Employee Engagement, Now AI

Happy Friday,

Employee engagement refers to employees' enthusiasm, commitment, and connection to their work, organization, and mission. Basically, it's how much they care.

Two main factors determine employee engagement: 1) enthusiasm for the organization’s mission (the why) and 2) the leadership aptitude of the organization’s leaders at all levels (the how).

The Mission - Organizations usually do a good job crafting a worthy mission but then fail to keep it front of mind, compromising its contribution to employee engagement. 

Leadership aptitude - Both problem and opportunity. Schools don't teach or encourage kids to become leaders, engineering organizations don’t hire engineers for their leadership skills, they don’t prioritize or encourage their people to develop strong leadership skills, leadership skills aren’t really required to be a named a leader, organizations rarely define and share what excellent leadership looks like, don’t explicitly expect good leadership, don’t directly incentivize leadership aptitude, and there’s essentially no penalty for being a poor leader. No expectations, no incentives, so no surprise that both employee engagement and business performance don't live up to their true potential.

Year after year, employee engagement hovers closer to 70 than 90, and the reasons never change: lack of recognition, appreciation, support, autonomy, career progress, advocacy, meaning, purpose, encouragement, listening, inspiration, etc. If not leadership, what?

The difference in business performance between a score of 70 and 90 is profound. High engagement correlates with higher productivity, better customer service, lower turnover, higher retention, increased innovation, greater customer loyalty, more repeat business, lower risks of all kinds, lower marketing costs, lower recruiting costs, a LOT more luck and frankly, a lot more fun, all culminating in significantly greater profitability assuming that’s what you’re after.

I’ve laid out steps for improving leadership in previous GNFs (Leadership Framework, Selecting Leaders, Leadership Excellence, Expectations, Listening, and others). Easy to refer back.

Fundamentally, an organization gets whatever it expects and incentivizes. If it explicitly expects and incentivizes great leadership, it will eventually get it, and the business results will reflect that. If it doesn’t, it will end up with more managers than leaders, and the business metrics will reflect that. It's a choice.

But now AI has appeared on the horizon, and soon engineering organizations will be selling more project leadership and less project production. If I’m on your Board, I’d be encouraging action now to gird the organization and prepare it to excel as this change occurs. Having superior leadership skills has always been the key to greater success. But now, AI has elevated it from a highly beneficial business strategy to an urgent strategic imperative.

It's time to e/acc!

Dave

Feedback and blowback are always welcome: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

All past topics remain available @ goodnewsfriday.com

Speed boost and blunder avoidance with the help of Grammarly.ai