Kevin Long

The best companies understand that employees must be emotionally engaged before for their organizations can reach their full potential.

Great managers understand the relationship between employee engagement and financial success. One organization that understands this very well is Computer Aided Technology Inc. (CAT), a reseller and service provider of 3D software, hardware and related services. CAT is based in Buffalo Grove, Ill., and has offices in Brookfield, Appleton and Madison. The firm has done an outstanding job creating a high degree of employee engagement throughout its entire organization.

Recently, the management team created an innovative way to more fully capture the imagination of the entire employee base regarding the success of every sales producer throughout their multi-state organization.

CAT's ability to create an environment in which employee engagement is very high, combined with innovative thinking, has enabled the firm to produce its best financial year ever.

Here is one unique and interesting component to CAT's recent and ongoing success: CAT's leadership team was inspired by the popular fantasy football leagues. The leadership team decided to give each member of their organization an opportunity to create their own fantasy team ... a fantasy sales team. The purpose of creating a fantasy sales league was simply to engage every person within the organization regarding the selling success of every member of the sales team.

Each month, CAT employees have an opportunity to review performance statistics for each member of the sales team. After the review, there is a process for ranking each member of the sales team. This ranking is based on past performance as well as the current forecast and the average close ratio for each sales producer. The review and ranking process provides insight, so each member of CAT's entire organization can select and draft an "A" selling team for their fantasy sales league.

Without getting into the specifics of how they rank their fantasy sales players, the point is that CAT's leadership team has found a very innovative way of increasing the visibility and awareness throughout the organization for sales results.

CAT, just like many other high-performing organizations, understands there should be no secrets when it comes to performance results. The company also understands the importance of creating an environment in which critical dialog thrives.

As a result of the firm's fantasy sales league, people from every department within the organization are e-mailing, calling and stopping sales folks in the hall, asking them questions about their past and forecasted selling performance. This is great dialog within an organization, and you can only pull this off if you have created a culture of trust and openness within your organization.

Employee engagement and innovative thinking leads to success. Follow CAT's lead and enhance the performance of your business by creating a workplace where employee engagement, innovative thinking and performance visibility fuels employee and customer satisfaction, as well as overall operating performance.

Philip Mydlach is the owner of Mydlach Management Advisors, a corporate planning and performance improvement practice in New Berlin. He can be reached at (262) 662-4646 or pmydlach@aol.com.

February 4, 2005, Small Business Times, Milwaukee, WI

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