely different kind of consultancy - the only one of its kind focused purely on making strategy work. By working with the politics, personalities, behaviours and processes, breaking down barriers and making the most of what’s going well, Stanton Marris helps clear the path to results.
For more information on Stanton Marris, please visit www.stantonmarris.com.
