How many times have we wrestled with a problem for days, weeks, or even months only to come up short on a solution? As the days drag on and the solution doesn’t present itself, it becomes pretty frustrating. We diligently search, rack our brains, and even pray for the solution, but it just doesn’t come.
New York City is an incredible place to work. The energy and vibrancy are unique and exciting. For six straight months, I flew there and traveled to midtown to work for a client. At first, I was apprehensive because I wasn’t sure I would like to live in the big city. But I actually loved it. Would I want to raise a family of 10 there? No. Not only would it be quite cramped, but it would be very expensive.
For all that I loved about NYC, I didn’t love the taxi cabs. Don’t get me wrong, I was very thankful for them because I could get anywhere I needed to be quickly, but sometimes it was a bit too quick. And a bit too smelly. But I was thankful that they worked so well.
My questions were during those rides were, “Why is this seat so broken down? Why are the cabbies so gruff? Am I really going to live to see my destination?”
The NYC cabby system has been around for over 200 years. In fact, it still works pretty much the same way in all major metropolitan areas. Regulated by the government, the cab companies buy a “medallion” for each vehicle to operate. At one point in NYC, the cost of each medallion was over one million dollars, collectively bringing in billions of dollars of revenue for the city. It was at this point that I was using the cabs there.
Now think about it. Can someone seriously challenge over 200 years of not only tradition but of government regulation? Do you realize what challenges someone would have to overcome to become the king of the cabbie hill?
Before we get into the obvious solution, I want to say one thing about disruption. It amazes me how often we take for granted the way in which we live our lives. We were taught one way of accomplishing a task and we do it. That is until we find that there are other ways that we had never thought of before. Often it is an epiphany spurred by a new experience where we ask, “Can you really do that? Is that even a thing?”
Essentially what is happening is that someone else is playing a completely different “game” than we were playing. Maybe it was because that is how they were raised or how they were taught. But maybe it was because they asked new questions.
This is what happened in the NYC cabbie scene. Now I know Uber is quite an overused example, but because it is so familiar, I’ll use it again. It seems many others felt the same way I did about the cabbies, but they looked at it with different questions than I did.
Some of the questions that might have been asked could have been, “Is this the best way to get around NYC? Could there be another way where cabbies are not even part of the picture? Would government regulations stifle any attempt at a new solution? Can I play a new game where neither cabbie nor government regulation is ready for and, thus, allow me to set the rules?”
Which is exactly what Uber did. They played by a new game and completely disrupted billions of dollars of the city’s revenue. They did it by asking new questions. I could imagine the questions went something like this…
“If I can give a ride to a friend without the city charging me, is that illegal? What if a bunch of friends started giving their friends rides? What if I considered everyone my friend and started giving anyone a ride? But how would I find friends that needed rides? And what if my friends wanted to start giving their friends rides like I was? Is there a way I could help these friends give rides to their new friends?”
Because of careful questions like these, Uber was born. They started playing a completely new game with new rules. And the new game took the cabbie industry and government officials by surprise.
Still, potential customers had questions. “Why would I take a ride with a complete stranger in a strange car? How can I be sure they won’t take me under some bridge and murder me?” As Uber started to gain popularity and as I talked with friends about the company, these were actual questions people asked in our conversations. Rather than answer them with an answer and try to convince them, I asked them one simple question. “How is that any different than getting in a car with a cabbie?” Each time I asked that question I was met with stunned silence. They suddenly realized that they were doing those things already with cabbies and yet had complete faith in them. If they were doing it with them, why wouldn’t they do it with someone else? This totally changed the way they viewed the situation.
Sometimes, the solution to a vexing problem can be found if we only ask the right questions.
Your success is directly influenced by the quality of the questions you ask.
As I speak to groups and consult with business leaders, when I ask, “What is the purpose of asking a question,” the overwhelming answer is, “To learn information.”
But is it really?
One of my family’s favorite games we play together and with guests at our home is called the Question Game. Here’s how it works…
Everyone sits in chairs in a circle. This circle at times can be quite large, especially since my wife and I have eight children and anyone added to that circle can really fill up a room. One person is designated as the king/queen. The person to their left is the dunce. The object of the game is to become the king or queen and hold that position.
The game starts off when the king/queen asks another member of the circle a question. It can be any question they want, but they have to look at one specific person to make sure that they received the question that was directed at them. After the first question is asked, the receiver can turn to any member of the circle and ask another question. The question does not need to be related to the first – it can be any question they would like except a question already asked in the same round. This repeats in rapid succession until someone accidentally repeats a question, hesitates too long, or answers the question instead of asking another question.
When someone breaks a rule, they are “out” and they must get up and move to the dunce chair. Everyone else moves up one chair closer to the king/queen to make room for the new dunce.
It seems like a very elementary game – one too simple to work. But it is a lot of fun. And, for many people, very difficult.
All you need to do is ask a question – any question. It doesn’t matter what it is. Why is the sky blue? Why do birds chirp? What is your favorite food? How long do you think the hair in your nose will grow?
What could be difficult about this simple game? It is difficult because it flies in the face of our human nature. Whenever someone asks you a question, you are trained to find the answer and relay it back. It is just what we do. And we are really good at it.
Why is the sky blue? Chances are, your mind just now quickly thought of an answer. What is your favorite food? You probably saw an image of that food and could taste it in your mouth. You have an almost mamilistic drive to answer. So in the Question Game, when you can’t answer, it runs against your very nature and can easily mentally throw you off.
The offending person in the game inherits the dunce chair usually in one of two ways. First, when the question is asked, the person accidentally answers the question. Sometimes they try to cover it up with a question following quickly behind, but others catch it.
“How are you?”
“Fine. What is your name.”
They are out. Answers don’t belong in this game.
The second way someone gets out is that when a question is asked, they hesitate before delivering their answer. If they are smart about it, everyone has their next question in their mind ready for delivery the moment they are asked a question. Then why would they hesitate? It’s because when they are asked their mind immediately wants to answer. For some people, this innate impulse is so strong that they constantly hesitate too long and visit the dunce seat more than the others.
I have learned to take advantage of this phenomenon and have come up with a question that unsuspecting new players to our game almost always break on. They are questions that naturally force the recipient to answer in their heads before they ask another question.
“Did you know that the next person you ask a question to will also be the person you like the least in this circle?”
What does this do? It forces them to answer the question, “Who do I like least in this circle,” and they start looking around. Naturally, they must follow it up with the realization that they can’t ask anyone their question because it will communicate to the whole group that they are the least liked – and everyone is watching who they will ask! So they hesitate, wanting to ask another question but knowing that the moment they ask a question of someone, they have essentially answered the question at the same time and will have offended that person. Then their mind races for ways to make this work without offending yet being able to ask another question. By the time they go through this mental exercise, everyone calls them out on hesitating too long and pronounces them as the new dunce.
When a question is asked, we are hard-wired to answer it by natural instinct. We may not say the answer out loud, but we at least think it.
This is one reason why bad mental self-talk is so damaging. “That was a stupid move. Why did I do that? ” Your mind will now look for the answer. “It’s because I’m not as good as the others are. I don’t have the experience. They are better than I am.” When you ask yourself a degrading question, your mind will find an equally degrading answer.
But it is also a key to mind control. Wait – What? Am I saying you can control someone’s mind using questions? Actually, in a way, yes.
When you ask a question, the person to whom it was directed (and oftentimes those within earshot) will look for an answer. You have naturally forced them to think about what you wanted them to think of.
Now, is that real mind control? No. But it gets us thinking: Can questions be used for more than just learning information? Can it be used to guide someone down a mental path that you have chosen? It sure can. But more on that later…
I was a consultant at NASA in Huntsville, Alabama for six years. This picture is a sight I would see every day as I went in to work. During that time social media was at the beginning stages of becoming mainstream and using social technologies in the workplace for business objectives was a brand new thought. My job was to get NASA not only onboard, but help change the culture to accept the new way of working.
By extension of my role, I was also seen as the default social media expert.
A woman called me up and asked if she could meet with me. The manager of her team said they needed a team Twitter account and to ask me how to get it started.
My first questions was, “Why does your manager want your team to have a Twitter account?”
“So we can tweet out what we are doing.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“Because my manager said we should.” I could tell this line of questioning wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I went along with the assumption that they needed a Twitter account. We went with it for a minute and I made a suggestion.
“We can’t do that! ” she replied.
“Why not?”
“Because they won’t allow us.”
“Why not?”
“Because that is what management said. They never have let us.”
“But why not?”
“They would have a coronary if we asked them. They just won’t allow it.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said, “Why not?”
By this time I was trying to turn this into a teaching moment and remain calm, despite their building anger and their inability to get past the “because they said so” syndrome. The more I questioned her, the more exasperate she became; how I dare challenge the invisible barrier that had always been there!
My questioning continued. Eventually, I suggested that she question the management’s decision to have a Twitter account. To clarify, I gave a related example. One of the requirements I had for the project I was working on was the ability to access the system from home without VPN.
Before I finished the story, she laughed and said, “Yeah, I know the security group. They would never allow that.”
“They already have,” I said. Her face drowned in disbelief. “They freaked out when I first suggested it,” I said, “and even for months afterwards, but they did it because I kept asking ‘why.’ Why can’t they access it from home? They gave me many excuses, each of which faded away when we critically looked at the reason. They were just told that this was the way it was and never had never before questioned why.” She was beside herself but also learned that there were some barriers worth questioning.
After more discussion agreed that Twitter was not a good tool for the team to use in this context. The only reason they wanted to do it was because everyone else was doing it and it was seen as a “cool” thing to do. In the end, I think my “WHY?” questions broke her down.
As we left the meeting we ran into one of her colleagues. ”We are not going to use Twitter,” she told him.
“But they told us they wanted us to use Twitter! Why won’t we?” the colleague shot back.
She looked at me and smiled, knowing what I would have said at that moment.
She replied, “I’ll explain it to you later.”
At that moment, I realized asking the question why over and over again changed not only the direction of effort for an entire team, but saved them from eventual frustration and failure. That one-word question made her dive deep into evaluating the team’s goal, stripping away the surface level reasons to expose the deeper motivations and eventual outcomes behind their request.
It was then that I truly started to realize the power of an expertly asked question.
Ever since then, WHY has become my favorite question.
Early in my career, I was in charge of managing twenty-plus part-time computer engineers. We had a good group, but one of them needed to be fired. I don’t remember why, but I do remember that he needed to go. This was my first time taking disciplinary action on an employee. The HR department was located in a different state and no matter how much I talked with them, they couldn’t understand the urgency we had to fire this individual. They outlined the process which I was required to follow but I grew impatient. The process was taking too long and that it was too cumbersome. This employee needed to go and – for reasons I don’t remember – needed to go quickly.
So I took some shortcuts to speed up the processes. It was all legal, just not according to the wishes of the HR manager, my main contact – and it was done in a way that she didn’t see the shortcuts. Until she did.
Suddenly, not only did I have an upset HR manager, but the process was slowed down again. On top of it, I thought I was going to get into trouble. Not so much that I would be fired, but it wasn’t looking good.
A little freaked out and frazzled, I ran into my boss’s office and frantically relayed the story.
“Slow down Kevin,” he said. “Hold on a second. Let me ask you a couple questions.”
“OK.”
“Whatever you did, will it make it so the RedSox won’t win the world series?”
Totally confused, I hesitantly replied, “No.”
“Will it make it so my girls won’t be able to go to college?”
“Of course not.”
“Then everything will be just fine. It isn’t that big of a deal. We’ll figure out how to take care of it.”
With two quick questions, my view of the world changed. Whereas I thought my life was in jeopardy one second, the next brought a clarity of thought – an assurance that he was right, everything would be just fine. It was just another challenge in life I would face, but there wasn’t a need to be bent out of shape.
This was the moment my fascination with questions – and the impact they can have – began.
Our success is directly influenced by the quality of the questions we ask.
Questions are an undervalued tool. What questions we ask and how we ask them can dramatically change the course of our lives and those around us – family, work, friends. They can lead people to action and change, or push them to apathy and ambivalence.
This is the introduction to the video series that will explore the Art of the Question.
Gap analysis is simple enough. You take the current state vs. the future desired or potential state, and compare them. Then you figure out what it will take to go from the current to the future state, put it in a plan and execute.
What\’s so hard about that? Nothing. That\’s why it is used so often as a good tool to improve.
But a gap analysis is very limiting at the same time.
Why? First you have to be real about your current state. Most companies assume they know what the current state is, that they intuitively know. Having worked with many groups I have found that they think they know, but the real state lies in a deeper, unexplored universe. Even if they have the \”number to prove it,\” often the numbers are an indication of the \”what\” instead of the \”why.\”
Because of this, most gap projects start off on the wrong foot.
The next, and more threatening aspect is that we set the future in stone. To be held accountable we must have an end date, an end budget, an end state. If not, we could get scope creep, overblown budgets, and the threat of spending a lot of time, money and effort and not getting anything accomplished. And although we understand this need, this is also a real threat.
Here is the reality: although we set the future in stone, it really isn\’t. The future is ambiguous.
Because of this, most of us set our outcomes too low and in a direction that is foreseeable when in reality the potential can\’t be known and just might blow our current expectations out of the water! Yet too often we hold fast and don\’t let the unexpected, the happy coincidence to shine and reveal itself because it is a natural threat to our set-in-stone future outcome.
Projects, like life, are a future we make along the way. The analogy might be a bit threatening, but we are flying the plane as we build it.
The ideal would be to have a goal and work in that direction yet be able to work in an ambiguous environment and be flexible and open enough to recognize an alternate future along the way.
Doing this will allow us to be held accountable to outcomes, gives us motivation, yet not miss the possible better future unknown state.
There are things that come along – whether it be a movie, an image, a piece of music, a video – that you look at and it automatically resonates with you. You feel a strong connection to it. For good or for not so good.
You are a part of it; you have felt that; you know exactly – to a deep level – what it is trying to get across.
Why? Because you have lived it – or maybe are living it today
When you find these you want to hang on to them, share them, and help others come to the same understanding.
This is how I felt when I saw Simon Terry\’s flowchart explaining What To Think When. I loved it so much that I created another Business Practices That Refuse To Die video of it.
It hits the nail on the head that sometimes organizations regulate what their employees think.
It\’s a great flowchart, right?!
The lesson? If we give employees room to think, they will come up with thoughts that will amaze us. They are capable of so much more than they are currently contributing – and they want to contribute more!
If I were to ask you, “How is your job?” What would you say?
Do you love it? Is it just OK? Do you feel there is something more but you are stuck? Have you avoided thinking about it? Or do you know someone who is having a hard time enjoying their job?
I think we all do.
Having interviewed hundreds of employees, I have seen the pain – and it’s real. It negatively affects all other parts of your life.
But it doesn’t need to be a pain! It can be one of the most exhilarating things you do!
LOVE YOUR WORK CHALLENGE
This free set of challenges will help anyone who works in an area or in a way that weighs on them rather then excites them. It will help them be masters of their work, not just be order takers of their career.
If you are stuck or need a lift, join the challenge! Or if you know someone who is struggling, challenge them.
How does it work?
Each Monday morning you will receive a challenge for the week. The challenges aren’t complicated, but they won’t always be easy, either. They are designed to stretch you a bit and help you love your work again.
I dare you. You have nothing to lose except confusion, frustration, and that drowning, stagnant feeling.
NOTE FOR MANAGERS: This free program is perfect for employees. It does not encourage them to quit and do something else. Rather, it helps them explore what they love and how they best work and then encourages them to work that way. Those who go through this challenge will have a more clear purpose and help them love their work. By natural extension, they will be more effective in their work and more proactive in making positive changes. Feel free to forward this to your employees so they can take the challenge.
“I’m so excited to answer the employee survey!” said no one. Ever.
Geraldo Rivera’s opening of Al Capone’s vaults. The aliens at the end of Indiana Jones IV. Pets.com iPhone SE Employee surveys
These are all huge disappointments. (Well, huge if you were really excited about Al Capone’s vaults.) But let’s talk about the last.
There is a resounding, unanimous cry from employees that the venerable annual survey is a huge disappointment. Year after year after year after…
You know it. I know it. Let’s call it what it is.
As I have interviewed and talked with thousands of employees I hear the same reasons. This list of why employee surveys suck your soul comes from them — the employees. The simple and obvious reasons are first, progressing to the less obvious and more impactful.
Photo via Visualhunt.com
1) Low Frequency
Most companies do an annual survey. Very few do it biannually. One company I recently talked to does it every three years!
Imagine checking your weight only once a year. “Man, I knew I had gained some pounds, but I didn’t realize it was this bad!” Or checking your bank account once a year. “Really? I don’t have any money left? No wonder these checks have been bouncing since April.”
Finances are measured daily. Call times, sales, revenue, production, quality and so many more factors — these are measured and reported on often. Sometimes several times a day, if not weekly.
But culture — something critical to a company’s success — is only checked once a year?! That doesn’t make sense.
Yet, it is understandable to a degree. How can a company effectively measure its culture or employee engagement without spending huge amounts of resources? (The answer is to come…)
Photo via Visualhunt.com
2) Way Too long
We live in a world of texting, tweets, and a low tolerance for interruptions with little value. We like quick, short bursts of information and want to respond the same way.
But when we fill out a survey we are asked to take 20 minutes (on the low end) out of our day that actually turns into double the amount of time. All that for an interruption that, according to employees, is of low worth. Why? See #5 below.
No wonder volunteer response rates are often below 20% when not forced!
What we need is response at the speed of texting. Make it quick, short, and to the point, and then be done.
Photo credit: JD Hancock via Visual hunt
3) They don’t identify what is important
I once reviewed yearly survey results with the director of a large department of over 500 employees. The wall of the conference room was covered with the results, printed in large type. The numerical analysis he did was impressive. He identified the questions that had low scores or changes from the year before that were in the negative.
Speaking about one result he said, “This one worries me. I don’t have a clue what to do with this one.”
“Does it matter?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“If this score is low do you care? Is it OK that this didn’t hit high marks? If you ignored this issue, would it severely limit your team’s effectiveness?”
He thought about it for a minute and realized that, no, this question and result didn’t matter. So from there we went and took out all the scores that didn’t have a large impact on his organization.
Unfortunately, we assume that because we measure it, it must be important. For some it may be, but for others it may not. We must be careful and identify and work with only those issues that will make a significant difference.
Photo credit: dougbelshaw on Visualhunt.com | CC BY-SA
4) Employees don’t see survey results
Not in their true form. Instead, what they are shown is a version of the results that management wants to present to them. Unfortunately, too many times they are watered down and only present the best of the company. The negative results that can’t be ignored are given a positive spin.
Not that positive spin is inherently bad. I’m all for looking at the possibilities and trying to make things better. But it needs to be filled with soul and should be honest. Too often, attempts to show negative results lack both of these characteristics.
And think about this: The employees give, but there isn’t a return. To them it’s giving of their valuable time and getting nothing in return.
Photo credit: Javier A Bedrina< via Visualhunt.com | CC BY-ND
5) Lack of meaningful action from management
“It’s the flavor of the year.” This was the response from one employee recently when I asked, “Someone mentioned (name of company-wide initiative). What is it?”
Employees understand the pattern: Take the survey. See watered down results. Management creates a new program and aggressively pushes it. This becomes the new mantra. It runs out of steam. It’s forgotten and never talked about again. Next year, rinse and repeat.
Should we bash management for such an atrocity? No! Leaders of an organization, in my estimation, have too much to do — too much weight is on their shoulders.
But there is something we can blame: The culture and expectations of the modern organization, namely: Point #6…
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6) Assuming that only management can make significant change
As I stated in this post, managers have control and it has been assumed that turning over control to employees is dangerous.
But what if we were able to give the information to employees and allow them to act? What if they held as much of the responsibility to create positive change as did the management? (see Insourced Management)
Sure, some companies have “empowerment programs” that mimic the transfer of control. But it is usually done within strict guidelines. For example, one company I worked with was hesitant to let employees work remotely. After much pressure they decided to give it a trial run.
To kick it off they laid down the guidelines (against my best advice): you can only do it one time every other week at most; your manager and your manager’s manager must approve it; you must give a detailed report of what you did the day you worked remotely. Your manager must review the report and decide if you can continue.
Guess how many took advantage of working from home? Almost no one. Why? It had to be done in a way that was contrary to it’s nature. Eventually, the company saw the low numbers of those who tried remote and decided that the employees didn’t want it after all, which was not the case. That’s like your mother handing you a piece of the chocolate cake you have been begging for and saying, “Enjoy it. But you can only eat it through your nose.”
What if we gave power to the employees to make positive changes? Not just in word, but in reality by changing the system? Without the data, employees are not sure where to direct their efforts.
If employees can see the data they can take action not only immediately, but also within the context of their work and make a positive change. As that takes hold, it spreads. Pretty soon we have broad change initiatives coming from from the bottom up — from all over the company instead of just the top down.
Photo via Visualhunt.com
7) It isn’t anonymous
“We took the survey and were honest. Things were not good. A month later a few of us were singled out to go through a program about the very thing we were honest about. From then on we never gave our honest opinions.”
Eyes roll when an employee hears, “It’s anonymous.” Because they know it isn’t. There is always a way to single out employees and find out who said what.
Photo credit: waferboard via VisualHunt.com
8) Assumes individual blame
“Individual blame” is actually the technical term for the practice of blaming the individuals in a system for failure rather than the deficiencies of the system itself.
In other words, when we get survey responses back we are accustomed to asking questions such as, “Why aren’t the employees’ behavior falling in line with what we have told them it should be?” or “What is it about the employees that they don’t like the program?”
Instead, we should be asking, “What is it about the system(s) (program, organization, process) that makes it difficult for the employees to do what we have asked them to do?” This is labeled as “system blame,” when we look at and deal with the environment rather than the individual.
Because, as we all know, put an event speaker on stage who has incredible content but is dry and monotone and the audience will fall asleep and learn little. But add some dynamic elements, humor, some video and interaction with the audience, the same content is not only consumed by the audience, it is devoured and is remembered and applied over a much longer period. The final results of each scenario are polar opposites.
Photo via VisualHunt.com
9) Survey’s are not designed for employees
We may not have thought of it from a design perspective, but when you think about it, it’s obvious: Surveys are not for the employee, they are designed for the executives. It assumes that management is the consumer and the employees are the producer. That’s almost a given, right?
But following that train of thought, the producer should give the consumer what he wants. And, often times I have been told, the employees only say what they want the managers to hear, if they say anything at all.
There isn’t a reason an employee would want to respond, other than the force that may come from their supervisor. If employees can get away with it, both quality and quantity will suffer.
The way we do it now, we put a bottleneck on both of these characteristics and then get bent out of shape when only 20% of employees respond, and many of them gave garbage answers just to get through the survey quickly.
What if we changed the producer/consumer assumption? What if we said that the employee is both the producer and the consumer? If we want the producer to produce more quantity and better quality, we need to design the process of giving feedback to allow the producers to want to produce quality and quantity. Otherwise, like a bad stomach bug, they will throw up whatever is forced upon them.
In addition, if they know they are producing it for themselves, they will care about the quality of the goods.
If we design a feedback mechanism in a way that employees want to respond and it delivers the results not only to management, but also to the employees themselves, think about the end result! More quality feedback given to more people who can make lasting changes. In the end this means real results.
REINVENTION
Even though we know these 9 points to be true, why haven’t we done anything to correct them? It’s because it isn’t easy — it’s hard. The answer isn’t obvious nor is it staring us in the face. We need to look hard for the solution. It will take test and trial and hours of thinking of scenarios and designing something that will work for both employees and management.
Over the last few years this is exactly what I have done. And the result is viaPing.
It is first designed for employees’ use — to be a quick, consistent feedback mechanism that gives the employee and management access to the data to make rapid changes to their respective areas. It gives a natural reward for responding (seeing yesterday’s results) and allows everyone to focus their efforts on what matters most for them.
Employees now have a reason to care. And when they care, we will find solutions, innovations, and hidden insights we have never seen before.
viaPing replaces the 9 soul sucking characteristics above with…
1) It happens every work day. 2) Responding is faster than a text. 3) Participants can say what is important to them. 4) Employees will see the previous day’s responses. 5) If management doesn’t act, that’s OK. Employees can act now that they have the data. 6) It can be proven anonymous. 7) See #5. 8) Because employees see the results, they can look at both individual and system blame more clearly. 9) It is designed for the employee as a producer and consumer. 10) It simply works. Simply.
Do you realize how frustrating it is to be colorblind?! Do you know how many times my family says to me, “Dad! Go put on a new shirt. You look like a clown.” It isn’t the clothes, it is how I wear them. In fact, it hurts other’s eyes just looking at me sometimes.
But as much as I try, I can’t tell the difference between colors! As we watched the 4th of July fireworks recently, I guessed at what colors they were (which, before I never realized there were colors involved). The kids laughed as I got them all wrong.
For example, I don’t see a difference between the two pictures above. Now, given that, try to match your clothes, or not burn meat on the BBQ, or try to even recognize that your child has a sunburn. It doesn’t work.
But what does this have to do with Employee Engagement?
Confusing terms
Accountability & Responsibility Schizophrenic & multi-personality Green & Red & Orange & Brown (if you are colorblind)
These are terms we often confuse. We use one word when we really mean another. Most of the time it’s harmless.
But when we are talking about workplace satisfaction & engagement we need to be very careful to understand the difference. We must be able to tell the difference and see clearly. And I’d say we are unknowingly misled by some of the big players. (More on that later.)
Confusing these two terms can really frustrate the leaders of companies. They are going for increased engagement to slow the number of employees exiting the company, for example, but create incentives and programs that only create satisfaction.
The result? Retention doesn’t get better and they can’t figure out why. Then they get frustrated that their efforts aren’t working and they give up. Or worse, they say that all this “employee engagement stuff” is a gimmick.
I’ve seen this happen time and time again. But then they are forced into trying to do something — anything. So more of these programs are created — not really trying to improve employee engagement, but more as a checkbox to say, “Hey, we tried.” That’s when you know a group is defeated.
It’s like being colorblind. We don’t know what we are missing, except we know there is something else there. We think we are seeing our situation clearly, yet in reality it is quite incorrect. And then we give up and wear mismatched clothes.
The difference between Satisfaction and Engagement
To begin to understand the difference between these two terms we need to learn about the work of Fredric Herzberg. He created the two-factor theory (also known as the motivation-hygiene theory). In a simplified nutshell, part of the theory states that the opposite of sadness is not happiness, but rather no sadness. The opposite of dissatisfaction is not satisfaction, but rather no satisfaction. The opposite of disengagement is not engagement, but no engagement. It makes us aware of a third choice — a middle ground of neutrality we don’t usually recognize.
Apply this thinking to employee engagement programs within our companies and what do we get? A present day scenario we live over and over again:
They have a workforce which is disengaged. They try to engage them by putting in new programs. Unbeknownst to the leadership, these programs will only satisfy employees, not engage them, but they call them engagement programs because they confuse the terms and don’t know the difference. So when the results they are looking for (which are the results of engagement) don’t happen they think the program failed or the employees just aren’t appreciative enough of the leadership’s efforts.
In reality the program did exactly what it was designed to do: satisfy.
The Three States of an Employee
There are three employee states: Dissatisfaction, Satisfaction, and Engagement. (Another way to look at it is Disengaged, Not Engaged, and Engaged. But the nomenclature here is important — it will help us distinguish our actions and their effectiveness.) When the leadership of an organization sees a problem they are usually looking at dissatisfaction: disgruntled employees who don’t put in a hard day’s work or who just don’t live up to the potential (read performance) they have. They are apathetic, slothful or just plain ambivalent.
So what does the leadership say? “Let’s get our employees engaged!” Then they put in programs which will take them to the next stage: Satisfaction. These programs are recognition programs, extra time off, bonuses, employee of the month, a company newsletter, better communication, etc. These programs don’t engage them, but they do make it so they aren’t dissatisfied any more. At this point, satisfaction and engagement are confused.
Satisfaction is much like limbo-land. Employees aren’t happy, but they don’t hate work, either. It’s mediocrity at its finest. You can’t fire them, but they aren’t living up to their potential.
The third state, Engagement, happens only when the Satisfaction state is fulfilled. You can look at it much like the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. You can’t go from Dissatisfied to Engagement without taking care of Satisfaction. Although the Satisfaction state doesn’t create engaged employees, you still need it as a base to create an engaged workforce.
Once that base is there you can start on things that truly engage employees. Things like trust, ensuring employees are working on something that challenges them and that they value, ability to fail without retribution, control over their work, and accomplishing hard things. These things engage employees.
Why aren’t we doing Engagement?
I recently had a director of a large, worldwide company call me. She mentioned that they are consistently rated one of the best places to work in the United States. But they are in a war for talent right now and they needed to be on top of their game. They have engagement programs in place and they are obviously doing something right.
“But when we heard your keynote about the 11 Secrets of Engaged Employees at the conference,” she told me, “My VP and I came to the same understanding: The programs we had in place weren’t helping employee engagement. They were nice and they were good, but if we wanted to do true engagement and win the war on talent, we had to focus on different characteristics.”
Why do we see so many programs focus on this lower level of employee intervention? The kind that only creates Satisfaction? It’s because of Parkinson’s Law of Triviality which states that, “…members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.” In other words, we tend to focus on the things that are the easiest and put off dealing with the difficult, complicated issues. In fact, we often try to do the easy things, hoping it will take care of the more complex ones.
Think about it. How many times have you put on a movie for your small child who was acting poorly? Sure, it calmed her for the time being, but it didn’t take care of the issue. In fact, it probably made it worse!
For example, how are you going to increase trust in your organization? A new company newsletter won’t cut it. It’s not something you can assign as a task. It is something that needs to be studied, measured, analyzed and creatively thought about by several people. It will take time and a great deal of effort.
When we go from the state of Dissatisfaction to Satisfaction, we are striving not to suck. It isn’t until we go from Satisfaction to Engagement that we are striving to be awesome.
Now, here is my claim — and please, prove me otherwise: the big boys are unknowingly misleading us.
For example, Gallup has arguably the largest, most oft quoted study on employee engagement. You know, the one that says that 70% of all US employees are disengaged? Their version of the three stages of employees is Actively Disengaged, Disengaged, and Engaged. Using these terms leads us to believe that if we can just move the employees out of the disengaged stage, they will be engaged. In actuality, no they won’t! They will not be disengaged, but they won’t be engaged, either.
Did you catch that?
Companies like this aren’t exactly measuring engagement.
In the “Gallup’s Q12”, they ask 12 questions. After looking at the list, five of them only measure satisfaction. (And there are others that don’t measure engagement, but I could understand why they are being asked.) I would contend that these particular questions reflect things that don’t lead to true engagement. Sure, some need to be there for engagement to happen (as part of the Satisfaction stage), but it is still only measuring Satisfaction.
(Giving Gallup their due credit, I can see how overall this measures engagement. But each question taken individually does not.)
My point is not to dig on Gallup, but rather to make sure we understand that having a best friend at work or receiving recognition or praise within the last seven days does not create engagement — it only creates satisfaction. And that if we stop there, we will have disengaged employees. Satisfied, but disengaged.
Measuring Employee Engagement
When I created viaPing it was important to me to distinguish between what measured employee engagement and what measured satisfaction. Why? Because I believe this is where most people get it wrong. And their misunderstanding causes millions of dollars (maybe even more?) each year to be wasted on programs that don’t deliver the desired results.
Recently I talked with an organization that was putting together an engagement strategy. I gave them a demo of viaPing and they were very excited about using it. Their plan was to have two groups: a control group and a test group. They were going to use their engagement strategies on the test group and see if their viaPing scores increased over the control group\’s’ scores.
After talking to them about how they were going to use viaPing I asked, “What are your employee engagement strategies?” Then they told me: employee parties, a recognition program, and several general get-to-know-you activities, like bowling. If they were going for satisfaction, they may see that rise with the test group. But if they send out Pings that measure engagement, they are going to be sorely disappointed. Will they know the difference between the two? Will they be measuring the correct things?
I’d hate to have someone measure one thinking they were getting the other. It gives false data — a false hope — when the actual outcomes are very different. I have seen this totally confuse management teams. It ends with them shaking their heads in disbelief, giving up and moving on to the next thing on their already full plates.
The lessons to be learned
If you want engagement, do things that will engage the employees, not just satisfy them. If you want to measure engagement, make sure the criteria truly measure engagement. When you strive to be awesome and create engaged employees, don’t just try to avoid disengagement, but do the hard things that will create engagement.
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