As I was reviewing employee engagement survey results with a client recently the question came up: “How do we take this great data and turn it into action?”
There’s a tendency by some to look at all the ills revealed in the survey data and put together a comprehensive plan with subsections and footnotes and “we do this, but only on Tuesday’s– whew! These plans, which look a lot like those New Year’s Resolutions lists, rarely bring any results. Like those resolution lists they are long on intention and short on action.
I tend to recommend the organization pick one or two key goals that all managers in the company should work on, and then let each manager pick one additional goal that would be germaine to their department. This allows the senior leadership to set the overall tone for the company, while still allowing each manager some latitude to address something that is important in her/his department. By the way, goals can be set to build on strengths as well as remediate weaknesses– something perhaps to discuss in a later post.
Ready to set aside resolutions and get down to something that will produce real results? Good luck.
Mark Hirschfeld 
Leave a Reply