Commitment versus Compliance

When ASIL engages with Clients we see the level of care and feeding within their organization. This includes the interaction between the employees and each other as well as the overall company. This helps us to understand where the client is on a scale of being able to accept, adopt, and advance innovation and change. While there are many challenges companies face, one that we can personally control comes down to two words with a dramatic difference in meaning and impact. Commitment versus Compliance.

Let’s start by examining the boundaries of Compliance. The term itself establishes a set of criteria or standard that must be met to be within compliance. Most of us will not be actively involved in setting the majority of the overwhelming compliance factors that exist. We just simply need to comply. Kind of hard to care about things you really have no say in or were not a part of to make the difference, unless it saves your life or personally affects you. We can be committed and support compliance; they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Commitment is more about harnessing your energy and ideas. In contrast, Compliance is about meeting a pre set criteria. Not to suggest that being compliant is easy or bad, rather it is difficult to get overly excited and energized about it.

We are all expected to be compliant at some time, but that does’t take much commitment. The typical outcome of non compliance is punitive in nature. In contrast, the outcome of non commitment is achieving less than you really can and the loss of exploring the realm of possibilities. There is definitely more power in personal commitment. It unlocks an individual’s potential because we care.

The impact can be seen when working on a program or with an organization. Does the team or organization display Energy, Empathy, Apathy, or Sympathy. It takes Energy and Empathy to move forward with innovation and change. Apathy and Sympathy deliver complacency and under performance. Which ones reflect your current situation?

In closing, Compliance is usually about doing things that are defined by others, while Commitment is about doing things that are defined by you. The key is getting your organization to become Committed versus just being Compliant. Make your Commitment today to harness the Energy and unlock your team’s potential. ASIL is committed to your success. How about you?

Contributed by: Pete Pazmany

Performance Improvement

Using ‘Meaning’ To Improve Performance

Performance improvement is a key to business efficiency, sustainability, and growth. There are many different methods that help raise performance within a company. Some methods can be costly, whether the investment is in time, money, or resources. A far more effective and inexpensive way of increasing performance is to learn to infuse ‘meaning’ to the work that your employees are doing.

Consider the employee that goes to work everyday for 8 hours doing a job they find particularly loathsome. More likely than not, this employee will produce to the standard that is expected of them and will probably not go much further because they have little personal attachment to the project or task at hand. On the other end of the spectrum, think about an employee who is engaged in their work. Since they find meaning within what they are doing, they naturally have more energy and contribute more to their job. When it comes to meeting a standard, they explore past what is expected because they want to make the work the best it can be because it has a significant and personal meaning to them. So then how can you bring meaning into the workplace?

Personal Development encourages the employee to try and grow through their work. This can be made a reality by finding out what the employee works well on and then providing work of a similar nature. It reduces burnout and increases the autonomy for the task at hand because the employee feels they have a particular expertise in that area because they enjoy the material they are working with.

Values Integration is another way to increase meaning in the workplace. If your employee and the company have similar values, they will work together in pursuing a certain goal. Finding out what employees’ values are can help clarify why they work in a certain fashion. Values are important to consider because if the company and employee have radically different values, then they will probably not be in sync for high performance.

Organizational Direction involves having your company and employee vision coincide in order for people to feel full engaged in their work, which translates into them finding more meaning in their daily tasks and projects because they realize it contributes to a larger overall goal. Knowing how you affect the grander vision of the organization from your everyday actions brings a sense of renewal and communal contribution that can intrinsically motivate higher performance within a workforce.

High performance can be achieved through augmentation of internal drivers within your company. A greater focus just needs to be placed on the individual and their intrinsic motivation and how to individually appeal to each employee’s unique needs. If you are looking to bring more meaning into your work environment and increase your overall employee satisfaction and performance, then contact ASIL to discuss a consultation.

Contributed by Joe Pazmany

Click on the links below to view ASIL, Inc.'s MAX Partnering® self-paced software demonstrations:

Strategies and Execution - This demo depicts the tools that organizations can utilize to embrace change effectively and implement it successfully.

Partner Selection and Management - This brief demo displays the tools available to define, select, and implement outsourcing and partner selection.

Scorecards and Corrective Action - This vignette provides visibility to measure and manage the performance of your organization, partners and company.

Self Assessment Sample Questionnaire - This demo will enable you to respond to a small sample of self assessment questions focused on change management and create a Heat Map of your responses to see areas that may need attention. The Driving Complex Change® methodology addresses the six areas of Direction, Ability, Incentive, Resources, Structure, and Action that can impact your effectiveness of change management.

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