North Star

You have been creating and getting plans executed over a 1 year time frame.  But given nature of task, you need focus to be much more longer term.

How do you go about creating this longer term focus while maintaining current year focus too?

You could create a ‘North Star’ – that team will work towards in longer run. Flip side of this is that only intention might not lead to actions needed today to move towards ‘North Star’.

On other hand, you could ensure alignment of yearly plans to ‘North Star’. That will ensure there is some ‘coupling’ of yearly plans to ‘North Star’.

Maybe this is a good approach to start integrating a longer term focus into yearly plans.

Once this approach has got seeded in, you might want to start building ‘scenarios’/’milestones’ – how will outcomes look like periodically – 1/2/3 years down the line? What should be focus in year 2, year 3, etc?

So while you have stronger execution plans in place for current year, you start building execution plans in place for other years – with space for periodic check-ins – to evaluate whether there’s a need for change in year 2/3 plans.

In all of this, there’s a consistent assumption. ‘If task at hand requires a longer term focus, then that focus should get reflected in your shorter term execution plans too’.

Balancing this dichotomy of shorter term v/s longer term is turning out to be very interesting. J

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Sourav

 

Execution and Results

You have started an initiative. You have laid down initial plans for executing it. You now go ahead and execute the plan.

Will you necessarily have success now?

You may or may not! Execution of plans does not necessarily ensure success.

So what kind of execution or what other elements are necessary to ensure success?

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Let us first look at our perception of execution.

Will you call execution a series of steps or an iterative process? Usual image might be it is a series of steps. If you require follow ups and iteration- well that might seem as process inefficiency!

Surprisingly, I have hardly come across initiatives that have not required follow up, iterations, or some kind of course correction.

Execution of plans is important. But plan needs to factor in 3 things mentioned above.

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Secondly you need to have contracted beforehand with relevant stakeholders on definition of success and timing and process of success measurement.

This is important because success maybe interpreted differently by different stakeholders.

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So execution of plans seems to be a pre-requisite but not a guarantor of success! – a necessary but not a sufficient condition for success J

 

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Sourav

Employee Engagement Surveys

What do employee engagement surveys tell or not tell us? 

Over next few weeks, I would be supporting managers/leaders in interpreting results from an organization wide engagement survey and creating action plans from them.

I observe such surveys are taken seriously by even business managers. I wonder whether they are complying (a part of their assessment does depend on results) or whether they truly believe in the possible benefits from such surveys.

Well! I would not know till the time I am neck deep into exercise too.  Here are some initial thoughts on my mind

• Surprises – what conclusions can I draw if a manager/leader is taken by surprise by results of the survey? I would know that at the least he has not had his ear to the ground. He either has not picked up what´s been expressed, has discouraged the expression of possible concerns, or has not acted on what has been expressed.  If I observe surprises, I would want to explore ´What has been the manager/leader doing to understand pulse of his organization and consequently act? What needs to change?´

• Statistically Significant shifts in scores-  I have heard this term often. It is a criterion for deciding possible action areas/strength areas.  I do agree that  we should consider this criterion, but what other criterion we may be missing out on?  I think ´context´ is a relevant term here I need to  interpret scores in terms of larger ´context´ a team is in.

• Context –  I support a growing business with a large number of new employees. They obviously are in early stages of employee life cycle. Feel good factor prevalent in ´initial days´ might have bumped up scores. I certainly need to segment scores of employees as per their stage in employee life cycle.

• Segmenting Scores by Employee Groups– there is a need to identify trends for relevant groups (as per demographics, specific job types, specialist teams, etc). If I were to take only an uber level view of things, I might not sense some important under-currents.

• Qualitative responses –  can be a double edged sword. Subjective answers provide richer understanding of emotions behind the different scores, but I am unsure of their utility in confidential surveys.  If I come across a ´concerning´ subjective answer, I would  discuss the same with the leader/manage and give him/her a chance to respond. How s/he responds is what I would be more interested in.

• Why this survey? – What is primary objective of conducting such a survey? I am not sure whether allocating rewards for managers/leaders should be primary outcome. The intent should be to understand what we are doing well/bad at a certain point of time, and take a collective decision on how can we progress further.

• Action Plans – ´Best plans are best executed plans´.  Administering a survey (ensuring high participation rate and a safe environment for employees to respond authentically) and interpreting and sharing results don´t necessarily lead to increase in employee engagement. Co- creating action plans that have buy in of different stakeholders and ensuring their execution are the more monotonous, more difficult, but the most crucial aspects of ensuring  a successful employee engagement survey.

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Sourav