The Rewarding Environment

 

There are several components to this emerging crisis.  In part it is the relationship that each follower requires with the leader and how stimulating that is.  It is also the working culture of the team/function/organisation and how confident people feel to challenge beliefs and effect change.  Furthermore it involves how effective the organisation is at developing people at all levels.  Equally it contains the organisation’s ability to welcome and seek change as a key driver of the strategic and tactical renewal.  Finally another aspect revolves around the way people are rewarded, recognized and valued.  There are, of course, others but these will be the subject of discussion in this article.

 

Today’s Gen Y managers and leaders are demanding more and different things from their organisations.   The fact that there has been significant change thrust upon every organisation due to the global economic challenges remains a backdrop to the ways organisations need to develop to attract and retain talent.   Traditionally the way to survive downturns was to rape a variety of budget areas – people development was often a high candidate for this form of surgery.  However, this is now being seen as more of a risk.   Talented people will not tolerate a withdrawal of investment in them as they value their development as key for their careers and therefore a critical aspect of the contract between them and their employer.  If they can no longer see that happening in their current employment then they will make a move – and quickly.  The signs are there in many places.  The interesting thing is that the research shows quite clearly that the performance of organisations who maintain their training and development budgets in hard times outperform those who withdraw them by a factor.  Common sense would also tell us that this would be likely to be true.

 

There are other aspects to this.  The environment in which people work  - the culture if you like – is now under the spotlight.  We are observing interesting companies like Google grow whilst continuing to attract some of the best talent in the world.  They have worked it out that smart people work best under certain circumstances.  They want to work alongside smart people in a way that can be unconformist yet innovative.   Many organisations cannot cope with unconformity.  ‘We have spent years setting up these rules and you have to work with us in the way we tell you’ is the mantra.  Well, you are probably in for a shock – because they won’t.  If an employer attracts an adverse reputation (not because of failure to pay market rates) by way of failing to provide a healthy, innovative and challenging environment which is underpinned by investment then it will be heading for a big problem that will take time to rectify.  Once a reputation is fixed for an employer then it is difficult to change.

 

Technology has helped people to establish data points on employers and their reputations.  Currently there are so many ways people can connect through technology as a pathway to rich research on potential employers.  Irrespective of what the organisation’s PR machine is trying to say in the press and media, individuals conducting their own research circumvent this.   Even the ‘inmates’ of an organisation will respond on their private systems to enquiries from people they don’t even know.  No PR machine can resist this groundswell of information circulating around the network particularly as they have no control of it.  So the truth will out – as they say.

 

This is not just about investment dollars in training and development.  It is much more that that.   It is critical to create an open environment where important things can be challenged and where debate can flourish.   Of course decisions have to be made and implemented otherwise we end up with a university.  The old models of the past are being challenged every day and leaders from the discredited world of command and control of yesteryear are finding themselves lacking.  New followers want certain needs from their working environment and today’s leaders have to start to provide these.   However, in many cases these leaders don’t know how to do it – they can’t cope with the feedback or have problems listening to more junior people.  It is not in their leadership DNA.   On the one hand we have leaders disconnected from the very soul of their business whilst on the other followers are withdrawing their equity and seeking an alternative environment where they can flourish.  So we now have a clash of styles happening.   Our view is that this will take some time to work through organisations – but the fact remains that this will happen and we need to acknowledge the fact.  

 

We have witnessed countless Attitude and Communications Surveys over recent times.  In many cases they make horrid reading.   We have also observed at first hand the time honoured denial systems at work, ‘well they would say that wouldn’t they?’ or ‘this was a bad time to conduct this survey as morale was low then’.  We have heard it all before.   Leaders are often too scared to look below the surface and examine the iceberg that they cannot (or don’t want to) see.   All the answers are within the organisations – they only have to ask and listen to what people are saying.    We started our company 20 years ago and the thoughts, ideas and innovation of the people within our organisations have driven our cumulative success.  Change never stops – we are always looking and having a ton of fun along the way.  So why can’t larger organisations do this – without pretending that ‘lunch with the Chief Executive’ or a ‘barbecue for a couple of functions’ will solve the problem?  This is cosmetic stuff that is insulting to people who know it is a short term management pretense at a response.   It is quite amusing to watch senior people surrounded by their sycophants trying to reconcile these futile initiatives as solutions to the problems.  

 

It is changing and it will continue to change – that is for sure.  The smart leaders will ask the uncomfortable questions and demand that these critical issues are addressed in more fundamental ways than the examples given above.    Customers, clients and employees have ever changing demands.  If these are not met then they will take their equity somewhere else.  This is no different from the employees of any organisation.  You have to decide whether you want to be a winner or loser in this sea change.  But first you have to ask, ‘what can my organisation provide for my people?’   In the past if you didn’t ask then you were never told.  Today if you don’t ask they still probably won’t tell you – but what is different today is that they will find what they want elsewhere and you will be captain of the ship that is diving to the bottom.  As Churchill said, ‘most of leadership is about choice’.  This choice is a ‘no brainer’ as they say.