Many great ideas for what needs to be done or fixed at an organization get suggested. But never in any formal forum - the best ideas often come up when out for drinks, or in furtive cubicle conversations, or other informal venues. The barrier is transferring that "tacit" knowledge of the employees into the formal management structure such that it can be acted upon.
Sometimes an organization doesn't know what it knows. The things that "everybody knows" and regularly complain about are completely invisible to the formal management structure, as nobody dares tell them that information. As such, the decisions made by the management team are lacking key pieces of information. This cycle tends to perpetuate itself, as the decisions made reinforce the idea that the executives are clueless, and therefore unworthy of telling what's going on.
There needs to be a more consistent way for employee disgruntlement or information to flow into the executive suite. Trust has to be built between somebody on the management team and somebody who is trusted by the employees. This communication link also has to go beyond the emotional content of the information (e.g. "our product sucks") to extract the knowledge that can enable better decisions (e.g. "the prototype is failing these tests consistently and we don't know how to fix it").
I once worked at a biotech startup called Signature BioScience. Among other things, we were building an instrument prototype for a partner company. This prototype did not work and did not deliver the desired results. All of the employees knew this. I even wrote an email to our VP of engineering and and VP of applications to explain that we could not deliver the prototype in its present form. However, neither of them wanted to miss the deadline they had promised to the CEO. So the prototype was delivered on schedule. The partner started testing it, quickly determined that it did not meet any of the desired criteria, and was naturally upset.
Admittedly, Signature had numerous issues (it went bankrupt a year later), but that particular situation continues to stick with me as an example of how broken management-employee communication can get. Something that "everybody knew" was somehow excluded from the formal decision-making process.
Trust between management and employees. There is a power imbalance, of course, so employees feel they have to tell management the information being desired, in the hopes of securing good performance reviews and the like. Management also has a tendency to punish those that contradict the official storyline - at the company I mentioned in the illustration, I was denigrated as a trouble maker by the CEO and execs for daring to tell them what many of the employees would say after hours or at lunch.
Reward those who provide new information, even if it's not what you want to hear. Spend the time to learn what they're thinking and what they feel the company is doing wrong (or right). If you're not hearing anything that surprises you, it's probably because you aren't being told things.
This is from my personal experience.
I think just about everybody's had that experience of pulling the blinds down on what "everybody knows" inside a company. You've really fleshed out the barrier, so here's a thought on a fix. It seems to me that the organizations that are the most successful when it comes to surfacing both the "hidden genius" and the "useful protests" (as you say, specific complaints or insights vs. "this company sucks") do two things:
1) the leaders of those organizations are quick to declare that they're not the smartest people in the room, that, in fact, they know the least and have everything to learn from their people and the wider world (not only do they say this, they tend to mean it!). Dan Wieden of Wieden + Kennedy told me his job was to "walk in stupid"--to be open to what's changed, what he doesn't know, what he could learn.
2) they create a container or a mechanism for those "complaints" or insights that drains them of emotional and political content and just makes them a contribution to the overall project of the organization. You can find a great example of both of these right here on the MIX in the story of Jim Lavoie and Rite Solutions (http://www.managementexchange.com/content//nobody%E2%80%99s-smart-everyb...). Rite Solutions created an internal stock market for ideas (from far-out proposals for new business lines to small-scale cost improvements). They added a mechanism they call "Penny Stocks" to the market--which is management's way of getting a read on the temperature of the organization around any particular issue. This is just one way to do it. Another mechanism I learned from the legendary exec coach Marshall Goldsmith is the: Stop Doing/Start Doing/Keep Doing list. He works with a bunch of leaders who ask their people those three questions: what should I/we stop doing, start doing, keep doing? Whether you do that in a monthly meeting, online, or one-to-one, it tends to surface a lot of the what's working and what's not working. Along these lines, I'd love to see a hack around the "what's broken" meeting. What if you could create a positive and productive ritual where you invited each person on a team to offer up the "one thing I would fix if I ran the world/company"--give each person 90 seconds to elucidate, record the proceedings, share widely, report on progress. Could be a monthly ritual. Would be curious to hear more about what fixes you think might work.
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Hey this is good stuff. I might add persistence to this MIX. I expect the first time it happens, the public conversation may feel a little, awkward...? Typically organisations that try this kind of working often get poor results the first or even second and third time they try it. Takes time to build connectedness and trust. All too often these early failures are enough to reinforce the doubting minds that didn't want to do this in the first place. So people who encourage these projects need to stick with it.
Practice makes perfect, or something like that.
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Making the conversation public is one courageous way to drive out fear. Great leaders "manage" this uncomfortable challenge in the spirit of these of Deming's principles,
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles
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Love the concept, and there's probably room on both sides of the conversation for improvement. I am not a fan of anonymous feedback and always encourage folks that I've managed and mentored to be open and honest. Too often managers don't want to listen, especially to bad news or a different point of view. This requires for management to be visibly open to critique, and also to walk the walk given they are in the "power" position. It requires that they set the right tone and "allow" dissent to be ok if done productively. Which leads me to the build for employees. Offering critique or new information must be thought through and understood from the perspective of the receiver. You must recognize you don't have all the info, and that management isn't often as dumb as you think they are. Think through your feedback and make it productive / constructive - rather than just complaints without solutions, and it will be better received. The more management can create an environment of openness and listening, the more they can teach employees how to be productive with feedback in a non-anonymous manner.
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Sadly, research (Plowman, Oliver et al) on innovation is increasingly showing why this and associated barriers surrounding trust and fear issues in medium to large organisations are more embedded in the organisational DNA that many might realise. This is demonstrable at both cause and effect levels. Cause levels surround the nature of "alpha" individuals gaining ascendency in these organisations due to conventional management selection processes and at the effect level through the performance management processes, all of which are aimed to choosing and rewarding the strongest, not the smartest. This results in the alpha personality type being way over-represented in middle to upper management. thes people by nature spend significant effort defending their organisational "territory" first, then fitting the organisation's outcomes in sencondarily. Innovation does not run well with territorial players, particularly if there is any hint of threat to territory involved, however they will run the mantra to ensure their survival.
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I agree we've got to build trust, and I think lower expectation of others perfection ( or accept that mistakes are part of life).
I've found the hardest thing is learning from the error, but forgiving it.
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The best way to learn about the conversations is to be invisible. How do you do it in real life? Create a site where employees can offer comments on an anonymous mode. Have a group of moderators who keep looking at these comments and reply simultaneously. Take the details of the issues that are being posted and ask the relevant Head of Department / Group to respond / react. Let the argument go on without any personal attacks. Very soon, the truth will be visible for all to see.
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Get close to operating personnel, many times they have the best ideas to solve some problems.
Don't underestimate the knowledge of people with hands-on experience.
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Very interesting take on a common problem organizations of all sizes and industries can relate to.
I agree that the power imbalance can be the achilles heel that hampers and, at times, extinguishes creative input to shared challenges.
Just think back over the past 48 hours and recall a conference call or meeting where a presenter or manager asked the group "does anyone have any questions or thoughts on this matter they wish to share with the team?" Invariably you will hear from the same core of voices or perhaps just deafening silence! Why is this?
Is the root cause the perceived power imbalance or could it be TRUST?
I think if we shift our focus more toward trusting and honing our own judgment / convictions and place less emphasis on who may "hang us out to dry," we're likely to realize a renewed focus and understanding of our own true motives for wanting to change the status quo. This, in my opinion, is the more important and sustaining element required to build a foundation for creative input by all stakeholders.
In other words, we should aspire to have the courage of our convictions and convey them in a professional manner. The only way to affect the outcome is to get in the game.
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An approach that I believe has quite a bit of merit (and proven success) is that of Zappo's. Tony Hsieh's book 'Delivering Happiness' spells out an excellent roadmap for building a culture of trust and employee ownership in my opinion. I actually ordered Zappo's Employee Culture Guide (it's free to order on their site) and highly recommend this to anyone attempting to build a transparent organization. The employees are given absolutely no restrictions in what they wish to write and include as part of the annual document and Zappo's. Some of the entries are quite bizarre but what else would you expect from a company like this. I also love that Zappo's is willing to expose their company blogs to anyone interested in them. Really takes a confident approach for a company to do this.
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