Seal the Deal with Your People!

Despite the gloomy statistics of the employee engagement surveys that indicate such high levels of employee disengagement, there are many companies out there that do not have a problem.

Some of those are organisations that are run on the basis of organisational democracy as promoted by my friend Traci Fenton at Worldblu; businesses that subscribe to the 10 principles of organisational democracy.

Apparently thousands of others "from start-ups to Fortune 500 conglomerates are using Great Game principles to achieve breakthrough results." These principles are rooted in "The Great Game of Business" as developed by Jack Stack and his colleagues at Springfield Remanufacturing Company (SRC). I only learned about this last week, but for those of you who are in the position I was in then, the story makes interesting reading.

With 12 colleagues and $100,000, Stack borrowed $9 million to purchase the failing division of International Harvester. Knowing that traditional management practices were not going to turn around the business in anything like the timescale needed, Stack recognised the need for a bold new way of managing. Accordingly Stack "took the elements of any game (teams, rules, scores, results), applied them to the daunting task of righting SRC" and got his people involved. They came to understand that their daily work does matter and that they could make a difference. As a result remarkable gains were made, and the 89-1 debt equity was reduced to 5-1 in just a few years and other people management issues "dropped precipitously."   

Naturally I relate to this approach, because it coincides with my conviction that any organisation is ultimately a team. This approach thus just delivers a practical means to effect that philosophy, and its initial success and subsequent replication elsewhere proves it works.

Both approaches deliver results that buck the trend (and make you wonder how bad employee engagement survey results would be without such organisations!) They prove, if further proof is needed, that treating people with respect is a fundamental element of sustained success. In light of this you might then question what difference my approach of valuing people would make. If you can achieve such results with greater democracy and "open book management" why would you need to go to the trouble of creating a new administrative process with all that entails?

It is a valid question, but the answer is simple. Valuing your people offers a way to create employee ownership that is fundamentally simple and more attractive than traditional employee share ownership plans (ESOPs.)  It embeds the theory and practice of making people think and act like owners and is irreversible and not subject to the vicissitudes of management changes. Thus you could say it seals the deal – and very effectively.