John Pryor

Keep you communication simple. Your message should be concise. Avoid long winding narratives. Check in with your audience or the receiver of your communication to confirm they understand. Avoid acronyms and local colloquialisms.

The first action that I take is to examine my behavior as leader of the team. In my experience as an HR leader I have found that periods of failure are wrought with tension and stress. Often times, my behavior is exacerbating that stress. My tone of voice and style of engagement changes. These changes discourage my team. In essence my behavior drives the team's behavior. People tend to be defensive and feel vulnerable - not healthy temperments for constructive feedback and analysis. Also, by starting with self-examination I begin to model the behavior that will lead to a constructive analysis.

Have the courage to own the event. This will allow you to be inquisitive and search for understanding. It will also aid you in determining how to assess the impact - what method do you follow - survey, focus groups, interviews, looking at data etc. Understanding the impact will set a good starting point for creating a solution as well as communication. Communication to impacted cohorts is very important. It will reestablish credibility by demonstrating that you understand the issue and how to correct.

Dashboards are an excellent way to capture your KPI's and monitor them. Partner with your technology teammates to determine what capability your company has for developing these dashboards. Also, make sure that your KPI's align with the areas that you are looking to impact.

I think that this model is missing a crtical first step. The first step to developing a sustainable people management plan is to ensure that you understand the company's short -> long term goals and objectives. Then assess your organization's strengths and weaknesses regarding knowledge base, competencies, skills and behavioral traits. In addition to the previously mentioned tools we have used stay interviews and focus groups as well as project post mortems. Skills such as communication and collaboration are not always intrinsic to people management. Often, the organization is not providing the tools that allows your people to apply such skills.

Employee engagement surveys, focus group sessions and stay interviews are all excellent tools to apply to obtain information from employees about how they feel about their experiences with your company. One note about employee engagement surveys - it is a good practice to engage a professional firm (due your due diligence!!) in developing the survey. Stucturing the survey questions to get maximum information is critical. Like all good research, the application of a sound data analysis competency will allow you to discover what is or is not driving high levels of engagement. Applying your analysis to current state (policies/practices) will allow you to identify what policies and practices to add, modify or eliminate.