People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 58

AT: Have you had subsets of your client companies talking to each other about organizational health?
CG: We've been pretty good at putting companies together one-on-one. We haven't yet
created the community that I think needs to
exist; that's definitely on our agenda for
2015. It could be a really powerful learning
mechanism. Imagine having two companies
in the same room: one is pursuing employee
involvement and continuous improvement
strategy, and the other is winning the war for
very high-priced specialized talent. Those two
companies approach the world in radically
different ways. Think what they could learn
from each other!

AT: So if companies are leveraging data to improve their organizational health, how do their
CHROs pull it all together into a coherent narrative? Can't there be a hybrid HR professional
who is very conversant with the technology
and data and yet eloquent on the storytelling
side?
CG: Sure there can. At McKinsey, we think of
it in two parts: one is the reliance on factbased analysis and the other is using that factbased analysis to tell compelling executive
stories. One of the most important things
we've done in our group is develop ways to
"storyline" the information that comes out of
OHI or other survey data. So every client we
work with knows the answer to three questions: how healthy their organization is; why
it's healthy or unhealthy; and what's the structured, evidence-based narrative case for doing
something to improve organizational health.
If the CHRO can't make that fact-based narrative case and be passionate about it, he
becomes the one who, at the end of the meeting when all the important stuff has been
discussed, says, "Now, let's talk about our
culture or our employee engagement survey"
- and you can hear the crickets chirping. We
find that the HR chiefs who really "get" organization health are true performance partners
within the business, eager to use the best tools
to improve their companies' performance.

AT: How big is your unit? And do you and
your team take the medicine that you dispense
to clients?
CG: We're about 60 people. And yes, we
absolutely do take our own medicine here.
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PEOPLE & STRATEGY

The first year we measured our unit's organizational health, we found three things to
work on. Two of them improved dramatically in the following year; we got better at
strategic clarity - our own big vision - and
at translating that vision into specific objectives for our people. We've always scored
high on bottom-up involvement, where we
spend time pointing people in the right
direction or helping people form groups to
discover innovations around our product
and services, and sharing the knowledge and
supporting them.
But on one measure-role clarity-we did
not improve. The score didn't go up because
I, as the group's leader, didn't really believe in
it. I'm naturally a very "ad hoc" kind of
leader. But this bias toward flexibility was
causing some issues for some of our team,
and I hadn't been sensitive enough to that.
When we hadn't made progress on role clarity during the first year, people came to me
and said, "Chris, you don't get it. Here's
what we need and why, and here's how your
mindset is causing us problems." So we
talked about it until I understood them and
they understood me, and we came up with a
version of role clarity that worked for us.

And the next year that measure improved
dramatically.
I'm not telling that story to say, "Look how
well we did," but to illustrate how the process
of a disciplined discussion was able to lead us
as a group. It gave us a way to have a structured conversation. That's the kind of conversation we need to allow to happen. It really is
the hallmark of a healthy organization.

AT: You mentioned that organizational health
metrics allow companies take more decisive
action on those issues. Say more about how
companies do that.
CG: Yes, the metrics are not just for putting up
on a plaque. They are meant to give the executive team a dashboard-a set of instruments
that point them to the actions they have to
take to make their organizations healthier. But
there's a virtuous cycle at work here. Our OHI
studies show that companies that work on this
stuff soon see real change in the metrics. In
fact, changes to organizational health happen
much faster than the three- to five-year time
span you hear about a lot. We now have a
growing library of cases where companies are
seeing real improvements in relatively short

That's the kind of conversation we need to allow to happen. It really
is the hallmark of a healthy organization.

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1