Excel at employee engagement using group methods

Engagement is a hot topic for leaders today.  This increase can be explained quite simply: Organizations are getting far better business results, and the numbers back it up.

Numerous Gallup poll statistics show that engaged workplaces have better performance than non-engaged workplaces.  A 2010 McKinsey & Co. report identified cocreation, collaboration, and employee engagement as being key success factors for organizational transformations.  And Gallup has even put a number on the cost of disengaged workers in the United States.  A whopping $300 billion per year.  Wow.

But how to engage employees is a skill not typically taught most business schools.  And for most companies it’s still glaringly absent from their leadership development courses.  For these reasons many leaders are turning to pre-developed templates that have been used successfully in the past for employee engagement.  These templates – often called group methods --  usually contain an agenda (which can be customized), principles for facilitating it, and pre- and post-even conditions that need to be present for it to be successful.

Here are a handful of some group methods I’ve used extensively, and achieved excellent results with.  All these methods focus on producing high levels of collaboration and merging of diverse perspectives.  Each has links to additional details if you’d like to find out more.  I’ve organized the methods into three general categories, based on what they’re used for in the context of my work:

Category	Purpose	Methods described
Planning	To stimulate collective thinking to develop plans, goals, and implementation plans.	Search Conference, Appreciative Inquiry, and Scenario Planning.  Additional details…
Higher quality decisions	To stimulate collective thinking for better decisions.	World Café, Dialogue, Organization Workshop, Visual Explorer.  Additional details…
Directly improve operational results	To stimulate collective thinking for directly improving operational results.	WorkOut, Participative Design Workshop, and After Action Review.  Additional details…

Three quick notes:

These are some of the methods that I use most frequently from the book The Change Handbook.  There over 60 great methods in that book, and I’m just presenting a handful here that I have used.

I’ve categorized the methods in these blogs based on the way that I personally use them.  Others might organize these in different ways based on their uses.  These are versatile methods, and different practitioners may use them in quite different ways, and also get great results.  I encourage you to experiment once you start down this path.

It’s important to note here that these templates are used periodically on an event basis, not on a day-to-day basis.  Daily leadership behaviors are an important part of an overall engagement strategy as well as these group methods.  We’ll cover the daily behaviors that leaders can use for engagement in a separate blog.

Higher quality decisions through group methods

Through the use of structured and semi-structured conversations, these group methods help people identify important patterns and develop insights that they would typically NOT be able to develop without some sort of collective thinking and conversation.

Group method	This method…
World Café	is a conversation-based process that provides a platform for highly effective group dialogue around complex issues.  Participants move from table to table after a series of questions and the group builds upon knowledge mined/developed from each subsequent round of questions.  More…
Dialogue	Surfaces key participant assumptions in a safe environment of suspended beliefs so the later decisions can be made and actions develop to implement them.  More…
Organization Workshop	is a group learning session in which participants experience universal conditions, traps, and dilemmas of organizational life, and learn effective ways to deal with them.  The foundation template focuses on “spaces”  -- Tops, Middles, Bottoms and Customers – in an organizational system, and specific organization issues can be loaded into the workshop and addressed.  More…
Visual Explorer	uses images to engage people in creative conversations and deep dialogues.  It’s a versatile tool that can be used for a variety of topics, and it typically draws out insights not thought to be possible at the start of the event.  More…

Directly improve operational results through group methods

These group methods draw on people’s collective thinking to improve their organizational unit’s performance at work.  

In the first of these methods – WorkOut -- the focus is on process improvements, such as streamlined the workflow.  In the second method the focus is on organizational structure, increasing day-to-day engagement, and increasing organizational energy to achieve the strategy.  In the third method the focus is at the project level – both how to improve outcomes from the ones that participants are working on, and also how to make future improvements to make similar ones go better the next time they’re executed.

Group method	This method…
WorkOut	Bestows upon employees in an organizational unit the eligibility – which they may have had little of before –  to identify high-leverage improvement suggestions and develop action plans to implement them.  Employees are provided several briefings to assist them with tools and principles for their improvement recommendations. After employees have developed solutions their immediate managers are required to give a quick yes or no for the idea, and then provide ongoing support for implementation.  More…
Participative Design Workshop	Bestows upon employees in an organizational unit the eligibility to redesign their organizational unit into self-managing teams.  Employees are provided several briefings to assist them with tools and principles for their organizational redesign work.  More…
After Action Review	Provides space, time, and training to employees to conduct a systematic analysis of what went well and what went poorly for a particular project or other endeavor (such as a product launch), and how to improve the next time one is encountered.  More…

WorkOut -- An Overview

WorkOut is a group method that engages people to tear down bureaucracy, improve key processes, and improve customer relationships.  It originated at General Electric in the late 1980s and has yielded dramatic results in a variety of operational settings.

 

Key outcomes

• Prioritized areas to work on
• Clear objectives with measurable goals
• Action plans and an accountability system for monitoring implementation of the recommendations
• Improved trust relationships between workers and management when worker ideas are implemented.

Sample client uses

WorkOuts produce great results in a wide variety of environments.  In a growth-oriented electronics company we used the method to reduce the time required to design and bring new products to market by 40%.  In a consumer packaging company we used it to reduce shipping and stocking costs by 28%.  In a pharmaceutical company we used it to improve the speed and efficiency of their clinical trials process.

 

Time investment

Preparation time: 1-4 weeks

Session time: 1 to 3 days

Follow-up: 2- 4 months

 

Number of participants 

20-100 participants 

 

General flow

The session starts with a group of cross-functional people who brainstorm potential areas for improvement.  The large group breaks into smaller subgroups and analyzes the issues and develops recommendations.  Often they use tools such as Asking Why 5 Times to Determine a Root Cause of a Problem, process maps, or simply looking at unnecessary reports and meetings that are currently occurring.  People develop recommendations, and then present them to senior management, who must give a yes/no decision on the spot (if a recommendation needs research a decision still needs to be made quickly, usually within one week).  When a recommendations is approved, the team spends the rest of the time developing action plans to get results within 90 days, and also develops an accountability system to make sure the recommendation is implemented.

 

For more information

Additional information is available in The Change Handbook (Holman, Devane, & Cady, 1999, 2004).  The WorkOut chapter can be obtained economically by just purchasing the WorkOut chapter of The Change Handbook.  Other great sources of information are the Schaffer & Associates website and and a second site.   

 

This is but one method of several highlighted that provides a template for engaging employees to collectively develop robust, sustainable solutions.  A list of these other methods and an accompanying brief description can be found in the blog entry Excel at employee engagement methods...

After Action Review -- An Overview

An After Action Review is a group method in which participants gather to examine the difference between intended results and those that were achieved.  Most often used with teams because the participants have experienced a common challenge together, After Action reviews can be conducted throughout a project (to help make mid-course corrections as necessary), as well as at the end of a project (to help future people who do similar projects).  For example, one might be held for a product launch team, or for a department that did not meet its goals, or for a Lean Six Sigma quality improvement team three months after their process changes have been implemented.

 

Key outcomes 

• Adjustments throughout a project that increase the likelihood of its success
• Increased accountability and motivation to improve by people who participated in the reviews 
• Builds organizational capability to quickly learn and adjust, which is proving to be a distinguishing competency in many organizations operating in a fast-changing, turbulent environment.

Sample client uses

After Action Reviews can be used in many different environments.  In a pharmaceutical company we used it to help in the launch of a new product in a new therapeutic area.  In a hi tech company we used it to diagnose and fix the problems associated with a high rate of device failures in the field.  In a biopharmaceuticals project we used it to assist in the implementation of a large, enterprise-wide computer system called SAP.  And in a global consumer products company we used it to assist in seasonal planning for merchandise. 

 

Time investment

Preparation time: Less than one hour (the actual performance data is collected while the activity is going on)

Session Time: 15 minutes to 3 hours

Follow-up: Continuous monitoring and adjustment

 

Number of participants 

5 to 15

 

General flow

The agenda starts out by having the group examine what the intent was.  They take a deep dive into original objectives, people and groups involved, the initial timelines proposed, anticipated barriers, etc.  The group then takes a look at the actual results obtained.  In this stage it is extremely important to neutrally describe exactly what happened, and not assign value judgments of "this was good" and "this was bad."  The assembled group then explores what went well and why so these practices can be sustained in the future.  The group also looks at went could have gone better and root causes of that.  The group then collectively explores what could be improved, and how those improvments might be done.

 

Though many people who have heard of the “After Action Review,” which was invented by the US Army, think that these types of reviews only happen AFTER all the action has occurred, that is not how the method is being used today.  When used effectively, it is used throughout a project, and many organizations also start a project with a Before Action Review where they specifically spell out intended results and measurements so they can later be reviewed in subsequent After Action Reviews.

 

For more information

 

Additional information is available in The Change Handbook (Holman, Devane, & Cady, 1999, 2004).  The After Action Review chapter can be obtained economically by just purchasing the After Action Review chapter of The Change Handbook.  Other great sources of information are US Army Study Guide, Wikipedia, and Signet Research and Consulting.

 

This is but one method of several highlighted that provides a template for engaging employees to collectively develop robust, sustainable solutions.  A list of these other methods and an accompanying brief description can be found in this blog entry Excel at employee engagement methods...