M E M O

From: David E. Edell, President

Date: March 17, 2003

Re: Results Based Leaders Focus on Building Employee Commitment

 

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Results-Based Leadership: An interview with Dave Ulrich

Copyright MCB UP Limited (MCB) 2002
republished by permission - Emerald

William Finnie: What prompted you to write Results-based Leadership?

Dave Ulrich: The research started four years ago when one of my co-authors, Jack Zenger, and I bought over 30 books on leadership. As I read them, I kept asking myself, with all the effort that is being expended on leadership, why do all the corporate management surveys conclude there's a dearth of good leadership? What's missing in these books? The result was blindingly obvious. All of the books seem to have wish lists of characteristics or attributes of leaders. The obvious issue was, "Where are the results?" If a leader doesn't produce results, then they're not going to be very effective in what they do. My co-authors and I began to build a framework of leadership that shifts the debate. It doesn't disagree with the importance of attributes, but rediscovers the obvious. It focuses on results in a rigorous way and makes sure what management knows and does leads to the desired outcomes.

Finnie: After you read the 30 books, you distilled four attributes of leadership: setting direction, demonstrating personal character, mobilizing individual commitment and engendering organizational capability. Did you have those as ideas before you read the 30 books?

Ulrich: Not at all. As we read those books, those were the four attributes that emerged. Setting direction is where the organization is headed. Mobilizing the individual is getting people committed. Engendering the organization is building organizational systems. Personal character is central.

Finnie: The other component of human capital is employee commitment. What do you mean by "employee commitment" and how can a company build commitment?

Ulrich: Commitment at the individual level means engagement and dedication. I'm going to avoid the word loyalty, which implies almost a blind commitment. Rather, commitment at the individual level means intentional engagement. Employees identify with the goals of the firm. They are proud to be there.
The second measure of individual commitment is discretionary energy. Committed employees put energy behind something without being monitored. Discretionary energy isn't about working hard because somebody is standing over them with a Frederick Taylor stopwatch. It's about working hard because you believe in the goals of the firm.

Our thinking has gotten clearer since we wrote the book. According to a recent literature analysis that Tony Rucci and I did, there are seven things that help build commitment at the individual level. We represent them with the acronym

VOI²C²E

Vision. People want to find meaning or purpose in their work. It's what I observed in employees and volunteers at the Olympics, for just one example. They found purpose. They are serving a cause that is good so they work very hard.

Opportunity. People want a chance to learn, grow, advance, and become better at what they do.
Incentives. Money can still be a motivator as long as there's enough available and it's tied to specific goals. To deny that is naive.

Impact. People want to do work where they see the impact of what they do. For example, auto industry employees can see an impact of what they do if they are members of high performing teams that build a car, but not if they are just workers on the assembly line.

Community. Work is a social system. Employees are more committed when they are on a team and work with people who they know and feel connected to.

Communication. People feel more committed when they know what's going on. They feel as if they have data and information about the firm and about its purposes.

Entrepreneurship. We've redefined entrepreneurship in this context as work-life flexibility. People are more committed when they have a chance to control how and where the work is done.

Different people want different parts of the V0ICE framework. Some folks are more motivated by money than by meaning or vision. People may change what they want in their VOICE during their career. Earlier in my career, I may have been more motivated by money because I didn't have any. Now that I have a little more money, I may be more motivated by impact.

We advise managers to think about who their highest performing people are and then ask, what is the VOICE they can provide to those high performing people that will help them stay committed? Managers need to find those things that motivate the high performing people.

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Dave Ulrich is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan where he is a member of the core faculty of the Michigan Executive Program. He is currently on leave. His research and writing focuses on how to create an organization that continually adds value to customers, a process that involves studying how organizations change, build capabilities, learn, remove boundaries and leverage human resource activities. He helped lead major change initiatives at General Electric, which are detailed in The GE Work-out (with Steve Kerr and Ron Ashkenas) and The Boundaryless Organization (with Ron Ashkenas, Todd Jick, and Steve Kerr).

Ulrich's other books include Results-Based Leadership with Jack Zenger and Norm Smallwood and Delivering Results: A New Mandate for Human Resource Professionals. Strategy & Leadership contributing editors William Finnie, a managing director of Grace Advisors, Inc. in St Louis, MO (WCF@GraceAdvisors.com) and Stewart Early, principal of Stewart Early & Associates, LLC in Bethlehem, PA (searly@worldnet.att. net) interviewed him.

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