Asking the right questions to get the right answers: A book of questions!

Consultants, research experts and industry leaders would tell you that if you want right answers, you have to ask the right questions. In this book from the Employee Engagement Network, 96 members of the network come together to share their views on the right questions to get the right answers which can help you create a truly engaged and productive workplace.

Members of the network have contributed to help you find questions that leaders, managers and organizations need to ponder upon to create a work environment which creates a engaging experience for its stakeholders.

Please click here to read the book.

In my contribution to the book, I have posed a question for our managers to think about:

• For the manager: Does everyone in my team have the opportunity to maximize their individual talent? 

Special thanks to the great David Zinger for putting together this network of like minded people and contributing so much to the subject.

I hope this gets you thinking and encourages you to identify and define questions that will get you the RIGHT answers!!

"Execution" advantage for growth

He graduated at the top of his class from Harvard Business School and started his career as a management trainee at Gestner Electronics, one of the world’s leading consumer durables manufacturers with operations spread across five continents. His hard work, dedication and commitment saw him grow to the position of COO of the same company in a short span of ten years. He was recognized as a “hi-po” and a “fast tracker” by all.

With such an impressive track record, Mr. Skinner had all the makings to lead a growing organization into the next era of growth. His experience of handling size, scale & diversity and his ability to overcome cultural barriers was seen as his greatest asset.

The board at Nate Electronics saw him as their first choice to replace their retiring and very successful CEO Mark Weiner. Headquartered in New Jersey, Nate Electronics was a growing consumer durables company. Ranked number three in the pecking order of the best in the world in terms of sales, Nate Electronics was seen as a progressive organization, always at the forefront of bringing game changing products to the marketplace. Mark Weiner was seen as the chief architect of this success story and Skinner was seen as a capable successor to usher in the next phase of growth at Nate and make it number one in the world.

Mr. Skinner took over from Mark and promised to carry forward the legacy of innovation and fast growth.

Before his first meeting with his team, Skinner spent time reviewing the numbers and outlined the targets that he wanted them to chase for the next year. After all, he was a fast tracker and nothing excited him more than to see that sales graph move upwards and it had to move very quickly for him, to showcase to the board that they had made the right choice.

After a round of customary introductions and a brief download on the progress in the various departments, Skinner outlined his vision for the organization for the next year and put forward the figures he had worked out for his team. There was a silent acceptance of what was put forward for them to chase and Skinner felt confident of his ability to achieve the aggressive target he had set for himself and the team.

At the quarterly leadership team meeting the numbers showed a significant drop in sales, the PE ratio also had taken a beating and the customer satisfactions scores were also witnessing a not so healthy movement in the wrong direction. Something was seriously wrong with the way things were looking, Skinner was fairly confident of the numbers and plans he had laid out for his team and he was not sure what was it that was going wrong. Every time a division head got up from his/her seat to share his/her report he/she got crushed for what he/she was putting forth.

What was it that was going wrong with Mr. Skinner’s ambitious and aggressive plans?

He had a successful track record and illustrious educational pedigree to back him. His experience with the best in the world had taught him all the tricks of trade that were to be learnt, his marketing acumen was considered to be the best in the industry. In fact, Times magazine had ranked him as the 5th most promising young CEO in USA in their last edition.

One of the worst quarters in the history of Nate, right at the outset was not a pleasant sign. He had joined Nate amidst much fan fare and he was sure that one more such a quarter and he would be soon packing his bags.

So what was it that had led to this sudden demise of Skinner’s plans?? Is it the market, is it the people in his team or is it his ability to execute.

In my opinion, the program plaguing Nate Electronics is very much similar to what most of our modern day organizations are facing and i.e. lack of effective execution.

Before outlining the numbers and plans for growth of the divisions, Mr. Skinner never took into account the organizational capabilities to achieve those numbers and execute those plans. Organizational capability to produce the required number of products, service the customers, hire the right people and manage their expectations etc. was never considered.

I talked about aligning critical business levers for successfully achieving business results in my last post and that is one critical aspect of execution. Same plan could have been made into a success story with a focus on aligning business levers and achieving effective execution at the outset.

He would have benefited greatly, if he would have spent time with each of his division heads reviewing the ongoing activities and taking their progress and pace of growth into account before devising the organizational roadmap for the next year. This would have also given him a peek into the capabilities of people leading those divisions and thereby enabling him to better plan for effective execution keeping in mind the leaders strengths and areas of improvement.

In addition to defining the outcomes, Skinner should have worked with his team to identify critical in-between milestones and frequencies at which those will be tracked to ensure that the teams were on target to achieve their goals or not. Herein also, fixing accountabilities amongst his team members would have helped him  to pin point responsibilities and track progress to avoid unpleasant surprises at the end of the year.

Furthermore, he would have gained significantly if he was not only tracking the outcomes that his team was achieving (or not) but also by asking “Why” outcomes were not being achieved. This would have gone a long way in ironing out the hurdles that were holding back the progress.

Most CEO’s consider themselves to be responsible for devising strategies, interpreting complicated strategies and planning smart moves. They assume execution to be the job of the next line of leadership. This however, could prove to be a grave misconception as was proved in the case of Mr. Skinner. Hence, if a CEO wants to see results he better brace himself up for bringing execution capabilities to the table because without execution focus and ability to execute a strategy is simply “no good”. 

Learning's  for Mr. Skinner (and for all of us):

1. Take into account the organizational capabilities at every level before devising a strategy
2. Buy-in of the team is critical to ensure successful execution  
3. Have right people in the right roles and fix accountabilities  
4. Define critical milestones on the road to achievement of outcomes to avoid surprises  
5. Why and how of achievement/non-achievement provides critical lessons for improvement

Must Read: 12 Things Good Bosses Believe- By Bob Sutton, Harvard Business Review Blog

Bob Sutton, Harvard Business Review Blog: 12 Things Good Bosses Believe -  I have been a regular follower of Bob's work on his blog Work Matters and this article on HBR Blogs is a surefire thought provoking master piece. Bob puts himself in the shoes of the boss and identifies 12 things good bosses believe.

Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch (Source: Youtube)

Success in the marketplace through alignment of critical business levers

What makes an organizational successful? .... My immediate response to that question - "an organization with a sound strategy which it executes with excellence through its people with enabling policies, processes & technology framework in a supportive external environment may become successful over a given period of time"

So, if we look at the response mentioned above we may find that organizational success is an outcome of a combination of factors both internal and external to it which come together in harmony to create a successful venture.

Given the stage of existence at which an organization is, the impact of these factors on the success of an organization may vary, for instance, a small organization may be able to achieve success by relying more heavily on select bright and hardworking individuals but as this organization grows, it may become imperative to develop enabling processes and policies to support size and scale and reduce dependence on individuals. Similarly, if an organization visualizes innovation and intrapreneurship as its mainstay of growth, it has to have enabling policies and processes which encourage its people to innovate. One shining example of organizational processes encouraging innovation is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation or 3M as it is known to all of us. 3M processes allow every employee to actually spend 15% of their workweek pursuing individual projects of their own choices. The employees don’t even have to share the details of the project with their managers, let alone justify these projects. Furthermore, every business unit is encouraged to innovate, to the extent that as a policy matter it is mandated that 30% of its revenues most come from products introduced in the last four years.

Similar cases in point of successful interaction of people, process, technology and policy levers to achieve organizational success has been seen across organizations such as Wal-Mart and Dell. These organizations looked at the eventual outcome to be achieved and then aligned the people, process, technology and policy levers to churn out the desired output.

If you want to be a customer centric organization, make sure that your people know what it means for them in their day to day interactions with the end customer and at the same time everything from the organizations product display, distribution & exchange policies to promotion plans, incentive schemes and pay raises etc. mirror that.

Hence, while designing organizational strategies it is critical to understand the nature of impact these strategies may have on each of the business levers and how the organization intends to better align these changes to achieve its strategic goals. The impact on critical business levers and the organizations ability to manage that impact, can actually act as a crucial filter for the organization to decide whether a particular strategy can be successfully executed or not. By building this self correcting evaluation mechanism at the strategy design stage itself, the organization actually brings execution focus right from the outset and hence eliminates the most critical problem facing organizations today i.e. lack of execution excellence.

To summarize, it can safely be said that for an organization to achieve success and continuously beat the bourses it is critical to focus on end outcomes while constantly aligning its internal management systems to talk to each other and aim towards achieving the desired end outcomes.

Improving channel partner throughput with Strong Relationships

It is increasingly becoming imperative for an organization to focus on its core value proposition and build a network of channel partners who act as extensions for the organization and help them multiply their presence and offer non-core services without leading to challenges associated with size and scale.


These channel partners are the interface of the organization for the end customers, be it in the form of franchisee owners or sales and service partners. These channel partners must mirror the brand promise that the organization is working towards delivering to its end customers and at every touch point with the customer, deliver on that brand promise.

The confidence and credibility of the organization in question can be strengthened or eroded by the channel partner with whom the customer is interacting. So, every time a customer walks into a channel partner outlet or speaks to a call center representative he/she feels he is interacting with brand in question and it is the brand’s ability or inability to resolve his/her queries that is being subjected to a test.

With this growing focus on channel partners and their direct impact on our business as they touch our end customers, what can organizations do to ensure that they have a channel partner network which is committed to building and growing business with them and mirrors the organizations core values to its end customers and at the same time acts as a key differentiator for them in this crowded marketplace?

The answer to this question lies in building Strong Relationships. Just as strong customer relationships mean sustained business growth similarly strong relationships with channel partners help ensure creation of an ecosystem which reflects organizational values and is committed to building the business through increased customer acquisition, better servicing and improved cross sell/up sell.

For an organization to positively impact this relationship strength, it may look at building customer like relationship with its channel partners which go beyond rational satisfiers and are held together by a strong emotional connect.

In a complex business environment, businesses continue to rely on gut feel and impressions to impact and improve channel partner performance. If we do not make any major investment decisions without going through the numbers then how can we make decisions that impact our business so directly without going back to numbers, identifying areas of improvement and then acting on it.

Hence going forward, one of the key differentiating factors for organizations may be their ability to objectively assess their relationship strength and work on areas which have a maximum impact on business.

Two critical aspects which impact any relationship and hence need to be evaluated are Rational and Emotional aspects. While rational aspects indicate an organizations ability to satisfy a channel partners on hygiene factors of a relationship such as product, price, promotion etc. emotional aspects (such as trust, integrity, pride and passion) help an organization assess the commitment of channel partners in building a business and has a direct impact business outcomes.

An objective assessment of the channel partner & company relationship strength is needed. This can be done through various research based frameworks available through reputed agencies. Most critical aspect to be kept in mind while evaluating a framework should be its ability to assess the critically important emotional bonds of trust, integrity, pride and passion and its linkages to business outcomes. This framework may then be coupled with other organizational and business environment variables; this would help an organization get a complete picture of their relationship across both rational and emotional aspects.

A complete approach to relationship strengthening may encompass the following steps- measure, plan & implement and review & monitor to help organizations experience improved channel partner throughput. The complete approach may be designed with a view to assess improvements made.

Thus, the paradigm shift of strengthening relationships should focus on measuring the key outcomes and drivers which impact channel partner relationships and instituting steps to ensure effective improvements which are then assessed for effectiveness for further improvements.

Friendships at the workplace- do they harm or help?

In a battle between organizational policy and human nature; human nature would always win. If you try and restrict social bonding at the workplace, you would eventually fail. The need for social bonding and relationships is very basic to every human being and will also surface at the workplace. A whole lot of studies have proven how having a network of friends at the workplace positively impacts outcomes such as customer service, safety incidents, sharing of information, suggestions and opinions etc.

Now, if we were to reverse the situation where overall engagement of employees at the workplace is very low, and performance on friendship parameters is very strong; does this mean that this social bonding at the workplace is working against the organizations efforts to improve employee engagement? Where all the conversations through all these informal channels is centered around how the organization is trying to cheat the employees and take away their bonuses or how the new guys are being interviewed to replace the old ones. The friendships at the workplace are getting stronger with common misery bringing everyone together to fight and crib against a common enemy.

A disengaged employee is like an irate customer, he/she is actively trying to spread his/her disengagement around the workplace and in the process garnering support from all others who share a similar feeling. Unlike an engaged employee who is busy working hard and contributing to building the organization, this disengaged employee is talking a lot more, enjoying longer coffee breaks and is creating more such partners in misery.

Social bonding at the workplace which can serve as a great source of bringing together the organization for achieving greater goals is now working against it with disengagement being the basis of most of these social bonds.

The failure of the organization to provide an enabling environment and local level managers to create an engaging work environment at an individual team level created this disengaging epidemic which is gradually spreading across the organization through these friendships at the workplace.

So what can an organization do to curb such a situation? Trying to curtail the relationships at the workplace would do more harm than good and would eventually lead to spreading of more negativity. The answer may lie in the basics of creating an engaging experience for every employee and hence provide more positive strokes to the conversations thereby using the informal networks to spread more positivity.

Our managers have to play a very critical role in ensuring that they are talking a lot more to their teams and keeping them abreast of what is happening in the organization to eliminate the impact of gossip on employee morale. This talking is about informing the employees about what's happening, why is it happening, hearing from them on what is troubling them and painting a true & fair picture for the employees. Nothing can replace an honest, regular dialogue.

While the most natural reaction would be to try and curb all informal communication, my suggestion would be to create opportunities for people to come together and share their thoughts, feelings and aspirations in a more conducive environment. This may actually help in steering these negative conversations in a more positive direction and create a more enabling environment at the workplace.

Another critical aspect will be to completely refrain from playing any kind of blame game in any given situation. Strictly avoid blaming anyone for anything that is going wrong at the workplace, for this may create a cycle of negativity and blaming which would further add fuel to the fire. You may want to talk to and hear from the trouble makers in private rather than use any kind of public medium to reprimand them. While you should use public platforms to recognize all sorts of positive behavior which has contributed towards creating a positive experience for employees and/or customers, thereby, encouraging more such behaviors.

Research has shown how friendships at workplace contribute to building a more positive and candid workplace where friends tolerate and work out disagreements better, cheer each other up in the times of trouble and are more committed to achieving the goals of the group. Thus, it is critical for an organization to encourage friendly relationships at the workplace rather than see it as a peril of having "people" at the workplace.