Talking to the void

You may have noticed a drop off in my regular flow of blogs - I have all the usual excuses .. too much to do, working away, living in hotels, a new computer etc. But truth be told I've become a little dispirited of late with my blogging as its become a bit too much like talking to the 'void' .. putting out your thoughts into cyberspace with little or no feedback. Net result a tail off.,

Now I don't think I'm alone in this. Too many of us work in organisation where we get little or no feedback. It gets so we'd rather hear something, even if it is negative, rather than nothing. Net result .. a gradual disillusionment and disengagement from the organisation.

In my experience, really excellent organisations have mastered the art of 'little and often' feedback, telling people what they are doing right as well as what they are doing wrong as they go along.  Net result .. mistakes get corrected quickly and the positives get reinforced, but best of all we feel like we matter.

So would it really be so hard to press the 'like' button?

Asking questions in change

I was talking last week with an HR Director who does an exceptional job at managing change in his organisation. "It is simple really" he said, "as soon as you grasp that change means loosing some degree of control then all you have to do is get really creative to help people feel back in the driving seat. Probably the most immediate way of doing this is to help people to ask the question they really want to ask ---then work really hard to get them an answer ".

This is an organisation who takes this sort of process really seriously - they regularly track employee queries and can tell you how they are doing responding to them. Its not that the employee necessarily gets the answer they want to hear, but at least they have the certainty of being heard.

Simple maybe but very effective.