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Question Of the Day

You're a health care communicator. Your CEO just came to you and said "Our employees aren't enthusiastic about our strategic plan. They're not engaged. Many aren't even aware. Fix it please!"

Here's the question: How do you respond?

With the safe answer? "I'll put an article in the employee newsletter." Or,

With the honest answer? "Perhaps we should do less telling and more involving."


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Comments

Shereen said…
Oh - let's see - how about a living, breathing example? I just heard that an organization that shall remain nameless has decided to make employee forums mandatory because no one comes to them.

Someone suggested trying positive incentives vs. one that could easily be perceived as negative (no one likes 'mandatory' anything) and was met with blank stares and this response "well, the meetings will only be mandatory for a while and then people will voluntarily attend." Really??? Is this really the best way to get employees actively involved?
February 4, 2010 at 9:06 PM
Shereen said…
How about making the strategic plan more than pretty graphs and fancy words? Show/tell the employees how it affects their daily working life and then follow through.
February 5, 2010 at 12:07 PM
Steve Davis said…
An organization I know well handed me their "strategic plan" - a 95 page PowerPoint deck reading like it was cut-and-pasted from an MBA-level textbook on strategy. The last 3 pages talked about their priorities but only in the most global sense. No action plans, no benchmarks, no measurements, no timeframes, no capital plan. Nothing. But it was darn pretty!

And they couldn't figure out why employees weren't engaged. Turns out the employees' BS-detectors "got it" more than the executives did.
February 5, 2010 at 12:46 PM
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