Level of Human Energy

Boost Talent Energy.

Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel -  6/28/11

A company’s collective energy can be the fuel to fire its ambitions or the reason performance levels crash and Individuals experience the ebb and flow of different states of energy in an organization. This energy can be the fuel to make a company work, as it is a cornerstone to people’s effectiveness. Further, organizational energy is measurable and manageable.

To actively influence their organization’s energy, leaders need to understand or assess it. Second, they should boost and sustain the energy in their organization, unit or team so people are fully charged to execute business goals. To master this challenge, talent managers should provide process support for leaders.

What Is Organizational Energy?
A company’s energy reflects the extent to which an organization, division or team has mobilized its emotional, cognitive and behavioral potential to pursue shared goals. To tap into the full scope and possibilities, talent leaders need to understand three crucial attributes of organizational energy:

1. Organizational energy is collective. It comprises a company’s activated human potential. It considers the dynamics and interactions amongst people.

2. There are three components. Organizational energy comprises the activated emotional, cognitive and behavioral potential exemplified by shared enthusiasm, cognitive alertness in the company or collective effort in shared initiatives, or the lack thereof.

3. Energy is malleable. Organizational energy reflects the current state of energy activation in a company, and it’s fluid, not stable. This means it ebbs and flows more readily than the organization’s culture, and leaders actively can alter it.

Companies experience different types of organizational energy along two dimensions: Intensity, which reflects the degree to which a company has activated its potential, and quality, which describes to what extent human forces are or are not aligned with shared company goals.

Combining these two dimensions results in four different energy states, and companies typically experience, to varying extents, all four simultaneously. They are:.

• Productive energy characterized by high emotional involvement, mental alertness, high activity levels, speed and stamina.
• Comfortable energy characterized by high shared satisfaction and identification coupled with low activity levels, reduced mental alertness and organizational complacency. 
• Resigned inertia characterized by high levels of frustration, mental withdrawal and cynicism and low collective engagement.
• Corrosive energy characterized by collective aggression and destructive behavior. For example, it may manifest in internal politics, resistance to change or focused efforts to maximize individual benefits.

How to Assess and Manipulate Organizational Energy
A talent leader’s gut feeling about a company’s energy state could be accurate, but there are ways to measure it. Talent leaders can help teams analyze their profiles across the four energy states, and choose leadership strategies and instruments to improve or maintain the organization’s energy.

One tool is the organizational energy questionnaire (OEQ), a standardized survey instrument to measure and analyze companies’ energy profiles for business units, departments and teams. It is advisable to assess major energy drivers such as leadership quality simultaneously.

Talent managers can work with the OEQ in three ways. It can be a periodic employee survey, an organizational energy pulse-check — to monitor change processes — and an instant energy check in workshops with management teams. In 2005, Alstom Power Service made the OEQ part of its global employee opinion survey to detect company energy overall and in various business units and departments engaged in global and local leadership activities. Alstom nominated identity champions to facilitate workshops in divisions, business units and country organizations to work with survey results. Every unit derived managerial issues from its energy state and defined action plans around engagement and alignment. These kinds of activities allow talent leaders and line managers to identify and nurture leadership talent based on data and tackle issues based on energy profiles.

In organizations that face the complacency trap, languishing in a state of comfortable energy, or are experiencing resigned inertia, talent managers need to help leaders activate human forces. To charge the company, they can support the leadership capability to perceive either a major threat — the Slaying the Dragon strategy — or a promising opportunity — the Winning the Princess strategy.

Slaying the Dragon focuses the company’s shared emotion, mental agility and effort on overcoming an existential external threat, ultimately generating productive energy. The strategy includes three tasks and underlying leadership instruments:
• Task 1: Identifying, interpreting and defining a threat.
• Task 2: Mobilizing communication to create awareness of a common problem.? 
• Task 3: Strengthening collective confidence that the company can deal with the threat.

The Winning the Princess strategy is based on the observation that productive energy can be particularly high if companies are pursuing a special opportunity. An innovation, a developing market or a new organizational vision can release a desire for action and the positive forces in a company. The strategy works with three steps and underlying leadership tools:
• Task 1: Identifying, interpreting and defining an opportunity.
• Task 2: Passionately communicating the opportunity.
• Task 3: Strengthening people’s confidence to achieve the opportunity.

For example, Tata Steel focused on its employees in three ways during a restatement of the company’s vision. First, it engaged employees in creation of the vision. Then, it launched a comprehensive communications campaign. Finally, the company followed up with a full-blown initiative to increase employees’ commitment to the vision. As a first step, Tata Steel’s 40 top executives developed basic ideas during a two-day discussion. But CEO B. Muthuraman encouraged the entire workforce to participate. Via the corporate intranet, employees could comment on the first ideas for the vision, express their opinions, or submit their own ideas, and more. 

Tendencias y Comparaciones.

Los número puros y duros a veces no nos demuestran la situación de nuestras empresas y nos puede resultar confuso entender que significan en la realidad, en el día a día; parecen temas abstractos, ustedes se pueden preguntar de donde salen, como lo miden,  como afecta a mi empresa, que beneficio obtengo de todo esto???Pues bien,  Esta información es producto de estudios de investigación que sencillamente no demuestran que está pasando en el mundo global de los negocios y como nos posicionamos ante esa realidad. ¿Qué podemos aprender de esta serie de datos e información? Básicamente nos demuestra cómo lo hacen las empresas consideradas las mejores (Top 20%) en su área, mercado, función o desempeño. Este tipo de investigaciones nos permite compararnos con las mejores en una serie de aspectos claves del negocio que determinan el éxito en el logro de los objetivos sean de tipo financiero, social, legal, político, etc. El benchmaking no ofrece información valiosa y útil para emular prácticas probadas y contrastadas de éxito, según las características de cada empresa, país, tipo de actividad comercial/industrial. Bien sabemos que cada empresa en un organismo  único y particular, pero también es cierto que, existen procedimientos, prácticas, políticas y normas comunes en las funciones de una organización que tienen estándares y lineamientos homologados internacionalmente aplicables y generalmente aceptados.

Los ejecutivos de gestión del talento y aprendizaje de hoy en día confrontan retos de tipo estratégicos, organizacionales, económicos y un sin fín de  temas tácticos, todos los días. Dada la prioridad que las organizaciones están poniendo en el factor humano como diferencia competitiva, los ejecutivos en gerencia de gestión del talento, deben posicionarse mejor para ayudar a alinear los objetivos de las personas con os  del negocio y proveer las herramientas adecuadas, información y medidas para una mejor toma de decisiones. Los mejores ejecutivos de gestión del talento en su clase están liderando el camino en la alineación de los objetivos estratégicos del capital humano en sus organizaciones. Comprender lo que hacen y lo que no hacen,  permite a otros ejecutivos emular sus estrategias  para un éxito continuado.

En presente estudio realizado entre Noviembre y Diciembre de 2010, participaron 439 organizaciones, en el que se muestra las prioridades de RRHH para el 2011 y la mejor manera de conseguirlas.

Las mejores empresas en desempeño Top 20%	VS	La empresas rezagadas
87% de los empleados se evaluaron altamente comprometidos		41% de los empleados se evaluaron altamente comprometidos
78% de los puestos claves tienen sucesor identificado y listo		18% de los puestos claves tienen sucesor identificado y listo
12% de mejoramiento en satisfacción anual en selección		Ningún mejoramiento anual
51% alinean continuamente los objetivos del negocio con los del capital humano		38% alinean continuamente los objetivos del negocio con los del capital humano
43% propician la cultura de innovación y creatividad		30% propician la cultura de innovación y creatividad

Otros aspectos que se muestran en el estudios son una evaluación de competitividad y madurez de la organización, barreras en la inversión, planes estratégicos activos, % de objetivos logrados, desempeño de las mediciones e indicadores y capacidades de la organización.  

Ahora es el momento de preguntarse si los directivos y gerentes son capaces de identificar las tendencias actuales, donde está el talento, cuales es la mejor manera de adaptarse a las exigencias en general y poder establecer las estrategias, iniciativas y procesos que le permitan a la organización dirigirse al logro de sus objetivos superiores.