Engaging for Success?

HR gurus such as Gary Hamel at CIPD conferences seem to mouth the word ‘engagement’ more times per minute than Robert Plant used to sing ‘baby’ in the average Led Zeppelin song.  But what exactly does this mean?  Is engagement some kind of secret code for ‘in company dating’ or a causal relationship between casual workers and casual sex?

I've listened long and hard to academics discussing the concept and they seem not to be able to even agree what the definition of the word is.  Of course engagement is all about the 4E’s: getting people excited, empathetic, ecstatic and energetic about the company and what it does.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but what about achieving it? Some people think it is enough to apply the '3 W's of engagement' by posting the word engagement on every Wall, Website and WC in the company, in the vain hope that the repetition will somehow rub off on staff in some Orwellian approach to culture change.   Let’s look at an environment where many people feel engaged naturally.  The pub!

Pubs do NOT have mission statements that say:

“We aim to encourage sociosexual networking and leverage mission critical knowledge, skills and wisdom through the use of addictive depressant substances in a relaxing lifestyle environment that encourages the suppression of societal norms of decency and so on”.

Equally, genuine ‘employers of choice’ such as Google, Innocent and Unilever do NOT have such depressing mantras displayed around the office.  Isn’t there something very odd about that?  To get people engaged with your company, try some of these things:

1. Set your people free to decide how they go about their work but be clear about the demands / end results – smart leaders worry about the destination but provide some scope over the journey.
2. Encourage constructive and destructive deviance in the pursuit of better / quicker ways to do existing things.
3. Encourage spontaneous behaviour by leaving some aspects of work unplanned and unstructured.
4. Where performance matters, insist on proper prior preparation.  Surprisingly, this applies as much to punk rock as it does to people management.  Writing a two and a half minute music hit requires a great deal of discipline as well as tapping into your intuition, as Ian Dury, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones would tell you.

I wrote a micro book called Punk Rock People Management a while back, which aimed to digest all of HR down to a very short volume, based on three principles: Simplicity, Brevity and Authenticity.  The book offers us three chords on engagement:

1. Cut the crap on engagement and get engaged with what counts and what gets counted.
2. Give people discretion on the means of production whilst being precise on the ends of production.
3. Create a vacancy if your people are pretty vacant …

Punk Rock People Management is available free via the link above.  You can also see a set of seminar slides on the subject which we gave as a keynote to an HR Conference recently at Innovation and HR.  No need to pogo or throw a TV out the window at work when you read the book, of course ! :-)

And Martin Couzens made this superb mini video about a Punk Rock approach to HR.  Check it out at PunkHR.

Peter Cook

About the Blogger:  Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock - Keynote events with a difference and Human Dynamics - Business and organisation development, training and coaching.  Contact via peter@humdyn.co.uk  His latest book "The Music of Business" is available direct or in the usual places.

  

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comment here telling us your take on what engagement is.

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