AsiaPac Webinar questions: Using Climate to Drive Employee Engagement

For every webinar that Forum hosts for a North American and European audience, we also host a separate version for our audience in Asia-Pacific. The Asia-Pacific webinars include presenters, insights, and case studies from across the region. Recently we hosted a webinar called Using Climate to Drive Employee Engagement for Asia-Pacific  (click here for a recording). The audience included participants from Delhi to Sydney, from Tokyo to Singapore.

We were asked a number of questions at the end of the webinar—more than we had time to answer. Here are the ones we couldn’t answer in the webinar:

1. How do you weight the value of training managers in emotional intelligence in relation to the value of training them in change management?

Change management often focuses on the process. Though it’s an essential part of any change initiative, if we don’t address people’s emotional resistance and comfort zones, the process will struggle—or fail. A truly successful change initiative must address both the process and the people to ensure that it has the buy-in required to make it work. This is the value of incorporating emotional intelligence into our initiatives. For specific weightings, look at each organisation/team individually to discern the level of EQ and understand the climate.

 

2. How do you bring managers to embrace the tremendous impact they have on climate?

We help them see themselves as leaders of people—not just managers of a process. Many managers move into a people-leader role because they want to make a difference or a positive impact. We need to empower them to do just that.

 

3. How do you remain optimistic and create a positive climate when you are under-resourced, with no sign of any resource changes in the future?

First of all we need to accept this as the new business reality and get clear about what the opportunities are. Don’t underestimate the impact of the leader buying into the “new” way of doing things. We may not agree with it—but we must accept it as the way things are. How do we make the best of it? How do we use this challenge to grow our leadership practice? We need to invest time daily in developing an optimistic mind-set. Then it is essential that we take the “chess” approach, building on our people’s strengths. It does require an investment up front and a deeper level of strategic thinking, but it will help us and the team to maximise our leverage in all our activities and create a greater level of engagement.

  

4. What different or additional management practices can be used to address a climate in an M&A situation?

Change and ambiguity create stress because we feel as if we are not in control. We feel as if things are happening to us. As leaders, we need to bring back a sense of control, a sense of certainty. If we don’t, we will create a leadership void, and someone or something will fill that void—usually at the watercooler, in less-than-optimistic conversations. Here are four key steps we can take:   

1. Manage our personal climate. Be in a resourceful, grounded, optimistic state.
2. Communicate clearly and regularly—even if it is only to say that nothing has changed. Do not allow rumours and gossip to take root.
3. Set short-term measurable (achievable yet challenging) goals to give the team a sense of accomplishment on a weekly basis.
4. Shift the focus to what the opportunities are and how we as a team add value to the organisation, the M&A process, and our customers. Ask our team (and ourselves), “What are the opportunities here? What can we learn from this?”

Strategic Speed in 140 Characters or Less

by Steve Barry 

As text-messaging and Twitter slowly take over my life (and my thumbs), I’ve begun to appreciate writers who express themselves with the power of brevity.  I recently saw an example of their writing in one of the core tenets of a church near my house:

 

 “In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity.”   

 

I write about this not to advertise for any religious institution, but rather to express my pure admiration for the simplicity and elegance inherent in this statement of beliefs. 

And when the “H” in charity is swapped out for an “L”, we get:

 

“In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things clarity.”    

 

That phrase is the pure, boiled-down essence of strategic speed.  Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that, but what do you expect in less than 140 characters?  To hear more about how top performers in our research attained strategic speed, please attend our webinar (register here), The 10 Ways Fast Companies Accelerate Strategy Execution, October 28^th at 11 A.M. EST or November 10^th at 10 P.M. EST.

Webinar questions 2/3: Using Climate to Drive Employee Engagement

by Tom Atkinson

For a recording of the North America and Europe webinar, click here. 

 Here are some more questions raised by participants in our recent Forum webinar for North America and Europe entitled “Using Climate to Drive Employee Engagement.”  I was joined by climate expert Henry Frechette of Forum and by Joe Price of Aflac—which has recently boosted the performance of its sales force by helping managers shape climate.

 

How does climate differ from organizational culture?

 The concept of organizational climate was developed by George Litwin and Robert Stringer in the late 1970s.  Their goal was to identify factors that made a workplace motivating (or de-motivating) for employees.  They found that an organization’s climate—what it feels like to work in the organization—could be measured.  More importantly, it could be shaped by the manager in a way that increased motivation and improved performance. 

 Climate differs from culture in that it is much more easily changed.  Think about the tone set by a new manager, for example.  Imagine working on a team whose manager sets a clear direction, encourages members to offer ideas, empowers members to resolve customer problems on the spot, and recognizes members’ accomplishments publicly.  Now imagine a new manager who keeps secrets, shows no interest in team members’ ideas, requires members to seek approval for the smallest decision, and rarely offers praise or recognition.  Not only would team members quickly pick up on the different atmosphere of the second manager, most of them—especially the most talented—would be heading for the exit.

 Culture, as opposed to climate, refers to values, norms, beliefs, and other aspects of the organization that tend to be enduring, such as whether it values customer intimacy or product innovation, whether it values individual contribution or team effort, whether its people tend to gather for regular face-to-face meetings or instead work remotely, and whether these people value competition or collaboration.  These cultural factors affect motivation and performance, but they generally take a long time to change.

 

How does climate differ from employee engagement?

 In recent years a lot of attention has been paid to the concept of employee engagement—the extent to which employees show real dedication to their job and exert discretionary effort (as opposed to just showing up—and even being counterproductive).  We know that climate affects motivation directly, and so it sets the stage for employees to become engaged.  If employees find their environment motivating, they are more likely to invest their energy in it and show signs of engagement.   

 Many companies conduct employee opinion surveys to size up employees’ degrees of satisfaction or engagement.  These surveys ask about a range of things that might affect satisfaction:  physical working conditions, compensation, opportunities for advancement, and so on.  Our research has found consistently that managers have the biggest effect on climate:  about 70 percent of variation in climate scores is attributable to managers’ behaviors.  And so we focus on the manager’s actions as levers for changing climate and conduct surveys that provide managers with information they can use to make immediate meaningful changes.

Webinar questions 1/3: Using Climate to Drive Employee Engagement

by Tom Atkinson

For a recording of the North America & Europe webinar, click here. 

I recently hosted a Forum webinar for North America & Europe entitled “Using Climate to Drive Employee Engagement.”  I was joined by climate expert Henry Frechette of Forum and by Joe Price of Aflac—which has recently boosted the performance of its sales force by helping managers shape climate.

The webinar participants represented a range of companies and industries, but almost all were focused on preparing their company to drive growth as the economy improves.  Almost half identified their single greatest challenge as strengthening their relationships with customers or fostering innovation.  And most agreed that establishing the right climate was critical to retaining talented people and delivering on their growth strategies.

Here are some of the questions the participants raised, along with our responses: 

 

How do you get senior management buy-in to climate?

Climate sounds like a “soft” concept.  It can be difficult to get senior managers to pay attention to it at first.  The best way to get their attention is to “connect the dots” to business results.  Decades of research in multiple industries has shown that climate drives motivation and performance.  But rather than simply citing research studies, we recommend you begin with the business strategy and then “work backwards” to determine its implications for managers and employees.  For example, if the company’s goal is to compete through superior service, the only way to achieve it is to create a climate that fosters high levels of customer focus.  Unless managers have the skills and information they need to build a customer-focused work unit, the strategy is at risk. 

Climate has some distinct advantages:  it’s fast, it’s cost-effective, and it’s under the control of individual managers.  It does not require widespread organizational change or investments in infrastructure.  The business case for senior managers is they can reduce risk and increase the effectiveness of strategy execution by preparing their managers to shape climate.

 

How do you measure climate?

Forum’s Climate survey asks employees to describe their actual team climate and also describe an ideal climate, by answering questions that address six dimensions of climate:

• Clarity:  The individual’s understanding of the organization’s goals and policies; the individual’s clarity about his or her job; the individual’s feeling that things are organized, that they run smoothly, that they are not confused.
• Commitment:  Continuing commitment to achieving goals—which is related to the realism of the goals, the individual’s involvement in goal-setting, his or her acceptance of the goals, and continuing evaluation of his or her performance against them.
• Standards:  The emphasis that management puts on setting high standards of performance; pressure to continually improve performance.
• Responsibility:  The feeling of taking personal responsibility for work; the individual’s sense of autonomy—which stems from real delegation and encouragement of his or her initiative.
• Recognition:  The feeling that people are recognized and rewarded for doing good work—as opposed to the feeling that criticism for poor performance is more likely than recognition for good performance.
• Teamwork:  The feeling of belonging to an organization characterized by cohesion, mutual warmth and support, trust, and pride.

The survey also asks employees and managers to rate their manager’s use of a set of management practices that relate to these six dimensions (such as “establishing clear and specific performance goals for people’s jobs”).

Managers receive a Forum feedback report that provides a picture of their team’s current climate, along with guidance on specific practices they should change in order to move the climate in the desired direction.

Whether the company is experiencing dramatic growth or downsizing, managers can use the Climate feedback report to focus their energies in the areas that matter most to their creating a positive and motivating environment.  For example, in a high-growth situation, managers may need to focus on providing high clarity about direction, as well as on encouraging people to take initiative in solving problems for which there are no “problem-solving policies.”  In a downsizing situation, managers may also need to provide clarity about how the team is performing against its goals, along with fostering teamwork and rewarding initiative.

For a recording of the webinar, click here.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

by Matthew Allen

Twittering for business: Is it worth it? Okay, so I’m admittedly taking out my paddle here and beating a dead horse. No doubt you have read your share of blog posts on the subject of Twitter—arguably the most prominent and powerful of the Web 2.0 giants that have stormed the social media scene in the past 3 years. At the ripe age of 25 (yup, first-generation Facebook user here), I feel fairly confident in my understanding of the ebbs and flows of social networking. However, only recently, as a Forum employee, have I had the opportunity to tap into the “professional” side of twittering. As I see it, Twitter users generally fall into five categories:

• The lurker: Either shy, new, or just looking for quality online reading material, the lurker rarely tweets, but instead enjoys the ramblings, perspectives, and nuances of others.
• The marketer: Whether selling a product, service, or just out for general publicity and popularity, the marketer is constantly tweeting about the latest and greatest happenings in his or her world.
• The nostalgic: You know the type. Nostalgics want to reconnect with old and new friends alike … by any means possible!
• The curious (aka the celebrity follower, aka Mom or Dad): The curious have heard about this Twitter thing, but aren’t completely sure what to make of it. They do know, however, that their neighbor told them it would be a good way of keeping tabs on Johnny while he’s off at college.
• The techie: He or she who claims to know the difference between a petabyte and a mashup. The techie always wants to be involved (and highly knowledgeable about) tech trends and fads.

But what about:

• The business professional? He or she who doesn’t want to mix business with pleasure, but does think that there’s a real opportunity to connect with colleagues and grow business opportunities through social networking.

 Business execs (outside the Marketing department!) everywhere, whether they admit it or not, have asked themselves the fundamental Twitter question at one point or another: “To Tweet or Not to Tweet?” Generally, this initial question leads to further questions: Do I put in the time to figure out this twittering thing? How do I make it worth my time? What type of return am I looking for? Can I expect a tangible return for my efforts?

A demographic study done by Strategy Labs in 2009showed that almost half (47 percent) of all Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 34. So does it make sense for the more “polished” types (those who barely have enough time to check their Blackberry in-between meetings) to be tweeting? The answer to this question is not black and white. Despite what many would have you believe, whether to twitter as a “professional” is not a one-size-fits-all decision. If you do decide to make the effort to become a Twitter aficionado, I’ve outlined some guidelines and suggestions that should help in your pursuit of a successful Twitter business account.

• Maintain a voice: Though every tweet doesn’t need to be about the same industry or subject matter (keeping your followers interested is key!), you do want to come across as somewhat of a subject-matter expert, or at least someone who has a reliable and unfailing opinion or slant.
• Be consistent: Potentially the most prevalent issue among users worldwide (and maybe the easiest obstacle to overcome) is needing to be consistent with tweeting. In other words, to spark a following, you must be consistent in your tweets. It’s hard to follow (and believe in) someone who only sporadically contributes thoughts and perspectives.
• Set your goals up front: What are you trying to achieve with this account? When you start with a goal in mind, it becomes much easier to define what you need to be tweeting about to achieve the goal.
• Think about your audience: Like goals, audiences need to be thought about pre-tweet. In other words, you need to figure out who you are trying to appeal to. What would your desired audience find of interest?

Once you’ve settled on a Twitter business strategy, buckle up and enjoy the ride. You’ve committed to making this social networking thing work, so why not have some fun with it, right?

 Want to keep the conversation going? Follow me on Twitter@maallen15. Looking for more on the people side of strategy execution? Well, then check out @TheForumCorp.

Poised for growth, but do you have the right climate?

The Conference Board reported last week that its global leading economic indicators are all positive and that both consumer and CEO confidence are rising.  The drumbeat of negative economic news we’ve heard over the past year seems to be fading.  Based on the headlines in the financial press, the debate among economists is now shifting from “how bad is the crisis?” to “will the recovery be quick or protracted?” 

 

What does the changing economic picture mean for companies and employees?  One trend that we’re seeing is executives re-focusing their efforts on driving growth (as opposed to cutting costs) by:

 

• Creating growth plans that involve acquiring or forming alliances with other companies
• Looking for ways to compete by means of offering innovative products and services
• Aiming to differentiate the company by creating a superior customer experience

 

All of these paths to growth have one thing in common:  they are highly people-dependent.  That is, they require that employees be aligned and committed to the company strategy.  They also require that employees have the motivation and capabilities to carry the strategy out. 

 

Now is a good time for companies to take a hard look at whether their people are up for the challenge.

 

During the recession, companies took a number of actions that were necessary for their survival, such as freezing promotions, putting projects on hold, and implementing layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts.  They asked the employees who they retained to bear with them, take on additional work, do more with less, and postpone some of their own career aspirations.  As necessary as this all might have been, it has undoubtedly taken a toll on the climate of the organizations.  Some of the ways we’ve seen this manifested:

 

• Employees are worried about losing their jobs, which makes them distracted, risk-averse, and less innovative.
• Some employees have become disengaged, and thus have exerted a negative influence on others.
• Job stress is leading some employees to be less generous toward others at a time when “playing nice” is especially important. 
• People’s stresses outside of work (such as family members losing jobs and mortgage or credit troubles) are making them less tolerant in relations with others at work.
• Managers are finding it challenging to keep people focused and energized.

 

The good news is that the improving economic climate will allow many companies to get back on a growth track, if they can regain their employees’ confidence and enthusiasm.  The bad news is that those companies that don’t get back on a growth track are sure to see some of their best people leave them for more attractive opportunities.

 

How can leaders prepare their work force for growth? 

Consider three questions:

1. What kind of climate is needed, if your company’s growth strategy is to succeed?
2. What is the current climate?
3. What are some ways in which managers can improve the climate?

 

Focusing on climate involves some major advantages: 

 

• Managers have great control over climate (as opposed to, say, organizational change). 
• Large investments (such as those that revising the compensation plan might entail) are not required—and there is an immediate payoff. 
• Even simple actions (like taking time to check in with individual employees to express interest in their lives, their work, and their ideas about the business) can have dramatic effects on performance.

 

What are some ways that you are creating a climate for growth in your own company?

Climate: Climate, the economy and strategy execution – what are our clients saying and doing?

Forum’s FieldVision enables us to capture recent insights and observations about the market directly from interactions with our clients. This month we share some observations about how the current economy is affecting organizational climate and examples of the impact a positive climate has on driving growth and strategy execution.

 

Top 10 ways we see the economic downturn affecting climate in organizations

1. Employees are worried about losing their jobs, which makes them distracted, risk-averse and less innovative.
2. Companies are trying to “do more with less,” which puts a strain on the employees they retain.
3. Salespeople who have been highly successful in the past are finding that the rules seem to have changed (longer sales cycles, smaller contracts, more price pressure, etc.), which is de-motivating.
4. Managers are findings it challenging to keep people focused and energized.
5. Some employees have become disengaged and have a negative influence on others.
6. Companies have fewer resources for rewarding high performance (such as, through big financial bonuses)
7. Job stress is leading some employees to be less generous towards one another at a time when “playing nice” is especially important. 
8. People’s stresses outside of work (such as, family members losing jobs, mortgage or credit troubles) is causing them to be less tolerant in relations with others during work.
9. Managers themselves are questioning their personal commitment to the organization.
10. Managers fail to recognize how their actions affect the motivation of their employees, especially when they fail to be authentic in their relations.

Examples of how a positive climate has helped accelerate strategy execution in organizations

 

• A sales manager invested a lot of energy in improving his team’s climate, by going on co-calls, holding informal events (such as, picnics) to show he cared about them, strategizing about accounts and putting the recession in context as a time-bounded issue.  His people are motivated and staying with the company, even though their performance is hindered by a slow economy.

 

• A residential property management company has invested in training for all employees, to engage them in creating a superior experience for residents.  The initiative has empowered employees to solve customer problems and built a climate of service that employees and residents find rewarding.  Even staff members on the low end of the compensation scale are willing to go the extra mile for customers because they find it intrinsically rewarding.

 

• An insurance company provided training for its sales managers to create a motivating climate among their salespeople, who are not employees but work on a commission basis.  The teams with the best climate outperformed those with the weakest climate by a wide margin.  The company is ensuring that all managers have the tools and training to create a high performance climate.

 

• A manager created a motivating climate by changing the way she manages.  Rather than telling employees how to solve a problem, or solving it for them, she now makes a conscious effort to always ask the person how they would solve it.  As a result, her people are not only more motivated but also more capable, as they are continuously learning.

 

• A new leader of a business unit in an Information Technology company was getting increasingly frustrated by his team not embracing the new direction he was trying to set.  The team continued to hang onto the past.  He asked his team to arrange a symbolic funeral for the “old” business unit and at this funeral they buried the past business unit’s logo and conducted a wake, where people spoke of past glories and past heroes.  Within a week the leader noticed that this acknowledgement of their past was the single action that broke the team free to start look ahead instead of back.  The climate changed noticeably.  Strategy execution was about “letting go” to be able to move ahead.

 

• An energy company was trying to embed two-way communication as part of the routine of how managers and employees work together.  With the introduction of daily and weekly “line ups,” teams were able to hear firsthand what was going on in the business, as well as provide input and ask questions of their leaders.  Conducting the line-ups up and down the business, with cross-functional visits, allowed people to be more engaged in the business and their work.

Trivia, Anyone?

By Steve Barry

Occasionally, I get together with my dad and a good friend at a local bar to compete in its trivia contest. The beer’s cheap, the Red Sox are on, and it’s a great time. What blows me away, though, is how the team dynamics of making decisions under time pressure and in total ambiguity emerge. Before I explain what we’ve learned works, take a few seconds to consider the following trivia questions. (I’ll provide the answers further on.)

1. What award for TV/movie actors in the science fiction genre is named after a planet?
2. What are the top two solar-powered products? (Millions of these have been sold worldwide.)
3. What NFL coach has had the most wins, all time?
4. What animal’s milk was originally used to make mozzarella cheese?
5. Which California-based band’s original three members started a band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions in 1962?

Now, here is what we’ve learned helps us make higher-quality decisions as a team:

• Establish loose guidelines to deal with the unknown
− Reason why: There are four questions in each round, and we must assign a point value to each answer (1, 3, 5, or 7 points) without knowing what the next question will be.
− Example: We created a rule: 7 points if we are sure, 5 if we’re 75-80% sure, 3 if we’re 50%, and 1 point if less than 50% sure. This enables us to prioritize and respond quickly.

 • Reframe the question
− Reason why: Reframing enables thinking about it in a different way, particularly when we have no expertise in the content matter.
− Example: “What award for TV/movie actors in the science fiction genre is named after a planet?” Both my dad and I guessed Mars. My friend said Saturn. His answer (which was correct) was outvoted, sadly. What if we had turned the question around to ask, “What planet would look good on a trophy?” Definitely Saturn.

 • Have specialists to cover a diversity of knowledge
− Reason why: The questions come from all angles.
− Example: As a kid, I read comic strips. My dad gave me a hard time. Now when questions about Beetle Bailey come up and I know the answer, I can smile at him smugly.

 • Write down all the options and review them together
− Reason why: When all answers are on paper, we give possible responses more consideration time. Also, we use different parts of the brain.
− Example: Asked to name the top two solar-powered products, we quickly guessed a calculator. Then my dad said wristwatch. We paused briefly—and then kept brainstorming. Calculator and wristwatch were correct, but we ultimately guessed wrong. Later, asked to name the NFL coach with the most wins, we wrote out all our guesses (Landry, Noll, Gibbs, Lombardi, Shula) and studied them. Shula just looked right, and it was. Had we done the same with the wristwatch, we would have gotten it.

 • Keep the group fairly small
− Reason why: Under time constraint, getting agreement quickly is key.
− Example: Three or four people is a broad enough base of knowledge to make intelligent guesses on most questions. More people can lead to over-thinking and needless debate—and slow you down.

 • Consider all possibilities, no matter how goofy they sound
− Reason why: You’re probably right.
− Example: “What animal’s milk was originally used to make mozzarella cheese?” We thought about what animals produce milk. My friend said buffalo. I chuckled, we moved on. The right answer? Water buffalo. Another question: “Which California-based band’s original three members started a band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions in 1962?” My first thought was The Grateful Dead. But I didn’t say it. It sounded too crazy to be true. We went with The Mamas and the Papas. I don’t need to tell you the right answer.

 • Finally, when it’s over, talk about what worked and what didn’t work

Now you know some new tactics for making decisions—and also which animal’s milk originally produced mozzarella cheese. Perhaps the decision you yourself need to make under time pressure and in total ambiguity involves responding to a competitive threat. Then the questions and answers are not at all trivial. Do any of these tactics work for you in your settings?

Are You Momentum-Minded?

By Jocelyn R. Davis, Executive Vice President, Research & Development

In a recession, the great danger is not that your company will go under; most leaders know how to ensure that their firm survives tough times.  In fact, the great danger is that your company will lose momentum.

In a quest for efficiency or simply for survival, many organizations facing tough times cut back, slow down, or go “back to basics.”  As a result, they lose all the momentum they’ve gained over the previous few years in customer satisfaction, employee engagement, innovative products and services, leadership development, and/or competitive differentiation.  When the recession eventually lifts, they find themselves back at the bottom of the mountain and facing a long climb just to regain parity.

A few firms, however, manage to sustain or even increase momentum:  they emerge from the downturn miles ahead of their competitors.

We can look back 90 years to find an example of a momentum-minded firm:  DuPont.  In 1930, in the midst of the Great Depression, DuPont’s sales fell by 15 percent.  Nevertheless, that year the company actually increased R&D spending in order to pursue Wallace Carothers’s discovery of neoprene, the first synthetic rubber.  Neoprene, first sold in 1937, went on to become a huge success for DuPont, showing up in every automobile and airplane made in the United States after 1939.  Although hunkering down and relying on existing products would have been a natural response, DuPont chose to maintain R&D momentum even in a severe economic downturn.  The bet paid off.

Now that there are some signs of life in the global economy, take a look around:  How is your organization’s momentum?

Have you slipped backward down the mountain and lost some energy?  If so, what can you do to begin an upward climb sooner than any of your competitors

Or are you one of the fortunate few who never slipped back—and if so, how can you keep your momentum going while most of your competitors are still regrouping?

Creating a positive organizational climate during an economic downturn

Tom Atkinson, Director of Customer Research

I interviewed Jim Simmons (a pseudonym) recently.  A sales executive for a leading provider of health insurance plans, he is responsible for leading a sales force of independent agents in New England who offer health coverage to employees of companies through the companies themselves.  A particularly challenging aspect of Jim’s role is that the agents he leads do not report to him:  they are independent businesspeople who sell policies on a commission basis.

Managing people who sell insurance, even in good times, is a demanding profession.  Turnover can be high, especially among newer agents who have difficulty getting started.  A key ingredient of salespeople’s success, Jim’s company discovered, is a supportive organizational climate.  In fact, it was found that 71 of the company sales units with the most positive climates performed above average, while only 18 percent of those with negative climates did.

Stated simply, “climate” is what it feels like to work in a place.  Are people encouraged to work in teams—or does the company mostly reward individual initiatives?  Are processes crystal clear—or is there flexibility in how the work is done?  Are there explicit standards of performance—or do people follow their gut feel?  There is no single type of climate that is right for every work setting:  contrast the Navy Seals with a luxury hotel, or an overnight delivery service with a company that designs web sites.

Decades of research conducted by Forum and others have shown that climate is a measurable, powerful factor of driving employee engagement and performance.  Unlike culture, it can change quickly—and it can have pervasive effects on how people perceive the work environment and whether or not they exert the discretionary effort it takes to excel in the environment.  Think of the tone set by a new manager or how the atmosphere changes when people join or leave a team.

One might expect that climate would suffer during an economic decline, as salespeople encounter more resistance in the marketplace and have greater difficulty meeting their targets.  “Jim” found the opposite, however.  By focusing his attention on fostering a positive climate—by providing clarity of direction, recognizing superior effort, and fostering teamwork, for example—he actually improved the climate of his unit during the economic downturn.  The enhanced climate is helping his people stay motivated and perform more effectively in a challenging time; it is preparing them to come out on top when the economy rebounds.

Here are some tips for keeping your employees motivated, especially during tough economic times:

Don’t

• DON’T assume that all your employees are motivated by the same things.  Some may relish public praise while others prefer a private comment or note acknowledging their accomplishments.
• DON’T focus exclusively on business results or other lagging indicators.  Pay attention to how motivated your employees feel and find ways to help them perform more effectively—and the results will follow.
• DON’T confuse a positive climate with fun and games.  A productive climate challenges people in addition to supporting them.

Do

• DO think about the kind of climate that would best support the business objectives of your people.  For example, what kinds of clarity about the work group’s direction and goals do they need?  What kinds of standards of performance should you set?  Do your people value working as a team?
• DO conduct regular climate “temperature checks” to ensure that your people are motivated.  Conduct informal discussions of the climate with your people—including people whose perspectives may differ from yours.
• DO find out how your people view your management practices.  What actions do they observe you taking that affect the climate positively or negatively?  What would they like to see you do more of, do less of, or do differently?