…High Morale In Your Business

E-Book Series

Top 5 Tips To Keep…

Jean-Bertrand

de Lartigue

Chief Executive

About the Author

CEO and Entrepreneur experienced in start-up through divestiture business leadership with proven track record in turn-around, acquisitions, management transition, and troubled asset environments in large and small businesses. 40 years of steering companies through growth, recognizing market opportunities and negotiating profitable financial partnerships. Background in developing expansion strategies through product commercialization, identifying advantageous acquisitions and leveraging competitive landscape. Excellent ability to identify future leaders, nurture talent and create sustainable succession plans.

Jean-Bertrandde Lartigue

Chief Executive

INTRODUCTION

• In the current climate we are bound to look for cost savings, as revenues at best are stagnating or reducing.

• Those cost cutting exercises can end up in redundancies or reduced worked hours with lower salaries, requiring people to do more with less, so it is very difficult to keep staff morale at a high or positive level. 

• When people are constantly under pressure they are at risk to burn out.  

• HR will certainly recommend implementing new motivational programmes to boost morale.

• Unfortunately while high morale can act as a motivating factor motivation does not necessarily deliver high morale. 

How would you know if your organization has a morale issue?

If you diagnose any or all of the following symptoms your staff suffer from a morale issue.

• No strategic alignment (lack of focus);• No clear goals result in long hours and chaos;• People do not meet performance goals;• Lack of resources (human, machines, money);• Poor creativity and innovations;• No decision making;• People blame & distrust each other;• Managers threaten staff or are inaccessible;• Managers only focus on savings and budget

controls;• Lack of clear leadership. Orders and counter

orders come from every one;• Absenteeism, rumours and disloyal behaviour;• No teamwork and sense of individual support;• Talents and intellectual capital are not

recognized and publicized.

Don’t be down-hearted if you recognise this in your organisation?

Indeed when we are called in, for example, to turn around a company, we almost certainly encounter most, if not all of these symptoms. So you are not unusual!

How would you know if your organization has a morale issue?

• One way to solve these issues is to create an environment in which people feel comfortable.

• The organization becomes a whole system, this change completely changes the staff’s present frame of reference and creates an “electroshock”. 

• This electroshock is necessary to implement the change process we have designed to rescue a company which is in a declining mode or in a distress situation or to enter a phase of high growth.

People normally “report” to someone.

In our model people have a “nominal boss” but they must work for many other individual leaders, teams, either regularly or on an ad hoc basis.

This may appear “not quite natural” to your staff but when implemented you will notice that the staff is:• less frustrated, • contributing a lot more and coming up with new ideas.

The most important factor is to create trust which will give the employees confidence in the organization:

• If their ideas are not implemented they know there is a good reason;

• They know that the idea has been evaluated through a rigorous process;

• They do not feel that unnecessary barriers have been put in their way;

• Transparency is the rule of the game;

• Your people feel being valued and know they are contributing to the success of the company.

• Success attracts success and creates high morale.

wisdom networ

k

wisdom networ

k

innovation

cultural growth

ethos

knowledge

support

economic growth

engage

Diverse Team

Common Interest

Shared Values

Purpose

Reciprocity

Copyright KeySo Global LLC

stability

leadership

Transform - ation

1)   The organization needs to be strategically aligned; 2)    Good Leadership is essential to staff morale;3) it is important for the success of an organisation that it motivates its staff; 4)    Establish a process to help people meet performance goals; 5)    Encourage creativity and innovations through wisdom networks.

To Keep Morale High Your Organisation Must Be Successful

Tip Number 1:

The Organisation Needs to be Aligned

Create a management system that will mobilize all your staff, channelling their energy and abilities, encouraging them to share their specific knowledge with others, outside and inside the organization, to fulfil the company mission and your staff’s own expectations:

Suppliers

Competition

CompanyOther Suppliers

Customers

Other Customers

Alternative service

Suppliers

Customers

Influencers

Regulators

Alternative Suppliers

Associations

Aftermarket Suppliers

Accessory Suppliers

System Integrator Suppliers

Lobbyists

Distribution channels

Customers alliances

JV’s

Partnerships

DemandSupply

Environment

Funding

Understand in which environment your company is evolving. My colleagues Steve Bell and Steve Benton have developed a new concept called the “EcoWeb”. In the EcoWeb each company has a unique map of relationships and value transactions that is as individual as DNA and as dynamic as the weather. It allows you to analyse and view the landscape of your digital footprint and use this to determine potential competitive threats and business development leads, and through this focus on building opportunity awareness it will help you define your company’s vision.

Degrees of separation1. First degreedirect suppliers customers employees shareholders, board members, partners, Competition2. Second degreeCustomers’ customers, suppliers customers, suppliers’ suppliers, banks3. Third degree Other customers, other suppliers, lobbyist, analysts, associations regulators, hedge fund

• Develop your vision, mission and long term goals and write them down in a balance score card.

• A score card is essential to grow your business and communicate with your employees it will give you and your staff a snapshot of the state of the business at any given time.

• Growth = change but if you want to become better you have to move in the right direction. The balance score card should allow you to:

1. spread your vision and gain consensus;

2. set clear goals;

3. communicate efficiently with your staff;

4. educate them;

5. link their rewards to performance measures, aligned with strategic initiatives;

6. allocate the right resources, and establish realistic milestones;

7. evaluate the performances of your business and your employees;

8. make the right decisions by understanding your overall position and making sure you are remaining in the game;

9. make key adjustments, this is the secret to success, the score card will help you to see where adjustments have to be made.

By making the score card an integral part of your culture you will be able to recognize and size opportunities leading to huge success.

Your staff will feel challenged, valued and motivated as they will be able to measure the result of their efforts and understand how their individual performances contributed to their overall success.

Tip Number 2:

Good Leadership is Essential to High Morale

• Providing a vision and adequate resources,

• removing barriers,

• encouraging accountability.

Within business, effective leadership has proven results:

• from the release of employees’ potential,

• to improved bottom line financial performance.

Leaders can be pivotal to organisational change, pushing back boundaries and creating new ways of working.

Leadership is very much about the ability to influence people by personal attributes and behaviours: skills are secondary. 

Leaders are special people:

Good leaders are followed chiefly because:• People trust and respect them for their courage.

• Leaders treat others with dignity, equality and fairness, live up to their commitments, and trust is thus engendered.

• Leaders are sensitive to the expectations of the workforce and lead accordingly.

• Leaders truly listen to others’ opinions, and take them into account. This doesn’t mean they have to act on the suggestions, but, having listened with care, they are best placed to explain their rationale.

• By acting in this way, not being afraid of making tough, unpopular decisions, leaders will be respected, potentially at the expense of being liked. 

What do leaders do for their teams? • A good leader will set a framework and define boundaries for actions and behaviours,

and therein allow co-workers full autonomy;

• The behaviours part of this is important. It’s right that a leader demonstrates and, if necessary, states what behaviours are appropriate and expected in an organisation;

• Leaders should keep people challenged, moving them on to achieve their potential and thus be successful in their own right, and as part of the collective success of the company. 

Leaders should be concerned with talent retention• Allowing employees to increase their employability.

• Employees should:

• Be given the opportunity to acquire new skills;

• Be encouraged to network with communities sharing the same interests, and hence develop and demonstrate their own expertise;

• Feel they have a value in the job market and are paid on the right scale. 

Change Awareness

Outside in Assessment

StrategyProcess

PositioningPlan

Change Implementatio

n

Monitoring

Effective leaders balance strategic thinking and planning, • And Allow enough time for, and get involved in implementation.

• Harvard Business School research suggests a good rule of thumb for this balance is 15% strategy and 85% execution.

• Leaders involved in execution have an intimate knowledge of their expectations of others.  

Leaders can Support Change • By outsourcing the innovation. • People within an organisation can be, intentionally or otherwise, resistant to change. • Utilising an external resource can bring internal staff out of their comfort zone. Universities are fantastic hubs for outsourcing innovation. Tapping in to this resource are gaining benefits.

Good leaders help their employees • Participate in online and offline networks more effectively. • See how these networks

• can bring forward ideas and deliver answers quicker; • can facilitate different ways of working and • are to be embraced to stimulate creative or effective thinking about core business

issues. 

Image source KeySo Global

They have developed a vision and strategy which:

delivers better than expected financial

results

Optimises business processes and embrace

the best technologiesto satisfy their customers

and share holders

sustains the ability to change & improve

through learning & growth

has best practice governance in place to

keep the business in line with the law

focuses on their customer

needs & deliver better products / services

than expected

How do leaders close a chapter in their career?• They realise that nobody is indispensable

• They have put in place

• the right skilled, motivated, successful people,

• with the necessary systems and processes so that their own role becomes obsolete,

• And so they move on to their next challenge

Tip Number 3:

Important for an Organisation’s

success to Motivate its Staff

To succeed an organisation must motivate its employees• Use their full talents.

• Put in place a strategy and approach with positive motivation philosophy and practice in place to improve:

• productivity,

• quality and

• service.

• There are many businesses out there feeling cash-strapped and this should not be seen as a barrier. I will focus on  aspects of motivation other than those related to salary enhancements.

Being Valued• Explain, in an appropriate fashion to the employee, how to go about their job.

• Spell out to them what your expectations are; it doesn’t offend to say what you are expecting of them.

• With these enablers in place, when they then deliver, don’t hesitate to thank them. Even better, do this in front of others; it’ll make others strive to do a good job too and receive their praise in turn.

• Feedback on performance regularly, and keep people challenged (but not overloaded and stressed).

• It also helps if individuals’ roles are set in the context of the company objectives, strategies and plans and employees can see how what they are doing fits in to the bigger picture.

• People are self-confident when they are feeling valued. Finding the right balance of confidence is difficult, too little nothing happens: too much leads to arrogance and inevitably to poor decisions.

• Without great levels of self-belief, the pillar of confidence, your employees will not take risks or try new things. You can’t have confident organizations without confident individuals inside them.

• Give people the potential to develop their skills outside their core competency.

• Consider the skill sets all job types need to perform well in their field, that these are transferable skills, which could be applied to, and honed in, another function, and you’ll create a flat-lattice organisation without the chains of command or predetermined channels of communication that are features of pyramidal management.  

• In those organisations there are no bosses, but leaders.

• Associates choose to follow leaders rather than having bosses assigned to them. They commit to projects, accepted and prioritised by the board of directors, of their own choice rather than having tasks delegated to them.

• Performance reviews are based on a peer-level rating system.

• Staff are mentored and supported in their development so they have a good understanding of the organisation, and how they can contribute to its success.

• Contribution to success is about how  your employees perform, so it means  having clear goals, moving positively towards them, talking about issues that might prevent them meeting their objectives and feeling heard when they do so.

• They do all this best when they feel appreciated and valued by their leaders and their colleagues. So it’s not just about delivering: it’s about doing that within collaborative working relationships too.

Explore Your People Potential

Fulfil Your Peoples’ Ambitions• The opportunity of giving an employee a secondary responsible role – is also a way of

supporting them to fulfil their career ambitions.

• It equips them with more widely practised skills and experience which will stand them in good stead when an opportunity becomes available.

• A promising employee who is effectively blocked in their promotional scope by your own presence could find this seeming lack of prospects demotivating.

• As a way of keeping your people motivated, and also as a method of effective succession planning, consider a sideward move for them within the organisation, or even a secondment to a valued supplier or customer.

• Your employees should be convinced that they have a future within the organization. Conviction is a short-term motivation factor both in good times and bad.

• It will keep your employees going even when things get tough,

• they will maintain their energy, motivation and resources,

• they will feel good and will be resilient, efficient and effective.

• To have conviction your employees would need to trust you and the organization so avoid promising things you know you won’t be able to deliver!

Help Them Achieve Success

•The goals you set your employees should be challenging and stretching, and they need the support and resources in place to achieve them. Consider what difference new software, machinery, guidance from yourself, help from a colleague, support in prioritising, agreement to home working etc. could make to whether an employee believed their goals to be achievable or otherwise.• Think how clearly you deal with a supplier: you specify how and when you want a product or service to be delivered, using tools such as specifications to support this. Your suppliers know what is expected of them and commit to deliver against this. Treat your employees likewise. •Commitment matters

because it is why your employees do the work you expect them to do. When your employees commit to a goal they are perceive that they are  doing something worthwhile, they demonstrate strong intrinsic interest in their job and feel that the vision of the organization resonates with their purpose.

Help Them Achieve Success

• The iOpener Institute for People and Performance, research, involving 9,000 people from around the world, reveals some astonishing findings. Employees who report being “happy” and motivated at work:

• Stay twice as long in their jobs as their least happy colleagues 

• Spend double their time at work focused on what they are paid to do 

• Take ten times less sick leave 

• Believe they are achieving their potential twice as much

• Employees experimenting the “feel good factor” will solve problems faster, be more creative, adapt fastest to change. Customer service will be excellent, your clients will be loyal and recommend your products / services to their friends and business acquaintances so your bottom line will increase!

Tip Number 4:

Establish a Process to Help People Meet

Performance Goals

Business is Becoming Increasingly Complex.• Customer expectations are higher and higher, you need your employees to be

able to change their knowledge and skills quickly and raise their performance “bar”.

• Leading edge organisations are re-thinking their philosophies and human resources strategies to align their employees’ performance goals with their organisational vision, values, and strategic plans.

• These leading edge organisations are evolving from a single ”overall” rating appraisal system, to one evaluating their people’s profiles of strengths and needs for developmental areas.

• They focus on developing people behaviours/skills, introducing multi-source feedback systems and re-examining the mechanism for pay linkage, in other words they embrace the performance leadership programme principles

Performance Leadership Programme Principles

• Applying continuous improvement to individual and team performance;

• Aligning individual efforts with business needs;

• Conducting real dialogues between employee and manager, not just processing a form;

• Defining common framework and measurement criteria for all employees;

• Looking at results and behaviours of people to deliver high performances, it is not about measuring personality trait;

• Maximising job fit and defining shared responsibility to avoid overlaps;

• Focusing their employees on their current job requirements to deliver the expected results;

• Your employees will feel being valued and adequately rewarded. They will understand what is expected from them both in terms of business performances and behaviours and they will serve your customers with enthusiasm, as they will be highly motivated.

All the above will lead to:

• High customer satisfaction and loyalty so your customers  will buy more from you and your profit will increase, your existing customers will be your best advocate and will recommend you to friends and you will get new customers increasing your sales and profit even more.

Measurement and Management in the Information Age

Vision and Strategy

FinancialHow should we appear

to our share holder?

Internal Business Process

To satisfy our customers and share holders what business

process must we excel at?

Learning and Growth

To achieve our vision

how will we sustain our ability

to change and improve?

CustomerTo achieve our

Vision How should we

appear to our

Customers?Objective

Measures

Targets Initiatives

Individual

Team

Company

Performance Leadership Objectives• Increase frequency and quality of performance

discussion• Enhance understanding of relationship between

business strategies and individual’s role• Emphasise impact of specific leadership behaviours on

achieving results• Reinforce shared responsibility for continuous

performance improvement• Enhance match between job and individual capabilities,

interests, and life style values, emphasising multidirectional job movement.

The context for Performance Leadership is…

IndividualPerformance

Inputs•Customer expectations•Business strategies & plans•Key initiatives•Clear goals & behavioural expectations•Information, skills, & resources•Motivation•Performance feedback

Outcomes•Customer satisfaction•Business results•Individual Dignity•Team performance•Reward/ Recognition

Performance Leadership is not …• A new rating form• A career development system• A performance Improvement process• A salary Increase process

Performance Leadership Process Overview

Performance planningMutual understanding about:•Team/ individual business goals•Expected individual behaviours•Assistance and resources needed•Job match/ action plans/ possible reassignments•Sources of performance input

Progress Check pointsDiscussion of:•Progress on individual / team business goals•Actual behaviour compared to expectations•Assistance and resources needed•Job match/ action plans / possible reassignments

Input to•Training•Staffing•Compensation•Career Planning

Performance SummaryDiscussion of:•Performance on individual / team business goals•Actual behaviour compared to expectations•Job match/ action plans / possible reassignments•Future skills needed for current job

Role of every individual

• Commit to open communication

• Enhance skills in performance leadership

• Initiate discussions

• Monitor and discuss progress

• Honestly assess strengths and development needs

• Seek and provide on-going performance feedback and coaching

• Commit to continual performance development

Performance planning is…

Typically completed at the beginning of the year

Performance planning is not…

• Evaluating

• Looking Backward

• Focusing on job in isolation

• Management by Objective

• Top Down

• Substitute for on going Dialogue

A collaborative discussion to create mutual understanding in advance, by focusing on:

• What the individual / team is going to be held accountable for

• The support the individual/ team needs to succeed

Performance Planning Activities and Content

Preparation

•Goals

•Behaviours

•Job Match

Discussion

•Goals

•Behaviours

•Job Match

Documentation

•Goals

•Behaviours

•Job Match

Individual, team & manager talk about:

Performance Planning Preparation

Goals Behaviours Job Match

•Business Strategies / Key success factors

•Team / individual goals

•Individual’s role in accomplishing team goals

•Behavioural expectations •Requirements of job in relation to individual capabilities, interests and lifestyle values

Individual & manager (& team where appropriate) talk about

Performance Planning Discussion

Goals Behaviours Job Match•Specific goals•Potential obstacles•Assistance needed•Resources Required

•Behavioural expectations•Sources of performance input

•Job match•Development plans•Job redesign•Possible reassignment

Other Progress check point schedule

Performance Planning Documentation

Principles Underlying Effective Goals

• Goals

• Behavioural Expectations

• Job match- development actions

• Time – bound 3 to 12 month focus

• Developed from customer requirements, business goals, key success factors, and milestone

• Reflect team and individual result

• Measurable, observable

• Realistic

Goal Setting Organisational links

Goal Setting Business Alignment

Performance leadership behaviour categories

• Thinking

• Administrative

• Leadership

• Interpersonal

• Self-management

Why Performance leadership behaviour• Describe specific behavioural expectations

in common language throughout the organisation

• Provide a coaching framework for achieving results

• Tool for team members to talk about how to work together to achieve results

360 Degrees Input on Behaviours

In planning for success they are an integral part of focusing attention on the necessary actions

• Current expectations

• Individual capabilities, interests, and lifestyle values

• Gap analysis

• Actions

Performance Planning Job Match

Performance planning guide

Key success factor: Innovation/ strategic initiativesGoal: Close X new deals in strategically important

markets by year end

A. Identify behaviours that will help you achieve goal:

• Analyse issues• Influence others• Think strategically• Build relationships

B. Identify specific actions relating to the chosen behaviours that will help you accomplish goal such as:

• Identify strategically important markets• Determine potential joint venture

opportunities in each designated market• Determine benefits of joint venture for

all parties and anticipate obstacles

Performance Planning Key Learning Points

Share responsibility for process

Emphasise results and behaviours

Link goals to business strategies

Identify team and individual goals

Establish mutual expectations in advance

Tip Number 5:

Encourage Creativity & Innovations through

Wisdom Networks

• In their book “Wisdom Network” Melissa Giovagnolli and Steve Benton describe the challenge companies have to use visible and invisible knowledge to achieve their goals.

• The problem is that people are reluctant to share their knowledge, they only talk about what they know to a close circle of people in their department / function because they are afraid that if they share their “secrets” with others they will lose their value to the company.

• In order to overcome this issue you have to create an environment that gives your employees the possibility and the confidence to share knowledge and ultimately co create to innovate.

• It is proving to be effective to design an organisation in which:

• Formal structures are removed people are not organised in functions / departments but according to their individual skills so that they can add value to various projects in the organisation

• There is no restraints due to job titles , every employee is an associate.

• Employees are assessed on primary and secondary skills and put into ‘Resource Pools’ which group people by skills which can be used effectively by the company and encourage innovation

How does it work? • Employee A’ can have a primary skill in Project Management but have a secondary skill in IT.

• They are added to the Project Management resource pool at a high level and• the IT resource pool at lower level.

• When a business project comes up requiring their skills:• they are allocated to a project’s ‘Job Family’ requiring their primary skill • and they can volunteer if they have free work time to be a part of another project’s ‘Job Family’ using

their secondary skill in order to improve their knowledge and experience. A Job Family being a group of people with the required skills between them to complete the project.

• So ‘Employee A’ can perform their main skill, develop their secondary skill or be utilised to do both at once see the project examples below:

By recognising that a person is more than their job title company’s can ensure:

• value is added, • skills are developed, • knowledge shared, • creativity developed and innovation is the rule of the game.

Each team / project will:• define their own roles and responsibilities• define Short terms and long terms goals• be encouraged to explore new ideas and push the edge of the

envelope • have members constantly crossing boundaries and exploring new

concepts

Project A Job Family A delivery project

Project B Job Family An IT product project

Project C Job Family IT delivery project

Senior Project Manager (Allocated) Senior Product Manager Senior IT Project Manager

Project Manager Product IT Manager IT Project Manager (Volunteer)

Project Administrator IT Technician (Volunteer) IT Project Administrator

This fluid model is ensuring:• An employee is working productively for every

hour they are at work, if they are not performing their main skill they can be developing their secondary skill and further assisting a business needing that resource.

• By being able to move around an organisation morale and recognition is increased, as well as offering a challenge and allowing the employee to understand more of the business as a whole. If an employee does not know the company as a whole they cannot be expected to proactively contribute to its success.

• Employees that have the ability to self-develop are:

• eager to stay within the company, as they enjoy themselves, learning new skills.

• loyal to the brand and are “walking advertisements” for the company, attracting new talents and clients.

• sharing knowledge with their co-workers as they know that others will share with them.

• serving the existing clients better and get their loyalty. Happy and satisfied customers will talk to their friends, colleagues and suppliers and will bring you new clients so your profit will increase!

• In this E-book we have talked about the  top 5 factors contributing to keep high morale in an organisation to generate success.

• Success appeal success and produce high morale.

• The top 5 factors that allow you to create an environment for success and keep high morale in your business are:

• 1) The organization needs to be strategically aligned

• 2) Good Leadership is essential to the morale of the troops

• 3) Motivate its employees

• 4) Establish a process to help people meet performance goals

• 5) Encourage creativity and innovations through wisdom networks

•If you want to discuss any of the above points or need help to implement this magic environment, please feel free to contact:

• JB de Lartigue at jb@macint.co.uk or call me on +44 1656 766 363

• Visit our Website www.maconsultinginternational.com• Join the conversation on our blog

www.maconsultinginternational.com/blog

Thanks!

JB de Lartigue