Evolutionary Provocateur

Clarity of Core Goal: Risk Management or Community Engagement?

I just came from a meeting with fellow professional facilitators where we traded stories and in the process learn of places where clarity can greatly benefit the players, in this case, a dynamic between facilitator-company-public agency who needs to stamp approved.

I share it here quite simply because it may help inform any one of those 3 parties elsewhere in the world on what the relationship is between core and unconscious action and the potential for unintended consequences.

The situation was a common one. The company wanted to fast track public consultation so they could jump through the hurdle necessary to gain local government approval. Barking at the back heels of the company was a deadline to exercise (or not) their option on a property under consideration for development. Of course, the deadline was sooner than the local public agency approval could ever accomodate in order for the company to pass the public/community involvement step and have the information they needed to inform their decisions.

Here is what i find most interesting because it illustrates the value of personal and professional growth to inform what the underlying factors are that influence decisions and there fore the implications of those decisions. 

Picture the facilitator, not yet hired to do anything, who is listening to both the public agency and the company. The public agency have as their primary focus, community engagement (this is frequently not explicitly stated) and the company who have as their primary focus, risk management. The facilitator's listening skills go beyond the words and pick up the core value of each party. At this point, unless the not-yet-hired facilitator points out the divergence between the two values, and the value of comparing notes, the company will proceed with they see as the short term risk mitigation plan and the public agency will watch with eyes and ears focused on what they value.

Timing imperatives drive the company into doing the minimum that is needed to be done - hold an open house but call it a public meeting. Subtext might read 'Don't want to open the public engagement box too wide in case unhappiness leaks out'. This draws people who either have no idea what the difference is between an open house and a public meeting OR it draws people who have an image and associated expectation for what a public meeting is and are coming to participate. Hmmm....Meanwhile the public agency is standing watching what is not happening as much as what is.

Skill and Competency Based Opportunity: Observe, reflect and compare notes on the implications of short term decision made with the eye focused 1-2 feet ahead of your feet, vis a vis longer term decision made with the eyes on the horizon.

What will work in the end?  Public process is so much a matter of clear and conscious intention, clarity of expecations, consistency of communication and action and timing or context which dictates public touch points for engagement, the intensity and the focus. Community engagement and public participation is part art and part science. Personal and professional growth skills are also part art and part science. The dance between them shows up on the dance floor directly impacting relationships and all events that happen after.

One thing for sure. if the company's effort to mitigate risk by minimizing their own at the front end creates a public backlash down the road, the short term need to mitigate risk will turn into a longer term hot potato unconsciously created by using a narrow lens rather than the long range lens.

Should be interesting!

Employee Disengagement: How did this happen?

“People want to contribute more. But they say their leaders and supervisors put obstacles in their paths” comments Donald Lowman, Towers Perrin HR on a recent survey done on employee engagement (Management Issue News – November, 2005 – www.management-issues.com ).

Put this finding alongside the top ten executive issues sited in a survey done by Accenture (Executive Issues: 2005) and you find:

Strengthening the organization’s human capital:

• attracting and retaining skilled staff,
• changing organizational culture and employee attitudes,
• improving workplace performance and
• developing employees into capable leaders.

It will take a different kind of thinking to get to where the executives say they want to go. The first step requires asking, and being willing to hear the answer: ‘what did we do to disengage them?’

If you aren’t ready for that question, consider these few headlines, (I am a self-confessed clipper which is a problem in an urban apartment!):

• Job satisfaction for women workers in serious decline: June 27, 2005-PersonnelToday.com
• It’s Boring at the top for female executives: May 3^rd, 2005– NY Times

Interestingly, the NY Times article mentions that Proctor and Gamble, ten years before had done a survey asking female high performers why they had left. ‘The answer was that they did not feel valued.’ Similarly, Deloitte surveyed women in the early 1990’s and found that the women who had left were not going home to look after family responsibilities but were working for other companies.

Ten years is a long time for these kinds of signals to be known. To their credit, the companies who dared to ask the questions have since taken action. Still, the current statistics on disengagement suggest that more than women are disengaged and for more than one reason.

To see what is being done invisibly to lose such talent, would mean noticing that employees come to work with their head attached to their body and that in their body is a heart where the passion lies. You would also have to ask (and be ready to hear the answer) whether you are in fact creating an environment where whole brain thinking can be supported. Whole brain thinking, in my brain, includes linear/logical, creative, and lateral thinking. It also includes receptivity for intuitive or ‘gut feel’ guidance.

I have not forgotten a comment made by a professional after I noted, as the facilitator, that the ideas were pretty creative (the topic was related to economics). Her response was that she left her creativity at home.

If you have others in your company, men or women, who leave their creativity at home, it is a pretty safe guess that innovation may be tough to achieve. There is also a relationship to be made between work environments where people are leaving due to burn out. Some judge burn out as people who could not ‘cut’ it. That would assume that those who burnt out did not care. The reality is that their care exceeded what their working environment could support.

We have not talked about the distraction of meeting increasing and competing high demands for caregiving and for working longer and harder. In companies who have not fully grasped the complexity, many who choose to work smarter, leave in order to take charge of the balance they seek.

If there were no limitations and failure was not an option, what would you contribute that you are not currently offering? This question is pertinent to all levels, including the executive suite. Hmmm....how much untapped potential do you think has yet to be released? 

Corporate-Social Responsibility or Profits

An entire issue of the Economist (The Future of Corporate Responsibility - January, 2005) was dedicated to the discussion of whether the two concepts of corporate-social responsibility and profits could be said in the same sentence in a synergistic fashion. The perspectives covered quite a range from the belief that companies, by existing, are meeting all their social responsibilities to whether the societal approval of the corporate-social responsibility as a concept has resulted in truly authentic responses or the appearance as in ‘smoke and mirrors’.

You can find some of the articles on line at www.economist.com.

The point is that it is not about either it is corporate responsibility or it is profit. It is both.

How can that be? I call it a no-brainer but just in case the dots are not connected clearly enough here are a few signals:

• The advent of pandemic diseases is becoming a threat to business. The existence of chronic diseases like HIV, and the full range of cancer, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses trace themselves back to stress or imbalance. To pretend that the health care system will look after it is to pretend it is all looked after. Taking charge of what used to be a social system service is not going to be an option.
• The planet is undergoing some major changes and it is showing up in the weather patterns. The cost to society and to business of natural disasters, such as Katrina, is high. To say social responsibility is not in the corporate job description is to deny that you have people working for you and that you have strengths. The relationship is direct in many cases.
• The cases of bullying, violence and aggression in the workplace express the stress that people are experiencing from a changed business environment. In the cases where the business has not noticed and has maintained a business-as-usual approach, the pressures that the business feels is passed on to employees automatically. The cost to human welfare, to society and to the unrealized value held within the business is high. Flying blind is not an option.

Sticking to using a narrow lens to view the situation is simply too limiting. You need the wide angle version. The entire principle of leadership involves holding two opposing views in balance with each other at the same time. There is plenty of corporate leadership available to tap into. You will find them using the wide angle lens.

Why are Devious Colleagues Devious?

The article in CareerJournal.com entitled 'How Devious Colleagues Can Harm Your Career' compels a comment. First, for those who have not experienced someone sabotaging your workplace efforts or who have not read the article, it speaks to the damage inflicted when a colleague, who normally positions themselves as your friend, sets up rumours about your character or your performance to ensure that they fulfill their ambitions, serve themselves to security or to a heightened reputation, at your expense.

In addition to the work environment promoting dishonesty, witnessed by the promotion of the saboteur and the demotion of their victim, the ‘why’ has to do with personal security and identity. In other words, how what the individual relies upon for personal security and how they define themselves is about external approval and material evidence of status rather than any intrinsic state of security within themselves.

The kind of dishonest behavior aimed at the destruction or undermining of a colleague views fellow workers as ‘competitors’ for position (when the job crunch is on and the playing field changes to survival of the devious) or status, (when by putting others down you will improve your chances of being promoted up or appearing to be competent). IF the work environment rewards the latter, then the work environment is designed for ethical failure and breakdown. It is also designed to squeeze out honest employees and retain those who have learned how to play the game.

To me, at the heart of it, these behaviors exhibit extreme cases of needing a high level of social or societal approval. It reflects the absence of security in one’s own talent and a reliance on external trappings, material possessions like the size of office, make of car, or suit designer for security and status.

The cost is high.

In addition to losing talent who were manipulated out of the picture and productive contribution (simply through loss of reputation never mind the loss of heart and disempowerment), the company is also no where near tapping into the potentially productive energy that is currently being channeled into counterproductive activity. Do the math….and the case for redefining the security of individuals from their intrinsic value becomes a high value opportunity.