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7 GREAT Reasons to Balance your Balanced Scorecard

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Descartes said “I think therefore I am”.  De Bono says “I do therefore I matter”.   Whether we call it strategy execution or service delivery the fact remains that here in South Africa we rank high on the thinking stakes, and low on the implementation scales.

What is it about execution that ails us so much? Moreover, what can we do about it?  One solution is the introduction of a Balanced Scorecard. Yet a Scorecard of any fashion needs to work for you, and be relevant to your business to achieve the results you desire.  It is more than an academic exercise, but rather needs to provide leaders and managers with a snapshot of the business, one that enables better risk management and improved decision making.

According to Dr. Bob Frost, a Performance Measurement expert, there are 7 GOOD REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO USE A SCORECARD EFFECTIVELY:

  1. Scorecards drive better performance.  According to Frost, “feedback enhances performance”. Being able to review your progress towards a goal, drives people (teams and groups) to higher levels of performance.
  1. Scorecards translate your strategy. Translating the big picture strategy into tangible concreate steps and metrics is key for any strategy implimentaton.  Your scorecard needs to enable people to move, change direction and implement your thinking faster than your competition. 
  1. Scorecards help ensure you have the right measures.  “Effective performance scorecards are, by nature, consciously and purposefully constructed. In building one, you develop a logical structure that helps everyone know what should be measured, what belongs on the scorecard and what does not belong.”  What gets measured gets done, and its critical that you measure the right things as metrics alone are not enough.  WHAT is measured must also be at forefront of your scorecard thinking.
  1. Scorecards encourage balanced performance.  “The proper scorecard design keeps the right balance of operational and strategic factors on your radar screen.”  Balancing business as usual with strategic activity will ensure that you have the right balance of focus for success.  An over emphasis on any one strategy may result in a loss of opportunity somewhere else. Your Scorecard activities need to remain in balance, ensuring that all the key elements of success are considered when planning the detailed activities. 
  1. Scorecards point out what’s missing.  “The scorecard will help you see if any key factors are missing—the gaps stand out.”  If you don’t have a sound model on which to base your thinking, then it’s highly possible that something will get missed out.  Introducing the Balanced Scorecard should go beyond the obvious measures and also seek to highlight the gaps, what’s missing and what needs to be done to fill those gaps.    
  1. Scorecards encourage GREAT management.  Great management is about monitoring performance.  Leadership takes risks, management mitigates them.  For sound corporate management to be in place, a thorough monitoring system needs to be introduced.  The Balanced Scorecard is a way of providing management with the appropriate information to enable them to make decisions and manage risk more effectively.
  1. Scorecards communicate – they tell the story.  A view favoured by investors and analysts, a full scorecard tell a full story.  According to Frost the scorecard enables you to “present a compelling picture of performance that is undistorted by focus on an individual issue.”  This ensures that reports do not allow us to be easily ‘distracted’ by one problem and potentially lose sight of the others that require attention.

Organisations, governments, NGO’s and institutions around the world have successfully introduced the Balanced Scorecard to assist them in delivery results to shareholders and stakeholders, ultimately demonstrating how strategic thinking gets translated into business results.  Developed by Harvard Professor, Robert Kaplan and Dr. Dave Norton, the Balanced Scorecard is widely considered as the definitive model for translating strategy into action. 

Prof. Robert Kaplan will be presenting LIVE in South Africa on 17 September 2015, delivering his world renowned lecture on Strategy Execution.  Hosted by Business Results Group, this one-day event promises to provide you with the tools, strategies and techniques to ensure that you continue to get the most out of YOUR Balanced Scorecard.  Book Now //www.brg.co.za/speakers/prof-robert-kaplan/

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DAVE NORTON IN SEPTEMBER – MAKING STRATEGY A CORE STATE OF THE ART COMPETENCE

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create value                                                                  Dave Norton says,  

“Behind every story of shareholder value, there is another story of value creation. That is the real story of strategy execution.”

Having had the privilege today to proof read the delegate materials for the upcoming Dave Norton Progress Conference on the 11th September, I cannot resist offering a little sneak preview of the 100 plus slides he has prepared for his South African audience.

In essence, he says, strategy must be a core competence and his presentation shows you precisely what you need to accomplish to make it a core state of the art competence. You can be assured of rich content with case studies and real life applications relevant to both the Private and Public sectors. His content flows seamlessly, offering delegates a deliberate journey through which they can contextualise their strategy execution efforts. And behind every success he shares with you he also tells the story of how the value was created.

THE STRATEGY MANAGEMENT VACUUM

First and foremost he will show how management systems have STILL not changed to keep up with the way the world has changed.  This is what he calls a Strategy Management Vacuum. He goes on to reveal his research into why strategies continue to fail and offer solutions to overcome this sadly, prevalent reality.

MAKING INTANGIBLE TANGIBLE

I was fascinated by his take on intangible assets and how describing your strategy begins by understanding the value the intangibles offer. He cites Apple, General Electric, IBM and others and will illustrate how Tom Stewart’s thinking in respect of how knowledge that exists in an organisation creates differential advantage. Dave remarks, “A good strategy focusses on the processes and people that have greatest impact on customer satisfaction.”

CLOSING THE STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE GAP WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT LOGIC

Dave has prepared a prolific set of strategy maps, scorecards and themes that have been applied within leading organisations. He asserts that your strategic theme is critical to create change and value.

“Intangible assets are bundled”, he says. “One initiative is not enough to execute strategy. You require a portfolio of several initiatives that are interdependent and cannot be treated on a stand- alone basis.” And again, he provides real management tools to show you how to include specific ways to define your strategic architecture, create robust strategy maps and tailor relevant strategy themes. In particular he provides delegates with specific Balanced Scorecards to show how they consistently fill the strategy management vacuum

LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVES FOR EFFECTIVE STRATEGY EXECUTION

Dave also says, “It is not a simple process for a CEO to mobilize transformation.” But his content goes on to provide tried and tested leadership essentials for certain success. He shows what is required in terms of left and right brain thinking to build your effective strategy management systems and why leadership issues are most often the dominant barrier to effective strategy execution. Just one barrier cited is how politics, in 89% of cases, is the major factor that prohibits the successful execution of strategy. Enter Dave’s right brain change management techniques and priorities, with ways to break down silos, get politics out of the way and cascade the strategy and scorecards to all key executives, business units and departments with appropriate accountability.

What follows on from there are the left brain change management tools that he has observed and that have been shown to achieve desired results.

MAKING STRATEGY EVERYONE’S JOB

Dave illustrates how Hilton Hotels did just this by linking their Balanced Scorecard to education, personal goals, incentive compensation and communication. Looking forward to how he will unpack this for us on the day.

SETTING TARGETS & FUNDING THE STRATEGY

Be prepared for prolific content and techniques to define your measures and targets and determine adequate funding.

SUCCESSFUL HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT ATTRIBUTES

An annual survey of CEO’s Presidents and Chairman showed that Human Capital Development is the most important issue facing senior management. “People driven strategies counter slow markets and economic conditions. The Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame shows that successful strategy execution begins with Human Capital Development”, he says. And then goes on to share the results of Public & Private sector results whilst showing you which are the key Human Capital Value Multipliers. He will also show us how to develop competency profiles for each essential strategic job family and in particular how to determine the gaps between individual and group level.

THE CHERRY ON THE TOP: BUILDING YOUR EFFECTIVE OFFICE OF STRATEGY MANAGEMENT: THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

As he insists that strategy is a core competence and that managing strategy is a whole new ball game very different to managing functions, he will show you why new organisation approaches are needed to facilitate cross-functional alignment. He defines the responsibilities of the office of strategy management and suggests the best practices in terms of conducting your meetings and reviews to keep your strategy on course including frequency and structure.

This blog barely scratches the surface or even does justice to what Dave Norton has in store for delegates on the 11th September, but hopefully provides you with some ideas to provoke and challenge your thinking in respect of your strategy execution efforts.

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Dr David Norton is the co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard and leading global practitioner in applying the Balanced Scorecard in both the Private and Public Sector. Together with Professor Robert Kaplan, he has been acclaimed by Harvard Business Review for his significant contribution to the management profession in the past 75 years. More recently Thinkers 50 have ranked them in their Hall of Fame alongside Tom Peters, Kenichi Ohmae, Warren Bennis, Howard Gardner, Henry Mintzberg, Charles Handy, Philip Kotler and Ikujiro Nonaka for their mammoth contribution to business management and leadership.

On the 11th September 2014 Dr Norton will present a full day seminar in Johannesburg on EXECUTING STRATEGY IN A NEW ECONOMY – Balanced Scorecard Essentials.

WHY STRATEGIES FAIL? DEVISING A STRATEGY EXECUTION SYSTEM FOR CERTAIN SUCCESS

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“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. If you can’t manage it, you can’t improve it.”
Kaplan and Norton (and many others)

According to Professor Robert Kaplan and Dr Dave Norton, companies that effectively execute their strategy evidence an impressive 50-150% increase in value. Those that don’t continue to battle the odds of success.

The People Barrier

The People Barrier

The desktop research around strategy execution speaks volumes:
• Fortune Magazine cites that “….less than 10% of strategies effectively formulated are effectively executed”
• Harvard Business Review states that “…the prize for closing the strategy- performance gap is huge : increasing performance by at least 50% for most organisations”
• Bossidy & Charan in their book “Execution” cite that “…in the majority of cases – 70% – of the problem isn’t bad strategy [thinking] but bad execution [action]”
• Chris Zook in his book “Profit from the Core” states that “….more than 2/3 of companies had targets that exceeded 9% real growth; yet less than 1 company in 10 achieved this level of profitable growth.”
What desktop research is showing us is that companies that fail to forecast and target success, will generally miss the target. In plain English, the same adage holds true “what gets measured gets done”. And yet despite innumerate measures, companies STILL fail to hit their targets and achieve strategic goals and objectives – and the question “why?” has to be hot on the tail of this statement.

REAL RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND WHY?

Why is successful strategy execution so difficult to achieve?

Kaplan and Norton have dedicated a lifetime of study to understanding the field of strategy and execution. Why do some companies succeed while others fail even when both have seemingly impressive leadership teams? Is it the thinking, or is it the action? Is it really around metrics or is strategy driven by culture and behaviour change?
The Balanced Scorecard didn’t just ‘appear’ in the halls of Harvard. It evolved as one of the best ways to combat the Four Barriers to Strategy Execution. Kaplan and Norton’s research has identified four key themes, or barriers, that appear to interfere with successful strategy implemenation. Their research also supports that a startling 80-90% of companies FAIL when it comes to strategy execution. Here’s what they found:
1. The People Barrier: only 25 % of managers have incentives directly linked to strategy implementation.
2. The Vision Barrier: only 5% of the work-force actually understand the strategy the organisation intends to execute.
3. The Management Barrier: a staggering 85 % of executive teams spend less than an hour per month discussing strategy.
4. The Resource Barrier: alarmingly more than 60% of organisations fail to link their strategy to a live budget.

The ongoing frustration of wanting to achieve something great often outstrips the company’s ability to implement their thinking. The results can be devastating and leaders can quickly lose credibility having promised and communicated one thing, yet fail to implement on the other hand. While the perception of leadership integrity remains challenged, its important to make clear that often the thinking is in tact, but it’s the execution that is poor.

WHAT TO DO?

The temptation for any business is to try to ‘nail’ all four barriers in one go. That alone may be a strategy, but will probably result in continuing poor execution. Perhaps a better strategy is to target one barrier at a time, and over time, with the goal of eliminating them totally. As each barrier becomes a strategy in and of itself, over time, each barrier will be diluted if not eliminated completely. And, when that happens, the strategic thinking has a chance to surface over the traditional mindsets and restrictions that inhibit success.

THE 10-20% EXECEPTION VS THE 80-90% NORM

Those organisations that enjoy an impressive 50 – 150% increase in value have a formal process for strategy execution. Through this lens they have commonly identified what we can today call the “conventional wisdom” of stratgy execution:
1.FINANCIAL: They recognise that financial indicators are lag indicators and only measure the tangible outcomes of the strategy.
2.CUSTOMER: They revere the customer value proposition and define them as their source of value.
3.PROCESSES: They acknowledge that strategic processes create value for customers and shareholders.
4.LEARNING & GROWTH: They know that aligned intangible assets drive improvement in the strategic process.

ENTER, KAPLAN & NORTON’S 6 STAGE CLOSED LOOP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR SUCCESSFUL EXECUTION

This is how Kaplan and Norton deliberately ensure you overcome the Four Barriers to successful strategy execution.
1. DEVELOP THE STRATEGY: Formulate your mission, vision & values – all the fundamentals. Keep in mind Google’s mission – “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” And that of Bill Gates: “To put a PC on every person’s desk.’

2. TRANSLATE THE STRATEGY: This means having to create strategy maps and themes with measures and targets, assigning portfolios and providing funding to ensure that you overcome the Vision Barrier.

3. ALIGN THE ORGANISATION: This includes all business units, support units and employees. Ensure you overcome the People Barrier through initiatives that support strategy execution. Never under-estimate the investment required and the power of appropriate change management and communication in strategy execution.

4. PLAN THE OPERATIONS – Devise resource and capacity plans as well as key process improvements that will be required to make sure the Resource Barrier does not hinder the success of your strategy.

BOTTOM LINE : EXECUTE, MONITOR & LEARN

Make sure you properly review your strategy and operations to overcome the management barrier. TEST and review the profitability, devise hypotheses in terms of cause and effect and be alert to emerging strategies, new opportunities and risks. ADAPT where necessary.
This strategy execution system coupled with leaders who affirm their fundamental goals and purpose with quantifiable outcomes, Norton and Kaplan have continuously shown how much value you can derive by implementing strategy maps and balanced scorecards. This is why they have been acknowledged by Harvard Business Review for creating one of the most significant management tools in the past 75 years.
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Dr David Norton is the co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard and leading global practitioner in applying the Balanced Scorecard in both the Private and Public Sector. Together with Professor Robert Kaplan, he has been acclaimed by Harvard Business Review for his significant contribution to the management profession in the past 75 years. More recently Thinkers 50 have ranked them in their Hall of Fame alongside Tom Peters, Kenichi Ohmae, Warren Bennis, Howard Gardner, Henry Mintzberg, Charles Handy, Philip Kotler and Ikujiro Nonaka for their mammoth contribution to business management and leadership.

On the 11th September 2014 Dr Norton will present a full day seminar in Johannesburg on EXECUTING STRATEGY IN A NEW ECONOMY – Balanced Scorecard Essentials.

STRATEGIC EXECUTION “SUCC-ESSentials”

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CREATING YOUR UNIQUE STRATEGY AND EVEN MORE DISTINCTIVE SCORECARD TO ACHIEVE UNPRECEDENTED SUCCESS.  

Today Strategy is EVERYBODY’S EVERYDAY job

Inside OR Outside Strategic Thinking

What do the world’s most acclaimed thought leaders have to say about strategy execution and why so many strategies fail to achieve their desired results? Professor Michael Porter, Dr Gary Hamel, Michael Hammer, Professor Robert Kaplan, The late CK Prahalad, Dave Ulrich, Ram Charan, Dr Dave Norton and Tom Peters’ thinking on Strategy Execution.

Tom Peters offers his 2 golden rules to guide your strategy – Rule # 1:  You can’t beat Walmart on Price. Rule # 2: You can’t beat China on cost. In essence he says, “You can’t be remarkable by following someone else who is remarkable.”

Inside OR Outside Strategic Thinking

Michael Porter is globally acclaimed for his strategic insights and in particular his  5 Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy. This model calibrates the attractiveness of an industry and benchmarks your outcome against that of your competitors to shape your new strategy. This is external analysis that on its own, fails to consider the internal factors, processes and people needed to execute and achieve your desired success. This does not imply that Michael Porter is a non-believer in internal strategic triggers as he also notes, “Operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential to superior performance… but they work in different ways.”

Dr Gary Hamel argues that some of the best strategies come from employees within their organisations. This inside-out strategy is based on the premise that they are close to technologies, processes and customers. The late CK Prahalad studied and believed in co-creating unique value with your customers; an outside- in approach. Professor Dave Ulrich is obsessed with designing strategy from the Outside-in with customers defining your future HR strategy. Michael Hammer’s business process re-engineering has been applied by many organisations to improve internal processes that deliver superior performance.

P’s & Ham 

In this instance, Peters, Prahalad & Porter’s insights offer you an external approach to shape strategy while Gary Hamel & Michael Hammer’s insights recognise the significance of internal processes. That said, they all acknowledge that these management interventions and ideas cannot stand alone. Michael Hammer has long been acclaimed for his innovative approach to improving internal capabilities and yet he concurs, “High performance operating systems are necessary but not sufficient for enterprise success.”

Today Strategy is EVERYBODY’S EVERYDAY Job

Ram Charan says that in the majority of cases (70%) the real problem isn’t bad strategy – strategies most often fail because they are not executed well.

With this wealth of wisdom and thought leadership, why are companies still failing to execute strategy?

Inside AND Outside Strategic Execution

Professor Robert Kaplan and Dr Dave Norton say that while there is a plethora of great strategic implementation tools out there, companies fail to integrate external and internal triggers that measure the cause and effect hypotheses in respect of the 4 key drivers of value in their business. A successful scorecard will show you how improvement in one area may be achieved at the expense of another. It breaks down silos and has a key shared understanding among all employees.

You can’t use a rugby scorecard for a cricket match |The “what to measure” dilemma

Traditionally people have tracked their performance against established standards and then taken corrective action. Exclusive reliance on financial measures as a management system was causing businesses to do the wrong things. These traditional measures offered lag indicators as they only reported on outcomes. Your scorecard should provide you with lead indicators – drivers of future financial performance. In a recent interview Norton confirmed that companies still rely too heavily on the quarterly report and use this as the life-cycle in their organisations.

A good balanced scorecard should tell your visionary strategy story

Norton and Kaplan confirm that companies also fail to execute their strategy when they fail to create a unique scorecard that is discernible and relevant to their business. Your strategy should be distinctive to your “do-well” existing and future capabilities. On Kaplan’s visit to South Africa in 2012, he was asked why companies, who widely publicise and communicate their scorecards, so liberally, do not fall prey to prying predatory competitors.  He said, that in all of his years observing Balanced Scorecard interventions, he has failed to see competitors achieve success by simply adopting another company’s scorecard. Your scorecard becomes your organisations’ unique DNA, it captures the hearts and minds of the people who co-create it. Nicola Tyler, the CEO of Business Results Group and sought after strategic facilitator, has long argued that the closer a person is to the origination of an idea the more likely they are to act on it.

And if your strategy and your scorecard are not unique and distinctive, remember Tom Peter’s earlier words, “You cannot be remarkable by following someone else who is remarkable.”

July 2014

In 2014, BRG & GIBS will present Dave Norton – Live and in Person: Executing Strategy: Balanced Scorecard Essentials. The 2014 programme includes the latest findings and experiences in strategy, measurement, leadership, human capital and cross functional priorities and solutions with tried and tested Balanced Scorecard essentials. In a recent interview Dave Norton highlighted that although he is comforted and assured of the effectiveness of the Balanced Scorecard by the 100 plus companies in The Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame who have evidenced success using the Balanced Scorecard correctly and in its entirety; there are still 100’s of companies out there just doing it wrong.”

Dr Dave Norton has most recently been honoured by Thinkers 50 in their Hall of Fame sharing this acclaim with Tom Peters, Warren Bennis, Howard Gardner, Charles Handy, Philip Kotler, Henry Mintzberg, Kenichi Omae, Ikujiro Nonaka and his colleague Professor Kaplan, for their mammoth contribution to business management and leadership. Harvard Business Review recognised the Balanced Scorecard as one of the most influential management ideas in the past 75 years.

USING THE BALANCED SCORECARD TO DEFINE THE BIG DATA THAT WILL OFFER THE BIGGEST IMPACT ON YOUR STRATEGY AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

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The Balanced Scorecard can drive your big data strategy to overcome data analysis paralysis; Dr Dave Norton and Professor Dave Ulrich affirm that big data is of no use unless it offers leaders insights relevant to their strategy.

In 2012, Big Data made the cut as the new form of economic currency. The world’s brightest and best thought leaders in Davos acknowledged big data as an economic agent as strong as gold, oil or money itself.

Gartner defines big data as follows; “high volume, velocity and variety information assets that demand cost effective, innovative forms of information process for enhanced insight and decision making.

So with the prediction that nearly 3 billion people will be online pushing the data created and shared to nearly 8 “zettabytes”, how do companies decide which data will offer them the insights and choices to determine their strategy and leverage their competitive advantage?

So what does this mean for leaders in business?

Although there is strong argument that algorithms will rule over instinct Dr Dave Norton, renowned for his balanced approach to measure the effectiveness of business methodology, strongly urges a combination of left and right brain thinking where leaders blend their intuitive insights with structured disciplined methodologies including using big data to test the relationships of their hypotheses and assess how this will enable transformational change. On his recent visit to South Africa, Professor Dave Ulrich recognised the value of information as a fundamental capability, but highlighted further that this capability is less about the information and more about insight and impact. He says leaders need to collect data to make informed choices. This is key to overcoming “data analysis paralysis”.

Dr Dave Norton and Professor Dave Ulrich concur that the data mined must offer relevant insights. Bill Schmarzo, the moniker “Dean of Big Data” and Author of Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business, suggests that your Balanced Scorecard could define your navigation choices in terms of which information is relevant to your strategy.

To illustrate this, he aligned his big data requirements with his Balanced Scorecard key metrics. This is his big data determinant on one key metric.

Metric: Secure 87.M in New Accounts

Big Data Impact Examples:

  1. Improve forecasting model predictability by modelling each individual deal (and components of the deal) taking into consideration sales team selling capacity (number and strength of deals in their forecast), sales team behavioural tendencies (selling products vs solutions), industry product buying trends and sales team track record with similar new name accounts
  2. Leverage text mining capabilities to analyse the call notes captured by the account development organisation to assess strength of industry solution opportunity; benchmark every NNA opportunity against similar successful and unsuccessful NNA engagements.
  3. Measure the effectiveness of sales and marketing campaigns to drive new NNA opportunities into the pipeline
  4. Flag any change in the sales team comments that might indicate a change in deal status.

SOURCE: Big Data and The Balanced Scorecard Framework | Bill Schmarzo Part 1,11 & 111 December 2013

In 2014, BRG & GIBS will present Dr Dave Norton – Live and in Person: Executing Strategy: Balanced Scorecard Essentials. The 2014 programme includes the latest findings and experiences in strategy, measurement, leadership, human capital and cross functional priorities and solutions.

Dr Dave Norton has most recently been honoured by Thinkers 50 in their Hall of Fame sharing this acclaim with Tom Peters, Warren Bennis, Howard Gardner, Charles Handy, Philip Kotler, Henry Mintzberg, Kenichi Omae, Ikujiro Nonaka and his colleague Professor Kaplan, for their mammoth contribution to business management and leadership. Harvard Business Review recognised the Balanced Scorecard as one of the most influential management ideas in the past 75 years.

Employee Engagement Gap

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Dr. Caren ScheepersEmployee Engagement

“Imagine a time when you were highly absorbed and engaged at work. What were the circumstances that caused this attentiveness and engagement? What did you feel at the time, what did you see, what did you hear and what did you smell? Make that experience vivid in your mind. Let your body actually experience the feeling now.” This is an exercise that I regularly start off with when I facilitate workshops on the topic “Employee Engagement”. As you read this article you are welcome to participate. You can even partake in the next exercise, by asking a colleague to work with you.

“Now choose a partner to work with and show your partner how you literally step into those circumstances and personal experience. What your partner then needs to do is to notice attentively what you look like, sound like, your body posture and your facial expression. The next step is to mimic it so that you can see clearly how your posture for instance changes when you are truly engaged or in the zone”. You have to take turns in this exercise, obviously. It has an added benefit of practice how to “tune in” to where other people are at by mimicking their non-verbal behaviour. Consequently, it allows us to become aware of how others feel and as a result build rapport with them. The question to discuss then is, “When last have you felt this invigorated at work?” and a follow up question, “How big is the gap between what you experience when you are fully engaged and your current work circumstances?”

Having observed numerous of these exercises, I realised that it is clear when employees are engaged and that it is actually quite contagious. Other observations were that the more upright body postures generally brought positive energy into the room and lasted long after the exercise. Neuropsychology explains this phenomenon by biochemical neurotransmitters in our brains that are activated by the imaginary incident, which also explains why we would feel fearful of circumstances that have not yet taken place (Scheepers & Jooste, 2012).

Tuning into our own awareness of being engaged or withdrawn as well as to others’ experiences, teaches us intuitively what engagement is about. Employee engagement is topical currently and mostly practitioners have been writing about this phenomenon. Lately, it luckily also grabbed the interest of academia that quite frankly wanted to find out whether employee engagement was only the latest “fad of the month”. Empirical studies followed that were published in top tier journals. For instance, the seminal work of Saks (2006) on the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement has academic rigour and provides scientific evidence for what we regularly experience intuitively in our daily work lives.

Nonetheless, mainly two exponents provided the theoretical foundation for employee engagement. Kahn (1990, p.694) defined it as ”employing themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally…in varying degrees.” In turn, Maslach (2001) who conducted more than 30 years of research, contrasted engagement with burnout, another phenomenon that we often come across in our highly stressful modern work environments. Her research revealed that burnout was the opposite of being engaged and the face validity of her study is high when we consider that vigour and dedication constitute engagement, whereas exhaustion, cynicism and withdrawal illustrate the opposite. Later research of Schaufeli et al (2002) confirmed Maslach’s notion of engagement and burnout being antipodes.

You might ask whether engagement is similar to commitment. Robinson et al (2004) pointed out in this regard, that engagement is more than commitment and more than an attitude. It is rather the degree to which an employee is attentive and absorbed in their work. Saks’ (2006) research provided evidence that commitment is actually a consequence of engagement. Furthermore, we can differentiate between job and organisational engagement. As a result, this article will focus on these two aspects.

a)         Job engagement 

Some people are highly engaged with their organisations, whereas others are actually engaged with their discipline or type of work and do not care where they conduct this job. These employees find meaning in the content of their work. Interestingly, job engagement increases when people have more contact with the beneficiaries of their work (Grant, 2012). Consequently, organisations must make a concerted effort to get back-office employees in contact with external or internal customers who are impacted by the quality of their work or lack thereof.

For the last 7 years, I have been lecturing on the GIBS MBA Module: Organisational Development and Transformation and I regularly asked these students whether they experience quality of work life. Sadly, over the years few of the MBA’s could declare that they were experiencing quality of work life. We often discussed Hackman and Oldham’s (1980) recommendations of bringing more of themselves into their work or being more engaged by: ensuring jobs are challenging, having variety, conducting significant tasks, allowing for personal discretion and making an important contribution. These students reported that getting feedback on their performance also increased meaningfulness of their jobs.

An interesting theory that could be associated with job engagement is the Social Exchange Theory or (SET) that implies that employees, who are provided with challenging and enriched jobs, feel obliged to reciprocate by responding with higher levels of engagement (Saks, 2006). On the other hand, when employees do not feel supported by colleagues or they do not get appropriate recognition and rewards, it leads to the burnout syndrome (Maslach et al, 2001). Kahn’s (1990) research revealed that our careers could constitute a series of leaps of engagement and falls of disengagement as well as that the person-role dynamics are complex.

b)         Organisational engagement 

Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) found that engaged employees have a greater attachment to their organisation. As a result, they have a lower intention to quit. Furthermore, they are involved in extra-role behaviour or being good organisational citizens and contribute to the greater organisation and not only to their own department or division.

I found it disappointing that in contrast, numerous executives on Senior Management Programmes found it difficult to articulate the social value that their organisations were creating and rather focused on financial results, whereas without financial results the organisation would anyway not be able to sustain itself. Nonetheless, through firstly meeting human needs by producing products or delivering services, organisations are able to declare financial returns and sustain the business. To the contrary, luckily organisations in South Africa like Nedbank, Woolworths, Nampak and FNB utilize corporate social responsibility projects as team building exercises and to build pride in their organisation’s contribution to society and subsequently organisational engagement.

Perceived procedural justice or fairness with regards to distribution of resources also influences organisational engagement (Rhoades et al, 2001). Conversely, a lack of fairness can exacerbate burnout (Maslach et al, 2001). Another dimension to consider is the Psychological Contract (Rousseau, 2004) with the resultant two-way relationship where employees receive economic and socio-emotional resources from the organisation and they respond in kind and repay the organisation by being psychologically present or engaged. We found in a specific study around this psychological contract that the human resources practice that had the most important relationship with the relational contract was training and development (Scheepers & Shuping, 2011). Consequently, investing in employees’ development would result in them perceiving that they are important to the organisation and they would reciprocate with loyalty to the organisation.

In closing, it is important to note that in the USA the engagement gap or lost of productivity cost due to employees being disengaged is estimated at $300 billion per annum (Kowalski, 2003). We do not have South African statistics to report however, the engagement gap remains an important phenomenon to investigate and I invite more researchers to conduct qualitative and quantitative studies to provide scientific evidence of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement.

Follow Dave Ulrich on twitter: @dave_ulrich

References: 

  • Grant, A. M. (2012). Leading with meaning: Beneficiary contact, prosocial impact, and the performance effects of transformational leadership, Academy of Management Journal, 55 (2), 458-476.
  • Hackman, J. R. & Oldham, G. R. (1980). Work Redesign, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
  • Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work, Academy of Management Journal, 33 (4), 692-724.
  • Kowalski, B. (2003). The Engagement Gap, Training, 40 (4), 62, as cited in Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21 (7), 600-619.
  • Maslach,C., Schaufelli, W. B. & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job Burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397-422.
  • Rhoades, L., Eisenberger, R. & Armeli, S. (2001). Affective commitment to the organisation: the contribution of perceived organisational support, Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 825-836.
  • Rousseau, D. M. (2004). Psychological contracts in the workplace: Understanding the ties that motivate, Academy of Management Executive, 18(1), 120-127.
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