Engagement: why you should care

A couple weeks ago I was speaking to Mike Portell, a consultant at one of the worlds largest consulting firms.

Mike is spearheading a program to help the people in his business unit collect more feedback. The objective is simple; help individuals & teams enhance their performance and execution by getting continuous insights from the people they work with.

With one of the key success criteria for a program like this being executive support, I asked Mike how his management team felt about the initiative.

“They’re very supportive,” he said. “The more feedback people get the more engaged they’ll be, and engagement is something our executives are very keen on.”

“Engagement?” I asked. “And why is engagement important?”

After taking a short, organic pause to contemplate the answer, Mike continued:

“Our clients entrust the success of their businesses to us every day. They call on us to craft new and innovative approaches to help solve their toughest problems. If our people aren’t engaged and looking for ways to improve themselves and their teams, how can we deliver on our promise to our clients?“

Even though I asked the question I was still taken aback by the elegance and simplicity of Mike’s response. He was also totally bang on!

Not surprisingly, employee engagement is not a new concept. However, people are now increasingly recognizing the importance of engagement in the new “Enterprise 2.0″ workplace, in particular within management ranks.

I think Gary Hamel’s Wall Street Journal Management 2.0 post: Management’s Dirty Little Secret sums it up perfectly:

in a world where customers wake up every morning asking, “what’s new, what’s different and what’s amazing?” success depends on a company’s ability to unleash the initiative, imagination and passion of employees at all levels

The moral of the story: engagement is not simply the goal, but the means by which people and organizations are able to innovate, differentiate, and ultimately serve their clients.