The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gap Between People and Possibilities

by Jim Haudan, Rich Berens

"Haudan's approach helps organizations bring strategies to life by engaging the hearts and minds of their people."
-Marcus Buckingham, bestselling author of "Go Put Your Strengths to Work"

Almost any business leader will admit that creating a strategy is far easier than executing it. That's because the majority of organizations don't know how to bridge the canyons that exist between executives, managers, and front-line employees. Most strategic initiatives fail when a company tries to execute strategy despite its people rather than through them.

As CEO of consultancy Root Learning, Jim Haudan has more than twenty years experience helping businesses bridge these canyons and achieve their strategic goals. Here, he shares his secrets for driving this strategic execution. Refreshingly accessible, this important book presents executives, managers, and team leaders with a proven, effective way to communicate, empower, and motivate employees at every level of an organization.

Through stories, illustrations, and insightful observations Haudan explores the concept of engagement in business--from the "roots of engagement" to the six reasons why so many workers rank themselves as disengaged to the keys to unlocking engagement in any organization. He also includes a framework for implementing the process of strategically engaging employees as well as a self-assessment for checking your own company's level of strategic engagement.

"The Art of Engagement" equips you with a range of tools--sketches, illustrations, and highly visual "learning maps"--to help employees speak the same language, see from the same point of view, and connect their individual actions to the success of the whole company. Included are: Engaging visual learning tools designed to help you communicate more effectively with your workforce Proven methods for successfully engaging employees at every level of an organization Real-world case studies of such organizations as Harley-Davidson, Pepsi Cola, and Blockbuster

A strategy may look perfect on paper, but it's worthless if leaders forget that human beings have to implement it. "The Art of Engagement" arms you with the knowledge and the know-how to engage your employees and drive effective strategic execution.

Genres: Leadership, Management, Nonfiction, Business

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2008

About the author

Jim Haudan is a different kind of leader, with a passion that goes beyond leading Root to success. For more than 25 years, he has been helping organizations unleash hidden
potential by fully engaging their people to deliver on the strategies of the business. With his background as a coach, it’s not a stretch that the company Jim co-founded focuses on tapping employees’ discretionary efforts – the kind that produce winning results.

Root partners with senior teams at major companies worldwide to build creative ways to execute strategy. A unique blend of 160 business experts, analysts, artists, writers, and educators, the Root team draws an organization’s people into the business by appealing to basic human curiosity and intelligence and by combining insights, art, visualization, and dialogue in innovative ways.

Root has worked with more than 500 companies and has impacted millions of people over three decades. Root’s story is captured in Jim’s best-selling book, The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gap Between People and Possibilities (McGraw-Hill, 2008).

Jim is a frequent speaker on leadership alignment, strategy execution, employee engagement, business transformation, change management, and accelerated learning. He has spoken at TEDx BGSU, Tampa TEDx, and The Conference Board events, and has given the keynote speeches for numerous organizations throughout the world. He also writes a weekly column for Inc. and contributes to business publications and blogs, such as Switch & Shift, where he was included on the Top 75 List of Human Business Champions.

Reviews

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventive program for engaging your employees

Organizational leaders spend considerable time and effort carefully developing strategies to advance their corporate goals. However, they often fail to communicate these strategies compellingly to their employees – the people who must execute every step. Therefore, it is no surprise that most such strategies fail. Management consultant Jim Haudan recommends a strategy-sharing approach using visuals, metaphors and stories to engage employees. He offers tactics for getting them on board to execute your strategy and organizational directives. One negative: Many of the illustrations (reductions from original table-size artwork) are busy and even fuzzy. Some feature tiny text, which illustrates – in the breech – Haudan’s point about using clear visuals to communicate and engage. Otherwise the book is superior, very insightful and nicely written. Haudan uses case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of his employee engagement process. getAbstract believes leaders can benefit from learning his tactics for communicating strategies so employees understand them, support them and actually implement them.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first section of this book was promising, outlining factors that help engage people in their work. I was hoping the rest of the book would dive into strategies to create that engagement, but the book read as an extended advertisement for Haudan's company's product, Learning Maps. If I didn't know better, this book would have me thinking Learning Maps were the only tool that could possibly get companies on the path to success. Worse, I really didn't like the Learning Maps that were included--they seemed to be to be crude oversimplifications that weren't particularly easy to grasp.

The last chapter, which provides a summary view, is worth reading, as is the first section, but I wish I'd skipped the 200 pages in between.

[Naveed · Rating 5 out of 5]

No nonsense and to the point book that not only explains what engagement actually is and why it's important, but author Jim Haudan goes into the WHAT, WHY, and voices from the disengaged employees, offering verifiable support for the why. He then goes into what the six keys are to engagement, an easy to understand and easy to realize chapter. This is where the meat is. Haudan doesn't stop there - he continues by talking about the HOW, and the process to ensuring success. This is a great read for anybody with a voice in any company, small and large. Highly recommend.

[Benedetto Conversano · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very concrete book, full of relevant business cases and a very solid approach to implement a powerful communication and implementation plan for strategy. All leaders should master this.

[Curt Smith]

A quick read with some good insight on the principles of motivation.