Our Approach
Executives often want to tap into the subjective experience of employees, either to improve working conditions (morale, turnover, employee satisfaction, etc.) or as a preamble to major organizational change (introducing TQM, a reorganization, new strategy rollout, etc.).
As a strategy to understand the organization, the traditional employee opinion survey seldom works as well as we might hope. The flaws in this strategy are easy to list:
- Takes too long; often months from handing out the survey to publishing the results
- Costs too much for the value delivered; surveys can run from $50K to $200K.
- Fails to engage employees in the process; they are "data givers" at best.
- Amount of data is often overwhelming; focus on "Top 3 issues" ignores the volume and complexity of issues raised.
The alternative is not to do without employee input, but rather to restructure the process so their input leads to positive change within the general domains considered strategically critical by the senior team. The process we propose consists of two simultaneous cycles:
The
first voice is that of the senior team. The key issue
is identifying the strategic objectives that are
currently considered at risk. This Executive Review
of the current situation also identifies the topics
or dynamics which the senior team believes to be
operating. For example, a team might be most concerned
about their ability to secure customers in a new
market segment as part of their plan to expand the
company's customer base. And they might be suspicious
that a culture that avoids risk-taking is one of
the reasons for the poor performance to date. That
kind of information provides the backdrop for approaching
the staff to surface their concerns.
Without waiting for staff input, the senior team can continue to explore their own development. If a risk-averse culture is one of their identified concerns, they can review how they respond to employee efforts, and whether they unconsciously reward cautious behavior. They can also ask how well they model the kind of courage they hope for from employees. If the senior team is timid is addressing issues, they can hardly expect employees to be any different.
The
second cycle initiated is built around staff energy.
Through focus groups, employees are asked to identify
those areas of company operation which they find
most frustrating or confusing. The sessions are not
meant to be free-form "bitch sessions"; conversation
is quickly brought around to what topics they would
like to address, and what initial steps they are
prepared to take. That is, employees are treated
as legitimate agents of change, and not allowed to
merely toss out their complaints and wait for executive
response.
Before proceeding, the topics of staff concern are reviewed with the senior team (the two cycles operate in tandem). They have a chance to shape the priorities and charter for staff efforts. Most important, the senior team can state the criteria for staff efforts. For example, staff may want to look at the review procedures for adopting new projects. This provides a chance to explore risk-aversion and courage in the operation of a particular process. The senior team can define the criteria that must be met for a redesign of the process, which then frees up the staff group interested in the topic to explore process alternatives without having to return to the senior team every step of the way for approval (which is part of what the senior team wanted in the first place).
The staff group starts the cycle with action-oriented discovery, which explores a topic by considering possible interventions and the assumptions behind them. The stage of lean design focuses on the smallest, high-leverage action that is likely to move the system to a healthier state. The implementation is highly interactive, in that we assume pushing for change will reveal new facets of the problem and return the cycle to discovery and definition of new action steps to be taken.