The CEO: Chief Engagement Officer

John Smythe has specialised in organisational communication and engagement. He is a founding partner of the Engage for Change consultancy. Previously he was an organisational fellow with McKinsey undertaking research into employee engagement, and John has also held senior public affairs posts for three American corporations: Occidental Oil, Bechtel Corporation and Marathon Oil. After leaving SmytheDorwardLambert in 2003, a consultancy which was acknowledged to be the thought leader in organisational communication, John was invited by McKinsey and Company to take a short term role as a visiting organisational fellow, undertaking research among sixty corporations and institutions in Europe and North America into current approaches in engaging leaders and employees in driving strategy and change. The research is available from Engage for Change. Before starting SmytheDorwardLambert in 1989 John had been behind a start up in the same field called Wolff Olins/Smythe (1985-1989). He published (with Colette Dorward and Jerome Reback, fellow founders of SmytheDorwardLambert) Corporate Reputation, The New Strategic Asset in 1989.

Contents: Part One The End of Employee Coercion, The Beginning of Employee Engagement: The CEO, the Chief Engagement Officer; What engaging people means; The four approaches to engaging your people; The irrationality of leaders in engaging their people in strategy and change; Why employee engagement matters - the missing half of decision making; Measuring employee satisfaction is a waste of time. Part Two Designing and Implementing Effective Employee Engagement: Understanding previous habits of engagement to accelerate change; Preparing to design an effective employee engagement intervention; Brief guide to the methods and approaches in employee engagement interventions; Engagement to drive implementation of strategy. Part Three Engagement as Part of the Culture: Implications for Effective Engagement for Leaders, Employees and Internal Advisers: Creating a climate of engagement: Implications for leaders and organisational communication; Employee engagement - a review of the literature, Johanna Fawkes; Index.