Over the 45 years that I have played with issues around involving and engaging people for workplace performance improvement, I have been involved in some really long and even somewhat convoluted discussions about motivation and innovation and engagement and leadership and workplace creativity. There are really complicated models out there and an amazing amount of articles and books and research, too much so to really allow for any real understanding, in my thinking.

And an associate of mine in Asia had asked for my ideas for implementing workplace improvement. So, I offered up some simple ideas about involving and engaging people and then thought to blog about it a bit, since it seems to be a very common organizational development issue. So, I thought to share some of my thinking below.

And, I could get into my own convoluted pedagogical diatribe and gobbledygook on all things, I prefer to keep it simple and straightforward. That’s just my nature.

How do we involve, engage, and motivate to generate innovation and workplace performance improvement?

Here would be my four key simple suggestions:

1. Ask, Ask, Ask, Ask, Ask, and Ask
2. Listen and listen and listen
3. Let things happen! Get out of the way!
4. Provide resources and support.

Below is my “model of the world” where I ask people the simple question to generate active involvement and open discussion: 

You will find a variety of ideas about facilitation of conversations and idea generation in other writings in the many blog posts I have created.

Basically, the use of the above image needs one to first give participants some silent time and then allow tables of 4 to 6 people to talk and share ideas for 5 to 10 minutes. (You can see some of the results in this other blog post on why this is so damn effective.)

By using the image / metaphor approach, what will happen is that they will eventually to talking about the Square Wheels they deal with in their workplaces and the Round Wheel ideas that already exist. And the reality is that once something is labeled a “Square Wheel,” people will want to fix it. So, this simple activity will set up 2, 3 and 4 on the list IF

YOU JUST STAY OUT OF THE WAY
AND NOT MEDDLE WITH THEM OR THE PROCESS.

Most people in most workplaces have a fairly realistic view of their reality and history that management is more The Party of No than the people in power who will enable them to actually make improvements and get things done.

Is this because I have a biased view of supervisors, managers and executives? NO. (Well, partly). It is really just my experienced view and based on observations as well as based on survey after employee survey over the past 30 years — Big Surveys done on thousands of people in dozens of countries and little ones done informally within workgroups using only pencil and paper. (See this great article around Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup, and his views on this.)

Most surveys show that managers manage — they control and direct (and inhibit).

I was once involved with a Mission Statement for a large public utility and the Executives were asking if this phrase was a good one to include:

“We manage with uncompromising integrity.”

Well, the supervisors took one look at the above and quickly said, “No way.” They rewrote it to read what they thought it really meant:

“We manipulate with inflexible righteousness.”

So, my advice is to support where needed with resources, time, money, etc. but to get the heck out of the way and let the people play with the ideas until they can put them into an effective solution. It may take some trial and error (and look something like this:

If you are meddling, you will probably toss a Blame Frame around the above picture and generate defensiveness and an unwillingness to risk going forward. Blame Frames are really common in most organizations, and really easy to apply to innovations.

It is like the old Six Phases of a Typical Project Management Initiative:

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honor for the Non-Participants