Ember Carriers Blog | From Possibility to Results

Effects of Commitment to Vision on Employee Satisfaction With Their Organization

February 14th, 2011

Mary Hladio

Job Satisfaction

An empirical investigation into organizational commitment to corporate vision and employee satisfaction was carried out using two successive surveys of roughly 900 workers of a high-tech robotics company.

A poll was held following development of a corporate vision statement and communication to employees to examine employees’ perceived organizational commitment to the vision and their satisfaction with their organization.

Factor analysis was executed for participants’ responses to corporate vision items, and three factors emerged:

Employee commitment
Departmental management commitment
Vision outcomes

Among the hypotheses tested was that employee organizational satisfaction will be more favorable when employees have a greater degree of understanding about the vision statement and when employees have a greater perceived co-worker commitment to the vision.

The research upholds a correlation between employee poll responses to corporate vision, department management to vision, and employee satisfaction. The highest correspondence to organization satisfaction was relevant to the factor of vision outcomes.

A follow-up survey was performed within a year, and data analyses demonstrated consistent correspondences over time.

Source: International Journal of Management (12/10) Vol. 27, No. 3, P. 421 Slack, Frederick J.; Orife, John N.; Anderson, Fred P.

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Big Data, Analytics, and the Path From Insights to Value

February 7th, 2011

Mary Hladio

Planet Data

The attempts by organizations to capitalize on information and apply analytics today and in the future is the focus of the 2010 New Intelligent Enterprise Global Executive Study and Research Project by MIT Sloan Management Review and the IBM Institute for Business Value. The study found through a survey of about 3,000 executives, managers, and analysts:

Top-performing organizations employ analytics 5X more than lower performers.
60% of respondents listed innovating to realize competitive differentiation as a leading business challenge and also concurred that their organization has more data than it can effectively use.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents cited a lack of understanding of how to use analytics to enhance the business as the primary impediment to widespread analytics adoption.

The researchers learned that organizations strongly agreed that the use of information and analytics distinguishes them within their industry and increased their chances of being top performers by twofold in comparison to lower performers.

Top performers doubled their chances of using analytics to direct future strategies and insights to guide day-to-day operations, and they make decisions based on thorough analysis at more than twice the rate of lower performers. The researchers identified a five-point strategy for successfully deploying analytics-driven management and for rapidly generating value:

Concentrate on the largest and highest value opportunities.
Begin implementing analytics by recognizing the insights and questions to fulfill the big business goal and then identifying the data needed for answering those questions.
Embed insights in normal corporate communications to impel actions and generate value.
Retain existing capabilities while adding new ones.
Plan for the future using an information agenda.

This is how the best organizations are transforming themselves not only to be smarter but to perform smarter. And to win.

Is your company poised for the future? Contact an Ember Carriers consultant and ask about the IntelliGap Assessment today.

Source: MIT Sloan Management Review (12/21/10) LaValle, Steve; Lesser, Eric; Shockley, Rebecca; et al.

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Why Your People Can’t Do What You Need Them to Do

February 1st, 2011

Mary Hladio

Global Skills Crisis

Problems with the nation’s school system are not the only issue when it comes to getting more innovative and ambitious thinking from employees at all levels. Companies must consider its own internal skills gap as it pertains to future workers and current staff.

Skills gaps are natural to doing business in changing marketplaces, and the goal should not be to eliminate them so as much to narrow them. Skills evolve rapidly, but companies should not view this game of impossible catch-up as an unwinnable race; you are not competing with a skills target but with other companies, and the winner is the one that best plans ahead for the skills it needs.

To develop the essential skills that companies claim to lack, organizations must give workers chances to flex those skills by rotating them into different positions, sending them abroad, assigning them unfamiliar projects, and encouraging them to take chances. In addition to offering experiential learning opportunities, companies can teach people analytical problem-solving and other techniques that can take on an innovative dimension.

When it comes to bringing in talent to fill a gap, companies should spend less time looking for perfect candidates and more effort finding people who can demonstrate overriding behavioral skills. Moreover, companies should consider fitting jobs around their people instead of creating a job description with a long list of requirements.

Contact an Ember Carrier consultant today (513) 984-9333 and ask about the IntelliGap Assessment,a five step process that will analyze your companies skills gaps based on your future business needs.

The Conference Board Review (02/11) Liberman, Vadim

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Mastering Talent Development

December 21st, 2010

Mary Hladio

“The Talent Masters” is a new book written by Bill Conaty, the recently retired senior vice president for human resources at General Electric Co., and Ram Charan, a business adviser and author, that focuses on talent development.

“The Talent Masters” rests on three principles:

A focus on talent development. “Talent masters” claim that they spend more than a third of their time developing their people.
Differentiation. Talent masters create a meritocracy by constantly evaluating their people
Candor. Ruthless honesty in evaluating the performance of people and businesses.

The book begins with GE-related examples, but some of its most arresting stories come from outside the company. A particularly interesting chapter involves Hindustan Unilever, Unilever’s $3.5 billion Indian subsidiary. The company routinely evaluates candidates for management jobs by putting several applicants together to discuss a specific business issue in a group. This shows how they interact with each other and who has leadership potential.

Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray concludes that the book “offers a valuable window into the skills of talent development.”

Does your company have a Talent Development Strategy? Contact a senior consultant with the Ember Carriers Leadership Group for a complimentary 30 minute consultation by send an email to info@embercarriers.com

Source: Wall Street Journal (12/08/10) Murray, Alan

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A Simple Plan to Increase Employee Productivity

November 30th, 2010

Mary Hladio

In a recent interview with the New York Times, FM Global CEO and Chair Shivan S. Subramaniam revealed the most important tools for managers when ensuring employees are being productive.

While not employee will completes tasks in the same way, as long as the tasks are completed with the organizational goals in mind, managers should be satisfied. Among the “key result areas” for FM Global are profitability, retention of existing clients, and recruitment of new clients.

Incentive plans for workers are created with those goals in mind, and the tasks associated with those goals remain transparent to ensure every employee understands them.

Leadership is about knowing when to express anger or frustration and when to stay calm, he said. Taking risks should be part of any leader’s dynamic nature to ensure the company continues to innovate and grow while maintaining a connection with workers.

If you are a mid-market business owner you should be prepared to hire the right managers and directors and ensuring that your executive team and others work well together to ensure the best decisions are being made based simple performance goals.

Need help getting your organizational align in 2011? Contact a senior consultant with the Ember Carriers Leadership Group for a complimentary 30 minute consultation by send an email to info@embercarriers.com

Source:New York Times (11/14/10) Bryant, Adam

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Is Your Boss Overestimating Their Managing Skills?

November 10th, 2010

Mary Hladio

More importantly are they estimating yours? We all can’t be the next Donald Trump and Jack Welsch. Many bosses need a major reality check and may want to reassess their skills and talent levels.

Consulting firm Development Dimensions International Inc. (DDI) has unveiled the results of its new survey of 1,100 front-line managers that was conducted in September:

72% of respondents said during their first year as manager, they never questioned their ability to lead others.
Further, managers were less likely to rate themselves as weak in several leadership attributes, including planning, communication, and adaptability.

Front-line managers identified their chief strengths as setting work standards, planning, and organizing, according to the survey, while delegating, coaching, and gaining commitment were cited as areas that needed more work. However, no more than 15 percent of managers identified any one of those as areas of development. Industry to Industry, companies big or small. As individuals we all have blinders on when it comes to our weaknesses.

Separately, DDI compared some managers’ self-assessments to performance in business simulations. Managers were found to consistently overrate their abilities in delegating and coaching and they did not display any consistent pattern of “hidden strengths.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford business professor and author of the book “Power,” says people tend not to comprehend the feedback they receive because they mishear or ignore criticism.

How effective are you as a leader?

Wall Street Journal (11/01/10) Light, Joe

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