A couple of months ago, I highlighted Daniel Pink’s work on intrinsic motivation in my February 24^th blog post entitled “When Traditional Motivation Doesn’t Work”.  I concluded that post with the following tips.

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In several turnaround situations, I have found the key to motivating and engaging employees is to:

• Make them feel valued as people and that they belong
• Help them see how what they do makes a difference, and
• Find a way for them to monitor their own contributions on an ongoing basis.

I recently stumbled upon a research study which validates these principles, shows how employee engagement and customer loyalty drive financial results, and illustrates how to execute these principles in a grocery store environment.  The study was sponsored by the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council and is entitled “Getting to Great:  Mapping Management Practices that Drive Great Store Performance”.

The article is about 30 pages long, but well worth the time, even if you aren’t in the grocery business.  Historically, the key to success in store operations has been seen as execution, and “command and control” has been a dominant leadership approach.  Seeing how the above principles of employee engagement work in this situation should increase our confidence that they will work in situations involving more ambiguous and complex challenges. Below is a quick recap of their findings.

First, how do we know a great performer when we see one?

1. “Great performers are those that overachieve relative to their market potential, not just those with the highest financial results.”  Store results are a function not only of the leader’s performance, they are tremendously impacted by the store’s location, customer potential, competitive intensity, and store specific factors.  The researchers devised a clever way of controlling for these external factors to show which store managers are executing most effectively against the strategic hand they have been dealt.  (pp. 4-6)
2. “Great Performers generate intense customer loyalty”.
3. “Great performers produce strong employee loyalty and commitment.”

Second, what are the key management practices that great performers use to get these results?

1. “Get clarity and commitment to goals.  The great performers focused on the one or two most vital goals for improving their store’s performance and put their full focus behind them.  By contrast, the more goals there were, the fewer were achieved with excellence.
2. Get everyone to focus on the key drivers.  Enlist each team member daily to take actions that have the greatest impact on achieving the main goals.
3. Implement simple mechanisms to propel goal achievement.  Post visible, compelling scorecards in accessible workplace locations.
4. Establish a constant cadence of engagement and accountability around the key measures and goals.”

While this is a good recap, go to the report for the specifics of how to measure great performance results and the specific leadership behaviors that lead to it.  It is sure to be a catalyst for ideas on how to do the same in your business!