Can a magic chair solve your workplace problems?

I can’t sing my “listen to your staff” song any louder if I tried, so lucky for me someone else has joined in. I’ve always said that it doesn’t really matter what method you choose to listen to your staff so long as you just make sure you do it!

A communications worker in a Fortune 500 company is changing the way it communicates with employees and customers…simply by using a chair. Her idea came up against opposition at first, but she eventually won over management. So she trotted off to the middle of the corporate campus dragging along two chairs. She put up a sign that had a topic for the day on it, then sat and waited. Soon people starting sitting to talk. She now has lines form as people wait their turn to have a say. You can read about this initiative in more detail here.

The reason this case is so interesting is because it could be considered old fashioned – two people, two chairs and pure communication. No intranets or technology or fancy forms. I have written many pieces about how our workplaces need to be modernized, move with the times and continually learn and embrace new technologies. But there are some things that need to stay ‘real’ and ‘pure’. The problem with communication was not that it got swept away with new technology and lost, but that it just stopped happening – bosses forgot they had ears and how to use them.

Another example of plain and simple talking to staff is the team building day. Some people cringe when they hear that term – they brace themselves for wearing blindfolds and falling back into the arms of team mates. They need to no longer because simple ‘talking team days’ can have a much bigger impact. Staff will probably prepare themselves for being talked at about what they should be focusing on and what they need to achieve. But as a staff member explains in this blog post senior managers talking openly and honestly to employees made a normally cringe worthy day an eye opening one instead.

It can be concluded that there is no need for fancy team days - just talk instead! Communication is so important to culture and business success. Unluckily for it though, it can sometimes wear the blame for things it shouldn’t. “It’s a communication problem” can cover a multitude of sins. Often with probing it turns out it wasn’t a communication problem at all. Make sure if you label something a communication problem, it really is. Probe a bit deeper and you should receive clarity about where the real problem lies.

The ‘Boss Exam’ - will you pass?

Questions to ask yourself when getting real about whether or not you are a fantastic boss.

Do you willingly and proactively lend a hand during busy or stressful periods without hesitation or drama?
Do you display any form of favoritism among individuals or teams?
Do you give regular and sincere verbal recognition?
Are you a genius at spotting things that deserve verbal recognition?
Do you back your staff and their decisions no matter what?
Do you show them how much you value them with rewards when they deserve a special thank you?
Are you more likely to do a messy/dirty job yourself or delegate it to someone else?
Are you totally free of B*llsh*t?
Do you have a positive contagious energy that brings fun to the workplace?
Do you always share credit with the team?
Are you understanding about the need to do some personal tasks during work time?
Are you willing to explore flexible options (i.e. hours, R+R, benefits, study) without freaking out and being rigid?
Do you make decisions with confidence and vision (without ‘dilly dallying’)?
Do you keep everyone constantly in the know about 'what’s going on around here'?
Do you keep everyone constantly informed about mission, strategy and goals?
Do you make efforts to fully utilize the skills each individual has accumulated over their lifetime?
Are you great at keeping the vision alive in a memorable way daily?
Have you got a fine tuned personal understanding of what leadership and management is and requires?
Are all meetings on task and worthwhile?
Do you have a servant’s heart (knowing that the boss is there to serve the staff not vice versa)?
Are you doing all you can to break 'stress habits' and not just accepting it as the 'norm' of how things are done in your work/industry?
Do you sweat the small stuff and nip tension in the bud?
Do you have zero tolerance for senseless moaning and complaining (and encourage powerful solutions thinking instead)?
Are you guilty of grounding workers (withholding praise for fear they will get too big for their boots)?
Do you frequently seek staff ideas i.e. meetings, surveys, 1x1s and use the ideas not just pay lip service?
Do you have an attitude of 'I know best' over staff or do you know that team opinion matters?
Do you hold back any secrets that staff find out about via gossip at water cooler?
Are you drunk on authority - frequently reminding everyone who is boss?
Are you fast to sort out any bullying? You aren’t the bully are you?
Do you have a 'no asshole rule'?
Are you keen to dish out responsibility, develop the team and show you trust your team?
Are you not scared to see ‘the yuck’ and address the weakest parts of the business?
Do you always put workers first (even before customers)?
Are you unafraid of facing your own faults and addressing them?
Are you secure enough to get your staff to answer this boss quiz anonymously to hear their thoughts on you (and not be defensive when reading the results)?

Give your staff this quiz – I dare you! You will learn a lot about yourself.

FYI: The Boss Benchmark is now also available in an e-version for $30NZD – purchase at http://www.thebossbenchmark.com/

How to survey your staff successfully

If you want to listen to your staff but you have no idea where to start, take a look at my article "How to survey your staff successfully". It gives you tips about what to do and why. If things are a bit quiet at your work currently then use your time wisely and do a staff survey.

The full link is: http://www.thebossbenchmark.com/How%20to%20survey%20your%20staff%20successfully.doc

Thanks to Kelley at www.HumansAtWork.com who loved my 'audit your secrets' article so much she used it as a guest blog here http://www.humansatwork.com/audit-your-secrets/

How to use the collective wisdom of staff

There is a great book called “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki. It basically says if you ask enough people a question you will end up with the correct answer. If you ask just one or two people you’ll most likely get a wrong answer, but if you ask 20 people it will most likely be right. Ask 100 people and it’s even more likely to be right.

An example James uses in his book is when the Challenger blew up. It could have been the fault of a handful of companies and would take a while to figure out which one. After the accident many shares in the companies involved were sold. It turned out that the company that had the highest number of shares sold was the one who caused the problem! The wisdom of the shareholder crowd was right – they didn’t even need to wait to hear the official cause, the crowd knew.

4 things that make crowds wise
1. Diversity of opinion (private info, interpretation of known facts)
2. Independence (peoples opinions aren’t determined by those around them)
3. Decentralization (people are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge)
4. Aggregation (private judgments into collective decisions)

There was a test done to see if people care about ‘the wisdom of crowds’. They made one person stand on the corner of a busy street looking curiously up at the sky. Loads of people passed and nobody else looked up. They then got 10 people to stand there looking up and some passersby did look up. However when they made 50 people stand on the corner looking up everyone passing stopped to look up. The conclusion was the more people doing it the stronger the ‘social proof’ that something was happening - lots of people doing it means there must be a reason.

There were lots of other cool examples of the wisdom of crowds in the book such as to decide if you’ll need an umbrella check if everyone passing your house is carrying one, if not it probably wont rain – apparently this rarely fails. The same goes for moving your car off the street for cleaning in London – if others haven’t moved theirs it’s probably been cancelled this week.

So are businesses engaging the wisdom of crowds? Are they asking their staff loads of questions about things like new product innovations, marketing ideas, solutions to problems or customer relations? The answer is NO. Businesses still seem to be indifferent to the wisdom of crowds – they aren’t actively, constantly and frantically asking their employees anything! The staff surveying I did in the past convinced me of the power in the voice of the employee. But the wisdom of crowds goes even deeper than that. I highly recommend reading the book and figuring out exactly how to make it a way of life at your company – you will stand out a mile.

Am opinionated...will question authority!

I knew I wanted to help businesses and some how, in my own little way, make the world a better place. After a few false starts I found my niche in staff surveying. I decided that making staff happier and bosses better through it was my little way of “changing the world”.
It was perfect because as a Gen Y I’ve always been opinionated and known that authority desperately NEEDS to be questioned – not because I am a brat, but because it is the questioning and discussing that drastically improves things. This attitude is not overwhelmingly popular, as there are plenty of old fashioned people and businesses who prefer things “like they used to be”. There is DEFINETLY a time and a place for ‘things as they used to be’ – I’d definitely prefer a delish old school cookie “like mama used to make” than those rubbery wee things Subway pass off as ‘cookies’! Business, workplaces and bosses however need a mix of old and new - the best of both worlds. I found that despite suffering high staff turnover, performance problems and the costs involved in these things, bosses still hesitated before doing a staff survey. I don’t know what they were scared of, but I did know what they were missing out on. Most staff surveys do not ask the right questions, nor are the answers interpreted correctly. In one case of the extreme I came across a survey that no matter how staff answered the questions, the responses came out glowing. Staff were bitterly, bitterly unhappy – yet the survey results boasted passion, engagement and commitment. More surprisingly it was run by an external professional survey company. I knew something was wrong. The right questions were not being asked and the staff not being understood. My surveys sent me in to bat for the ‘little guys’. I was on the staffs side – I knew no one else was. I also knew what it was like to feel powerless. Where the company isn’t interested in what you have to say, nor is the boss. I would go as far to say that not listening to your staff is the most ridiculous, stupid, toxic, mammoth mistake mediocre businesses are STILL making day after day. I loved batting for the staff, but I loved EVEN MORE the look on the bosses face when I presented them with insight. The results that told them all they have ever wanted and needed to know about what is going wrong and why. I think they found freedom in the results – they regretted ever being scared and wished they’d had this info in their hands years ago. I’ll explain how all I learnt doing surveying lead me to write my book The Boss Benchmark soon.