Leading the Culture of Accomplishment

Any good thought or idea is only half done till it is worked upon to deliver results. It becomes important for

HR professionals to facilitate interventions, provide tools and most importantly entice early adopters to gain acceptance and propagate the ideology to others. For a certain ideology to become a prominent element of the organizational culture, behaviors and activities aligning to the ideology ought to be rewarded. Continuous and later periodic interventions need to be planned and executed for the same. This draws from the theory of conditioning.

HR leaders and practitioners can device a number of

-          Procedures

-          Tools

Here are a few I propose:

a)      Personalized Portal: Each organization I believe must have an accomplishment portal for its employees with features such as

a.       Activities to accomplish

b.      Professional/Personal?

c.       Timeline – Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly & Yearly

d.      Resources

e.       How?

f.       Make visible to other members?

g.       Seek help within the organization?

h.      Status – Red, Green & Yellow

The activities are made visible both to the individual as well his/her reporting manager. HR thereby has a database of all such activities the individual members wish to accomplish. These can help identify improvement areas, design developmental plans, succession planning, aid talent management, performance management, plan OD interventions and thereby retention.

b)      Accomplishment Boards: A bulletin board where the accomplishment stories get published. Accomplishments – irrespective of magnitude; individual, team or organization get published encouraging others to follow suit and motivate the accomplishers.

c)      Rewarding Group/Cross-team accomplishments: A culture of collective accomplishment goes a long way in building trust and collaboration within the organization. Rewarding group accomplishment also encourages thinking beyond and above self.

d)      My Champ: In one of the organizations, I worked, we launched this initiative where any individual in the organization could recognize fellow colleague who has in any manner helped accomplish a task/activity.

e)      Make it part of the performance management process: Organizational accomplishments need to drill down to management and then individual level making way through the goal setting process.

These action items can create the right climate for the organization to tread the path of accomplishment.