“
To capture the hearts of our employees, it is essential that we tell them what we stand for and where we
are going,” according to author Jim Harris in his book Getting Employees to Fall in Love With Your Company.
For many who strive to obtain a better organizational culture, employee engagement has become a priority.
Yet, few organizations are able to achieve this essential goal. Recent research conducted by the Gallup
organization reveals that most organizations do not have enough engaged employees to ensure continued
success. Their findings reveal that only 11% of employees worldwide are engaged in their work.
The responsibility for this dismal statistic lies primarily with the highest senior leaders within the organization.
While HR departments have a responsibility to find the right candidates for positions, it is up to the senior
leadership to define and guide the culture of the organization. Somehow, there is a tremendous gap in this
important aspect of leading a company. There is strong evidence that shows an organization’s culture takes
precedence over strategy and policies in determining individual and organizational performance. What needs
to be central to the organization’s culture is the set of core values that defines that culture and the appropriate
behaviors that define its identity and strengthen its reputation. What does this actually mean for leaders in
today’s marketplace? Simply put, it means that leadership within every level of an organization needs to pay
close attention to the culture of that organization.
However, is striving to produce employee engagement within a culture enough to transform the culture into a
high performance organization? Perhaps there is more to this situation than we previously thought. There’s a
new buzzword being used to describe true employee engagement within a High Performance organization.
That word is entanglement. For the culture of an organization to transform into a High Performance model,
employees must move from engagement to entanglement.
THE HIGH PERFORMANCE ORGANIZATION:
MOVING
FROM ENGAGEMENT TO ENTANGLEMENT