"We hired a new CEO, but had to let him go after just seven months," the chairman of an East Coast think tank complained to me recently. "His resume looked spectacular, he did splendidly in all the interviews. But within a week or two we were hearing pushback from the staff. They were telling us, 'You hired a first-rate economist with zero social intelligence.' He was pure command and control."
via blogs.hbr.org
This paragraph captures the essence of employee engagement today. It's a ride made bumpy by the different terrains: the employees, the executives, the new hires and some legacy habits of organizational behavior.
Let's review the players and their terrain:
The Chairman, ie, Hiring Manager.
His first habit appears to be leader, decision-maker, on top of a top-down command-and-control hierarchy. Hiring in isolation, his blind spots dominate. He hires an image of himself: spectacular resume', splendid conversationalist, the Decider so his self-confidence is supreme, pure command and control . So, is his lack of listening skills.
BUT...he's learning. Within a week or two we were hearing pushback from the staff.
The Employees. Left out of the hiring process, they still speak up. They insist The Chairman, etal, listen to their experiences.
And, they're learning their opinion is important enough that they should be included in this hiring process and others.
And they're learning how to engage around delicate issues like a hiring mistake.
The New Hire. His terrain in this example may be the most challenging. The setback from an early dismissal is significant. But so is the learning opportunity.
- What type of organization fits his skillset best?
- Make sure you have buy-in from all the stakeholders in the next position.
For most organizations, this is the bumpy ride. Ok, for most of us this is the bumpy ride in this time of change. This bumpy ride is so common and been bumping us so long it's like chronic pain. Our survival mechanism enables us to compartmentalize the pain. Denial, excuses, cynicism, disengagement, misaligned incentives, top-down hierarchies all designed to hide the loss of opportunities, innovations, excitement and yes failures with soul-sucking comforts.
The one stakeholder missing from this bumpy ride's narrative is...
The Customer. And that's common for companies who still bounce on the bumpy ride, comfortably numb as Pink Floyd would say. But for this company, for this kind of conversation, I could see the customers returning. And soon becoming advocates or evangelists.
Is there a bottomline to this post? Sure. We're all learning. Every bump on this road to engaging and participating, listening and disrupting or innovating, and there are many...they're just wake up calls, little bitty learning moments. Just keep listening, keep talking, keep participating. I think pretty soon the road's pavement will get smooth again.
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