Passing Down Internal Intelligence
More and more companies are opening the doors of their boardroom, their executive offices and even their books so that the marketplace can gain an honest perspective on the benefits of engaging with the company (the whole chain from prospective employees through retirees and prospective customers through loyal clients). I like the trend and I’m convinced it will continue – primarily because of individual access to information and the ease of personal communication. Effectively, there’s nowhere to hide organizational mistakes/dishonesty/malignancy and, on the other hand, it’s easier to find “cool places and cool stuff” to engage with. The best run companies are places where everyone understands, believes in, and acts on consistent internal intelligence.
As organizations get more comfortable adapting to the growing openness of today’s business culture, they’re faced with the challenge of communicating internal intelligence and organizational goals to all employees. OK… not so difficult in smaller companies – there’s a short line of sight to where the company is going and what the implications are for individual employees. If there are questions, people have easy access to leadership. This is a difficult challenge when the organization is large and more complex.
There’s an initial issue with the tactics of simply getting the message out in a timely, creative way that will be heard by all employees. The larger the organization, the more intense this effort must be. This is a real communication issue and the most obvious one to address, but I think there’s another challenge that may be more significant and is often overlooked. That challenge is accountability for execution on the delivered internal intelligence.
Execution is a two-way street – the company is accountable to deliver the culture, strategy, structure and tools that produce great work; employees are responsible to use that corporate platform to execute their respective roles. In today’s fast moving, fast changing business environment, it can be very difficult to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the direction of the organization and is pulling in that direction. This is where an organizations Recognition and Reward System can help.
If your RRS is aligned with culture and goals, and if everyone in the organization can be reached with the RRS, you’ve now created an accountability system that will regularly reinforce the internal intelligence related to the behaviors, practices and accomplishments that are valued within the organization. You’ll be in a position to celebrate accomplishments as well as to make timely course corrections when there’s a change in internal intelligence.
People want to engage with cool places and cool stuff… Use the power of a well designed RRS to create organizational accountability to deliver results on the internal intelligence that the company works so hard to develop.
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