Happiness Door: Rapid & Compelling feedback where Feelings matter!!!

Introduction

The feeling of happiness is a subjective construct, and it may depend on many factors. Happiness for an individual may depend on the context or situation that they are in, may it be in their personal or professional lives. However, this feeling will evolve and change over time. As per Management 3.0, the Happiness Door combines team collaboration, employee engagement, and open and honest feedback to determine individuals’ own happiness levels. The Happiness Door is a way to make the feelings and emotions of individuals visible.?

Why should you read this article?

• Do you want to purely know what is Happiness Door practice from Management 3.0?
• Are you interested to distinguish how to adjust the flow of meetings/events to the atmosphere/mood in the room quickly?
• Are you planning to experiment with Happiness Door with your team but wondering how to kick off in a step-by-step pattern?
• How to interpret data points/trends coming out post-implementation of this practice and use it towards making meetings/workshops/training the most engaging one?
• Do you want to explorer/know the challenges and outcomes I observed? ?While experimenting?
• Lastly, How does this practice add value at different levels (In my case, Team & Program (Agile Release Train (ART)) level)?

If your answer is “Yes” for any of the above-mentioned questions, then this article may be of your help.

What is a happiness door?

Jurgen Appelo got influenced by the Happiness Indicator and Feedback Wall and mixed/integrated it with his 'Mojito method into a new tool, called “Happiness Door”, which is one of the many Management 3.0 practices.??The Happiness Door is usually placed at a location easily visible to everyone.

1. Before the Meeting/Training/Workshop etc. starts - select the?right place?for the happiness Door,?it can be a door, a window, board, or anything elsewhere (Nowadays in, Digital Tool as well)

• We also have an option to twig emoticons (don’t hesitate to customize them according to your event, just ensure and remember that they must be easily understandable) and enough space to collect all attendees' stickies.
• Participants must not leave the event without?seeing?it.

2. Take a moment or two, in the commencement, to enlighten?why?you are using this tool/practice and?why?you need?feedback, also be sure that the happiness scale is clear for everyone (especially If it’s the first time).

It is not binding to stick to emoticons only; we have the autonomy of amending them to explore factors that make participants feel excited, amused, stressed, dejected, and so on. So, feel free to change these groupings based on what matters to you and your participants the most.

It is a gratifying and easy way to collect participant’s feedback according to?how?they feel?and?what they want me to know?about their event’s experience, it can be an improvement, a nice word, or just thanks for preparing the Training/Meeting or the workshop. You can straightforwardly perceive how happy your participants are with your work or if your event sucks. And you have valuable feedback which you can use to improve. The Happiness Door is an ideal technique to check the mood of any team.

In this article, I am going to zoom in on the use of this technique in a remote public & private online training context.?

Why have I decided to use this practice?

As an Enterprise Agile Transformation Coach and SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) my job requires me to conduct several trainings (e.g., Leadership, Curated, Certification oriented, etc.) & workshops throughout a year which in turn encapsulates an average of ~400+ Individuals at minimum.

Bearing respective scale in mind, I have been experimenting with Happiness Door from Management 3.0 practice with one of my Scaled Agile Transformation Consulting assignment with one of the US-based BFSI clients couple of years back (precisely at the beginning of Q1 2018). This experimentation was carried out for one of the Agile Release Train (ART) consisting of 90-100 individuals - ~10 teams in the classroom and remote/virtual training.?By the time I introduced this practice for respective ART (Agile Release Train), I was already experimenting Niko-Niko calendar with the same Agile Release Train (ART) and the initial outcome looked promising which stimulated me to start experimenting with other Management 3.0 practices. (If you are curious to know how I implemented the Niko-Niko calendar which is one of the very influential Management 3.0 practice, you can find my article at -

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/niko-niko-calendar-tracking-your-teams-happiness-can-joshi/

The job of a trainer is really taxing. Especially when conducting training targeting professional certifications. Classroom (In-person) & Remote/Virtual certification-oriented training often runs for multiple days and it is hard on both the trainer as well as the trainees. Not only do both parties have to keep attention levels high but they also must keep their engagement and energy levels up to make it an interesting engagement.

I use distinct techniques to ensure relentless engagement such as group activities, presentations, videos, role-plays, homework are some of these methods. Simultaneously also need to make sure that there are an interesting start and end to the session as well as a smooth transition from one section to another. This is when ice breakers or check-in check-out activities come in handy. Constant breaks at logical points in time also help break monotony and tiredness.

The Covid-19 pandemic has put a new spiral to this already complex environment. Individuals are self-isolating and practicing social distancing. Hence, organizations (Including mine) are now conduct training sessions online using collaboration and communication tools. So how can the trainers get a pulse of what trainees are feeling which in turn will help improve the learning experience? As a trainer and coach, I was in a similar situation, and the happiness door turns out to be a fantastic tool to enhance engagement with participants.

It has been now almost four years since I am using this technique & I love it because?it is so simple yet so powerful. The concept of ‘Door’ means that this technique can act as a path or a gateway to let participants in and feel comfortable in a group setting. The objective is to make sure that the participants do not feel like leaving once they come in through the happiness door. One of the major positives of the Happiness Door is the fact that every idea/comment/view put up is anonymous though made visible publicly. Anyone has the freedom to put up any number of ideas/comments/views as sticky notes or any other method to make it visible. There is no constraint in terms of the number of ideas/comments/views or whether it is good or bad ideas/comments/views. Hence, this is an idyllic method for the facilitator to get an insight into the general mood in the group and determine methods to grab their devotion during the session.

How did I implement this practice?

Following are the steps in which I experimented for multiple remote/online certifications-oriented trainings as a trainer in the recent past. The training lasted from 3- 5 days - ~3/5 hours each day. I used the Happiness Door in 3 stages as described below for my training especially. Please note that the same framework I did use while delivering the same in-person/classroom mode too. However, since virtual training is a new normal; thought to share the respective experiences.

Stage 1 – At the beginning

I used to onboard the participants into the session (Welcome, Meet and Greet, Introduction, Agenda outline); explained the ‘why’ of the Happiness Door, described the advantage for the participants, and how this feedback practice helps me to conduct a great workshop/training for them.?It made them feel comfortable, relaxed, and let out any negative energy they may have. ?The goal is to listen to all participants and to check the pulse of the group.

To execute these steps, I used the ‘Mural’ tool. Board was configured and the link was shared with all participants.

?Three categories included:

• What are you energized about today?
• What are you anxious about?
• What are you unbiased about?

Once said the exercise was done, core training was kicked off.

Stage 2 – Mid Training (After a Group Exercise & break-out session)

It is important to take an update from the participants on a regular basis. I asked them to fill the Happiness Door again before going for a first break/after a group exercise which is after ~2.5 - 3 hrs into the session. Now I asked the following 3 questions. I wanted to focus a bit more on the session and the content in this instance as I felt it was important for me to structure the rest of the session accordingly.

• Which learnings are you most happy about now?
• Which learnings are you least happy about?
• Which topics need supplementary exploration?

Stage 3 – At the end (Check-out)

I used the Happiness Door exercise to form a coherent wind-up to the session to get an inclusive understanding of how the remote learning session went, what made them happy, sad, and mad about it. The following were the last 3 questions in my 3rd Happiness Door board, and I encourage participants to give feedback about their answers as well.

• ?What did you love about the session?
• What are you puzzled about?
• What are you not happy about?

There were key facts that helped me understand what participants were facing and feeling, and what they were doing to make them happy. I was also able to devise quick strategies to engage with the participants further. For example, I had earlier planned to play an audio-visual for 4-5 minutes but then decided to eliminate it as the level of interaction when playing a video would be not as much of. Instead, I selected to do a group activity in a breakout room creating a case study scenario on the fly. The participants were much more enthused and enjoyed the opportunity to interact and learn from one another.

My Experience:

• The additional cycle of Feedback was removed. Firstly, the L&D team was used to send links post-completion of training, later compile data, and used to share the final results with the concerned parties. As an outcome of the Happiness Door experiment, they are getting data straight from the training which saves overall lead time hence removed less efficient process steps. Thus, I strongly feel that It replaces the traditional feedback method makes it easier to inspect and adapt quickly.
• Reflexive Feedback

One fascinating aftereffect of this method is that it is reflexive. While experimenting with this practice, I have witnessed that the information radiator not only gathers but also influences the feedback of participants. When people give negative feedback, it is likely that more people will do the same. And if the door only shows high ratings, it might make other people feel better. Hence, I suggest making participants comfortable beforehand and explain that it’s good to be genuine instead of getting influenced by other’s feedback/opinions.

• It helps me to understand the pulse of participants - A better idea about how participants are feeling before and during events which gave me an opportunity to react/adapt my workshop content/way of delivery, whenever needed.
• Some participants were a bit hesitant to give feedback, and some people had to get used to the Happiness Door, and some people ignored it first. As a facilitator, I learned that the feedback increased and got better when the group had a facilitated feedback round together.
• As a facilitator, I could immediately identify areas for improvement regarding exercises, understanding of the learning content and could make changes during a session.
• After practicing it for a while, I got to know from participants that they had a better learning experience when using the happiness door in the workshops & Training.
• I got better insights about what is going well and what had to be changed and improved.
• People in my Agile Release Train (ART) gave feedback that they felt more listened to and appreciated.
• It is a great way to alleviate the participants into a session thereby increases engagement.
• It gives me a direction as a trainer on what might need to change in terms of logistics, structure, content, exercises, and the overall feeling about the session
• The participants felt more comfortable, engaged, and loved the opportunity to compare what they feel with what the others in the group are feeling.
• Lastly, I believe that it is a good opportunity to leave the session on a positive note

My Learnings:

• People can leave sticky notes empty and can just place them on the happiness door. With Mural we can be more creative and place emojis or images or draw something to express feelings. This also means more fun for everyone. It is not mandatory to describe the stick. They can be left empty and just placed in the appropriate happiness index. For people, it’s the easiest way to give left.
• Allow anonymous feedback. Not everybody feels comfortable entering a name. For me, the overall feedback is more important than knowing where it comes from.
• Make sure that everybody understands the scale of the happiness index. Define your scale. I also used emojis with the numbers to make the scale clear to all.
• You can ask questions to make feedback more specific.
• Every group has different feedback dynamic, and people behave differently. As a facilitator, I must find out this during the workshop or in a team.
• Though there are various tools available for remote workshops, however, I personally felt that the ‘Mural’ worked fantastically well. I will continue using the same it in the future.
• Niko- Niko calendar practice (One of the other Management 3.0 practices) works well when implemented along with the happiness door.

Next Step:

In the future, I am planning to experiment with the same by introducing a scale (1 - 3/4) to perceive the retort of the people and make feedback unpretentious, for example, a scale of three or four. I think when using a scale of three, there might be a danger that people tend to the middle. Using a scale of 4, people have to decide for good or bad feedback side which is more meaningful. Let’s experiment!

Conclusion:

I believe that Kaizen is one of the most important things in order to run a successful business in today’s VUCA world. And this feedback should be collected easily and instantly, so we can learn and improve at the lightning speed. And last but not least it is fun. Participant does not enjoy filling out long questionnaires but from my experience, they feel always happy when their voice and opinion is heard. They are engaged! The Happiness Door is a very easy, lightweight, fast tool and it cost almost nothing. I passionately recommend & persuade you and your team to give it a try.?It’s definitely worth it.?

If you want to explore/learn more about Happiness Door, you can look at Management 3.0 page at https://management30.com/practice/happiness-door/ .

Please Note:

• The article is prepared & compiled basis on my personal Management 3.0 practice implementation experience/view-only; you may have your own version too.
• As project Happiness Door implementation images are classified; have not been shared/published with this article.
• Mojito Image courtesy - https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/mojito-vector-1291484
• Happiness Door Image courtesy - https://management30.com/practice/happiness-door/
• Article Heading Image from the book Managing for happiness

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