Tag Archives: employee engagement

Leadership Card 11 – Clarity and Empathy and Employee Engagement

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Design For Ease of Use with Lean CX – Leadership Card 11

Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card - Engagement Model 3

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Clarity and Empathy – Two Major Keys To Employee Engagement

Straight out of Harvard comes a story and research showing a simple way to improve employee engagement and your productivity, profit and happiness.  It’s called caring.  Actually caring what your customers are trying to solve, actually caring what your team is trying to solve, and providing clarity on the path to solve that problem.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Yet almost no one does this.  Most people are too busy either putting out fires in their own business, or creating fuzzy, vague outcomes and mission statements that when it comes down to it mean absolutely nothing.

To Be Clear Is To Be Unkind

Something financial guru and  entrepreneur Dave Ramsey says is “To be unclear is to be unkind”.  And that kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?  It happens so often not just in business but also in relationships – when you have an expectation that something will happen but you haven’t actually made that clear.  You haven’t told the person what you would like!  And since they can’t read minds, there is a good chance they won’t actually do the thing you secretly wanted them to do.

So make it clear.

Make it clear by understanding what your customer wants.  Make it clear in a standard, repeatable process that shapes the path for your team.  Make it clear when you check in regularly to see if everything is on track.

When you’ve made it clear, another thing can happen.  It might be clear that the process is actually pretty hard.  Maybe it’s an emotional time or area for a customer, maybe it’s a long and boring process.  Nothing is perfect.  So this is where the second part of our equation comes in:

Care.

Care about your team, sympathize with their troubles.  Yes, problem solve with them using Lean CX when you can, but also just listen.  Sometimes people need to vent, and need to be heard that they are going through something tough.  Acknowledge that it is, and don’t minimize it.

Empathy and Clarity.  They both make a difference to your team’s engagement, and if you use both I absolutely guarantee you will see some astounding results.

Chat soon – David Mclachlan

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Leadership Card 10 – Tie Outcomes To Meaning

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Design For Ease of Use with Lean CX – Leadership Card 10

Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 10 - Tie Outcomes to Meaning

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Giving Your Team a Purpose

There’s nothing worse than getting up at your alarm in the morning, getting the kids ready for school, downing a morning coffee and rushing in to work… only to have that work mean absolutely nothing in your broader life.

You’ve been there before, haven’t you?  The work is either boring and too easy (or too hard), or too little or too much.  It’s rarely ever Goldilocks – just right – and it’s almost never a part of your real dreams, passions, or purpose.

There’s A Lot Of Disengagement Out There

And the stats on this are pretty brutal.  Nearly 67% of workers are disengaged at work – dragging their feet, making additional mistakes, and  having significant time off before leaving altogether.  But the research also shows that people want to do a good job, it’s usually leaders lacking in real team motivation, psychology and operational management skills that cause people to lose their engagement and their drive.  Which makes sense, because no one really ever teaches you this stuff, do they?  Especially not in an easy to use framework like the one from “The Lean CX Score” book.

Tying the outcomes of your team to a higher meaning has been proven to improve the engagement and purpose of your team, and the results they get.  The good news it doesn’t have to be a fancy meaning like curing world hunger, it just has to be a meaning higher than the work they’re doing now.

Things like:

  • Your work will have a direct impact on meeting our profit target in this way, or;
  • The customers you help are impacted in that way, or;
  • You are helping your broader team achieve something by doing your work, or;
  • Even almost any “because”.

Just Saying “Because” Increased People Saying Yes By 93%

During a study by psychology Ellen Langer, she wondered what sort of words she could use to get people to let her cut in line before them at the copy machine.

She used many different variations and ways of asking, but it turned out that almost any reason was enough – the highest performing sentence included “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” with a 94% compliance rate.  But just giving any reason also gave a 93% compliance rate, such as “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?”

Just including a “because” in your request brings a different meaning to things – a meaning that’s not just all about you, or the other person in the moment.

So when you tie the outcomes of your team’s work to a meaning, give it some thought, but don’t overdo it.  Don’t spend six months coming up with the perfect “meaning”, when a simple higher meaning will do.  And then watch your team blossom just that little bit more, as the engagement within your team grows.

Chat soon – David McLachlan

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Leadership Card 6 – Employee Engagement and Defects, Theft and Safety

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Design Your Work For Ease of Use Using Lean CX – Leadership Card 6

Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card - Theft and Defects

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Have You Ever Been Happy?

Silly question, I know.  But… have you?  Really, truly happy?  Do you remember what it’s like?  Maybe it was this morning, maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was last week or maybe it was last year.  But the thing about happy people – people who are fulfilled, at peace with their place in life, and satisfied with what they have, is that they are nicer people to have around for a variety of reasons.

Sure, they are happier, they don’t grumble as much, and are generally more fun to be around.  But the statistics also take it a step further, because people who are happy, find meaning from and are completely engaged in their work actually make fewer mistakes, have fewer safety incidents, and steal less.

Employee engagement is so important when it comes to safety incidents, in fact, that one CEO I recently worked with used to have a rule: “Don’t tell me the engagement score, just tell me how many safety incidents and absentees your team has had.”  That was all the information he needed to know to get a gauge on whether or not the team would be working well or far off track.

Chat soon – David McLachlan

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Leadership Card 5 – Absenteeism and Turnover

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Design Your Work For Ease Of Use – Card 5

Leadership Card 5 - absenteeism and turnover

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People Leave Leaders, Not companies

Your experience of a company, now matter how large or small, is only as good as the leader you are working for.  Have a good leader who engages her staff, checks in regularly, focuses on strengths, ties outcomes to meaning and more, and you will likely have a good experience and want to do great work.

Have a bad leader, however, who micromanages, is never around when you need them, doesn’t seem to care about the work or your development and only looks out for themselves, and there’s a good chance you’ll be left with a bitter taste in your mouth when thinking about that company.

It’s no surprise, then, that teams in the lowest quartile for engagement experience 41% more absenteeism – people with sick days or any other reason to get away and have a day off.  They also experience 59% higher turnover.  When you combine these two things as a business, not only is less getting done, but the cost of replacing staff – from advertising, to hiring, and training someone new, is absolutely huge.

Design Your Work For Ease Of Use, and Employee Engagement

Getting intentional about designing your work means designing it in a way that engages your staff.

At its very core, the framework described in the book The Lean CX Score advocates things like checking in regularly, removing frustrating rework, gaining clarity through a standard process and much more.  It’s the little things, the mundane things, but these things make a huge difference.

Chat soon – David McLachlan

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Leadership Card 4 – Productivity and Profit

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Design Your Work For Ease Of Use – Leader Card 4

Leadership Card 4 - productivity and profit

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Employee Engagement Affects Productivity and Profit

Most everyday leaders battling in the trenches are not aware of a thing called “Systems thinking”.  It’s a way of thinking, taught to most MBAs or business school graduates that asks you to think of the bigger picture, and then the bigger picture again, and to how each tiny action will affect the whole.

The perfect example of this is how employee engagement – where your employees enjoy and are empowered to do their work – affects not only your team’s happiness but the productivity of your team and the profit of your company.

If you are a small business or a startup this is absolutely critical, because eventually you will be needing to hire your initial team of people to run things when you’re not around.  Trusting those first few people with your fledgling business can be very difficult, but it is made infinitely easier with the trust that comes from highly engaged, high productivity and high output team mates.

Design Your Work for Ease of Use

The good news is there is a proven framework that shows you, step up step, how to design your work in a way that increases engagement and reduces the friction you feel when your work isn’t quite right.

It’s called the Ease of Use framework, and it was first outlined in the book “The Lean CX Score”.  It takes the absolute best methods from the most customer and culture-centric business improvement method of the last century, and makes them usable in a white collar world.

Chat soon – David McLachlan

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Oh and good news!  You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time.  Get the Lean CX Score now.

Leadership Card 3 – Sales and Satisfaction

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Design Your Work For Ease Of Use – Leadership Card 3

Leadership Card 3 - Sales and Satisfaction

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Sales and Satisfaction

It’s amazing the affect something seemingly unrelated can have on something bigger.  Most managers are busy trying to get through their day (and oftentimes night), just putting out the fires that come up.  They’re so busy that they never think about intentionally designing their work for ease of use.  Designing their work in a way that improves the small things, that affect the bigger things.

A little thing like employee engagement – how much your team enjoy and are enabled to do their work – can affect something as important to your business as sales.  In fact, if cashflow is the oxygen of your business, then breathing is making the sale – it is that necessary to life of your business.

Using the framework I describe in the Lean CX Score to get intentional about designing your work can make a huge difference, in more ways that you might initially think.

Chat soon – David McLachlan

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The Leadership Card Deck

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Update: You can now buy the full Leadership Card Deck of 48 cards, printed on super-strong, beautiful linen paper from anywhere in the world.  You can also watch us playing the Leadership Affinity card game for the first time.  It will raise your leadership level, and the engagement, motivation and leadership level of your teams.  Have the Leadership Cards delivered for your next meeting!

Leadership Card Deck Back

Leadership Card Deck 001 Introduction - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 002 Lean CX Ease of Use Employee Engagement Leadership Card 003 Lean CX Ease of Use Sales and Satisfaction Leadership Card 004 Lean CX Ease of Use Profit Productivity Leadership Card 005 Lean CX Ease of Use Absenteeism Turnover Leadership Card 006 Defects Theft Safety - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 007 Clear Outcomes - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 008 What is expected - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 009 Setting Clear Outcomes - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 010 Tie outcomes to meaning - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 011 Empathy and Clarity - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 012 Checking In - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 013 Focus on Strengths - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 014 CEOs Customers - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 015 Design the Situation - Lean CX Ease of Use  Leadership Card 016 What Workers Want - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 017 Intense Focus on Activity - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 018 Clear Objective - Lean CX Ease of Use  Leadership Card 019 Immediate Feedback - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 020 Certainty Variety - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 021 Significance Connection - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 022 Growth Contribution - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 023 Not Invented Here - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 024 - Curse of Knowledge - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 025 What looks like a people problem - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 026 - What looks like resistance - Lean CX Ease of use Leadership Card 027 What looks like laziness - Lean CX Ease of use Leadership Card 028 Make it Repeatable - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 029 Reduce the steps - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 030 Make it Visual - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 031 Impossible to make a mistake - Lean CX Ease of use Leadership Card 032 Checking In - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 033 Problem Solve - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 034 Rework - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 35 Excessive Hand offs - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 36 Waiting - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 037 Excessive Steps - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 038 Not getting what they want - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 039 Meaningful Work - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 040 Two Times Revenue - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 041 Million Dollar Checklist - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 042 Assertive Enquiry - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 043 Intrinsic motivation - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 044 Autonomy - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 045 Mastery - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 046 Purpose - Lean CX Ease of Use Leadership Card 047 Revealing Problems - Lean CX Ease of Use Lean CX 040 Leading Collaboration - Lean CX Ease of Use 

Lean CX Infographic – The Huge Benefits of Employee Engagement

Lean Infographic Employee Engagement Benefits

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It’s Official: Employee Engagement Has A Huge Impact On Your Profit

For years the greatest leaders have had an inkling that teams who are most engaged actually perform better, and bring more prosperity to their business.  Well now it’s official.  As the latest numbers from the Gallup Engagement Study show, in the state of the American workforce there is a very telling difference in the productivity, sales, and overall profit of businesses within the top quartile of engagement.

If employee engagement is something that you are struggling with, or even just want to improve, I have some good news.

There Is A Proven Way To Higher Engagement: Design Your Work

The Lean CX Score, a book by David McLachlan, outlines six key steps to creating disruptive products and services, and it also improves the speed, morale and engagement of your teams.

With the latest research pointing to the fact that engagement and profit are inexplicably linked, it may not surprise you that if the Lean CX Score impacts speed and morale, it also has a higher likelihood of creating disruptive products and outstanding businesses.

The six key steps of the Lean CX Score have been linked to research in psychology, business, and plain old motivation.  But the main aspect of all of them is the principle of intentionally designing your work, and intentionally designing your product and your experience, so that it meets the needs of your users in a way that keeps them engaged.

When we say “keeping them engaged”, it works for both your customers and your team.  Engaged customers are the ones who return to your product, again and again.  They are the ones who are your biggest fans, the ones who would walk an extra block to buy from you instead of your competitor.

And engaged team mates are the ones who will go the extra mile for their managers and for their customers – whether it is internal “customers” that they serve with a report or task, or the final, end customer who pays their wage by buying your product or service.

If you haven’t got a copy of the Lean CX Score, I highly recommend you check it out.  I guarantee it will have a huge impact on your life.

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Lean CX ScoreGet "The Lean CX Score" now, and start creating disruptors in your industry that completely annihilate your competition.

Oh and good news!  You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time.  Get the Lean CX Score now.

Lean CX Infographic – Employee Engagement (and Disengagement)

Lean CX Infographic Employee Engagement

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That’s Right – 67% Of Employees Are Disengaged At Work

And that’s just in the U.S, where people get coffee breaks and are paid more than two dollars an hour.  It’s even worse if we look at the broader world where those things aren’t guaranteed, factories can pay a handful of dollars with inhumane conditions and employees are not protected by basic laws.

But having 67% of your employees be disengaged is still pretty bad.  After all, disengaged employees are the ones who are more likely to leave, more likely to be sick on average, and even (according to the research) more likely to steal.

But there’s more, and it is discovered and outlined in the book, “The Lean CX Score” by David McLachlan.  In the Lean CX Score, David outlines the benefits of designing your work, and your products, properly.  And they all point to improved engagement and improved profit as a result.

For a start, disengaged team members or employees are six times more likely to leave their job than their engaged counterparts.  That’s a 600% difference.  Do you think it’s expensive to acquire customers?  Well it’s extremely expensive to find and hire good staff.  Between the downtime caused with a lost employee, to the cost of advertising, vetting resumes, interviewing, and training, it is much easier to keep them engaged in the first place.

Engaged team members are also more likely to make you more money.  A study by Kenexa found that businesses with highly engaged employees – those in the top quartile of engagement – achieved twice the annual net revenue on average, when compared to businesses with lower engagement scores.

It’s for these reasons that there are entire companies dedicated to the discovery of employee engagement around the world, and companies are lining up to buy their services.  Engagement matters.

But You Don’t Have To Suffer Through Low Engagement

If you’d prefer to live in the higher engagement end of town, there is good news.  You don’t have to suffer through low engagement scores, as a business owner, a leader managing a team, or a “leader without a title” inside a team of your own where you feel engagement could be higher.

Designing your work for happiness has been proven to have a huge effect on your employees, and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Take just two steps in the Lean CX Score book – a Repeatable Process, and Checking In.

In 1961, a US psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihali interviewed 1000 peole, asking them about the circumstances that made them happy.  He called this happiness a state of “Flow”, when things went well, and things just seemed to flow well – when participants felt on top of the world.  Mihaly found five main things in common when it came to creating happiness.  It happened when his subjects were:

  1. Intensely focused on an activity,
  2. Had control over the outcome,
  3. That was neither too easy not too hard,
  4. That had a clear objective, and;
  5. That gave immediate feedback

The good news about this is having a Repeatable Process, whether it’s interacting with a product in a predictable way each time, or knowing the boundaries of your work so you can easily move into a flow state, has a deep impact on happiness and flow.

And Checking In, which is step five in the Lean CX Score, means we check regularly to see if we’re on track – with our customers, our users, or our team.

There are many more stories and a lot more research in the Lean CX Score book, making it a nice, easy read that will have a huge impact on your results.

I highly recommend you get yourself a copy today.

Get all the infographics here

Lean CX ScoreGet "The Lean CX Score" now, and start creating disruptors in your industry that completely annihilate your competition.

Oh and good news!  You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time.  Get the Lean CX Score now.