Engaging Your Workforce - Part II

Our research has shown that the Number#1 difference between the highest- and lowest-performing organizations is strength of leadership, based on the average of several factors.

One of those factors was the ability to motivate or engage the people in the company in pursuing its goals.

For this isolated factor - the ability to engage the workforce - top-performing companies rated 281% higher!

Given that execution is a far greater challenge that strategy formulation, the ultimate core competency for any organization is realized when "all individuals make strategy execution their everyday job."

BOTTOMLINE: Three key steps to engaging your workforce:

1. Make sure each person understands your strategy. Since research indicates that less than 5% of the typical workforce understands their organization's strategy, make sure it is clear, available and reinforced continuously.
2. Get individual commitment (buy-in) to the strategy. The best way to do this is having leadership visibly engaged themselves in the strategy's execution.
3. Give individuals the tools they need to execute the strategy. Individual plans, created on a quarterly basis and reviewed briefly each week gets each person more engaged.