HOW CAN YOU GET THE ANSWERS YOU NEED?
Though you may have a hunch about your current reality, you need to get some hard data to support or disprove your view.
To understand how your business is doing, you need to utilise certain tools that measure performance and gain insight. You might have a balanced scorecard, daily data on output, measures sales or complaints. Your reporting will give you information on productivity, performance and output. Do you measure skills and behaviours too? Monitoring and feedback should be a daily practice, not in a micro-managing way, but in a high performance business management way. How do you know how the leadership team is performing other than bottom line results? Tools like a 360-degree feedback, behavioural profiling tool, team measures or employee engagement scores broaden what you measure to give insights into your current reality.
The following tools are a practical way to start asking the right questions and get started on data collection.
After all, when people weigh in with their ideas and opinions, they are more likely to buy into the solutions. You just need to ask the right questions, in the right way and feedback the results. Believe me, your people are constantly thinking about how to improve their work. They discuss it, moan about it, get frustrated by it. They think about it. What they need is a way of sharing their thoughts with you, the leader, so you can take action.
Therefore, getting an INSIGHT FROM YOUR PEOPLE will provide you with a way to find out what they really think of your company.
You could also delve deeper into this by following these steps:
STEP 1: The core central question - what do you really want to know?. Whatever format your insight-finding takes – a survey, focus group or 360 feedback – you will probably ask the wrong questions unless you are clear about what you really want to know.
Tool Tip
Take it right back to basics and ask yourself this: if a team member was sat in front of you now and you could read their mind, what would you really want to know?
STEP 2: The right format. Now you are ready to craft the questions and decide how you want them answered. Give them careful thought and keep referencing back to your central question. Asking someone ‘Are you happy at work?’ isn’t going to give you much insight. What might be more telling is whether they would recommend this job to their best friend or a relative or perhaps. Look at your existing data collection methods and look for what you don't measure? What is missing? Are you asking the questions in the right way? Are you the right person to ask? Many leaders use consultants, technology or employee forums to gain insight.
STEP 3: What will you do once feedback comes in? It is the "so what?" question. Reporting and measuring is only useful if you are going to act on the data. You have the opportunity to feedback and act on the results. The results just give a pointer to the blocks and barriers to performance. I recommend sharing the results, and then creating forums or focus groups (based on trust and safety), where you can ask for ideas, solutions and gain genuine insights into the topic. The leader doesn't have to do all of the work. You create teams of engaged people to help you. Ask questions for which you have no answers and try to discover rather than justify or challenge employee feedback.
“JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT THEY ARE TELLING YOU, DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE WRONG.”
Lucy Barkas
This is free consultancy and they will give you all the information you need, if only you are prepared to listen.
STEP 4: Take action. Now you have the data, decide what you are going to do about it. Implement the quick wins and create a strategy for more complex problems and prioritise. Communicate the outcomes and thank your people for sharing.
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