Areas for high-leverage from engagement
On this website I’m providing some concrete examples and tips about where engagement can be used, and how to do it effectively. One perspective we’ll explore: specific leadership actions available for a leader who wants to do engagement well. We’ll cover pragmatic tips like distributing decision-making with relevant guideilnes, tapping into employee motivation factors like local goal-setting and the sense of achievement , and using questions to gather diverse perspectives to enhance performance.
A second perspective of engagement we’ll explore is the use of existing, proven group methods that engage people to tackle tough issues. I’ve found group methods to be particularly useful in the following areas: direction setting, day-to-day operations execution, continuous improvement, organization restructuring, change management and innovation.
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General Area |
Specific Engagement Opportunities |
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Direction setting |
Strategic goal-setting & action planning, vision development, scenario development and placing of strategic bets |
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Day-to-day operations execution |
Top team effectiveness, coaching programs that cascade from the top down, goal-setting and self-correction for local work, improving collaboration among Veterans, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen and Y generations in the same workforce |
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Continuous improvement |
Implementing Lean Six Sigma in an engagement-based way, rapid process improvement based on simple process mapping and analysis, dialogue sessions to uncover hidden assumptions that may be harming performance, quick-hit executive yes/no decisions re employee improvement suggestions a la GE’s WorkOut process, kick-off meeting for a major process redesign to develop improvement goals and action plans |
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Organization restructuring |
Employee input sessions for new structures, employee-led development of new structures informed by strategic goals |
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Change management |
Implementing a new information technology system, implementing a new strategic direction, altering the organizational culture (like increasing engagement and accountability), specifically addressing the people side of a major initiative like Lean Six Sigma, |
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Innovation |
New product ideation sessions, business model reinvention workshops |
Practical engagement tips and case histories for the above topics will organized into these categories on the archived Blog posts, and can be accessed from the rightmost column of any page on this website. Current individual blog posts will appear chronologically under the “Blog” label on the horizontal bar near the top of this page.