A core value of Facebook is “Move Fast.”
“Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. We’re less afraid of making mistakes than we are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We are a culture of builders, the power is in your hands.”
A core value of Apple is “Saying No.”
“We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.”
These two core values couldn’t be further apart from each other. That creates a challenge when it comes to creating a single employee/team engagement strategy that works for all organizations. It’s almost impossible for us to say that one tactic will work for any company, because every team and organization operates in a different way.
Instead, our goal at Swift Kick is to first deliver a framework in which leaders can understand the concept of team engagement. Then, we help to facilitate the creation of a strategic plan that leaders feel will work best within their specific organization and team.
Dance Floor Theory is our engagement framework and Appreciative Inquiry is our facilitated process to create the strategic engagement plan. They both work together. One is theory and the other facilitates putting the theory into practice. One understands the problem and the other helps solve the problem. You have to have both to create real change.
Throughout the whole process, we like to include stakeholders throughout the organization, not just the leaders. By engaging everyone in the process, we are able to:
- Get organization-wide buy-in.
- Tap into the collective wisdom of the group.
The final step is to measure the results of the strategic plan. We are still working on our ability to measure the results in a time and cost-efficient way. Once we have measurements in place, then we will use the data to retrain on the theory, adjust and update the strategic plan, and remeasure.
By using this repeating three-part process, we create a Culture of Connection in which team members are motivated by their work, valued by their leaders, and connected to each other.
