Talk the talk, and walk the walk

One of the toughest things for a manager to do is give up control.

It’s easy to want to do it all yourself, to assume that you know better. Imagine the dire consequences of promoting open communications among employees: ceding even a bit of authority can feel a little like handing the asylum keys to the inmates. Allow them the freedom to talk without you in the room, and the next thing you know they’ll be staging a company-wide revolt!

 

But authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff insist that trusting your employees to engage in conversation is exactly what a good manager does. The measures they outline in “Groundswell” to enhance a company’s bottom line by engaging and energizing customers will prove useless unless the employees believe in those same initiatives. That’s why Chapter 11, “The groundswell inside your company,” is so crucial to understanding all the precepts that come before it: remove employee buy-in and you’ve disturbed the critical Jenga piece that keeps the structure standing.

 

I loved the authors’ example of Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, the army of frontline sales associates who employ their own network to exchange ideas, support one another, and suggest efficiencies — all which ultimately benefit the customer. This was a brilliant move for a large, far-flung company whose stores weren’t talking with one another. Best of all, it was a bottom-up idea that began with lower-level employees, rather than a top-down dictate from the CEO (Groundswell, 217). Let’s face it, having the big boss orchestrating employee conversation is a little like having your parents plan your dates

Some experts note that engaging employees at work improves their lives outside the office, which is a reasonable assumption. Being valued at the place where you spend (at least) eight hours a day can only have positive ramifications on your home life.

Bell Canada’s ID-ah! (great name) initiative of having employees select the best ideas generated from within their ranks smartly employs the let’s-vote-on-everything culture exemplified by “American Idol” (Groundswell, 225), but it only works because the company makes clear that each vote matters. That’s no small thing: consider in this, or any, election season the vast number of people who stay away from the polls because they believe they have no voice. Local elections often struggle to generate single-digit participation from the electorate, despite the fact that local politicians have more direct influence on our lives than their counterparts in Washington.

 

ID-ah! only works because employees’ suggestions are actually being used. In the first year and a half of ID-ah!, 6,000 Bell Canada employees voted on ideas, 27 ideas were “harvested” and 12 were implemented (Groundswell, 225). Not only did management listen, but they acted — they energized their internal groundswell so that the company can better energize the groundswell occupied by its customers. That’s truly transformative.

In Chapter 12, Bernoff and Li describe a prototypical shoe company marketing executive accessing the groundswell in nearly every aspect of her day. Some of their scenario is speculative, given that the book was published in 2008. Today in 2012, we know they nailed it — from the woman’s reliance on the newest technologies, to the way she gauges public input before launching a new shoe color.

In their description of this person’s typical day, the authors have her going offline only long enough to grab a lunchtime sandwich. This may be the one instance where they’ve got it wrong. Now that it’s been launched, the groundswell stops for nothing. Not even lunch.