Instead of running more and more employee engagement surveys, why not just start involving employees in problem solving? People like solving problems. If you are a leader, why not coach your employees to work together to solve work problems that are important to them. Don’t solve the problems for them. Help them use their own creativity. Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.
Before you can solve a problem, you have to understand it… And you can’t understand it if you are not sure what the words mean. When we are kids, we think simple and we talk simple. As we grow older, we start learning bigger and bigger words. Some of us are reluctant to ask for clarification for fear of appearing ignorant or unprepared. And sometimes we hide behind complicated language which disguises what we really mean.
Have you noticed that problem generation does not come easily to many people? They prefer to wait for others to surface problems and to take the lead in finding opportunities for improvement and new approaches. This applies to people at all levels of organizations, including leaders.
Would any automobile company try to build a new car without an assembly line? Just dump the parts on the factory floor and say “go to it” to the workers? Of course not. We all know that the assembly line is a necessary part of building a car that actually works.
Are you in an organization in which the leaders understand problem-solving and implementing, but are a bit fuzzy about problem generation and conceptualization? It can be frustrating when you know that the secret of organizational effectiveness requires both efficiency AND adaptability – or in other words, all four of these capabilities. Simply put, many organizations favor efficiency at the expense of adaptability. They become blind to other possibilities.
“Dear Min –Tonight I shared a presentation on your process and a question came up about a team with a dominating personality. How might I encourage the rest of the group and keep the dominator from scaring off the others?” Thanks, Alice
