GROW

The employee experience needs to adapt to the employee life cycle

September 2, 2017By Mike Hohnen

The classical way to define the employee life cycle is: attract, recruit, onboard, develop, retain and transition. But that is the HR perspective, not the employee’s perspective. And as good service designers, we know that we need to consider the perspective of the ‘customer’ or user if we are going to be successful with our journey/experience design.

The life cycle will vary from industry to industry and of course from employee to employee. So good experience design would require that we do more research on this, in order to understand what it looks like in our case.

But here is what it might look like from an employee’s perspective.

Is this for me?
Attracted to a job proposition and wondering if it is for me.

Will I make it?
Entering into the application, selection, interview, and final negotiation process.

I made it!
The excitement of being chosen and starting the new job. Flooded with new impressions and ‘firsts’.The lunch canteen is amazing. Loving the attention I get as a newbie. (Or so one hopes.)

Am I good enough for this?
The first feelings of being overwhelmed. Am I good enough for this? Imposter syndrome. Do I belong here? Is this really for me? Feeling very much outside my comfort zone. Should I bail out and limit the damage?

Challenging but do-able
Feeling more secure in the saddle. Challenged and on the edge of my comfort zone, but in an exciting way. Giving the job everything that I have, and enjoying it.

Cruising – no sweat
The daily routine sets in, and most of what I do is well within my comfort zone. (Canteen is not nearly as nice as when I started.) Engagement may start to regress, through lack of challenges.

Is this it?
The first doubts start creeping in. I am always well within my (now shrinking*) comfort zone. This is no longer meaningful for me

From here there are two options: change your job or stagnate completely.

Experiences are all about managing customers’ emotions, as we have seen in previous blog posts on the subject of Service Design Thinking. The same principle applies to employee experience design. We need to understand the emotions that the employee is going through at each stage of the cycle.

When we review the above life cycle it becomes clear that the overall principle we need to look at is where people are in terms of comfort zones. Growth and development are keys to engagement and enthusiasm. But learning and growth happen just outside our comfort zone. We have the misconception that if we do the same thing for a long time we will get better and better at it. Not true. Research shows that, if anything, we stagnate or regress*. (Could you pass a driving test today? Probably not. See what I mean?) In order to get better we need to challenge ourselves and make a deliberate effort to improve. On the other hand, if we get too far outside our comfort zone we trigger fear, and then all learning and development stops as we move into “fight or flight” mode.

Engagement is essentially the product of the accumulated emotional experience. It is what we in a service profit chain terminology would call content. It is different from context (environment, salary and work conditions), which forms the basis of satisfaction but does not produce engagement. We can all have tricky and less than satisfying days, just as we can have fabulous days. But over time the key to engagement is: is this meaningful for me overall? Do I regularly find that I am at the edge my comfort zone, in a constructive and challenging way?

So the key to engagement and retention is to create an environment where the employee can safely switch back and forth between “challenging but do-able” and “cruising, no sweat” modes.

When looking at the employee life cycle in this way, it also becomes clear that as a manager you have a huge responsibility to know where your employee is in the cycle, and to do what you can to support that person in the best possible way. And that may even include helping an employee to move on to a new and more challenging position, if you have no more challenges to offer.

Who gets the last chef?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Who gets the last chef?

That was the title of my presentation for a group of managers last week. The title was inspired by a number of conversations that I have been having with clients during 2016. (You can substitute ‘Chef’ for the type of critical position that is part of your current reality.)

Reflecting on those conversations, I realised that there has been a common thread through most of them.

They have all been concerned with:

The lack of bench strength on their management teams
The scarcity of new talent

On a day to day basis, this is not so obvious, and therefore it’s not a high priority; but it hits them every time a key team member needs to be replaced. First, they realise that there is no obvious no.2 who has been groomed for the job. Secondly, when they start the search, they quickly understand that there is not a lot of talents available out there.

Problem is that once they realise this, it’s a bit late to do much about it other than pray…

And honestly, are they going to get the cream of the crop in that situation? Probably not. Most likely, they will get what is left over. It’s like purchasing a second hand car. You are essential taking over someone else’s problem.

Why?

Because the smartest of your colleagues out there have understood the problem a long time ago and have been working strategically with their HR development.

They don’t start thinking about who is going to replace the head chef on the day that he resigns.

They have a strategy to be the preferred employer in their area and an important part of that is a proactive strategy for succession planning. That means that when they recruit or promote someone to the position of, say sous-chef, they ask themselves does this person have the potential to become a chef one day, or is this just a good cook who just might make it as a half decent sous-chef? If that is the case, we have created a problem with a time release.

Part of being a preferred employer is being recognised as an organisation where employees can learn, develop and grow. And in order for that to happen, someone needs to take charge of developing, coaching and mentoring.

If you are a manager, that someone is you.

But this is an actually quite challenge for most managers. In fact, it is one of six key challenges that managers have in common across borders, hierarchies and professions, according to research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership.

Developing, coaching and mentoring team members also happens to be one more of the leadership attributes that our current series on defining management and leaderships is about.

So let’s start off by understanding how do people actually learn and develop in the job situation?

According to a much quoted piece of research also by the Center for Creative Leadership*, lessons learned by successful and effective managers are roughly:

70% from challenging assignments
20% from developmental relationships
10% from coursework and training

The authors of the research explain it like this:

Development generally begins with a realisation of current or future need and the motivation to do something about it. This might come from feedback, a mistake, watching other people’s reactions, failing or not being up to a task – in other words, from experience. The odds are that development will be about 70% from on-the-job experiences – working on tasks and problems; about 20% from feedback and working around good and bad examples of the need; and 10% from courses and reading.

We can support learning and development through courses and training sessions, absolutely, but at the end of the day, it can only be support for what is actually going on in the day to day job situation. That is where the real learning takes place; which is why the immediate manager plays such a key role in the development of team members.

In the coming blog posts, we are going to explore this crucial leadership competence and what you need to do in practical terms.

*Lombardo, Michael M; Eichinger, Robert W (1996). The Career Architect Development Planner (1st ed.). Minneapolis: Lominger. p. iv. ISBN 0-9655712-1-1.

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This post is one of a series where we are exploring the notion of leadership and how this is different from management. Our starting point is the Service Profit Chain and the understating that the management part of our job will only take us so far. If we really want to create an organisation that is capable of delivering outstanding customer experiences, we need to develop an organisation that delivers outstanding employee experiences – and that requires leadership. You can check out other articles of the series below:

What is the gap between your capability and your desired results?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Capability Result gap

The research is pretty clear – personal growth and development are key factors in creating engagement on the job.

If we are lucky, we have a job situation where continuous learning and development is built into the culture. But in my experience, this is definitely not always the case.

So if no one else is looking out for your growth and development then maybe you should take it into your own hands – if not you, who else?

In order for us to develop and grow as human beings – and managers – some forms of learning probably need to take place.

But what does it mean to learn?

One definition that I like is this one:

“To learn is to increase your capacity to accomplish the results that you desire.”

Think about that for a moment.

What does it take for us to learn then?

For learning actually to happen, there must be a gap between your current capability and the results that you desire.

This makes it all a bit trickier. Because that means that in order for learning to actually take place, you will need to:

have an awareness of the the gap
be willing to declare your incompetence (at least to yourself)
commit to learning

So your first step here is to start the search for appropriate gaps between current capability and desired performance.

There are several ways to start thinking about this. But let’s start with the very big picture – and draw a 2×2 matrix.

On one axis, we have you as an individual versus the organisation; On the other, we have the internal vs the external perspective.

learning

This then gives us four large areas to choose from:

1) My internal drive, attitudes and motivation. How I choose to see and understand the world – This will, to a very large extent, determine how the world responds to me.

2) How I relate and connect to people around me – Strong interpersonal dynamic is a key to succeeding in any kind of managerial role.

3) My knowledge of an ability to shape the culture that I am part of – Culture eats strategy for breakfast remember.

4) My understating of an ability to influence the myriad of external stakeholders , customers, supplier, partners etc.

So take a moment now to reflect.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your achievements in each of these four overall areas? Where do you see a gap between your current capability and the results that you desire?

I leave you with these thoughts for now – next week, we will continue our exploration of how we can take responsibility for our own growth and development.

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If you have the curiosity to take a deeper dive into the subject of how we produce engagement on our teams, you are welcome to download my ebook Understanding Engagement.

Enter your email below and download the ebook now!

In this brief e-book, we will look at how the lack of engagement is to a large extent a function of leadership. And that if we really want to change the engagement levels on our teams, we will need to make radical shift in how we understand the world of work. The shift is all about moving from a transactional mindset to a transformational mindset. We will look into what that means, how it can help you as a manager and why it is so important.

SeeBeDo

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

I have been reading “Building the bridge as you walk on it” by Robert E. Quinn. It’s a lovely book. What struck me the most and what has been going round in my head for a while since reading the book is this very simple statement:

“Management is what we do. Leadership is who we are.”

So from that perspective, all this talk about leadership tools and training misses the point. What we need to talk about is what it takes to develop a healthy leadership state.

And that made me go back and dig out some writings by Doug Silsbee. He has a lovely acronym SeeBeDo that reminds us that the way we choose – and it is a choice – to see things, influences the way we are. Our state. And the state that we are in will influence our actions. And our actions determine the outcomes that we get in life.

A simple example: The way I drive on the day I have all the time in the world, meandering through the countryside on the first spring day, is different from when I am late for the airport and traffic is dense in the rain. And the way behaviour shows up comes out most obviously in how I behave towards other people.

I expect that you can imagine for yourself the two different scenarios and the two different types of driving behaviour that are the result. I say no more.

But the implication of this line of thought is that my driving style is at the mercy of the circumstances that I happen to be in. Ultimately, that means I see myself as either a lucky guy out for a drive in the countryside, or as a victim of bad weather and crowed motorways and I behave accordingly.

Ouch…..

I don’t need more driving lessons – that is not the point – I need to learn to manage my states.

The first step in managing my states is to examine closer how I choose to see what goes on around me. The state that I am in is driven by the way I choose to perceive the situation.

Neuroscience has documented this very well; we are what we give our attention to. Whatever we hold in our mind unconsciously influences what we can notice and focus on – and maybe more importantly, what we are unable to notice and focus on. This too has been well documented in “the Gorilla on the court” experiments.

So to what extend are we conscious of what we are holding in our mind? And is what we are holding in our mind supportive of the leadership responsibility before us or is it getting in the way, possibly even hindering us in understanding what is truly going on?

As always I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic. Feel free to leave your comments below and let me know what you think.

The future of leadership in a web 3.0 world

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

There seems to be and emerging realization that the same way that social media have changed the way we think and do communication, advertising and PR, Social Media will inevitably also change the way we lead and the way we think about what leadership is.

We will see a new leadership role that will include all of what we already do and know – but that will also add completely new dimensions to what we have hitherto perceived as the leadership role.

A few sites and studies have recently caught my attention on this subject:

The Bertelsmann Foundation has published a report under the title “Web 2.0 and Leadership” – you will find it here.

From the introduction I quote:

“Need for a new leadership paradigm.

In the two decades of rising Web impact, the need for a new paradigm for leadership has become more and more apparent. Seven indicators of this needed shift are:
Leadership as an activity rather than a role
Leadership as a collective phenomenon
Need for individual leaders at higher levels of development
From organization-centric to network-centric leadership
From organizations as ?machines? to organizations as ?organisms?
From planning and controlling to learning and adapting
From Generation X to Generation Y

The paradigm that was dominant until at least the early 1990s assumed that leadership highlighted the dynamic between designated ?leaders? and ?followers? pursuing shared goals. At its best this paradigm allowed for participatory and shared leadership, but inevitably singled out the lone leader as a key player, tacitly reinforcing deeply-rooted myths around the importance of ?heroic? individual leaders and the usefulness of ?command and control? styles of leading.

While situations will continue to exist that are well-suited to this approach, it has become obvious that in the world that is emerging, the leadership resulting from this paradigm is increasingly limited.

A new leadership paradigm seems to be emerging with an inexorable shift away from one-way, hierarchical, organization-centric communication toward two-way, network-centric, participatory, and collaborative leadership styles. Most of all a new mindset seems necessary, apart from new skills and knowledge. All the tools in the world will not change anything if the mindset does not allow and support change.”

PriceWaterhouse a while back already published the report ‘How leadership must change to meet the future’ its conclusion came back to me when thinking of this subject :

“The strategic revolutions in today’s rapidly changing business environment clearly mandate a new leadership framework. To capitalize on developing trends and drive future success, organizations must begin building leadership strength now in the four leadership success quotients: agility, authenticity, talent, and sustainability.

But the formula for achieving leadership success is a moving target.

The leadership success quotients will evolve. Nevertheless, complacency is not an option. To quote an executive from our CEO survey, “Global trends are hitting faster, harder, and wider, with results that can be both exhilarating and devastating for companies, industries, and entire regions.
”The winners of tomorrow will be those organizations with strong leaders who demonstrate agility, authenticity, connectivity to their talent, and sustainability. They will use their skills to remain at the ready, anticipate and harness the power of change, and stay ahead of the shifting business environment.”

And finally I discovered a the blog of Ann Holman yesterday where she has published a post entitled “The emergence of social leadership”’

“If our customers and employees are demanding social experiences, social networking, social marketing, collaboration, co creation, connection, attention and a very human, intimate relationships with our organizations, our leadership style, behavior and delivery is going to have to modify and refine itself considerably. Future leaders will not direct the work but enable and facilitate the new skills people are acquiring.”

and then the follow up post from Ann Leadership in 2011 and beyond….

… leaders of the future no matter what product or service they offer, what geographical location or industry or sector, are going to need to have in depth, responsive and critical skills in enabling and facilitating its employees and customers to ‘bang their heads together’ on a regular basis.”

That means that future leaders will need to master the 4C’s:

Content – customers become creators as do employees

Collaboration – refers to the idea that social media facilitates the aggregation of small individual actions into meaningful collective results. Collective action goes one step further and uses online engagement to initiate meaningful action. Collective action can take the form of signing online petitions, fundraising, tele-calling, or organizing an offline protest or event.

Community – Most people understand that a community that has a large number of members (size) who have strong relationships and frequent interactions with each other (strength) is better than a community that doesn’t. However, a community is more than the sum total of its members and their relationships.
People don’t build relationships with each other in a vacuum. A vibrant community is built around a social object that is meaningful for its members. The social object can be a person, a place, a thing or an idea.

Collective Intelligence – refers to the idea that the social web enables us to not only aggregate individual actions, but also run sophisticated algorithms on them and extract meaning from them. The great thing about collective intelligence is that it becomes easier to extract meaning from a community as the size and strength of the community grow. If the collective intelligence is then shared back with the community, the members find more value in the community, and the community grows even more, leading to a virtuous cycle.

And if you want to take and even deeper dive – I can recommend reading “The power of Pull” and keeping and eye out for John Hagels blogs posts at edgeperspectives …

Something is defiantly cooking… ( Finally .. ;-) )

What a way to end the year

December 18, 2009By Mike Hohnen

We wrapped up this year with a great After Action Review for Berendsen Textil. The final workshop in their 12 week GROW Leadership program. I shall look forward to continuing working with Berendsen in the coming year they are a great bunch of lovely people with a passion for what they do!

Hvad driver medarbejder tilfredshed?

April 21, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Børsen Executive har et tillæg om medarbejder tilfredshed og bundlinie fredag den 2. maj – og for ivrige læsere af the Service Profit Chain er der jo ikke noget nyt i det. Men én ting hæftede jeg mig ved, som er rigtig vigtigt at forstå, og som vi ofte glemmer eller misforstår:

“… og banken kan også konstatere, at det væsentligste gashåndtag i personalepolitikken er at gøre det daglige arbejde så attraktivt som muligt. Hverken løn eller personalegoder kan kompensere for det, forklarer Lars Mørch.

»Alle medarbejdere bør have en klar definition af, hvad de skal arbejde med – fra de kommer, til de går hjem om aftenen. Men desværre er det ikke det, der intuitivt ligger cheferne lige for. For mange chefer handler det mere om selv at blive mere populær på arbejdspladsen, tilbyde teambuilding, eller hvad de nu kan finde på. Men det væsentligste er, at medarbejderne har nogle spændende arbejdsopgaver, at opgaverne bliver serveret på en ordentlig måde, og at man får den support, der skal til for at løse dem på det kvalitative niveau, som man gerne vil løse dem på,« siger Lars Mørch.

Jobglæden ligger altså i opgaven man skal løse – ikke i en masse udenomsflimmer!

Amen !

Diplomleder – afslutning modul I

May 17, 2016By Mike Hohnen

[lang_da]Før vi fik set os om var vi nået til afslutningen – 18 hotel og restaurant ledere fra Danske Konferencecentre har gennemført det første af seks mulige moduler på diplomlederuddannelsen, som vi i øjeblikket gennemfører i samarbjde med University of Chester.

På den sidste workshop havde vi fokus på rekapitulering af stoffet. En gruppe havde valgt at skrive en sang – og synge den for os – for at anskueliggøre hvordan TMS-hjulet fungere i prakis.

En anden trio valgte at vise, hvordan mennesker med forskellige læringsstile går til en ny madopskrift.

Sidst men ikke mindst stillede Lothar Friis trioerne en ‘opgave’ i teamwork og problemløsning. Resultatet var interessant ;-)

30 Januar går holdet løs på Modul 2 – vi skal arbejde med the Service Profit Chain og begrebet værdi. Hvordan skaber man værdi i en service virksomhed – og ikke mindst hvad er værdi for hvem?

Det bliver spændende at følge dem på næste trin.
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