Driving Success in 2017, Business Principle "Involvement of People"

Does your organization focus on "involvement of people"?

Innovation, participation, consultation, partnerships and collaboration.

Who are these people?

Seek and engage internal/external involvement, advice, assistance, strategic alliances and social networks where needed.

Within an Organization

People at all levels are the essence of an organization, and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization’s benefit.

Ensure talent management.

Companies focus on employees by defining roles and responsibilities, however, it is important that they take ownership and are emotionally engaged so that they feel they can actively contribute and make improvements.

By ignoring the emotional engagement, companies will be missing out on the financial returns, as productivity decreases and input is not supporting the direction of the organization.

Employees not only accomplish tasks to assist in customer satisfaction, but also set the tone for the customer’s perception of how they are treated (positively or negatively) and they use their knowledge when giving advice to a customer, which could provide added value in the customer relationship, increasing customer satisfaction. Today the market is very competitive and innovation and customer satisfaction is key.

Many employees and boards of directors will be retiring in the next five to ten years and an organization needs to have in place a way to capture the “knowledge” that these key people have related to the organization’s operations and a plan to bring in new people prior to their leaving. Training is key for performance and productivity and in most cases gets cut in budgets.

Employees, partners need to see progress in their own growth, as an individual and within an organization; otherwise they will look to other opportunities.

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Questions to

ASSESS - REFLECT - ACT

1. How does the organization promote innovation and empower its people to contribute to meeting the organization’s goals for performance? How do you reward them? Is there individual or group profit sharing or incentives paid?

2. How does top management as leaders for the organization assist employees, contractors, others to understand the importance of their contribution and to get satisfaction from their work or involvement in the company?

3. Does organization have an information system that provides employees with relevant/current understandable data (transparency), so that they can provide the input for changes, opportunities?

4. Does organization motivate its people by focusing on their strengths or does it focus on improving weaknesses? Does organization have the “knowledge” to make decisions, take action? Training

5. How does organization track real-time involvement of its people in problem solving or quality improvement projects?

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Quotes from Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon:

Fortune’s third annual World’s Greatest Leaders list published March 24, 2016, Number one leader was Mr. Jeff Bezos

"Our vision is to be the world's most consumer-centric company, where customers can come to find anything they want to buy online."

On innovation: "I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

On progress: "If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering."

On strategy: "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient."

-Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com