Lara shared a number of feedback methods and tools she has used in organizations to improve communication and engagement.  She talked about the factors to consider when selecting a feedback method and also shared common mistakes you will want to avoid when implementing employee feedback.

As a special hand-out for Enclaria listeners, Lara provided this 1-page Feedback Favorites summary (PDF).

Listen here (30 minutes):

Be sure to visit the radio show page to listen to past episodes and subscribe to the show.

Of course, this doesn’t happen overnight.  And you can’t go straight from where you are now to where you want to be.  There has to be a journey.  The key is to not be sidetracked by the process of change.

Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) was the first to describe change as a 3-step process:

1. Unfreezing – dismantling the old way, creating a sense of urgency and a need to change
2. Changing – a period of transition, challenging the old way but not really knowing what the new way is
3. Freezing – a returning to a sense of normalcy and comfort, crystallizing the new way

A good example of this is in a case study I wrote called A Roundabout Path to Increasing Employee Suggestions – the roundabout part is exactly what I’m talking about here.

In the case, the three steps could be described like this:

1. Unfreezing – We started a steering committee separate from the executive team to collect and manage ideas.  We challenged the concept of paying for ideas.
2. Changing – The steering committee collected ideas, and was proactive in the response and tracking.  We started a weekly newsletter to keep idea-generation and problem solving at the forefront.  Idea submission levels increased dramatically.
3. Freezing – Managers started holding regular meetings with their direct reports to identify and discuss opportunities for improvement, and to brainstorm on ways to address the issues that came up.  The number of ideas, maintained by managers in a central database, increased even further.

If we had stopped with the centralized suggestion box as the final way for employees to submit suggestions, then we wouldn’t have followed through with the ultimate purpose of the change program:  to increase innovation, not because employees submitted more ideas, but because managers asked for and valued them, and involved their teams in solving business problems.

Bottom line:  It’s important to not get stuck in the change step, and keep in mind the final state and ultimate mindset change that you are going after.  Plan to make your change initiative obsolete.

Inquiry:  What will your organization look like when your initiative dissolves?

This post is also featured at Tenacious Tortoise.

• Multi-directional trust (leadership, employees, peers)
• Transparency and feedback
• Ample, clear, compelling, consistent communication
• High-performing teams
• Data-based decisions
• Accountability to results
• Clarity of vision
• Congruence of personal work with organizational goals
• Alignment between business units and departments
• Breakdown of silos, turf wars, and self-protection
• Atmosphere of mutual respect
• Employee engagement
• The idea of a “well-oiled machine”, efficient standardized processes
• Effective, value-added meetings

I would love to hear what else you might add to this list, and if any of these would actually decrease your success.  Please share using the comments.

The premise behind Blue Ocean Strategy is that your current market of customers is only a subset of the customers who potentially need or want your product or service. The current market is called a Red Ocean because of all the competition tearing each other apart. The Blue Ocean represents all the potential customers who are not currently buying because they don’t have any idea what your product or service does or why they might need it.

The solution presented for engaging the Blue Ocean was through Value Innovation.  The simplified method included finding the answers to these questions:

• What causes people not to buy this product?
• What can we do to overcome it?  (What can we reduce, raise, eliminate or create?)

When you look at your organizational change initiative, you might see a similar pattern. There is a subset of the organization who “gets it,” pays attention, and is involved in making progress. And then there is everyone else, who is not buying what you’re selling.  Not only that, but it’s not even on their radar.

Inquiry:  What causes people to not to “buy” your change?

There are a number of other tools in the Blue Ocean Strategy framework that might be helpful to expand your thinking along these lines.  Visit the official Blue Ocean Strategy site for some useful diagrams and more detailed concepts.

As the Senior Manager of Strategy Management Performance Excellence in a large IT department within a much larger corporation, Pamela Santiago has built a team that has become a center of excellence in change management and strategy execution within the larger organization. Her story also shows how change can start within a support unit as a proving ground, then branch out into the rest of the company. Listen for insights on what makes a successful change agent and change management team.

After 28 years at United Illuminating, an electric utility in Connecticut, Phil Turner retired in January this year as Director of Strategic Planning and Risk Management.  As he reflects on his role as a change agent, Phil shares the story of the 100 Million Dollar Challenge, a large scale re-engineering initiative that took place in preparation for deregulation.  Listen for insights about restructuring the organization for change, and about the pros and cons of implementing “big change fast.”

In 2002, the executive team kicked off a suggestion program, cleverly called Jel-A-Vision, with much fanfare and high rewards: the top prize was $5000 and each idea that was selected to be implemented earned the idea generator $250. The publicity and awards encouraged employees to place approximately 130 ideas into the suggestion box, of which 28 were selected and awarded a total of $19,000. Only 17 or 13% went on to be implemented.

After the kick-off, the criterion was added that the idea must be implemented before the monetary award was given. The number of ideas and awards dropped. The executive team started to wonder why they weren’t receiving very many ideas, and why the ones they did receive were not very good. By the end of the Jel-A-Vision program, only 21 more ideas had been collected and only 4 of those ideas had been implemented and awarded. By 2003, the executive team at Jel Sert had become disillusioned with the suggestion box program.

When the newly appointed Director of Organizational Effectiveness offered to take over the suggestion program, it was handed over to her without much opposition in 2004. She rebranded the program as the Process Improvement Network (PIN) and formed a cross-functional and cross-hierarchical steering committee with 9 members. All of its members were director level and below. In addition, the following changes were made to the program:

• Whereas the executive team had met monthly, the new steering committee met weekly to review and address each outstanding idea.
• The committee created a formal follow-up procedure. One member of the steering committee was assigned to immediately thank the employee for the idea. The same steering committee member was responsible for helping the idea be considered and implemented.
• Monetary awards were disbanded, to eliminate the artificial hurdle of idea worthiness. Employees whose ideas were implemented received t-shirts with the PIN logo and recognition at the monthly employee luncheon.
• The committee published a one-page weekly newsletter called the Ideation Station that included program updates as well as fun ways to stay creative. The newsletter was a regular reminder to think of and submit ideas.
• Employees were trained in creativity methods presented by Blair Miller & Associates (www.blairmiller.com).

In 2004, 183 ideas were submitted through the PIN program, almost 9 times the number of ideas submitted in the previous 18 months.

When the time came to decide if the PIN Steering Committee should be refreshed with new members, they decided they would instead distribute and embed the suggestion box further into the organization. Responsibility for idea collection, documentation and follow-up was transitioned to the managers of the company. On a voluntary basis, 21 department heads held regular meetings with employees and tracked the status of ideas within a centralized database.

This iteration of idea collection proved to be the most effective. In 2005, 287 ideas were collected, a 57% increase over the previous year. Most ideas were collected through the departmental meetings instead of the suggestion box. Of the ideas collected in 2005, 39% were implemented.
There are four key lessons to engage employees to submit improvement ideas that were learned from this roundabout path:

1. Monetary awards are superficial. More ideas were collected and implemented with no award at all. Generally, when employees turned in an idea, it was presumably because they wanted it to be implemented, not because they wanted something in return.
2. No centralized team or committee is a substitute for a manager who listens, documents and follows up on the ideas presented by her employees. Simply knowing that they have an ally who will help implement an idea works wonders toward encouraging employees to share their ideas. Also, managers are usually in the best position to implement their employees’ ideas.
3. If you want “good” ideas, you need to be willing to listen to the “bad” ones. First, don’t be too quick to judge ideas as good or bad. Even “bad” ideas address a perceived problem. Look beyond the idea itself and work with the employee to formulate a solution.
4. Find a way to make generating ideas a regular part of doing business. A scheduled (but not mundane!) meeting, or a regular communication will remind employees to look for problems and solutions in their daily routines.

While special programs can move the organization in the right direction, change has not truly occurred until new behaviors and attitudes are adopted into the regular running of the business. In the end, employee engagement is not about filling the suggestion box – it is about not needing the suggestion box in the first place.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy:

• Case Study:  A Fizzled Balanced Scorecard Implementation
• Tips for Leading a Successful Transformation
• Avoid Scattershot Change:  Plan Communication