Employee Engagement

To get your people excited about a new initiative, make sure you get the "skeptic" on your side. Here are three tips to do this with success.

Storytelling is a leadership blind spot that has been facing the business world for the past 20 years. It’s time to address this.

Employees want to be a part of something bigger, to belong, to go on meaningful journeys & make an impact. Here's how to make this a reality within your organization.

Companies that deliver great customer experiences also deliver great employee experiences. Do you have a winning employee strategy in place?

To help their organizations realize success, leaders need to create high-quality experiences that unlock their peoples' discretionary efforts. Are you ready?

Employees are your most important customers. It’s time to start treating them that way. Here are three tips to help.

Today leaders must do more to create a place that reenergizes people & enables them to contribute their best. Here are two key questions to ask.

Dialogue is at the root of all effective engagement and group action. Here are six tips to help ensure that dialogue thrives at your organization.

Employees are resigning from their jobs at rates we’ve never seen before, making it clear that they’re the ones with the power. Leaders and organizations must adapt to meet the needs of today’s workers.

What drove your people to perform in the past is no longer the same. Amidst a workforce evolution, leaders need to evolve their own thinking.

Visualization can help take the sting out of change by adding the necessary context that is so often neglected in corporate communication.

Managers must need to know how to lead with Empathy 2.0 if you want to get the best out of your people. Are they ready?

Hiring managers are focused on the wrong things. Look for the characteristics of high performers and forget everything else.

As leadership teams discuss plans for hybrid work and culture, they’re relying on HR leaders to successfully develop and engage their people.

If your organization hasn’t honed its virtual event skill set yet and still needs to figure out how to combine virtual events with in-person experiences, the time is now.

Yes, it is possible for your organization to rise above the current talent-shortage trend and cultivate its next generation of leaders.

Your talent shortage has more to do with you and your organization than it does with the talent you're trying to recruit or retain.

What are you doing to improve the energy and attitude among your peers and teams? If you're stumped, read on for some tips to create a positive work environment.

Jim Haudan discusses diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and mental health with six C-suite leaders.

We are currently all at risk of cultural tunnel vision. And so we must work harder to establish mutual empathy and stronger connections.

High-performance teams are the result of people committing to build something together that is special. Here are tips to make this happen at your organization.

Working from home can be isolating. To help with this challenge, successful leaders weigh in on how to create cohesive and engaged workplaces.

Bite-sized learning and 60-minute modules aren't the only options. 15 minutes might be all you need to get the job done.

For an organization to conceptualize and roll out transformative change, it needs every single employee on board. Click for tips.

How can leaders create engagment despite the tidal wave of chaos casued by the pandemic? Celebrate your teams any chance you get.

Preparing for change? Here are three tips for leaders to mitigate risks and help prepare their people for the road ahead. Change isn't easy, but yes, it is achievable!

Culture is king. Get tips for creating a strong culture – one that unites your people and inspires them for the long term

For an organization to succeed it must have a strategy for creating a winning employee experience. Feeling stuck? Read on for three tips.

Create emotional and intellectual understanding of strategy and priorities. Enable remote, shared learning using visualization and dialogue.

The concept of “giving back” is showing up outside the expected.It appears to be a critical ingredient in sustaining meaningful human behavior change.

People must understand how a business operates and what it takes to win if they give their best efforts. Three tips to encourage everyone to work together.

Do you know the truth about how your people are feeling right now? We'll fill you in. They're hurting, stressed, and exhausted, but don’t feel safe enough to tell us. It's time to figure out how to connect with your people and we have insights to help.

I miss hallway conversations -- not the actual hallway, but the connections. The performance and emotional health of your people in this new virtual work from home world requires leaders to help create deliberate and purposeful connections. Are you prepared?

During change people want and need three things: clarity, connection, and conversation and messaging needs to address each of these elements.

Organizations need to implement changes to navigate tremendous challenges. Communicating effectively has never been more critical than it is right now.

Engagement surveys have a place and time.This is not it. But it's still critical to know what people are thinking,to guide organizational shifts.

While we certainly value in-person gatherings, you can’t afford to put events on hold even if you can’t be together. Your business and strategy can’t wait.

As a leader, how do you clearly and concisely convey rapid business shifts to your people during times of uncertainty? How do you break through the noise?

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Working from home, or “WFH” as it is now often called, is becoming increasingly common in the modern workplace. To help those who find working from home challenging, here are some tips for staying motivated and being efficient.

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Leaders are faced with the new challenge of how best to engage their teams remotely in thse rapidly changing and uncertain times. Here are actions to take.

Upside down. For many of us, the world is upside down now, and we don’t know how or when it will feel right-side up again.

My mindset can’t be that of a marathon runner or a sprinter during these uncertain times. Instead, I think we should embrace an interval training mentality.

The big differentiator is how leaders empathize, engage, motivate, and capitalize on their talents and knowledge in the face of adversity.

As we grapple with the challenges of maintaining health and safety, business continuity, and jobs, it’s easy to forget that your people need self-care.

The coronavirus has forced many to cancel meetings, conferences, and gatherings that were previously considered essential. Don't go dark, go virtual! Here are our top tips for driving virtual engagement that works.

Is employee engagement a buzzword? What leaders can do to foster an engaged workforce.

My role, leading our CX team, gave me insight into how easy it is to initiate organizational change and how hard it is to sustain real change.

Values, purpose and mission should align to the work an organization does—and all the decisions made along the way

PowerPoint effectively showcases data, but it might not be an effective engagement tool or the best way to get people to care about what you're sharing.

One of our clients is in the telecommunications space, and working with them led to what became the best experience I’ve had in my role as a Concept Artist.

The times when we need to be the most conscious of others are when things get chaotic, stress levels run high, and deadlines loom. But, this rarely happens.

Despite the well-documented power of storytelling, most leaders are just awful at telling stories. Learn seven ways to become a stellar storyteller now.

There is nothing better than working in an organization that has a great culture. According to Deloitte, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe

The following is an excerpt from Erica Kewsin’s Bring Your Human to Work: Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Design a Workplace That is Good for People

Realism and truth-telling are at the heart of authentic engagement and change. But at people people rarely tell each other the truth.

The fate of your strategy hinges on everyone in your organization getting their heads, hearts, and minds around a new way – the needed culture change.

In sports or business, winning isn’t automatic just because you buy, recruit, or develop great talent. Performance and execution are as much tied to

Get a solid view and understanding of your employees’ experiences, attitudes and behaviors and you’ll have the tools you need to create lasting change.

An organization is only as strong and successful as the health of its people. It builds their capacity for optimal performance and overachievement.

There is more than $350 billion of lost productivity every year. Let's recover the lost hours of productivity by engaging people at work.

The power of face-to-face engagement enables people to have meaningful connections which in turns allows them to remember the content even years later.

Three tips to make your change initiative stick by helping every single person understand the "why" and "what" of the strategy and "how" they impact results.

Jim Haudan, and Rich Berens of Root Inc. detail 5 leadership blind spots that hinder employee engagement and innovation in the workplace.

Designing uniforms and implementing change have one thing in common, seek employee feedback if you want it to be successful.

When people are face-to-face, they talk about the true story behind why your business is changing and how they see themselves impacted in that change.

The lack of real dialogue is preventing change in organizations. Here are six ways to ensure dialogue thrives in your organization.

5 key elements for culture success that help you build a culture that attract customers, engage employees, and create purposeful and connected organization.

Four ways to build authentic advocacy, which means getting brand buy-in from your employees and customers and getting them involved in advocacy work.

The power of visualization is that it creates a clear picture that enables everyone to constructively discuss their opinions in a more thoughtful way.

This excerpt from the book INSIGHT takes us on a journey of self-exploration, showing us how to survive and thrive an increasingly delusional world.

It's time to start treating your employees as the most important customer, otherwise they cannot deliver the proper experience to your paying customers.

People know the best way to engage themselves with their work. Here is one person's letter to their boss on how they want to be engaged at work.

Diversity and inclusion at work enables people to show up as their whole and authentic selves which allows them to bring 100% of their value everyday.

Why is it worth investing time to create a pre-performance routine? Because, it can put you in the right state of mind to boost your chance of success.

Here are three questions to ask to achieve diversity and inclusion in your marketing to ensure all of your customers are welcome into your company.

You have a new strategy and need employee engagement ideas? Combining metaphors, visualization and discussion enables your strategy to be a success.

Emotional intelligence is just as (if not more) important than technical skill. Here are seven reasons why emotional intelligence is so important.

Engaging people in your company culture takes more than ping pong and a stocked snack room. A compelling organizational purpose is key to your culture.

Everyone has their way to motivate a team; here’s how we do it at Root. Motivating a team is a rewarding experience that has a lasting impact.

When you are the early bird, the world is a different place. Learn how waking up at 4am can have a dramatic benefit on your day.

Disruption. That’s a word that can be misused or even mistaken for a buzzword and it’s anything but. To be a disruptor means to evoke palpable change

It's important to create meaningful lives so here are three things smart people do to create meaningful lives for themselves.

Visuals are powerful storytelling tools because they allow you to see the big picture. Read how a visual helped everyone see what was really being discussed.

In most organizations change is hard, that's why using visuals can help everyone see what is really happening.

Gallup shows that employee engagement has risen 5%. So is employee engagement getting better? Find out if 5% is enough and why you should care about it.

To create employee engagement strategies that last, it takes more than a ping pong table and snacks. Here some people actually care about at work.

7 Steps to Building a Learning Initiative that Grabs the Attention of Millennials and Beyond Have you ever had a seven-layer salad? I haven’t either. They’re too healthy. That’s why I’m going to be open about my obsession for another food with an equal amount of layers: the seven-layer bar (shout out to the best … Continue reading “How to Create the Best Company Training Initiative Ever”

The innate form of communication is visuals. Learn how visuals can help a strategy roll out be successful by ensuring everyone sees the same strategy.

When you want to improve your onboarding program focus on Day 1. Day 1

There are 4 reason why storytelling is so powerful and enables you to tell your sustainability story successfully. Start telling stories today!

Engaging millennials at work with gamification improves learning and meets them where they are, their phone! Learn why 'mobile first' can have a big impact.

Learn how you can start using a comic in your business to help enable effective strategic communication.

Build better employee engagement by creating super super fan employees. Super fan employees are game changers to their organizations.

Creating a world-class onboarding program with these 7 traits ensures your new strategy will be a success.

It's time to start engaging Millennials at work. Studies find that recent college graduates are not engaged in their work, it's time to change that.

Let's make 2017 the year where we get beyond the buzzword and start using real words to create a shared meaning among all employees.

To unlock employee potential you need to give them the key, or multiple keys. Study what is already working and share it with the rest of your employees.

Whether you’re a CEO, senior manager, or recent college grad just entering the workforce, I have no doubt that you’re hearing the term employee engagement

Long have we been talking about the transformation of HR and how its role and significance is shifting within our businesses

Make it a better workday by saying these things to front line employees. Follow the words with actions to show that you mean them.

If you follow through with transparency and flexibility working hand-in-hand, the end result is happier, more engaged employees

People love a good story and it’s not just because stories are entertaining. We are wired for storytelling. The short story about stories is that they sell.

Root can help show you the big picture of change so you know how much longer you need to fight.

Back in May, I wrote a blog about Zappos’ bold move to embrace a no-manager model. While a drastic tactic, I have always been a fan of moving away from the archaic managerial role and more toward one that revolves around coaching and development. As part of Zappos’ strategy, CEO Tony Hsieh’s offered a severance package to employees … Continue reading “Checking in on Zappos’ Holocracy Movement”

Millions of dollars are spent each year in board rooms as executive teams determine the best strategy to win in the marketplace, be more competitive,

Every company has its own procedures and processes for new hires. From compensation and benefits forms, to training, to shadowing others – there are a lots of ways to bring new hires under the tent and make sure they become part of your organization and most importantly a contributor to the corporate strategy and culture. … Continue reading “Want Your Employees On Board? You Better Onboard!”

Millennials. They’re entering the workforce in droves, and they’re not very quiet about it.

Not sure how many of you caught this recent Fast Company article on the new rules of work. It makes some really good points about how what we do every day is evolving. And that may be too light a word… less evolution, more revolution, it seems. “The old rules of work applied to an economy of … Continue reading “The New Rules of Work”

As a child in school, my teachers would say, “Gary, please be quiet and take your seat!” Year after year, no matter who the teacher was, what the grade or which subject was being taught, that mantra never changed. I was never a trouble maker, I merely wanted to connect with the other kids in … Continue reading “A First for Everything”

All of us can learn from one another if we take the time to open up and listen. Even community leaders, politicians, and CEOs have room to learn a lesson.

DuPont Pioneer leaders wanted to increase employee engagement with better clarity, alignment and focus on the company strategy, its process and growth plans

Perspectives on how to anticipate, understand, and initiate conversations with your people to build engagement and improve performance.

What keeps leaders up at night? Things like figuring out how to tweak a business model; how to do things faster, better, and cheaper;

40% of employees don’t understand their company’s purpose. If you don’t know what your company stands for how can you derive the pride of purpose.

Connecting purpose and meaning at the various levels of the business is something that organizations don’t always do and it has detrimental effects.

What’s the case for storytelling? The mind processes information faster and better when it's in the form of something memorable and cohesive, like a story.

Thinking of engagement as a means to successful strategic change rather than an end in itself,than investing in engagement becomes vital to performance.

The Accordion Chart is an innovative tool that provides a useful visual breakdown of everything you need to know to get your employees on the same page.

Your paying customers are actually not your most important customers. Employees are, in fact, who you should focus on most.

Anyone can be creative, but there must be an environment that spurs and facilitates that creativity.Time to forgo traditional mindsets and predictability.

Work with your people to get something on paper – images, words, ideas. Encourage everyone to contribute through every iteration of the visual.

At a time where creativity and strategic innovation is falling short and change is a way of life, people are not showing up at work engaged in what they do.

We have unique ways to engage people, make it interactive, and appeal to both right-brain and left-brain thinkers to help them draw their own conclusions.

A fear-free, open environment encourages people to share ideas. If people know it’s safe to share their thoughts in the workplace, the floodgates open.

Realism and truth telling are at the heart of authentic engagement and change. The challenge is that rarely have we seen organizations of any type, profit or non-profit, where people tell each other the truth. And the higher you go in an organization, the worse it gets. As a matter a fact, when we ask … Continue reading “The Bold Side of Vulnerability in Creating Fearless Engagement – Part 1”

Without effective dialogue, achieving real results can be challenging. But how do you ensure the dialogue in your organization is genuine and meaningful?

Our experience bridging the divide between the “smart” and the “healthy” stuff shows that most companies still outsource the engagement of people to HR.

I would argue employee engagement is owned by the executive team, the same way they are responsible for managing all of the other critical assets.

The bottom line is Border's lost its focus on the customer, its purpose for being, and most importantly its people - the 'burning platform' wasn't enough.

Think about companies where employees are engaged. Southwest Airlines or Zappos? It’s a totally different customer experience.

An organization is only as strong as its root system or foundation - mainly it's employees and how engaged they are in the big picture strategy.

Last week, I talked about the challenge of senior leaders in building “collective intelligence” by owning the whole before their individual piece. When senior leaders are working too much on their individual agenda, they are often not spending enough time owning the whole — they’re not focused enough on the big picture of where the … Continue reading “Owning the Whole Before Your Piece – Part 2”

As strategy execution consultants, we constantly see mandates to innovate and strategies built around innovation. More than ever, it seems that organic

The real key is each team member must own the whole before their piece: They must sacrifice the area they represent for the overall good of the company.

Design is essentially a rational, logical, sequential process intended to solve problems or initiate change in man-made things

Employees can truly love their organizations only when they are committed to the organization’s vision, understand the strategy and how they contribute

One of my favorite quotes from Anne Frank is: “No one ever became poor from giving.” I find it so simple, true, and inspirational. And yet, I’ve also found that people rarely give just to give and even those with tremendous resources don’t pull out the checkbook to give to anything and everything. Quite the … Continue reading “Giving Is Personal”

the essence of her golden touch was that she figured out long ago that giving and growing were inseparable. You couldn’t have one without the other.

Cartoons aren't just for the Sunday funnies. Using them at the office opens minds to new ideas by suspending disbelief, so why not a cartoon?

“Our employees are too smart for visuals,” that they’re “analytical and data-driven.", but those same people are using images or visuals to solve problems!

We often build principles of play into our creative methods to solve business problems and build employee engagement along the way.

There is no silver bullet for simultaneously establishing a compelling vision and engendering employee engagement for execution

The question became, “How can we balance the need for leaders to establish their vision while gaining commitment from more employees?”

Link people who test, build, manufacture, pilot, serve, and transport the products and services to how it impacts the people using them.

Is your company at a crossroads on next steps, don't now how to respond to changes, or how to communicate new strategies - storyboards might be the answer

A meaningful journey has challenge, risks, excitement, suspense, unexpected events, unknowns and a purpose that makes it all worthwhile

Building a sense of belonging to the team of the future for your people is an important proactive art of leadership and engagement.

Building a sense of belonging to the team of the future for your people is an important proactive art of leadership and engagement.

Any investment in helping managers be better employee coaches can have a lasting and significant impact on the success of your business.

The perennial advice to college grads is “find yourself.” Root CEO Jim Haudan (and others) suggest the real point is to “lose yourself.”

Creating employee engagement is a challenging endeavor for any organization, particularly if it’s suffering from low employee morale or if there is a “make or break” strategy that needs to be executed well for the organization to continue to be viable. Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start. There is really no “one size … Continue reading “Missing a Critical Element of Employment Engagement?”

All organizations have business processes, and today’s organizations are constantly trying to transform – from manufacturing to brand-led, from domestic to global. But if you ask organizations for the process that guides the way they manage the organization through change, you may get a blank stare. Strategic change is a process, but it’s often managed … Continue reading “How Successful Strategies Win: Strategic Change as an Interdependent Process”

Adventures take shape in many forms.  And from adventures there are usually lessons to be learned.  I recently took part in a program offered by the National Outdoor Leadership School, which takes people of all ages on remote wilderness expeditions, teaching technical outdoor skills, leadership, and environmental ethics in some of the world’s wildest and … Continue reading “Survivor: Patagonia”

Every new year brings hundreds of predictions and thoughts about future trends. Just five years ago, Josh Bersin predicted that the LMS market would be

I recently returned from an overseas trip to Russia. My husband and I traveled from Detroit to Amsterdam to St. Petersburg to Arkhangelsk and back again in 6 days. A lot of traveling in a short period of time, but we couldn’t be more motivated and engaged. Even with the crazy time zones and lack … Continue reading “The Roots of Engagement in Russia”

In deciding what they will do – and do differently – to respond to today’s business challenges, organizations have moved onboarding up on the priority list. The ability to make new or redeployed employees productive and effective in the shortest possible time is more critical than ever. At its best, onboarding is a holistic process … Continue reading “Strategic Approaches to Onboarding”

Raise your hand if you work for a consulting firm. Raise your hand if your work has ever given you the opportunity to work closely with consultants. Raise your hand if your company has ever hired consultants. That’s a lot of hands up. Business and management consulting has a rather long history starting around the … Continue reading “The Infancy of Visual Consulting”

“Onboarding” is a term used on cruise ships, but most companies don’t operate on boats. And starting a new position or understanding your role

A few years ago New York Times writer David Brooks wrote an article during the graduation season that really struck a chord with me.

Do you believe that “a picture is worth a thousand words”? It refers to the idea that ideas and stories can be described with just a single image, instead of a large chunk of text. Well, last week, I received a picture from my older brother: A picture of my niece dressed as Belle (from … Continue reading “A picture is worth a thousand words”

For the first time in history, companies are experiencing four generations of people working side by side, where the age difference may be 50 years or more

We’ve all been there before. A new strategy is presented by the CEO or business unit leader. It’s about world-class customer satisfaction, operational excellence, innovation, ambitious growth targets, and how “we” are planning to displace the competition. And after that, not a whole lot seems to change. You don’t hear much about the strategy and, … Continue reading “Marketing the “Friendly Skies””

Imagine walking into your local watering hole and taking a seat at the bar. The bartender sets your choice beverage in front of you, let’s just say, I don’t know, a brown ale. However, the drink becomes the last thing on your mind, because the moment the drink touches the bar top it is illuminated … Continue reading “The iBar™ – Engagement at the Pub”

The Context I was watching my nephew as he struggled to complete his reading assignment for the night. The assignment was to read one chapter and write a short paragraph summarizing what he read. I sat down next to him and asked if he needed any help. “I hate reading! I always have to read … Continue reading “Different Learners, Different Learning Styles”

Strange as it sounds, training and Fruit Loops® have much in common. When considering training, we often think of instructional design models, learning management systems, curriculum structures, and learning theory. We ask ourselves, “Should training be mandatory?” More often than not, our answer is “Yes, otherwise employees won’t bother taking it.” Can you imagine asking … Continue reading “Organizational training and Fruit Loops®”

One of the fastest ways to provide a common understanding is through a story or a visual. Film marries both approaches in less time.