Change-Management-Insights-from-a-Fortune-500-Apparel-Companys-Restructuring

Change Management Insights from a Fortune 500 Apparel Company’s Restructuring

Recently, consulting firm Emergent partnered with a Fortune 500 apparel company to undertake the biggest business transformation in the company’s history. Below is a mini case study that provides insights from that project. Building upon its solid performance in 2012, the company chose to implement a new global structure designed to fuel its long-term, international growth. The project…

Give-Me-Something-or-Someone-to-Connect-to

Give Me Something (or Someone) to Connect to

There is enough research on Employee Engagement to show that engaged employees give more “discretionary effort” (going above and beyond job expectations…without being told/asked) to their employer. Yet levels of engagement have not changed over the last ten years or so, through a period first of boom, then of bust. Consider this data from the…

Engaging-Employees-to-Drive-Strategic-Business-Initiatives-White-Paper

Engaging Employees to Drive Strategic Business Initiatives (White Paper)

Many excellent change initiatives never get off the ground, stagnating just when they should be flowering. Why, after an enthusiastic start, do so many major change efforts—a new product rollout, international expansion, a new IT system—founder and organizations return to the pre-change state? It’s because companies focus disproportionately on the structure and technical aspects of…

Use-Storytelling-Technique-to-Communicate-Your-Vision

Use Storytelling Technique to Communicate Your Vision

Equally important to creating a powerful future vision is how that vision gets communicated to your people. This is where the art and skill of storytelling becomes very important. Done well, storytelling can be a powerful catalyst for driving transformational change. Effective leaders tell stories that position them and their organizations as change agents instead of defenders of the…

Every-Job-Matters-to-Someone

Every Job Matters (to Someone)

Recently I heard a presentation by Jim Gibbons, President & CEO of Goodwill Industries. In it he said that “every job matters.” Every job has someone relying on the incumbent of the position to do their job well so that the other person can either: benefit or do their own job well. Your client/customer is…

Your-Final-Performance-Review

Your Final Performance Review

I get some great ideas from my clients. In a recent coaching conversation my client and I were strategizing about how to fire up an employee in his 60’s with about two years left before retirement who was slacking off.. I suggested he challenge the individual to make the choice to make his last two…

Do-We-Stop-Growing-after-Schooling

Do We Stop Growing after Schooling?

I ran across a recent posting from the Gallup Management Journal that made a point have I never thought about before: “Raised through a childhood in which each new year brought novel opportunities, playing at ever more difficult levels of sports, growing physically, educated in a system of cleanly delineated grades — freshman, sophomore, junior,…

Helping-or-Harping

Helping or Harping?

When front line supervisors and managers are asked to share some of the characteristics of the best manager or supervisor they had ever worked for,  they will include “supportive” on that list. One participant was even more emphatic – his best boss was focused on “helping” not “harping”. A boss who is constantly critical and…

4-ways-great-leaders-use-the-4-Drive-Model-to-impact-employee’s-motivation

4 ways great leaders use the 4-Drive Model to impact employee’s motivation

How leaders can impact employee’s motivation using the 4-Drive Theory The 4-Drive Theory of Employee Motivation states that there are four main drives that motivate employees, these are the drives to: Acquire & Achieve, to Bond & Belong, to be Challenged & Comprehend, and to Define & Defend.