Reality Bites Back

Can employees be “educated” about the realities of the marketplace? It seems that among a lot of corporate leadership these days, there is a belief that “education” is the path by which employees will be helped to “see the light” as to what’s going on outside the company, to help them put their internal reality into context.

The ultimate goal is admirable. It's the approach and attitude that's wrong.

“Educate” suggests an attitude that sees employees as less worldly than they ought to be – at least less so than the managers who speak in those terms. Big mistake. It is an assumption that often betrays an environment where, up until a crisis hits, management basically keeps the general employee population in the dark.

As a paper mill worker once told me about his company, “They just want us to check our brains at the door when we punch in for the day.”

There often comes a time, a crisis point, where it’s critical that the internal audience have a clear awareness and understanding of the external realities that are forcing radical changes on the organization. This innate awareness and understanding give employees a firm foundation on which to operate. But if corporate leaders reach that crisis point and find themselves scrambling to bring the internal audience up to speed, it’s too late.

Reality bites back.

Let's go back to the ultimate goal: to raise awareness and understanding among employees about the realities of the business so that they are better equipped to put their own work and responsibilities in the larger context.

Yes, employees need to have a full awareness and understanding of the external world and its many impacts on their organization and their very livelihood. But it is an awareness and understanding that come with time and deliberate action. It is not something like a snow blower, brought out of the garage when the blizzard hits.

Awareness and understanding are achieved through on-going cultivation, through a deliberate effort to foster dialogue and discussion - even debate when appropriate - inside the organization. This requires an attitude and accompanying behavior of openness and engagement that starts of the top of the organization.

If the CEO consistently engages her/his direct reports and other managers in open dialogue, discussion and debate about the issues and opportunities facing the company, it's clear that it is an acceptable and appropriate behavior for the organization. Having been engaged in such a manner by their managers, middle managers in turn do so with their direct reports, and supervisors with theirs.

In this era of reduced manpower, where employees are increasingly being asked to assume greater responsibility without constant supervision and support, it is best that they have a firm foundation of understanding of how their manager thinks - and why - so that they can infer the right choice in a split-second decision.

That foundation is built over time, under the guidance and clear-headed thinking of a focused management team that not only knows the company's vision but the route by which they will achieve that vision, and how best to communicate it to the organization.

Communicating that vision is not achieved through "education." It is done through engagement: discussion, dialogue and debate. The successful organization focuses this engagement on the outside world around questions such as these:

• How is the economy affecting our customers?
• What do our customers need and expect from us in this climate that's different than before?
• How are our competitors responding to the evolving marketplace?
• Where can we anticipate the market to go next?
• Who are our future competitors, companies that we don't now perceive as competitors?
• How can we beat those future competitors before they get started?
• What are the potential markets for our products/services where we don't now compete?

These kinds of questions and the dialogue they stimulate are valuable on a number of levels, not the least of which is engaging employees in the business. Managers often learn more from their employees than the other way around. People on the ground, so to speak, often have unique insights that those in the C Suite don't. Most important, though, this kind of dialogue engages employees in the real business of the company: its future.

Employees' stake in the game becomes obvious to them. Their commitment and best thinking follow.

Reality is alive and well in an organization that engages employees like that, and never has a chance to bite back.