By Garth A. Jordan (@nonduesdudes)
The fact is, most employees are not nearly as engaged as you want. That’s a statistical likelihood. And that hurts your income.
Employee engagement can be described in a number of ways. For example:
The fact is, most employees are not nearly as engaged as you want. That’s a statistical likelihood. And that hurts your income.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t respond well to employee disengagement. Blame can get tossed about, sometimes followed by flailing or shallow HR solutions and knee-jerk “don’t worry, be happy” bromide-laden communications from leaders. When you stare deep into the eyes of statistics, however, you’ll find there is almost always a cultural issue at the center that takes patience to work through.
Could horizontal management help with company culture and employee engagement? I thought that question would be fun to explore after my last post. So I’ll start where Simon Sinek so deftly suggests – with WHY.
Why?
WHY might a leader want to think and act in ways that promote team interdependence, adaptability, and resiliency through horizontal management?
More directly, WHY might a leader eschew the traditional hierarchies and cultures that have been in place in business for over a century to try something: where you “lose control” that you’ve 'earned' over the years; that doesn’t follow the cozy blueprint of the prototypical organizational chart; and that is likely to fail the first time you try it?
Top-down hierarchy is the most widely used of all organizational management structures and styles. This rigid style of setting goals, managing people and controlling specific work responsibilities has changed little over the years and is documented to lead directly to any number of the following workplace woes:
Just one of these general outcomes might be deemed unsavory and a rational reason to change. But get ensnared in a few at once, and it’s no wonder why old-fashioned organizational management structures experience more challenged bottom-lines.
Research by Aon Hewitt tells us lack of employee engagement and the resulting loss of potential income is a global issue, averaging 60%, worldwide. And the scary result is that "companies with low engagement results see operating income decline by 32%," according to Towers-Perrin ISR Employee Engagement Report.
I’ve heard leaders say they want to achieve 80% engagement. That's a super BHAG (big hairy audacious goal). But many don’t do anything remarkably different to get there. Sure, some try introducing a “new kind” of staff meeting, a restructuring or two (or three or four), a CEO video fireside chat, and/or some transparently-postured HR programs, etc. But many attempts simply fall short of what must be done to authentically and intellectually engage human beings.
It’s time for more profound action.
Contemporary horizontal approaches to management purposefully design flexible structures and cultural attachments that emphasize interdependent teams, cohesion, conversation, participatory workflows and decisions, entrepreneurialism, focus, alignment, and respect for diversity over the stiffness of our top-down past. The intent is to generate a positive, long-lasting impact with employees and move the needle forward on trust, although the transition can be difficult for leaders who feel a loss of control or staff who struggle with the new paradigm.
Companies that demonstrate the patience (which includes a sincere allegiance to learning through failure) to adopt and embrace even just a few basics of horizontal leadership have proven to become more innovative, adaptable and resilient.
Take Pixar. Its first two operating principles are exceedingly horizontal: (a) everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone and (b) it must be safe for anyone to offer ideas. Pixar's staff is highly engaged because the simplicity of these two principles:
The emphasis on culture and engagement is at Pixar's core:
It’s the heart of our model, giving people opportunities to fail together and to recover from mistakes together. You can try to out-spend the competition. Or you can try to out-culture them. Create a place that makes employees feel special. A place that makes them feel like they’re part of a bigger whole. A place where they continually get to learn and evolve. A place where everyone actually likes each other. If you create a culture like that, who would want to leave? Plus, you’ll get the best minds out there knocking on your door to get in. - Randy Nelson
Just watch one of Pixar's brilliant movies. Based on their product, I'd say it works.
The other good news is that an engaged workforce often leads to improved productivity and higher revenue, along with a host of other benefits. According to research from Psychometrics Canada , an engaged employee:
And critically, "companies with an engaged workforce improve operating incomes by 19%." Towers-Perrin ISR Employee Engagement Report.
Every book, research article, and practitioner of horizontal management that I’ve encountered strives first and foremost toward building principles, values and structures that drive engagement, whereas, like it or not, top-down structures were built for control - the antithesis of engagement.
Some history.
Just take a look at where vertical hierarchy and command-and-control came from and its original intent.
Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote The Principles of Scientific Management for the needs of the Industrial Age, birthing our omnipresent drive for efficiency. From Taylor's methods, our box-over-box organization structures were neatly constructed. "At each level, managers would examine objectives, break them apart into separate tasks, and farm these out in discrete packages." (from Team of Teams - General Stanley McChrystal (ret.) To be even more brutish, Taylor's management science was summarized 100 years ago by the reductionist mantra:
"We have other men paid for thinking."
Wow. How engaging.
Why do we continue to work under a model (a) so clearly designed for the purpose of control and (b) that results in the disengagement of so many people? Professionals in healthcare, sports and IT (just to name a few) are not afraid to regularly shed "old ways" in order to adopt the latest technology and training advances in their disciplines to continuously improve. I believe business leaders should follow suit in the application of management practices.
Horizontal management is by nature employee-centric. Its heart is about valuing input - quite the opposite of our old buddy Taylor's mantra. It endeavors for everyone to reach his or her full potential through:
In short, horizontal management is about teams becoming central to your culture and strategy – not products, not slick campaigns, not images and not leaders' personas. The strategy is about teams and employees. So it runs deep and takes time. And, bluntly, if the human-centric qualities of horizontal management alone aren’t convincing enough to make us think about changing our ways, then the fact that the money follows should make the remainder of us converts.
My challenge to you.
All that said, I’ve chosen a new personal leadership WHY…I hope you like it:
I believe in unlocking revenue and driving innovation through horizontal leadership that's focused on absolute employee engagement.
It's time to rev-up revenue and employee engagement through horizontal leadership. To all you leaders out there, I ask that you give it a shot - if only on a small scale. Failure to continuously try, fail, learn, and improve upon leadership is not leadership.
Be bold. But be patient. We need to smash and redesign a century's worth of management practices. It will take time for all of us to learn to thrive together.
The fact is, most employees are not nearly as engaged as you want. That’s a statistical likelihood. And that hurts your income.
Employee engagement can be described in a number of ways. For example:
- Gallup: [Engaged employees] work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They [not just executives] drive innovation and move the organization forward.
- Hay Group: [Engaged employees offer] discretionary effort – their willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty or go the extra mile for the organization.
- Dan Pontefract in Flat Army: [Employee engagement is] the state in which there is reciprocal trust between the employee and leadership to do what’s right however, whenever and with whomever.
The fact is, most employees are not nearly as engaged as you want. That’s a statistical likelihood. And that hurts your income.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t respond well to employee disengagement. Blame can get tossed about, sometimes followed by flailing or shallow HR solutions and knee-jerk “don’t worry, be happy” bromide-laden communications from leaders. When you stare deep into the eyes of statistics, however, you’ll find there is almost always a cultural issue at the center that takes patience to work through.
Could horizontal management help with company culture and employee engagement? I thought that question would be fun to explore after my last post. So I’ll start where Simon Sinek so deftly suggests – with WHY.
Why?
WHY might a leader want to think and act in ways that promote team interdependence, adaptability, and resiliency through horizontal management?
More directly, WHY might a leader eschew the traditional hierarchies and cultures that have been in place in business for over a century to try something: where you “lose control” that you’ve 'earned' over the years; that doesn’t follow the cozy blueprint of the prototypical organizational chart; and that is likely to fail the first time you try it?
Top-down hierarchy is the most widely used of all organizational management structures and styles. This rigid style of setting goals, managing people and controlling specific work responsibilities has changed little over the years and is documented to lead directly to any number of the following workplace woes:
- Organizational silos
- Power-grabbing leaders
- Inefficient bureaucracy
- Reduced employee morale
- Stifled employee involvement in discussions and decisions
- Lack of employee ownership
- Less-than-desirable workplace environments for people who aspire to work above-and-beyond the constraints of their job description to help their organization
- Ineffectual hub-and-spoke communication
- Disconnects between leadership and staff
Just one of these general outcomes might be deemed unsavory and a rational reason to change. But get ensnared in a few at once, and it’s no wonder why old-fashioned organizational management structures experience more challenged bottom-lines.
Research by Aon Hewitt tells us lack of employee engagement and the resulting loss of potential income is a global issue, averaging 60%, worldwide. And the scary result is that "companies with low engagement results see operating income decline by 32%," according to Towers-Perrin ISR Employee Engagement Report.
I’ve heard leaders say they want to achieve 80% engagement. That's a super BHAG (big hairy audacious goal). But many don’t do anything remarkably different to get there. Sure, some try introducing a “new kind” of staff meeting, a restructuring or two (or three or four), a CEO video fireside chat, and/or some transparently-postured HR programs, etc. But many attempts simply fall short of what must be done to authentically and intellectually engage human beings.
It’s time for more profound action.
Contemporary horizontal approaches to management purposefully design flexible structures and cultural attachments that emphasize interdependent teams, cohesion, conversation, participatory workflows and decisions, entrepreneurialism, focus, alignment, and respect for diversity over the stiffness of our top-down past. The intent is to generate a positive, long-lasting impact with employees and move the needle forward on trust, although the transition can be difficult for leaders who feel a loss of control or staff who struggle with the new paradigm.
Companies that demonstrate the patience (which includes a sincere allegiance to learning through failure) to adopt and embrace even just a few basics of horizontal leadership have proven to become more innovative, adaptable and resilient.
Take Pixar. Its first two operating principles are exceedingly horizontal: (a) everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone and (b) it must be safe for anyone to offer ideas. Pixar's staff is highly engaged because the simplicity of these two principles:
- encourage lateral conversation,
- help people solve problems without going through "proper" vertical channels, and
- build trust by making it safe to offer professional critique. (see this paraphrased HBR article by Ed Catmull for more)
The emphasis on culture and engagement is at Pixar's core:
It’s the heart of our model, giving people opportunities to fail together and to recover from mistakes together. You can try to out-spend the competition. Or you can try to out-culture them. Create a place that makes employees feel special. A place that makes them feel like they’re part of a bigger whole. A place where they continually get to learn and evolve. A place where everyone actually likes each other. If you create a culture like that, who would want to leave? Plus, you’ll get the best minds out there knocking on your door to get in. - Randy Nelson
Just watch one of Pixar's brilliant movies. Based on their product, I'd say it works.
The other good news is that an engaged workforce often leads to improved productivity and higher revenue, along with a host of other benefits. According to research from Psychometrics Canada , an engaged employee:
- Is willing to do more than expected (39%),
- Has higher level of productivity (27%),
- Builds better working relationships (13%), and
- Has more satisfied customers (10%).
And critically, "companies with an engaged workforce improve operating incomes by 19%." Towers-Perrin ISR Employee Engagement Report.
Every book, research article, and practitioner of horizontal management that I’ve encountered strives first and foremost toward building principles, values and structures that drive engagement, whereas, like it or not, top-down structures were built for control - the antithesis of engagement.
Some history.
Just take a look at where vertical hierarchy and command-and-control came from and its original intent.
Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote The Principles of Scientific Management for the needs of the Industrial Age, birthing our omnipresent drive for efficiency. From Taylor's methods, our box-over-box organization structures were neatly constructed. "At each level, managers would examine objectives, break them apart into separate tasks, and farm these out in discrete packages." (from Team of Teams - General Stanley McChrystal (ret.) To be even more brutish, Taylor's management science was summarized 100 years ago by the reductionist mantra:
"We have other men paid for thinking."
Wow. How engaging.
Why do we continue to work under a model (a) so clearly designed for the purpose of control and (b) that results in the disengagement of so many people? Professionals in healthcare, sports and IT (just to name a few) are not afraid to regularly shed "old ways" in order to adopt the latest technology and training advances in their disciplines to continuously improve. I believe business leaders should follow suit in the application of management practices.
Horizontal management is by nature employee-centric. Its heart is about valuing input - quite the opposite of our old buddy Taylor's mantra. It endeavors for everyone to reach his or her full potential through:
- creating and orchestrating structures that foster the right amount of cohesion, separation and alignment in human teams;
- letting go of command-and-control hierarchies and actions;
- involving broader constituencies in the strategic process;
- a genuine interest in creating team-based interdependence;
- a pure dedication to acquiring and using the richly diverse inputs from your workforce; and
- enabling staff talents to thrive by letting loose on their ability to identify and seize new opportunities.
In short, horizontal management is about teams becoming central to your culture and strategy – not products, not slick campaigns, not images and not leaders' personas. The strategy is about teams and employees. So it runs deep and takes time. And, bluntly, if the human-centric qualities of horizontal management alone aren’t convincing enough to make us think about changing our ways, then the fact that the money follows should make the remainder of us converts.
My challenge to you.
All that said, I’ve chosen a new personal leadership WHY…I hope you like it:
I believe in unlocking revenue and driving innovation through horizontal leadership that's focused on absolute employee engagement.
It's time to rev-up revenue and employee engagement through horizontal leadership. To all you leaders out there, I ask that you give it a shot - if only on a small scale. Failure to continuously try, fail, learn, and improve upon leadership is not leadership.
Be bold. But be patient. We need to smash and redesign a century's worth of management practices. It will take time for all of us to learn to thrive together.