Francis Wade | Staff engagement through AI

As a leader, you feel the pressure to be inspirational. However, it’s not easy. After a few failures, you think you may need further personal development. But before you invest, consider a different approach entirely.

When staff lack engagement – stuck with nothing more inspiring than a vanilla vision statement – all fingers point to the top. The occupants of the C-suite and/or the board are to blame. They fail to inspire. People around them are merely going through the motions.

Consequently, you may feel a tinge of guilt, pushing you to consume classes, books, podcasts and coaching.

However, let’s totally rethink this challenge, using the power of generative AI.

The old methods of sharing corporate vision and/or strategy are well-known. Just get everyone together in a town hall, pass out 50-page PDF documents, then rely on managers to cascade the ideas.

At the heart of it all was a rousing speech – think Michael Manley or Marcus Garvey – followed by a call to arms. The hope? That this ‘rah-rah’ session would keep things going for a few months, at least.

Let’s set aside this myth. Hard truth: a five-minute TikTok scroll generates more engagement than most CEO strategy presentations.

Therefore, let’s also forego the goal of an artificially, but temporarily, pumped-up staff member. Instead, let’s imagine someone who is ‘activated’, as defined by consultant Amie Devero.

How to activate workers

An activated employee either cares deeply about the company’s future or sees a path to drive meaningful organisational change. My informal guess is that about half of the folks in the average company fall into one of these two categories.

Yet traditional methods reach only about 10 per cent of employees below the C-suite level. Why? Most people simply don’t have the training or bandwidth to study or understand the strategic plan/vision.

Even with well-crafted documents and good intentions, employee disengagement remains frustratingly common. Unfortunately, many leaders respond by doubling down on these failed techniques. They try harder, speak louder, write longer and add pressure to middle managers to no avail.

But what does an activated staff member look like?

They continuously consult the vision/strategy for direction. They have positive, inspiring experiences when they interact with the ideas. In fact, it helps them get closer to their aspirations. At the same time, they feel connected to their colleagues around a shared purpose.

How can this engagement be made more systematic?

Most people are aware of LLMs or large language models, even if they haven’t used one more than a few times. These are chatbots on steroids. In response to plain-language questions, these AI systems offer in-depth answers.

In my Sunday Gleaner column of July 20, I further described a SLM or shared language model. Think of it as a custom-built library containing only your organisation’s documents, videos, and audio files. Employees can query this focused database, which never searches beyond your uploaded materials for answers.

Tech tools for empowerment

Fortunately, there are tools being added. An SLM, such as NotebookLM, has the ability to include a summary podcast, a video presentation, a quiz, a mind map plus more. This means that a staff member can satisfy his or her curiosity about the organisation’s strategy at will. And in depth.

In other words, an SLM built around your corporate strategy reports, diagrams, audios and transcripts will transform the way you engage staff and other stakeholders. As they tap in their questions, and pursue their interests, they are actually deepening their learning.

Better yet, they are able to identify gaps in the strategy that leaders might have missed.

For example, there are incipient threats in the form of new technologies, which are probably reshaping your industry. The leaders who shaped the strategy likely don’t have the deep knowledge to see the future. But maybe a few staff members do. If asked, they may be willing to speak up. The idea is to activate them so they use the strategy within the SLM as a constant point of reference.

At scale, your SLM becomes like having a perfectly informed strategy consultant available 24/7 – one who never tires of answering questions and never goes to sleep.

The bottom line is that an activated employee is less likely to result from stale methods. Instead, help them find their own purpose and avenues to deepen it at their own pace.

In summary, the future promises other means of engaging staff which have nothing to do with how charismatic you, their boss, happens to be.

On the contrary, by meeting each person on their terms, you can activate them in ways that are consistent with your strategy and vision.

Francis Wade is a management consultant and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity. To search past columns on productivity, strategy and business processes, or give feedback, email: columns@fwconsulting.com