Do more with less - find the right skills to engage

Gregory Ronczewski leads the design of the TeamFit - view his skill profile

In one of his posts on LinkedIn, Luke Wroblewski, Product Director at Google, shared a graphic showing that 21% of Millennials (age 18 to 24) would consider deleting an app from their phone because its icon was not pretty, or not visually fitting in their phone environment. This provides two interesting insights:

First, that in the mobile world logo still matters. If an app that is useful is removed just because it doesn't fit in, this speaks about how the deep relationship between the device and the owner.

Second, the collection of apps on my phone represents my personality and I need to find it compelling. Our digital persona is created by the apps we use.

I was listening to an update from HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas earlier in October. When I heard that "everyone was talking about employee engagement." I thought there is an interesting connection. If we now live in a world where people move from project to project, and team to team, and the phone is the main way people stay connected, it is no surprise that the relationship with the device is becoming so intensely personal. The phone has become a key way in which we represent ourselves, a major communication channel, and a ground for employee engagement. How are companies managing this?

Let's look closer at engagement. What is it? How you do you get an employee to go beyond being a dedicated contributor to become truly engaged? What fundamental skills are needed to become engaged at work? Where do we find those skills? What does it mean to be engaged?

Let's look at a company that has thought a lot about this. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, speaks about "holacracy" in an interview published by McKinsey Quarterly. It is "an organizational model that distributes decision-making authority in self-organizing circles, made up of employees who hold roles (often more than one at a time) rather than job descriptions. Each circle is arranged around a purpose statement."

Those circles, or teams, are constantly changing. The Zappos organization chart is available in real-time online and changes probably 50 times a day. Every one of the 1,500 employees can transparently view what every employee’s purposes and accountabilities are. This transparency and insight into the changing dynamics of the organization promotes engagement.

So how does a company achieve such a high level of engagement? The answer lies in collaboration - a shared conversation about the company's purpose.

In the de-centralized model, where people work on multiple projects, collaboration and engagement come hand-in-hand. This requires a good combination of social skills. The "conversation" with the team can't be limited to once-a-week-meetings or updates. Employee surveys and rewards will not result in engagement. For this to work, people need to get something back. It can be as simple as the sense of being connected to something larger than themselves. People need to know that their work matters not only to themselves, but to the team and to the organization.

What does the above has to do with TeamFit? Where is the link between skills and engagement. It is actually very simple. People will engage with each other when they can understand each others' skills and how they can contribute to each others' growth. Understanding skills will allow managers to do more than just manage. They will be able to support the growth of skills on their team. This is one of the key things employees, especially millennial employees, are looking for. Team members should be transparent with each other, help each other develop and apply new skills and to do work that transcends the individual.

There is an incredible boost of energy if you are able to find the right fit with people organized around common goal. We designed TeamFit to harness this energy and allow people to function better in a very fast moving workplace. Start using TeamFit and find out your unique skill-based "footprint". You can do this not just for yourself, but for your team and the circle of people you work with. The engagement you get will drive performance.