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Creating Enthusiasm for the Annual Meeting

Cathy Ivancic

July 1998

It is the season for the annual meeting ritual at XYZ Company. It's time to dust off the overhead projector, develop 30 to 40 informative slides of the financial results, line up the chairs in the great hall, and prepare to deliver the latest information on stock value. This year, the financial results at XYZ company are quite impressive. Despite this, company leaders know there will be an abysmal turnout. As in years past, they expect the event to attract a fraction of the workforce, who will yawn their way through the presentation and leave the carefully prepared corporate documents strewn across the floor.

Company leaders at XYZ are asking themselves some questions about this annual ritual. Why doesn't this meeting generate enthusiasm? What will improve attendance? Should we serve hot dogs and beverages? Is ice cream the answer? What about inviting spouses? What about door prizes? Is it necessary to have it on company time?

These are not bad questions to ask about the annual meeting. However, the leaders at ABC will be disappointed again next year unless they begin to ask themselves the deeper questions about why and how they are communicating about performance.

Why Are You Sharing This Information?

Curiously enough, it is common to engage in the annual meeting ritual with little or no concept of why the company is doing it. Company leaders find themselves duplicating the efforts of well-known employee ownership successes or assuming that employee ownership companies are supposed to have annual meeting. With these externally generated goals, the leaders will never be able to focus on getting the results their own company needs. The ritual will be empty.

It is essential to fully understand what you want to achieve with your communication to know if you are succeeding. Is this information sharing a part of building trust? Do you wish that employees would understand how their daily work is connected to the company performance? Are you secretly hoping employees will appreciate the hard work that corporate officers are doing? Are you interested in teaching employees about how performance is tied to rewards? An honest appraisal of your objectives will enable you to set a course of action.

Is the Format for Sharing Information Appropriate for Your Objectives?

"We want to treat employees like owners so they will begin acting like owners" is why XYZ company leaders are doing their annual meeting. When leaders examined what they really meant by "ownership," they realized the format for the meeting didn't fit their vision for ownership. XYZ company had been running a carbon copy of corporate annual meetings at company with outside ownership . They had unintentionally designed a meeting that was appropriate for informing "outsiders" -- passive owners who use financial statements for making decisions about investing. At XYZ, the leaders know that they want employee ownership to be something different. They wanted it to be about owning excellent customer service, maintaining commitment to outstanding quality, and connecting team performance to shared rewards. These were the stories that will be most important to tell at the XYZ annual meeting.

Do All Employees Know What It Means to Win in Your Business?

Reporting that "XYZ company saw 25% growth in revenues and significant increases in gross margins, which resulted in increase in stock value" may be as meaningful to the average employee as reciting French poetry. XYZ leaders agreed that most employees do not understand how their company makes money and do not speak the same language as the leadership. Despite knowing this, they found themselves trying to use this "foreign language" to inspire employees to act like owners.

One of the first objectives of XYZ's communication about performance has to be educating everyone about how the company measures performance. It is no fun to hear detailed statistics of a game you don't understand. Imagine how unbearable it is for employees to hear the details of business performance when they don't know what it means to "win" in your industry. Leaders at XYZ will focus their communication on the key concepts needed to understand performance in their company. The annual meeting is now viewed as part of the educational process.

What Will Make This Annual Ritual Meaningful?

A lack of enthusiasm for the annual meeting may be problematic. However, it is safe to assume that this is not XYZ company's core challenge. Poor turnout at the annual meeting is a symptom of the way the company has communicated about performance throughout the year. Financial results are not meaningful unless a connection is being made to day-to-day work.

For XYZ to make financial results matter to people, the company will need to create regularized, two-way conversations about performance that are engaging. The company will need to invest in tracking performance regularly and developing the skills for "telling the business story" throughout the company. Communication about performance cannot be relegated to an annual event if it is going to inspire daily work.

When a departmental leader clearly explains that reducing customer returns has a direct result on the bottom line -- and ultimately on stock value -- the annual results will take on new meaning for employees in that department at XYZ. When employees begin tracking those customer returns weekly on an enormous chart they designed themselves, the performance information becomes engaging and real.

XYZ can improve turnout at the annual meeting by serving hot dogs and door prizes. Hot dogs, however, will not transform the annual meeting into an opportunity to celebrate successes, dream about the future together, and renew commitment to shared ownership. These are the things that leaders at XYZ want to see at their annual meeting. To accomplish these objectives, they must start focusing on performance throughout the year.

Cathy Ivancic is a consultant and co-owner at Workplace Development Inc. Since 1985, she has helped more than 100 ESOP companies enhance ESOP communications and develop an ownership culture. She is active in national organizations that promote shared ownership and has served on the NCEO's board of directors and as an officer of the Ohio chapter of the ESOP Association.She can be reached at civancic@workplacedevelopment.com.

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