by Steven Shagrin, JD, CFP®, CCP & Thornton Prayer, CCP
June 2010

In these difficult economic times, businesses have shared with us several major challenges they have faced regarding their competitiveness – and even their survival.

Our research has found that every day, business leaders in every industry all around the world struggle with profit-eating, productivity-draining performance issues that could have been prevented – and the real problem isn’t what they think it is.

They aren’t paying attention to the most critical factor in management — the crucial ingredient that determines WHAT their employees will actually DO — and WHEN they will do it. That crucial ingredient is the level of “productive tension” in the workplace.

What do we mean by Productive Tension?

It is not “stress.” While stress is certainly an aspect of the overall productive tension concept (and how productive tension is managed), it is just one element.

Productive tension is the level of activity and productivity by your staff for maximizing positive outcomes and minimizing negative impacts. Your ability as an executive or manager in measuring, monitoring, and managing the level of productive tension is key to achieving the results you want most for your operation, your employees, your clients, and yourself.

The statements that follow are six of the most common concerns we hear from executives and managers we’ve worked with. They all relate to and are determined by the level of productive tension. How many of them resonate with you?

1) “My employees are not as productive as I need them to be — and nowhere near as productive as I know they could be.”

2) “Some of my key employees are talking about quitting — or have already taken their talents elsewhere, leaving me with expanding vacancies in a climate of hiring freezes — and worried about what happens when one-of-a-kind employees leave.”

3) “Hours of my management team’s productivity are being lost every day, handling (or trying to avoid) employee issues related more to personal stress and anxiety than to the work at hand.”

4) “My veteran team members have ‘retired in place,’ becoming increasingly complacent, ambivalent and apathetic about the mission of our organization and their passion for its pursuit.”

5) “Changes in our organization keep coming more quickly than ever before and it’s harder to motivate my staff to accept, adapt and make the necessary shifts.”

6) “Our bottom-line focus has shifted from growth to survival, deflating the spirit of key staff members and undermining their resolve.”

How effectively are you dealing with these issues – and others affecting the levels of productive tension – in your organization? Your ability and challenge in doing so is vital to survivability and growth in today’s economy.

We invite you to take an online survey and see where you fall in managing productive tension in the above six situations – and nine others – for your organization. All results are kept confidential, and we will provide you with a complimentary review of the results with no further obligation or commitment. The survey is available at http://tinyurl.com/yk9sadw

About the Authors: Steven “Shags” Shagrin and Thornton Prayer are Certified ChangeWorks Practitioners in the East Bay. Learn more about ChangeWorks at http://www.CAChangeWorks.Eventbrite.com

Come to a half-day workshop on March 26, 2010 from 9am-1pm to learn the fundamentals of the ChangeWorks!® System and the ChangeGrid instrument, both developed by T. Falcon Napier, internationally-recognized human development expert, specializing in sales, leadership, and change management. His client list using the ChangeGrid includes over 300 major companies representing virtually every industry, including: Sony, Bosch, Detroit Edison, IBM, General Motors, State Farm, BellSouth and over 250 programs for American Express alone.

This reasonably-priced workshop at $49 introduces several key facets of one of the ChangeGrid, one of the most powerful personal and professional change management tools. Whether you are a coach, a trainer, an HR professional, or a team leader, this workshop is for you! This system will help you help yourself, your clients, and colleagues answer a very basic question: Is everyone ready to do the work that needs to be done without any outside support or guidance? And if outside support or guidance is indicated, the form it should take is revealed by the ChangeGrid itself. (Workshop fees may be credited 100% toward an optional three-day live ChangeWorks! Practitioner Training class to be held in Pleasant Hill this coming May 24-26 taught by T. Falcon Napier.)

The program runs for 4 hours and includes the following topics:

• The Nature of Change
• Introduction to the ChangeGrid
• Basic ChangeGrid Interpretation
• Applications of the ChangeGrid
• The Path of Self Discovery
• ChangeGrid Maneuvers
• The ChangeWorks! Online System

To receive notification e-mails of scheduled events, please visit our webpage at http://www.CAChangeWorks.eventbrite.com and sign up for our mailing list, or go to http://cachangeworks.eventbrite.com…. and join as a member. Either way, you’ll be informed about upcoming events about ChangeWorks news and training.

by Thornton Prayer and Steven Shagrin, Certified ChangeWorks!® Practitioners

Companies always struggle with the challenge of keeping employees engaged and focused on their jobs. The economic upheaval of recent years has magnified the risk of disengaged employees. What was previously a big problem is now reaching a make-or-break point for your company’s survival. Can you and your company afford to let this situation spin out of control?

There are four ways how employee disengagement damages your company. Let’s examine how it affects your company and the consequences.

1. Disengaged employees are less productive.
When your staff is disengaged, they simply are not as productive as you need them to be. Sure, they show up and do their jobs well enough to keep their jobs. However, they are not focused, able or willing to maximize their productivity. Your company’s productivity may be suffering just when you need it the most. Is this situation acceptable to you?

2. Disengaged employees have already quit….but are still on your payroll.
Disengaged employees have checked out. Many are asleep at the wheel. They’ve likely quit either consciously or unconsciously. Some are actively looking for other jobs and others are actively thinking about looking for another job. The only thing that’s holding many of them back from leaving and looking is economic uncertainty. Your problem is that they have already quit but are still collecting a paycheck. You have low productivity and are paying for it. How long are you willing to continue this scenario?

3. Disengaged employees are less focused on the bottom line.
You need to cut costs and maximize employee productivity for bottom line needs. A disengaged staff has much less incentive for the same focus. Their focus is instead on their own career needs and economic survival. Any attention they do pay to your company’s financials is slanted to whether their own jobs are in jeopardy. Are you confident that your workers are thinking seriously about your company’s bottom line?

4. Disengaged employees do not focus on your company’s success.
Because disengaged workers are focused on their personal career and economic needs, they are much less likely to focus on the company’s short-term and long-term success. Whereas you are constantly juggling revenue, cost, productivity, and profitability goals, these areas are not that important to disengaged employees. Isn’t it important to you to have a workforce which focuses on your company’s success as much as you do?

Employee disengagement is a big challenge in any economic climate, but is an even bigger problem when the economy itself is a challenge. They are less productive and focused on your company’s bottom-line while still collecting a paycheck. You want and need them to re-focus and perform at a high level. Your own challenge is figuring out how to re-orient your employees to do what you hired them to do.

To assess how likely your employees are actually doing the jobs you hired them to do, click on the following link: http://bit.ly/5yT3QN

Authors

Steven “Shags” Shagrin is dedicated to life-long learning … and teaching others. Shags brings a unique background to his coaching and training business. With degrees in accounting and law, Shags worked for two decades with Wall Street brokerage firms, then as a “fee-only” independent financial planner, before finding his truest calling as a coach and educator. His professional credentials include Certified Money Coach, Certified Financial Planner® professional, Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor®, Certified Retirement Counselor®, and Enhanced Lifestyle Planner. He is President of Planning For Life in Walnut Creek, providing Money Coaching and Financial Wellness services, and is Vice President of The Money Coaching Institute in Petaluma, providing Money Coaching training workshops and classes, as well as Personal Finance Education classes. Please visit his websites at www.PlanningForLife.info and www.MoneyCoachingInsitute.com.

Thornton Prayer is a business coach, motivational speaker, and seminar leader who works with organizations and individuals seeking optimal performance, clarity of purpose, continuous growth, and decisive accomplishment. His work experience with both small businesses and major corporations such as Oracle and General Electric gives him a broad perspective on business requirements and effective interpersonal relationships. His background is enhanced by a comprehensive foundation of technical and business education including a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Thornton received his coaching instruction with the Coaches Training Institute. He is a Certified ChangeWorks Practitioner in the ChangeWorks!® System and educated in the Group Facilitation Skills course from the Community At Work consulting firm. His career history and in-depth training in several personal development programs enables him to provide a holistic perspective in addressing the vital challenges facing organizations and individual business people today.

In my years as a business and life coach, seminar leader, and speaker, I have been very fortunate to have worked with large numbers of people who want to accomplish their most important personal and professional goals. Their dreams and aspirations are magical and inspiring for me to witness and support into their fruition. So I often wonder and am frequently asked a very important question: what is the difference between the people who reach their dreams and aspirations versus the ones who don’t? The reason usually boils down to one simple fact: the ones who succeed take action.

Information and knowledge about yourself and your goals is fundamental, but in the end, taking action is essential. For example, most of us can articulate clearly what we truly want personally and professionally after taking the required time to sort through these issues. However, the many insights you may have about the business, career, and life you won’t add up to anything if you don’t act on them. It’s that simple.

I have had the repeated experience with coaching clients and seminar participants not getting the results they wanted for months, even years because they did not take the required steps to get what they wanted. Their frustration about not accomplishing their goals was directly correlated to how inactive or inconsistent they were in following through with the fundamental actions to create results they had defined for themselves. Even though they realized and acknowledged their own responsibility for their circumstances, inaction often proved to be a hard habit to break. Unfortunately, tolerating not getting and having what they wanted was also a difficult habit to break.

By contrast, the common characteristic of the coaching clients and seminar participants who have been most successful are the ones most consistent in applying themselves to the working on their necessary tasks. Their level of intelligence, ambition, and work ethic was basically the same as the ones who failed. They just did what was necessary and did not let their circumstances, mindset, or past history interfere with the steps they needed to take to get the results they want.

Therefore, the proposal to you is very direct: To get what you want, take action. Whether you wait 1 month, 1 year, or 10 years to act, you simply delay getting what is most important to you by the same amount of time. Moreover, you may even guarantee that you never develop the personal and professional life you want.

Delaying or not having your goals and aspirations is your choice. However, given what most of what we say we want, not only do you not want to make that choice, in end you may find you have no choice at all because what you want simply never happens. In the end, I do not believe that is the choice any of us would want to make.