Enabling for Employees to be Successful – Part 3

This is the last part of a 3 part article on how to enable for employees to be successful in their work. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

The Day of the 3 Hour Session with Executives

Ten executives and senior level leadership attended the session. Two of the investors started the session, along with the CEO. They focused on the need to engage employees in order to attract and retain the best talent. The investors shared the financial results and showed how changes made within the organization over the past few years had negatively impacted engagement of employees and the ability to remain competitive.

The survey responses were reviewed and leaders were asked to keep the information in mind as they progressed through the session.  We divided up the participants into two groups based on responses to the second survey question: Where do you believe you could add the most value in helping to solve the problems to be addressed.

Two problems were to be addressed in this session, with the group split into two in order to focus on determining a plan to solve the problems.

Group 1, comprised of 2 Executives and 3 Senior Leaders would focus on:

• How does the organization re-engage employees?

Group 2, comprised of 3 Executives and 2 Senior Leaders would focus on:

• How does the organization restructure to enable for less hierarchy and decision-making at the lowest levels?

Each group was tasked with developing a detailed action plan of how to move forward solving the problem they were assigned. The action plan was also to include timing as well as resource needs. Although each group had a particular problem assigned to them, they collaborated throughout the session – relying on the expertise of the group as a whole and testing ideas with each other.

A High Level Overview of the Action Plans Developed

At the end of the session, the following draft action plans were shared with the group:

PROBLEM: How does the organization re-engage employees?

PROBLEM: How does the organization restructure to enable for less hierarchy and decision-making at the lowest levels?

This change team, once selected, would map out a project plan for the initiative. They would work off of the preliminary information developed during this session. Areas of focus, based on the discussions in the session, would be:

• Development and/or refinement of processes for managing through conflicts, solving problems and making decisions
• Selection of rotating team members to work in the following areas (teams would rotate on a 9 month basis):
  • New product research
  • Operational planning
  • Strategic planning

Team members for these areas would be selected by the change team.

Additionally, since the changes in the leadership team, there had been no company all staff meeting. An all staff meeting was scheduled in order to share the results of the 3 hour session and begin to engage employees in the changes. It was expected that it would take some time to sell employees on what was happening because trust needed to be built between staff and leadership. After the all staff meeting, a social was scheduled at a nearby restaurant in order to enable for staff and leadership to get to know each other.

This would be the first step in re-engaging employees and building relationships and establishing trust between leadership and individual contributors.
While the CEO was a bit worried about how the employees would feel about everything that was going on, especially since he knew that much should have been done sooner; feedback was positive from employees! The CEO reached out to some of the more vocal employees and each noted that they were happy with the direction being taken by the company.

One Month Later

There is still much work being done, and it will be ongoing for quite a while; however, people in the organization were engaged and participating in the teams. The CEO spent time weekly meeting one-on-one with the others on the leadership team to ensure that they were “letting go” as they needed to and were continuing to engage employees. It was made clear by the investors and the CEO that this was the direction the company was taking and it was essential to be on board.