So if a given person isn’t engaged…..who’s problem is it really?

“I’m getting concerned about my HR guy, he’s just not getting any movement on our staff engagement no matter how hard he’s trying”.  Jason was worried.

“What are you not seeing?” I asked.

“Engagement!”  He replied.  “Interested people.   People actually wanting to work here.  Work harder.  You know, just be into it”.

“And who do you hold accountable for that?”

Jason didn’t appreciate the circle.  “David” he said.  Slowly.  “My. H. R. guy.  Because the ‘H’ stands for ‘human'”.

“Got it.” I replied.  “So these people who are not engaged the way you want them to be…who are their managers”?

Jason didn’t hesitate: “There’s three managers.  Jenny, Max and Kristy”.

“And what were we saying is the accountability of each manager?”

I could see a change starting.  “We said managers are accountable for the results of their people and how well they work together”.

“So if a given person isn’t engaged…..who’s problem is it really?”

Next instalment…Cross-functional relationships: Start with one!

Ethan was focussing on the cross-functional relationships of his Quality Engineer. We’d established the role was accountable for engineering standards being met such that all work passes inspection from government regulators and any other external audit functions we may choose to bring in.

“Each role relationship attaches to an accountability” I explained. By setting up a clear role relationship for each accountability, we can give your Quality Engineer the authority they need to get their work done.”

“Wish I’d had that years ago” Ethan smiled. “Let’s do it then. What’s the role relationship?”.

“A couple more questions for you and we’ll be there”. Read more…

Continued…Cross-functional relationships: Start with one!

Ethan was ready to start making life better for his people by sorting out how their roles fit together across the organisation. I suggested he start with the role of Quality Engineer. He reached for the phone.

“Don’t do that” I jumped in. Ethan looked surprised. I continued; “it’s not up to your Quality Engineer to decide the work system, it’s up to you. We’re going to get her input for sure, but first, tell me what you are ultimately holding her accountable for”.

Ethan didn’t answer.

“We’ve found our starting point.”

“OK….” Ethan said. I needed to explain;

“Work occurs because someone gets someone else to start doing something, wait before doing something, or stop doing something.”

“Sounds reasonable”.

“And why do they do this…why does it happen?” I asked.

“Because…it’s their job?” Ethan ventured

“Yep. Or to get right to the bottom of it, they feel they are accountable for a particular thing happening or not happening, so to make sure they can do what they believe they are accountable for, they go and talk to someone else”. Read more…

Cross-functional relationships: start with one!

Ethan was enthused and exasperated at the same time.

“OK, I can see there’s this model for sorting out our cross-functional relationships.  Tears, tars or something, and a lot of words like audit, monitor, coordinate and stuff like that.  All sounds great.”

“You don’t seem to think it’s all great” I offered.

“Well it’s not.  We’ve got a million of these relationships.  Everyone talks to everyone, and to go through and work out every role relationship in the place would take a decade, and wouldn’t it just turn us into a bureaucracy anyway?”

“Sure would”.

Ethan looked surprised – “but you’ve seen this stuff work before”.

“Yep”.

“So what do I need to do”?

“We fix one“.

“One?”

“Yep, one”. Read more…

The simple way to good service area relationships

“I can’t win” sighed John.

“Tough day?” I asked.  John was the Senior Manager of Work Health & Safety in a large organisation.

“It’s my senior colleagues from other areas” he began.  “We need a better approach to work health and safety around here, but that’s not going to happen if they don’t listen.”

“Why don’t they?”

“Because if I was them, I’d be doing exactly the same!  They’ve got serious businesses to run, they’re all on the hook for more profit next year and delivering services better.  Then along comes one of my team and somehow they’re supposed to prioritise my stuff’?” Read more…

Improving processes? This first…

Processes in your business are what makes a customer requirement a non-surprising event – your people know what to do to hit the expectations that you’ve put out into the market.  They know what comes first, what comes next, who does what, what they use, and it all flows like a swift-moving happy river to the sea no matter what.

Right?

Right.

I know a couple of outstanding improvement specialists who have never come across a business process where they didn’t create significant ROI for their clients, and when I ask them how they do it, the answer is “we look”. Read more…

The right spot for personality tests

When personality tests and cultural surveys come up with clients, they often say a little apologetically “I know you don’t think much of these, but…”. I feel bad when I hear this, because I don’t automatically think they are bad.

Far from it.

I rate things such as Myers-Briggs, the various LSI, OCI, CSI permutations, Facet 5 and all various  letters, spiderwebs and colours as great tools for  raising the performance of teams that already know what they’re doing. Read more…

You don’t need a reporting relationship to get things done

Organisations often need a watchdog role.  I know we shouldn’t call it that, we should at least say ‘ensure quality’ or ‘alignment’.  But what we are trying to achieve is to make sure that a group of people provide the services or do the work as required.

One particular role comes to mind where this function appears – Manager of Strategy.   This role is often expected to ensure that plans and outputs across the business align with the agreed organisational strategy. Read more…

Stop the battles: Using authorities to set up cross-functional work

There is a way to create a culture of working together and stopping cross-functional work being the bane of your people’s working life, and it does not start with sending everyone away to learn how to handle conflict, find out their personality type or get 360 feedback.

Instead, it involves addressing the issue at its source by managers clarifying what they are each accountable for, confirming with their cross-over manager, then setting up role relationships for their people by integrating accountabilities and authorities.

Elliott Jaques provides  seven different types of authority to match with accountability Read more…

The simple step to improving cross-functional relationships

Something actually quite strange, but common, are Finance areas taking ownership of profitability for an organisation.  You will hear comments like “March should be a big month, which will make Jim (CFO) happy”, and you’ll hear Jim saying things like “my money” and “that’s good for my bottom line”.

We see the exact same thing when HR departments take ownership of culture or employee engagement.

This comes from a good place, from Read more…