Puzzling stuff

I was once asked by a senior leader that we need 'to try harder' with engagement. He had a solution, he told me, and suggested our managers engage their teams in the UK around a new company vision using nothing more than a jigsaw puzzle covered in a global mantra. He was planning to send us this magical jigsaw, which had allegedly worked its spell in other countries, and was aghast when I explained it might take just a tad more than that to do it. I did put it to him that culturally the Brits are a questioning kind of people and spookily may want to understand how the business was planning to achieve its vision, what was their role, what was in it for them and so on, and a balsa wood puzzle was not going to do this - however jazzy!

But this story is a reminder that while there are plenty of organisations well ahead in the engagement stakes, there are still too many who want to tick a great big box on it. They seem happy to spend a small fortune on glorious comms gimmicks, sheep dip their employees each and every one of them in some kind of one-off comms activity that promises to miraculously transform them Stepford-wives’-style into 'engaged' beings, and wonder why nothing changes.

PS We never used the jigsaw puzzles.