What is engagement?

In business literature today you’ll find a lot about engagement: community engagement, employee engagement, customer engagement, and more. Articles range from working in “green” buildings to the latest press releases from the CSR department, the notion that using Twitter as a broadcast medium does NOT create engagement (True, that.), to levels of job dissatisfaction (i.e, lack of engagement). Engagement seems to be the business buzzword du jour.

As with most buzzwords, what’s important to keep in mind is: What does engagement mean? What will make the term useful? If we don’t know what engagement is, it’ll be difficult to discuss, measure or nurture.

en·gage·ment n. [en-geyj-muhnt]

1. the act of engaging or the state of being engaged.

Engagement is related to participation.

par·tic·i·pa·tion n. [pär-ˌti-sə-ˈpā-shən, pər-\]

1. the act of participating
2. the state of being related to a larger whole

What we almost never talk about is:

Engagement and participation are specific acts.

They’re things we and the people around us actually do.
That’s good news, because they’re observable. You can request and reward certain actions.

What’s more difficult is that engagement and participation are also states of being.

This is what normally gets left out because it’s more difficult to discuss. We each need to ask ourselves:

• Who should people in our organization Be?
• What should they Do?
• Who do Leaders need to be to call forth, allow for these ways of being and acting?

As a leader, then, whether you have direct-line authority over anyone or you act as a Leader for your colleagues & customers, ask yourself:

• What are the rituals in that kind of workplace?
• What will you reward?
• What should be celebrated?
• What will entice this type of people and behavior?
• What will you expect?

People exist in networks of conversation.

What conversations are happening around you, in your workplace?  Really listen. Are people talking about not having enough time? Are they complaining a lot?  Or are the conversations around you creative and inspired. Are people coming from “have to” and “should” or “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”  What conversations will you fuel?

Draw boundaries if necessary so people know what kinds of conversations to have around you.

Breakthrough Ideas happen in collaboration.

How will you support collaboration?  Exactly what actions & behaviors do you want to induce, reward, and normalize in your corporate cultures?

The answers to these questions serve as your blueprint. You’ll want to write them down.

It’s Not About Us & Them. It’s About You & Me.

Usually when we speak of engagement we break down into Us/Them dichotomies. The conversations sound like this:

“How do we get THEM to re-engage?”

“If our leaders acted differently or made better decisions, maybe we’d be engaged.”

“Maybe the space or environment gets and keeps people engaged.”

Have a look at those sentences again. Who’s the active participant? None of that is not our most powerful thinking.

It really comes down to you and me. Who will you Be? What will you Do?

I’ll never forget the moment I realized TNM’s culture called for different actions from most work teams: I’d just started. On a small group training call, we were scheduling our next meeting. One date/time was thrown out and I said, thinking out loud, “I’ll be in Italy and don’t know about Internet access… I’m sure I could come into the lobby and call in via Skype.” Zoran, who was running the meeting, said, “No, no… don’t do anything that doesn’t work. We’ll find a time that works.”

That simple exchange set the tone of much of our interaction, and I started to understand the rules of engagement at TNM.

• What are the rules of engagement in your workplace?
• How does your organization define, cultivate and measure engagement?
• How do you reward the acts or actions you’d like to see?

Here are some resources to guide your way.

Dan Pink studies the science of human motivation. He asserts that there’s a mismatch between what we know about motivation and what we implement in business environments. It’s not about bonuses, incentives, and other commonplace extrinsic motivators. Instead:

Rewards narrow our focus and work only for narrowly focused, simple tasks, taks with clear sets of rules and single solutions. If you want people to think strategically or creatively and think way out of the box, Start with Why, as Simon Sinek explains in this Tedx talk:

You might want to also write down:

• This is what we Believe:
• This is Who You Can Count on Us to Be:
• These are Things We Do:

Finally, Steven Johnson studies environments in which ideas take flight. What can you use in your environment?

There’s another thing: Conversations Disappear.

The breath moves over our lips and before you know it, everybody’s busy doing something else. This isn’t something you set up once. You’ll need to create times, space, and continuous reinforcement. Have fun with it: Leaders Lunches, Idea Breakfasts, online spaces for collaboration, maybe even a Leave Your Complaints & Concerns Here box by the door – so people can literally leave those at the door.

Go forth and engage. It’s up to you and me!

A version of this post appeared first on TNMcoaching.com

What is Crowdsourcing?

First coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” crowdsourcing refers to the increasing ability, especially facilitated by new media technologies, to leverage the knowledge, talent, expertise and interest of large groups of people — customers, employees, audiences, interest groups. ”It’s not outsourcing; it’scrowdsourcing,” says Howe.

“When you look at the future of companies I think you’re about to see the most fundamental change in businesses and government on a global basis that you’ve ever seen, moving from command-and-control to true collaboration and team work, and it will be a combination of the two. The result of that, enabled by technology especially around visual connectivity, will allow for a generation of productivity and new models. Which companies and which countries lead in this will have the highest standard of living.”  Cisco’s John Chambers October 2008 speech at MIT

Around the same time, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams were writingWikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Wikinomics is based on four core concepts: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally. The kind of mass collaboration described by crowdsourcing relies on free individual agents voluntarily working together, cooperating to create something, improve a given operation, or solve a particular challenge.

Before that, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More was based on an idea first articulated by Clay Shirky and popularized by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying the strategy of reaching a far greater number of customers with lower volume per item sales of a far greater number of items. We’ve also heard the term The Long Tail refer to accessing, listening and responding to a far greater number of customers or clients for product and process feedback. That’s where crowdsourcing and The Long Tail meet.

Mass collaboration is used successfully internally and in external communication to generate new ideas, facilitate workflows and develop new processes, build cross-functional teams and better addresses the needs and desires of customers.

In this video, Chambers shares a snapshot look at the benefits of dispersing leadership throughout Cisco’s teams and organizational structure:

As for the Long Tail concept, an Amazon.com employee reported, “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.”

Online marketplaces from eBay to Etsy may be considered part of the phenomenon, so is Internet-facilitated microfinance as seen on Kiva.org, President Barack Obama’s grassroots online fundraising and voluntary viral campaign promotion are evidence that creative, voluntary, new media-driven contribution is transforming not just the way we do business but the very world in which we live. PepsiCo’s DEWmocracy and Refresh Projects highlight the democratization of business:

How do we train & develop for crowdsourcing?

Listening is more important than ever before. Here are some ways to listen:

1. Set up a social media listening station for your brand or organization.

Gen Y Social Media Guru Amy Sample Ward provides simple instructions here for setting up a listening dashboard for your organization.

2. Train leaders to listen more than command.

Our client companies use coach training across all leadership levels from frontline leaders to the C-suite to develop and embed new leadership and communication styles, techniques and skills. Going from command-and-control to crowdsourcing marks and organizational shift; it also requires individuals in the organization to lead and interact differently. TNM helps facilitate that shift globally.

3. Create listening times, systems and structures for them to do so.

Command-and-control to crowdsourcing can be an organizational shift of gargantuan proportions. Creating new practices, norms and strategies will further embed new behaviors into the organization. How can you smooth the way for better performing cross-functional teams? Which current organizational practices and standards keep command-and-control management in place? How can you replace those? How can you best access and respond to customer needs? These are crucial questions to answer.

Engagement and activation are more valuable than ever before.

This is good news! There are myriad examples to consult as you consider how to best move from command-and-control to crowdsourcing. Contests, crowdcasting, grassroots fundraising and microfinance, dispersed leadership and socially networked working groups all provide valuable feedback and opportunities for growth, paving the way toward organizational sustainability in the new Crowdsourced World.

Crowdsourcing is good consumer-facing marketing; it’s good for employee morale, retention and innovation. From philanthropy to Pepsi, the shift from command-and-control to crowsourcing is well underway. What does your organization need to do to keep up?

Science knows what we should do; most businesses aren’t yet doing it.
In the 21rst century we need new ways to do this.

Don’t base your talent development decisions on a 20th century model. Instead, look for intrinsic motivation: Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose.

“If you want engagement self-direction works…”

Al Gore’s former speech writer, Dan Pink, delivers a good TED talk on voluntary collaboration:

Pink argues that FedEx Days & 20% Time encourage creativity and job satisfaction. Take incentives and rewards out of the mix and let people do what they want… they thrive.

Not so fast. On the other hand, in May 2010 Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis was fined $250 million in the U.S. for systemically discriminating against female employees.  Women head up only 3% of the Fortune 1000.  The percentage of women leaders actually declined 1% last year. Women still lag behind men in salary and promotion.

This isn’t just an American challenge: Deutsche Telekom’s instituted a quota to fill top leadership spots with women; in Finland CEOs must publicly explain the figures if women are not well-represented at the top.

The implications for business seem clear: high-performing female talent represent a huge missed opportunity in the leadership pipeline. Women are entering the workforce in well-educated droves, and are not making it up the leadership pipeline.

There are several reasons: A recent Harvard Business Review article illustrated that smart, young women are not given equal starting positions to their male counterparts, and it’s almost impossible for them to catch up. TNM’s Dr. Marcia Reynolds, author of the new book Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction, reports that talented women are quicker to leave dissatisfying positions than their male counterparts. Women are also leaving stable positions to start their own businesses. Women take time off to care for young children, too.

How can you and your organization better capitalize on and honor your top female talent? Here are eight concrete ways to engage, motivate and ensure success of female leaders, and some companies doing it well:

1. First, make sure your organization is giving men and women equal starts.

The HBR article recommends taking the resumes of 100 recent hires, removing all identifying factors, and assigning appropriate job roles. See if those are the roles they were given, or if men were given better starting positions than women.

2. “Make sure women are appropriately developed.”

“Give them the right tools and they will rise to the challenge,” Reynolds wrote in her Forbes article “How to Make the Workplace More Appealing to Top-Performing Women.” When asked what the right tools are and who’s using them, she cited GlaxoSmithKline’s extensive leadership training program, which includes mentoring, coaching and semi-annual conferences with a cohort of female colleagues.

Reynolds dispenses more tips for leaders of high-potential and high-performing women:

3. Help women see how their work is meaningful.
4. Affirm women’s value and unique contributions.
5. Give women frequent new challenges.
6. Create a collaborative environment.

In support of building collaborative cultures, Reynolds cites Dr. Anne Perschel’s “Work-Life Flow: How Individuals, Zappos, and Other Innovative Companies Achieve High Engagement.” The article, she says, includes references to Patagonia’s annual survey measurement of the degree of meaning employees experience in their work and Tony Hsieh’s Zappos, which hires primarily based on values then stretches employees to learn new skills once they’ve arrived.

7. Give women opportunities to make a difference in the world outside your company.

In Marketing to Women, Marti Barletta stresses that the most important thing to women is knowing they make a positive difference. Some multinationals are working with external vendors to ensure that sense of “giving back.” The Trestle Group Foundation works with sponsor companies including IBM, Microsoft and PepsiCo matching high-performing female executives for six-month coaching stints with successful female entrepreneurs in emerging markets.  It’s a win-win: the multinational executives contribute knowledge and expertise to innovative women in developing areas of the world, helping to employ more people there, gaining knowledge about market conditions and having a rewarding, meaningful leadership development experience.

8. Engage Women at All the Different Points in Their Careers.

For another example of a meaningful leadership development opportunity, see Sara Lee’s Returnships, designed to provide opportunities for mid-career individuals re-entering the workforce after having been away for a number of years.

That’s 8 ways to ensure engagement and development of top female talent. From start to re-entry, ongoing communication tips and external leadership development for mid- and late-career star performers, these programs and practices can transform yours into a female-friendly Leadership Pipeline.

Special Book Launch note:

Purchase Dr. Marcia Reynolds’ Wander Woman on June 15, 2010 and email the receipt to Marcia@WanderWomanBook.com to receive a personal guide to accompany the book’s many exercises. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity. Marcia adds: “If you’re a woman working in an organization that mismanages high-achieving women, there’s a letter you can copy and send to your CEO at www.wanderwomanbook.com in the top right corner.”

At the intersection of coaching, training and new media, executives ask:

-    Can we increase the efficiency and consistency of global rollout using new media?
-    Is it possible to incorporate online tools into our existing training programs? - to reduce time away from  work and travel costs?
-    Can we use to media for follow-up to our training courses?
-    Could social networking enhance dialogue among dispersed groups in our organization?
-    Can we train our own internal coaching corps online?

The answer to these and many more questions we get asked is a resounding, “YES!”

At TNM, we’re working with clients to uncover ways online content and social networking can increase productive dialogue and reduce travel and training costs.

The programs vary from client to client, depending on business needs, budget and corporate culture. Some are using video, audio and written content combined with dialogue in online forums. Some use online forums and content to follow up on live training. Your programs can match your needs.

Organizations today cite numerous reasons for incorporating new media into their training and coaching:

-    Out of necessity to reach dispersed workforces
-    To engage younger generations and harness the power of their creative new media usage
-    To crowdsource and/or increase dialogue across the organization
-    To reduce costs and allow for flexibility in training schedules

The first step to including new media tools in your organization’s coaching and training programs is a clear assessment of your organizational needs. What’s right for one organization can be an expensive disaster for another.  Our team of PhDs, MBAs and Master Certified Coaches ask the questions to determine your organization’s facility with online communication and which tools fit best with your business needs right now and in the future.

-    Internal social networking forums
-    Ning groups combined with online training modules
-    Training simulations
-    Video and audio content
-    Hybrid live training/mediated group follow-up approaches

Too many organizations waste valuable resources with a “build it and they will come” approach to new media spaces. It’s crucial in the very beginning stages to see where your organization stands with regard to using mediated communication and what kinds of internal communication will be needed for their adoption and sustained value. Most organizations need long-term engagement programs to manage the transition to new media tools.

The second step is co-creating your content, tools and spaces. Once you’ve charted a course, we partner fully with you to help you design the most appropriate types of coaching and learning experiences for your organization.  Should you use live training, new media or a combination of both?  How do you know?  We’ll work with you to answer these questions and tailor programs to fit your particular business requirements, whether they’re simulations, podcasts, online portals or insight-based live training programs.

The third step is rollout. You need engagement, initiative and impact from your development budget. Here’s where you launch your new products, services and tools to take your organization to the next level and reinforce existing programs that are working well. Our team of coaches based in 20 countries worldwide can support rollout and delivery of global training and coaching solutions.

The fourth step is evaluation.  So many companies use training evaluation as a sort of popularity contest – measuring whether or not participants like the venue, course content and training. What you really want to know is how the training is having a lasting impact toward your business drivers and with your company culture. We’ll work with you to identify what to measure and how – from the very beginning.  Then you’ll know if your training is working and how to tweak it over time. We can work together to design and deliver meaningful experiences and follow-up that meet your business needs now and in the future.

Engagement and impact: coaching, training, and new media combined can deliver unprecedented value from your training and coaching budget.

Coaching is and will always be what unites TNM affiliates; it’s our core competency.  As social networking and other technologies make new kinds of communication possible, we’ve built upon the ways coaching and new media technologies connect.  Here are some of them:

TNM started as a group of executive coaches.  We’re engaged in conversation with executives across industries and around the world.  ”Start where you are” is an adage in every coaching school of thought.  Whether our clients are dealing with rapid growth, drastic cutbacks, cultural challenges… we start from their concerns, perspectives, and needs.  In some ways, our clients led us to the connection between coaching and new media as they asked, “How do we best utilize new media technologies?”  ”How do I harness the power of group-think and collaboration?”  ”How do we go from strict hierarchical lines of communication to more modern, open, egalitarian community?” We’ve brought media experts onboard to address precisely these types of questions.

New media technologies and platforms are tools for long-distance coaching relationships, for cost-effective training and for community-building online.  Many of the business drivers and HR directives executives are faced with today can be facilitated using new media as tools.  As coaching is incorporated into training initiatives, mentoring relationships between leaders and an everyday part of organizational cultures, Ning groups, podcasting, video tips, and online interaction facilitate new kinds of communication within organizations.

As organizations around the world go from 20th century, top-down, hierarchical bureaucracies to flatter, more nimble, open and inclusive ways of doing business, they use coaching not just as individual sessions or for particular projects, but as cornerstones of the corporate culture, a routine part of the way individuals relate to one another and the organization as a whole – as a place where they can grow, develop and be creative together.  It’s one of the ways the Net generation is being recruited and included.  New media technologies, like coaching, have gone from being an extra or novelty to a routine part of the business landscape.  Cultures are evolving to include wikis, Second Life, online forums and gaming-as-training.

One of our largest clients here at TNM is on a mission to create a global Feedback Culture, a corporate environment in which transparency and feedback are regular and honest.  Coaching and new media technologies are both tools for two-way communication.  The way coaching may be overused these days.  When we refer to coaching, we mean communication in which the coach stands for the coachee’s success by asking powerful questions, actively listening, creating the space for the generation ideas, supporting him or her in the face of challenges.  This questions-answer-create-support communication requires participation.  Likewise, the success of online communication and new media technologies takes new ways of engagement, responsibility for participation.

Combine the two – coaching communication style and effective new media deployment through Ning, podcasting, wikis (whichever combination of new media is right for your demographic, culture and needs) – and at best you create and maintain an environment where individuals can develop to their full potential and express themselves freely.   Add the power of the group and mass collaboration through media technologies and truly we see organizations unleashed – producing results with an unprecedented level of ease and grace.  Call it kismet; some say magic.  Whatever you call it, a systematic approach to coaching and new media can create it. That’s what we are at TNM: keepers of the kismet, makers of magic.

Three business trends have converged for us here at TNM, and it’s making for interesting conversations:

- the rise of executive coaching,
- the shift across industries toward more inclusive and responsive communication, and
- the massive increase in the use of new media technologies as tools for both.

One element of executive coaching is meeting clients where they are, dealing with whatever they bring to the table.  That might include questions like, “How do we best motivate people?”  “How do we make the most effective use of new media technologies?” or similar to the Fiskars case I heard recently at BlogHer Business in Chicago, “How do we create a deep, emotional connection with our customers?” Here’s how Fiskars did it.

Fiskars is a 360 year old company.  They make scissors.  Their assumption in 2006 when they asked this question was that scissors are something people want nearby when they need them and don’t think about when they don’t.

The thing is: creating a deep, emotional connection isn’t about products.  Deep, emotional connections with corporations, that kind of loyalty and love, stem from social interaction and existing (or at least traditional) emotional bonds with family, friends, significant others, etc.  How can you create opportunities for that kind of interaction – then honor it, value it and let it flourish?  Disney did that in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s – brought families together to watch The Wonderful World of Disney on tv, its films in theaters, and visit the theme parks together.* Fiskars created a deep lasting emotional connection with its customers quickly by nurturing existing interests and connections.  They created a corps of brand ambassadors, the woman call themselves Fiskateers.

It started with just four women Fiskars found online.  They were outstanding craft bloggers; it’s a whole subculture now… blogs about quilting and crafting and scrapbooking.  Even as they connected, Fiskars didn’t understand the magnitude of the existing online community. The four women chosen already used Fiskars and had a following through their blogs.  They are passionate about crafting and scrapbooking.  Fiskateers are numbered as they join, so there’s Fiskateer #1, #2, #3 and so on.  The lower the number the higher the status in the community.  The original program goal was 200 Fiskateers in six months; that was exceeded within 48 hours!  Fiskateers now number over 5000 strong.

Online chatter about the Fiskars brand increased 600% within 2 years.  Fiskateers in 70 countries meet with crafters and srapbookers for virtual, online events and in home and stores face-to-face.  They share new ways to use Fiskars products and gain valuable insight into how consumers are using them and what they’d like to see next from the company.  They’re a test market and the long tail made manifest all at once.  Only the first five lead Fiskateers are paid.  The rest participate out of pure passion. This is Crowdsourcing and The Long Tail at work.

Surf sites associated with Fiskateers and you’ll see love for the brand expressed outright over and over again.  You’ll also see that Fiskars made its products and the program completely accessible to the Fiskateers.  Transparency has been crucial.  It’s created a movement.  Fiskars is beloved.

COACHING LESSON:

How can you tap into existing passions and social connections?

This kind of inclusion is not limited to B2C consumer interaction.  How can your B2B and internal communications benefit? How can you include people, honor what they’re up to and how they use your products or services? Where can you create space for connection?

Coming soon… how to use social networking for internal communication

For more information:

On Fiskars and the Fiskateers, read their blog.

Here’s one Fiskateer’s personal blog – with info on online events.

Brains on Fire helped create the Fiskateers. Here are posts and video from them about the program, featuring Fiskateers.

Here’s one 20 months into the program.

And a few analyses and case studies:

Branding blogger on Fiskars

History of Fiskateers.

A couple of good analyses.

* I say this with conviction because my Ph.D. Dissertation was a study of how 53 American families created their relationships with the Walt Disney Company.