People are not numbers. They are not clinical and able to be counted always. They have a beat, a resonance and a voice. They have issues and secrets to unlock. They have potential to realise. They have a contribution to make and they can possibly make an even better one tomorrow, or next week or next month if we engage effectively.
You can and have made a difference. Let’s open our ears, and eyes to the prevailing culture, wants and expectations of all of our people. Open your heart so that others can see that it is safe to do the same. Engage and listen and listen more. Many of the answers lies in what is done or not done around you and not in the numbers that surround and confuse you.
Our Management colleagues and Leaders are People too. They have a voice and a right to be engaged. Our role however is to influence the agenda around decisions, to set the limits and the boundaries. And we can do this. We can do this because we know our people, because we have listened and engaged them. And because we keep doing this.
Lets make that difference. Reach into the deeper recesses of your Business and seek to engage and embrace the best of your people. What are you doing to engage the people in your Business? When is the last time you really asked someone what they thought of the way the Business is run and did something meaningful with the responses? Why did we allow the whole engagement journey to be clouded by the metrics, the colourful graphs and the Consultants confusing correlation co-efficients?! When did metrics get a louder voice than the People who built them?
We have allowed ourselves to get lost in a murky world, removed from the real people that make a real difference. The People in your Business who contribute every day. The secret to engage lies in not seeing People as a “Science” or as a “cohort” to be processed or re-designed, but rather as the key differentiator in your ultimate Business success. They should be central and core to all of the decisions.
