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Our Journey to Excellence | Judith McMullan

Judith McMullan is  Global OpEx Manager, Abbot.

Our Journey to Excellence

Judith currently manages the Shingo program across Abbott Nutrition Supply Chain (ANSC), where they have a number of sites challenging for the Shingo Prize over the next three years.  In October 2017, Abbott Nutrition, Sligo were the first site in the ANSC network to receive the prestigious Shingo prize.

When they started the Shingo process three years ago they liked the Enterprise wide nature of the process, how it mirrored their values and behaviours and connected the dots between people, process, purpose and performance offering them an external validation of their excellence journey.

The process now engages everyone, everyday with a culture of continuous improvement and problem solving with all teams working together to achieve enterprise alignment.  This is achieved through the deployment of the Management Operating System (MOS), standard work and visual management and is measured through the premier plant balanced scorecard.

Judith explained how the company drove engagement through Behaviour-Based Principles using the Shingo methodology.  The Shingo model leverages an interconnection of Guiding Principles, Systems, Tools and Results with culture at its centre.  Guiding Principles are aligned to Systems which in turn drive guiding principles.  Systems in turn select Tools which enable systems.  Tools achieve results and results refine tools.  Results also affirm Guiding Principles which drive results. At the centre of all of this is culture manifested in behaviour.

As a hierarchy the Shingo model has results at the top which created customer value, followed one step down by Enterprise Alignment, creating constancy of purpose and systematic thinking.  Continuous Improvement focuses on process, embracing scientific thinking, flow and pull value, assure quality at the source and seeking perfection. Finally at the base of the pyramid are cultural enablers by leading with humility and respecting every individual.

Judith shared how the people within ANSC are considered to be their greatest asset across all functional groups and it is the collaboration, shared behaviours and common goal that make them a prize winning organisation.

Abbott Nutrition have achieved MOS implementation and standardisation across 14 plants in the ANSC network, across many cultures, also encompassing the functional groups – demonstrating that excellence is not limited to the shopfloor and is relevant and achievable globally.

Standardisation through MOS

Judith explained the range of Cultural Enabler activities and structures that Abbott have in place to ensure leading with humility and respecting every individual.  This includes ensuring Safety is always the number one priority, comprehensive auditing to ensure compliance and continuous improvement, an investment in the development of employees through specific leadership programs such as Mindful Leader, through strong visual management achieved through a 5-tiered meeting process, and a culture of recognition of their pledge behaviours.

According to Judith one of the biggest complements during a Shingo visit was when the Shingo examiners shared with the leadership team how it was not easy to distinguish leaders from managers or associates because they had built a strong culture of leading with humility and respecting every individual.

Judith shared how ANSC have evolved on their excellence journey, continuously challenging the tools, systems and measures they have in place and if they are driving an improvement in performance.  Asking questions such as “If it is not adding value or making a difference, why are we using it or measuring it?”  One such example is in the revisions to visual management, allowing room for personalisation as opposed to stringent standardisation to ensure it is driving results and meeting the needs of individual teams.

The customer is at the heart of everything that Abbott Nutrition do, with their products spanning the continuum of health, and providing life-enhancing nutritional products for infants through to the elderly.  To remind of this and ensure they never become complacent, they hold an annual customer appreciation day.  Judith shared the most recent example of this in Sligo, where a father of two daughters dependant on nutritional devices manufacturing at the Sligo facility came to site to share their story with all employees.  This provides an opportunity to understand the user experience, look at opportunities for further improving our product and touch the hearts and minds of employees by bringing the customer insight to the shopfloor.

Abbott Nutrition to directly correlate their operational excellence journey to improved business results and cost improvements year over year, with the systems and tools implemented allowing employees to work smarter, not harder.  Since the deployment of their Management Operating System, they have seen their journey develop through the various phases of Build, Grow, Evolve and today it is in a Sustain phase, yet continuing to challenge and improve.

On Oct. 12th 2017, Abbott Nutrition Supply Chain, Sligo Ireland, received notification from the Shingo Institute that they had won the prestigious Shingo Prize per the recommendation of the Shingo examiners.  This was a proud moment for all Sligo employees and the entire Abbott Nutrition division, being the first site to have received this external validation of their performance.

 

 

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Problem Solving – John Quirke

John Quirke, SA Partners

Two common themes come up when we review how businesses approach problem solving.

One.  The lack of a joined up system to enable effective problem solving across the business.

And two. The level and quality of process focus within the organisation.

Given the development of enterprise excellence thinking, those organisations that achieve consistent levels of sustainable excellence are hard wired to think in core business systems and the behaviours those systems need to support.

In his presentation John asked the audience a series of questions.

  • How many have standard approach problem solving?
  • How many have visual management boards in their work areas?
  • Is there a good quality problem solving visible on those boards and is it current to the ‘now’?
  • Do you see the same systems and practices at the senior management levels, and are leaders consciously coaching for good behaviours to support effective problem solving?

John pointed out that we need different ‘heads on us’ when we approach problems depending on the ‘Lean maturity’ of the organisation.  If we are in a place where there is constant firefighting and we cannot predict outcomes with confidence then our problem solving focus is on identify standards and finding new ways for the process to ‘speak to us’ so we can understand better what is going on.  In more mature organisations the focus becomes prediction and likelihood and also questions around what is possible? Or, what if?

In problem solving there is a tendency to focus on the tool not the overall systems and a the behaviours needed.

A second problem is the level and quality of process focus.

In order to demonstrate this John asked the group to carry out a card experiment where attendees attempted to drop a card onto a flipchart size sheet of paper.  Following the standard process almost none of the tables got the card on to the sheet.  John then went through the ‘normal’ problem solving activity and the way organisations can jump to solutions without really understanding what is at the core of the process.

Using the same standard conditions with one slight change (how the card is held) John demonstrated the problem related to the control of the aerodynamics of the card’s flight to the target area.  John explained that by understanding the aerodynamics of the cards flight and what was need to ensure a perfect flight, we could then create well thought out standard work documents that are truly applicable to the process and will ensure consistent predictable results.

His advice was we need to focus on experimentation and curiosity to allow the development knowledge which enables us to better investigate what is happening in the processes.

Problem solving should be a learning experience a discovery. Sometimes we are finding things and solving problems that nobody has solved before.  The quality of the documentation controlling this problem the story telling around how we discovered and controlled it in a way is our legacy.

In order to achieve this, we need to connect with and enable our innate human intuitiveness.  The stone age did not end because we ran out of stone!  Homo Sapiens is hard wired to prod, poke, investigate, grunt ‘why’. and then work as tribe to make things better.  This is what we are.

 

 

 

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2018 ICBE Conference Introduction

Introduction

Welcome to the eBook and report from the Annual ICBE Conference that was held on Thursday, May 10th in the Killashee Hotel, Naas, Co Kildare.  This year, we evolved the innovative and interactive event format, which included highly relevant presentations from practitioners and renowned speakers, a moderated forum, live blogging, interactive Group Action Learning and this eBook take-away.

Over the course of the morning and afternoon our 9 speakers covered the three pillars of Productivity, People and Technology.  These ‘one to many’ talks from leaders in our sector prepared all the attendees for the group challenge, discussions and knowledge sharing that took place in moderated sessions after each pillar.

These group sessions discussed challenges prepared by the speakers in pairs and shared them as a group.  We have captured the essence of this tacit knowledge and the immense experience of the 11 groups in this eBook.  These probing sessions uncovered coal face experience and ideas from the delegates.

Rather than just provide access to knowledge, the impact of which can rapidly decay, we wanted attendees to take the learnings and internalise them by immediately analysing its relevance to them through an industry challenge. Through working in groups each attendee also has access to a broad range of shared peer to peer insights which also enhanced the networking and further expanded their knowledge set.

The day was expertly MCed by broadcaster Matt Cooper who also interviewed our keynote speaker this year Dr Niamh Shaw.  Niamh’s presentation was an inspiring story of vision, failure and perception of self.

Finally we are also conscious that we live busy lives and it can be difficult to reflect and recall the learnings from events when we get back to our workplaces, so we live blogged and captured the inputs from attendees as the day evolved.

This eBook contains a synopsis of the morning talks and the collated shared insights from the attendees.  Naturally we could not include everything in this eBook but it is designed to be living document and encourage all readers to visit the conference microsite on www.theknowledgemap.biz to evolve the conversation.

I do hope you enjoy this eBook and look forward to taking these discussions forward.

Eamon Murphy.

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The Power of influencing and Motivating

Owen Fitzpatrick – International keynote speaker, best-selling author, globetrotting psychologist and leading expert on influence delivered a fast paced dissection of the world of influence.

Commenting on the importance of influence Mr. Fitzpatrick said “Influence is one of the most vital and indispensable skills that all leaders must possess. Nowadays, with globalisation and social media dominating our world, how we communicate with each other has changed massively. Your ability to get others to agree has never been more important.”

In his  presentation he outlined the 3 different aspects of Influence.

1. The Attitude of Influence

There are 4 key factors that makes influence possible.  Mr Fitzpatrick outlined how how recent developments in neuroscience, behavioural economics and social psychology has given people a far better understanding of persuasion and influence.

Persuasion is about changing peoples beliefs.  In order to influence them you need to understand what beliefs they have formed about you in advance.  With this knowledge you can construct a way to influence them  State or emotion, how you feel or the emotion you express can make a big difference.  Focus, Physiology and Ethics are also key factors.

Owen pointed out the importance of Confirmation Bias where people convince themselves of a perspective and only look for cues that support this. Armed with this insight people can be more efficiency influenced.

2. The Psychology of Influence

The speaker proceeded to explain the 3 essential aspects of influence (source, audience and message).  People are impacted by who you are and frequently where the message came from is more important than the message.  Speaking on the audience Owen discussed the importance of identity and internal perceptions.  Finally on the message Owen asked  what do you want them to say.

There are 6 principals of influence

  1. Commitment/consistency.  Ask people to do something small before asking for something bigger
  2. Reciprocation.  People want to do something back.
  3. Liking.  If the like you or not
  4. Authority.
  5. Social Proof.  Doing something because everyone else did.
  6. Scarcity.  Easier to get something the less we value it.

 

3. The Language of Influence

Finally Mr Fitzpatrick revealed some of the most important phrases that determine how people feel and how to get people to say YES. He also shared how to structure communication to get buy in.

Using demeaning words to describe people can have a very big impact on the perception that people have about someone and action they take.

Use of words and framing also impacts greatly on behaviour and Owen shared example of using  lose/save, surcharge/discount death/survival to very different results.

The point in a sentence when you use the word BUT is important because it draws attention to the comments/words after it.

Research has also show that using the word BECAUSE as people are hard wired to assume it has logic.

Owen asked the group to pick the most powerful statement when thinking about the gym.

  • Like to
  • Want to
  • Can
  • Should
  • Need
  • Have to
  • Must
  • Will
  • Am going to
  • Am doing

Personal preference of phrase is important as it impacts how much they will do something.

Finally we are all driven by something from:

Success/Challenge/Ownership/Power/Money/Status/Recognition

The key is finding what people are motivated by.

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“Leaders Standard Work”

“During our Shingo Journey, Leaders Standard Work was a key enabler in allowing us to demonstrate and nurture the ideal behaviors required of the 4 dimensions of the Shingo Model: Cultural Enablers, Continuous Improvement, Enterprise Alignment and Results” said Sean Gayer – Site Director, Boston Scientific, Cork in his talk entitled ‘Leaders Standard Work’.

Leaders Standard Work (LSW) is a way that assesses and sustains the overall health of ALL systems. It includes a set of daily, weekly and monthly actions and behaviours that leaders apply to sustain a continuous improvement culture

Commenting on other methodologies Mr Gayer said “Lean is harder than is seems. Improvements gained through the use of lean tools can be hard to maintain as the force of habit is to go backwards.”

David Mann: Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions

Mr Gayer then discussed the benefits of Leaders Standard Work which include; 

Go See:. The power of leaders is presence, where leaders spend their time determines what is important to the organisation.

Engage People: By being a visible leader engagement increases.

Focus on the Process: By focusing on the process we drive further improvements and build the team’s problem solving capability through coaching.

According to Mr Gayer, the foundation to successful LSW is TRUST.  A blame free culture where employees are comfortable highlighting problems and where leaders take note of these concerns, coach and support follow up.

For Leaders Standard Work to be of successful there has to be a frame work in place.  This should include:

  • Visual Controls so problems are visible
  • An active Daily Accountability Process
  • Robust Problem Solving/Continuous Improvement systems.

Mr Gayer added some final advice in accessing effectiveness “Your actions and behaviours as a leader is what make LSW successful. Not the tool you are using to track it.  How do you know it is successful? It is what the team says about you as a leader, their willingness to get involved in running the business and shaping the future.”

Output form the Table discussion

There was some level of leader std. work in place in some of the organisations. There is general understanding of the concept around the table.

There was acknowledgement that this type of event is powerful way to capture and develop the network. Capturing and sharing information is key to learning. So this type of process is a nice addition.

Good conversation between all groups, great interactions and sharing of different views. Good pace to the conversation and engagement.

4 groups discussed the topic

Main Points captured

  • Importance of presence of managers is key part of Leader Standard Work
  • How does LSW account for manager styles and how can this be applied to different styles of manager
  • Production Operator level have 100% defined by standard work and this changes in % as you go up the organisation
  • It’s to drive a standard on what is key to the system
  • As a senior leader your responsibility is around be seen, enable engagement ad recognition
  • Education of the Leadership team and getting buy in is key
  • What’ the “Why” – Needs to be understood
  • Trying to find out what’s important vs. urgent.
    • Prioritise appropriately
  • Reflection on what working and not and using this to influence the future.
  • Highlights problems and allows them to be corrected
  • Keep it visible and keep it simple – Allows all people to engage
  • What the training that is required –
    • One system had the instructions integrated into the system
  • Simplicity is key
  • Send a designate if you can’t attend, system needs to be supported
  • Management walking around is key
  • Elimination of Email thru the Pulse of the business meeting –
    • So easy to communicate a common message quickly
  • Operator like the face to face engagement option that recognition walks enable.
  • Quick and easy recognition is another key enabler to get engagement
  • LSW is about engagement but it may start of as a mechanical system.
  • Trust – is driven by focusing on the process and not the “who”
  • Accountability back to the person who identified the item, to close it.
  • What’s is meant by leader in “Leader Standard Work”, anyone
    • On group –Senior Leadership Team and Middle Managers
    • One group – Anyone who has a direct report
  • There is some cross over in LSW and standard work of Individual.

Group 2

Shared the last group’s topics and there was alignment with their observations.

Main Point Captured

  • Good understand of what is needed but How do we get there is unclear
    • In the middle of rolling out our Tier boards
    • Meeting Structure and agenda is driven by the board
    • Some levels of checks in place
    • Tier 2 meeting with Sup and Eng. team and manager working
      • Dir. will comes in and observe
      • No standard to what the dir. is looking at
    • Most elements are present but its hit and miss – Looking to drive consistency
    • Driven from the top is key to success.
  • Lacking Structure – Meeting and systems are in place.
  • Looking at LSW to remove waste and making meetings and systems more effective.
  • It’s not a tick the box exercise or engagement
  • Drives engagement
  • Challenge – Making things visible, if you don’t stick to it then you are lost
  • The system is flexible and can be changed to fit circumstances.
  • Needs to be genuine – can’t be saying great job just at a certain time and not calling it out in normal day to day interactions.
  • SME dedicated to support LSW to embed the system. They were tasked with driving engagement.
    • This process created a scorecard on health check
  • Focus on the process – Key to driving success – Not the person.
  • Day in the Life exercise – people jumped into the role to see what was preventing people getting LSW done.
    • Working from the position that people are trying to do the right thing to understand what is preventing them.
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Shaping Ireland’s future talent landscape – Views from HR Leaders and CEO’s

Sharing the results of research amongst HR leaders (PwC’s HRD and CEO Pulse Surveys) Louise Shannon, Senior Manager, People and Organisation,  PwC, spoke about “Shaping Ireland’s Future Talent Landscape – Views from HR Leaders and CEO’s”

Some of the key issues and trends she identified include:

The lack of availability of key talent: This remains a key concern amongst Irish HRDs (77%), with the greatest shortages experienced in IT, data analytics, risk and finance. Similarly, our CEO Pulse survey shows that the lack of availability of key skills (81%) is a top business threat to growth.

Diverse workforce: While organisations are recognising the benefits of having a diverse workforce there is still significant room for progress – with almost half (45%) of Irish HR leaders confirming that they have no formal strategy in place to promote diversity and inclusiveness.

Performance management: While nearly all (97%)of organisations operate a formal performance management programme, the majority (75%) are changing their performance model to recognise the importance of having more frequent performance discussions.

Improving reward strategies: Almost half of the HRD survey respondents (46%) revealed that their reward strategy is not appropriately renumerating their best people. In addition, 96% are not tailoring their reward offerings to meet the different generational needs of their workforce. Recognising that one size does not fit all will be key to generating an engaged workforce across all generations and levels in the future.

Gaining insights from analytics: Almost 40% of HR leaders do not have analytics capability within their HR function. HR analytics (53%) and data analysis (38%) are noted as the areas with the largest skills gap. However, on a positive note, this skills deficiency may be in the process of being addressed as the majority of HR leaders (62%) plan to increase spending on HR technology in the coming 18 months.

Benchmarking for success: While a large majority of HR functions measure key HR benchmarks such as absenteeism and turnover rates, very few measure the return on people investment (13%) and HR function performance (5%). These are important areas requiring attention.

Deploying your people: With critical shortages in talent in specific markets and disciplines, employee mobility has moved up the organisational agenda. The critical need for companies to shore up skills in particular disciplines, regions and projects is changing attitudes to international assignments with short-term ‘purpose-based’ assignments becoming increasingly popular.

Background to PwC’s 2017 HRD Pulse Survey

PwC’s 2017 HRD Pulse Survey captures the thoughts and views of Ireland’s HR leaders on the key challenges and opportunities facing HR functions, as well as upcoming priorities and trends. This survey was conducted in November 2016 and represents 67 HR leaders from all industry sectors in Ireland.

The 2016 CEO Pulse Survey reflects the views of over 250 local and multinational business leaders on key issues critical to Irish business. This survey was carried out in April/May 2016.

 

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“The importance of agreeing and publishing Core Values in a Turnaround’

Patrick Jordan, Atlantic Aviation Group.


“4 years ago I was not a believer and thought all this stuff about core values was text book stuff but that has changed now” was a refreshing opening by Patrick Jordan and his journey to seeing the importance of Core Value to an organisation.

Patrick guided the audience through his broad backgrounds and business ventured but interestingly highlighted a psychology of success course in 2002 as one of the anchors for his future mental approaches to life and business covering

  • Feel terrific – regardless of circumstances
  • I like myself –
  • I think of the worst possible outcome
  • I am responsible

After existing some business and investing in start-ups Patrick entered the world of aviation.

Despite the opportunity there was risk with a potential €250,000 a week loss if hangars were empty, highly unionised, large reliance on key customers and his own lack of understanding about aviation.  However as Patrick points out “You get to the point when you have to make a decision.  Rather than focus on the reasons not to invest I focused on the reasons why which were significant including worldwide demand, payment security and pipeline.”

The offer stage was complicated with changes to work practice, redundancies and removal of historic days off.  After a few months the deal was approved and the problems moved from the examiner to Patrick.

“Sometimes you just need a new team and people were tired and needed to see new people” said Patrick as he discussed the building of the new team from a new CEO followed by a COO, marketing and finally HR & training manager who became the central team to turn around the company.  None had aviation experience.

Speaking on his experience of turning around successful companies “If you have a problem you have it in one of three departments sales, operations or finance.”

He also outlined the different challenges of growing a business where you recruit people organically to taking over a business where people are suspicious.

With the team in place Patrick narrated the Turn Around Journey which started with the creation of a new identity.  Patrick confessed to be sceptical about the process of forming the values behind the new identity.  During the sessions the values evolved were:

  • Trust
  • Ambitition
  • Committed to Excellence
  • Agile
  • Fun
  • Customer Focused
  • People Focused

In order to make them real they published the core values on the canteen wall and discussed with employees.  This was followed up with work on visualisation which was captured in “Where do you want to be in 10 years time and what will you do in the next 20 days to get there.”

Using the agreed core values key business pillars were built that help to govern the business

  • Focus on people and culture
  • Deliver a superior customer experience
  • Create excellence at all levels
  • Drive growth and profitablity
  • Be market and customer aware

In order in implement the change the management team also focus on creating a great place to work.  This ranges from office environment to created a right first impression with significant investment in painting the shop floor to collateral.

Continuing the change management process HR’s function became Employee Engagement.

In wrapping up Patrick shared what he has learnt from the journey

  • Constantly improving
  • Talks to the right people
  • Build forums
  • Work on visualisation
  • Living the core values
  • Constantly on your toes
  • Don’t be afraid to change business
  • Identify and publish values
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The (r)Evolution of Performance Management to unleash Organisation & Individual Potential

Paul Aherne, Ascend Associate started his presentation on ‘(r)Evolution of Performance Management’ with an overview of Performance Management,

Performance Management has been with us for almost 100 years, evolving over time from its origins in a US military ranking approach equating employee’s performance with individual inherent capabilities and largely ignoring individual’s capability to grow. GE popularised this forced ranking approach and used performance appraisals to hold employees accountable and allocate rewards.

Synopsising the area he added “Performance Management is a process by which organizations align their resources, systems and employees to strategic objectives and priorities to enable them to achieve results.”

As such, Performance Management can be regarded as Critical Strategic Business Process and a Pillar of Business Excellence.

However according to Mr Aherne current data suggests:

  • 50% of executives believe that current performance management process is not an effective use of anyone’s time.
  • 3% said it delivers exceptional value.
  • Less than half (45%) of employees feel performance review helps them improve their performance.
  • The average manager spends more than 200 hours a year on activities related to performance reviews.

Sources: Deloitte Consulting: Global Human Capital Trends Report 2014/2015 CEB Global: Performance Management Survey 2014, World at Work Survey, 2016.

“They are scary numbers for a strategic business process” said Paul commenting the poor ratings.

Reflecting these statistics Mr Aherne commented that Senior Leaders are questioning performance management in terms of:

  • Effectiveness
  • Efficiency
  • Value for money
  • Impact on motivation and morale

Highlighting the current status of sector Mr Ahern said “You could conclude that performance management is either completely broken or in need of radical change.  Are continued evolutions or radical revolution required to meet the needs of a changing work environment and a changing workforce.”

However several companies are making radical changes in performance management leveraging a philosophical approach based on:

  1. Creating approaches to follow natural cycle of work, provide feedback, coaching and guidance as projects finish, milestones are reached and challenges pop up. Providing feedback when it is relevant, allowing people to solve problems in current performance whilst also developing skills for the future.
  2. Spending time focussed on enabling future performance rather than retrospectively looking back at past, fostering team work rather than individual accountability.
  3. Coaching and developing people to be successful.
  4. Motivating people to perform for their personal growth and sense of progress.

Reflecting the world of continuous change Mr Aherne highlighted some innovative practices including:

  • Abandoning the Annual performance review cycle.
  • Removing individual performance ratings.
  • Releasing the focus on evaluation and appraisal.
  • Simplifying the process supported by tools and technology (going digital to encourage real time structured growth, crowd sourced and social feedback; gamification).
  • Changing the link between pay and performance.
  • Integrating into way we work (Business Owned Process).
  • Connecting between organisation purpose and performance to enable a high-performance culture.

Mr Aherne had some solid advice for attendees suggesting that in order to spark a performance revolution in their companies they should consider:

  • Creating clarity regarding the purpose of Performance Management. Know what you want to achieve, why and how.
  • Clarifying this purpose for everyone in your organisation.
  • Developing a simple, agile process aligned with natural flow of work in your organisation.
  • Leveraging a customer centric deisgn approach to create experiences employees love.
  • Setting expectations regarding frequency of managers and employees talking about goals, clarity, performance and development.
  • Investing in skills of people managers to clarify and provide feedback well.
  • Spending less time on formal meetings, forms, processes and reinvesting time in less formal conversations focussed on clarifying and developing.
  • Measuring desired outcomes regularly (for example: “I am clear what is expected in me in my role; I know how my objectives relate to the organisations; I know how I am performing; I know what I need to do to create more impact; my manager supports me in performing in my role)

He also had some strong advice to spark personal/individual high performance mindset, reminding attendees that they perform at your best as an individual when:

  1. There is a clear outcome you are driving towards
  2. You are motivated from within (intrinsic)
  3. You feel competent to do it but it is challenging
  4. You get feedback and support on the journey
  5. You review progress and consciously learn
  6. You have clarity on whether you achieved it
  7. You feel connected to those you are working with

Mr Ahern finished his presentation with a challenge to the delegated asking them to question:

Is your Performance Management Approach delivering value for you, your teams, your company?

How would you know if it was?

What could you do to spark your own high performance revolution:

  • In your organisation
  • As an individual employee
  • As a People Manager
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Engaging the business in driving growth through storytelling

Catherine Neilson – Kerry Foods, Director of Strategy.

Engaging the business in driving growth through storytelling

With an ever expanding set of products and with a wide geographically spread Kerry turned to a core story telling strategy to engage employees and harness the passion of the management team.

“Simply telling was not enough so we took a story telling approach which could generate an emotional connection.  A rational approach would not have touched hearts and minds.  Powerpoint would not achieve what we wanted – you would be telling them and not engaging.  Developing the values was an important starting point and the story telling was co-created with the management team.” commented speaker Catherine Neilson, Kerry Foods journey.

Although the story telling was manifested in many forms from posters, images, LinkedIn, commercial media and on site, one of the biggest forms was a mini highly visual animated film that communicated the values while capturing the essence of the business.  The film featured food and ingredients as the heroes with cheese gorges to butter rivers.

Some of the comments that the story telling ‘Delivered the most clarity on what makes us distinctive’ showed the power of the approach.

The programme was launched with 120 of their leaders, many who started off sceptical only to openly share stories of fear to excitement which all added to the authenticity.  In order to spread the campaign through the organisation they created toolkits to help senior management communicate it to all 6500 employees, who had equal opportunity to connect and tell one of their stories.  Catherine captured the power of this in a story of one shop floor employee who revealed  she learnt to read through a Kerry Foods programme and was finally able to read a story to her grandchildren.

“Many of these stories would not have been told if this approach not been developed and we have translated them into 6 languages.” said Catherine.

Catherine also described the steps they have taken to keeping the initiative alive within the organisation which includes:

  • ‘striking out conversation’ inspire to take action.
  • Link action to conversations to strategic goals.
  • Dragons Den trail blazers.

According to Catherine the story telling programme has led to a powerful shift in employee perception of leaders and has strongly engaged the business rather than just telling them.  Proving the success their Trail Blazer campaign has had over 845 ideas submitted.

In closing Catherine’s advice to the group was “You need to put trust in the storytelling process.  Growth strategy will be delivered by colleagues who feel an emotional attachment to the business.”

 

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Employing Continuous Improvement as a Means to Engage the Disengaged

Noel Hennessy: Continuous Improvement Director, Lake Region Medical.

How to deal with the 62% of people who potentially suck the energy out of your business was a central component of Noel Hennessy’s doctorate and presentation.

Over the course of 4 years and 50 hours of interviews he sought to establish if there was a link between continuous improvement and employee engagement?

New data clearly shows that twice as many people reported to be disengaged as engaged within organisations.

In looking for the answer Noel dug deep into Social Exchange theory which centers on constantly weighing up risk and reward.  This led to the 3 main objectives of his research.

Noel found clear evidence of social exchange within continuous improvement with employees articulating the importance of trust/obligation and respect.  He also found that a close connection with managers has a deep impact on their connection with the organisation.

So if it exists what are the catalysts that enable it? Noel highlighted some key areas including:

  • Leaders providing resources to get things done, direction, emotional support, (people need someone else to believe in them).
  • People  should be able to influence their own working environment.
  • Employee recognition is a huge factor builds loyalty, trust and making a connection.
  • Personal development opportunity – showcase their skills, show potential, achieve ambition.

Some of the impacts of continuous improvement can lead to powerful transformations and range from pride, a greater understanding of the organisation and people pulling together to get things done.

In finishing up Noel shared his key takeaways:

  • Continuous improvement is a perfect way to engage employees and results in more satisfaction and a greater contribution to the organisation.

However the benefits also extend to the managers who find continuous improvement can:

  • Break down barriers
  • Gain new advocates
  • Develop loyalty and trust
  • Develop new skills