The Disappearing Boss - Issue 22

Your team is a brilliant source of feedback.

I remember watching an episode of 'Troubleshooter' many years ago, where John Harvey-Jones bemoaned the fact that too many companies assume that their employees walk through the doors as some kind of blank slate, with no intelligence, no experience, and no interest outside work.

When in fact, as he said, they do all sorts of interesting and challenging things in their spare time - make complex things, run communities, learn leading-edge skills, and generally solve all sorts of hard problems.

For fun.

So why would you ignore what they can tell you about how to improve how your business makes and keeps its promises to the people you serve?

Just as you have a mechanism for allowing prospects and clients to leave feedback, so you should have a mechanism for allowing your team to leave feedback too.

Collect.

The mechanism for contributing and collecting team feedback should be as easy as possible to use, ideally while they are doing the job, because it's when they're actually doing the job that people feel the friction.

This could be something as simple as a shared google doc, as old-school as a physical suggestion box, as modern as Slack or as fully functional as a ticketing system.

Whatever works for you and your team.

As long as it is as easy as possible to log an idea, an observation or a bug hot off the back of action.

Otherwise what happens is that people just carry on doing the workaround, and before you know it, entropy is setting in.

Review.

Capturing feedback and suggestions is just the first step of course. The next is to review them.

This is where its helpful to have a systematic and transparent process for review, with dedicated time set aside to run it regularly.

Get everyone together to review, ponder the consequences and choose which ideas to incorporate next.

There are several questions you need to ask each other before you act on any issue or idea:

1. Does this align with oury Promise of Value? Does it strengthen it, weaken it, or contradict it?
2. Is this issue an exception? A one-off is a one-off. It's when exceptions start to repeat themselves that you need to act - because what they're showing you is a potential new normal.
3. Do we need to change the system, or the person? Does a process need changing, or clarifying? Or do I need to train people better in their Roles? Or move someone to a Role that suits them better? Is there a bit of drudgery I could automate that would resolve the issue?
4. Will it improve how we Share Promise, or how we Keep Promise? Or does it mean we need to Package up our Promise in a new way? If so we'll need to add at least a whole new Keep Promise process to cover it.
5. What resources do we need to add, remove, swap about to make this happen?

I'd start with regular, planned sessions to get everyone used to thinking like this. Over time, and with practice, everyone will start to see where they can just fix things as they go (things that don't change the process, but improve its delivery, such as correcting a typo) and where a review is needed.

Remember to record your decisions, those you reject as well as those you take forward.

First of all, it will save you time the next time the suggestion is repeated. Secondly, a look back through rejected ideas can be a source of innovation, when circumstances around your business change.

Act.

Finally, you need to act on the improvements you've chosen.

Before you implement them for real, try new out changes in a group run-through or rehearsal, so you can see any knock-on effects, and to make sure the new improved Score works for everyone. Or have a 'test lab' set up somewhere so you can try them out for real, without endangering a real customer.

Then create a schedule for piloting these improvements on a small scale; seeing how they actually affect things before rolling them out or back as a consequence.

If this is starting to look a bit like software development, that's because in a way it is.

Like software, your business is a system - for making and keeping promises. And like modern cloud-based software, it has to keep running almost seamlessly for clients all the time. Gone are the days when you could take the system down over the weekend for an overhaul.

Acknowledge.

If you want your people to contribute wholeheartedly to improving your business system, then you need to give credit where it's due.

Acknowledge your sources. Be transparent about where ideas come from and how they get incorporated (or not), and why. My dad, a data processing manager, used to keep a log af all the system changes they didn't choose to make, so that people coming afterwards wouldn't blindly repeat their mistakes.

That way you'll continuously improve the quality of your feedback too.

Of course this Review, Act, Acknowledge process doesn't just apply to team feedback. Once you have it in place, you'll use it to assess consequences and decide actions from process and customer feedback too.

Everywhere, discipline makes daring possible.

As always, thanks for reading,

What mechanisms do you use to get business improving feedback from your people?

How could you improve them?

I'd love to know.

Ready to leave your business as your legacy?

Let's talk .