Tools of the devil - employee surveys

I enjoyed Chris Bailey's rant on one of the "idiotic things that organisations do" - employee surveys:

"If you really want to know what your employees think about their work, their managers, their colleagues, and most importantly, their relationship to the organization, step out from behind your desk and start asking questions face-to-face. Stop relying on surveys and making ritual sacrifices to the gods of quantitative measurement."

I agree. While some surveys may have their place, too often I suspect they end up as a routine and superficial anxiety-management tool for an organisation. Perhaps the anxiety may arise from an inability to conceive of and engage in certain kinds of conversations, or it may arise from need to be seen by peers to use 'best practice'.

The sad thing is that talking with people naturally leads to creative solutions, while many survey reports naturally lead to inertia. (And perhaps that's a further kind of anxiety avoided - the fear of the kind of change that makes personal demands on 'leaders', not just on 'employees'.)

Technorati: internal communications, employee engagement, organisation

Communication - not a 'sending' process

Corporate communications as it is practised today seems to rely often on the notion of communication as a conduit process - a sender sends a message to a receiver. This metaphor underlies many practitioners' thinking about their roles, the objectives and measures they devise, and the processes they use to 'reach' their 'audiences'. Indeed, the suggestion that this notion is a metaphor, and not a factual description of reality, would be seen as contentious by many practitioners.

From my own metaphoric bias - that communication can be seen as a behavioural coupling - it's helpful to hear that an empirical cognitive scientist such as Stephen Pinker has doubts about the validity of the conduit model: "Another misleading conceptual formula is the conduit metaphor, in which to know is to have something and to communicate is to send it in a package." That comes from his latest book, quoted by Shawn at Anecdote.

The question of how these metaphors conceal or reveal aspects of our work (or lives) needs a longer conversation, but my view would be that the metaphor we adopt (consciously or not) in part determines the intention and outcomes of our working. In organisational terms, if practitioners explore and adopt a variety of metaphors, that might lead to more flexibility in intention, and more variety in outcomes.

Technorati: internal communications, metaphor, Pinker

Meaning and money: why do we work?

What motivates us to work, or satisfies us about our job? I've just caught up with two recent posts on this from different internal communications consultants that are worth reading in tandem.

In his post, Lee Smith refers to a new survey by the UK-based Work Foundation on job satisfaction. As he says, the study gives some mixed messages: a majority of workers derive personal fulfilment from their jobs, and regard their work as stimulating and meaningful, while about half also view their work as a means to an end.

Meanwhile David Ferrabee sets off a ripple of comments with his observation: "I like to remind people of something unbelievably simple: people come into work to work." David makes his point in the context of asking whether or not organisations should reward employees for making changes the employer wants.

Motivation to work, and the satisfaction we have in our job, may be closely related but distinct issues to untangle elsewhere. Notwithstanding that, I believe we are motivated or satisfied by a mix of factors that change as we mature, or as we encounter different contexts during our lives. Maslow, of course, had one view of this, and there are many others. Over my career, I have certainly felt social status, intellectual stimulation and companionship among my own fluctuating needs. And I know that money has and will always motivate me in some of the work I do. But from experience of voluntary work, I also know that the genuine thanks of another human being for helping them meet their own needs is priceless.

Technorati: employees, internal communication, motivation

Storytelling: the particular and the abstract

Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple of thought- and feeling-provoking hours in a workshop led by organisational consultant Geoff Mead on storytelling, for the Organisational Development Innovation Network.

After we told and re-told the variously truthful and fantastic stories of our shoes (by way of introducing ourselves) Geoff engaged us in thinking about the nature of stories and why they are so powerful as an expression and shaping of our identity and thought.

One of the things he suggested which caught my attention was the idea that we relate to the particular in a different way than we relate to the abstract. I'm curious about the origins and nature of this difference.

Enlarging on this 'different way', Geoff cited the ideas of Hugh Brody, an anthropologist, and Jerome Bruner a psychologist. The former apparently distinguishes needs for the particular and abstract between hunter-gatherer and farming communities, and the latter distinguishes two forms of thought, the narrative and the paradigmatic.

I will need to read more about their ideas. Meanwhile, I'm still left wondering about the 'different way'. The most obvious difference to me about my own relating to the particular and abstract is emotional. Stories evoke emotion in me more often or more strongly than abstract discourse does, not least when they are 'untrue' in the form of fiction, fable, myth and so on. They also have a greater tendency to evoke my own fantasy in response - I imagine more than I hear, as I am listening to a story, and my own fantasy extends, embellishes and leads elsewhere.

The insight for organising seems to me to be to notice our various preferences for particular and abstract forms of communication, to ask how we are relating to others as we express those preferences, and to notice what the consequences are. I don't believe that storytelling is inherently superior to more abstract conversation - they each have their time and place. And I'm not keen on storytelling being used as a means of convincing people of the greatness of leaders, or the rightness of plans, or the wonderfulness of organisations - that kind of organisational storytelling practice seems to be another kind of sales method.


Technorati: storytelling, narrative, organisational consulting

Does size count?

In answer to the perennial management question about the best size for a team, the answer from the academic frontline is . . . wait for it . . . 'it depends'.

This is an undoubtedly too-flip summary of a more sophisticated discussion by professors at Wharton business school, who suggest that while optimum size can be an important consideration and depends partly on the team's role, it's not the most important feature in putting a team together. The team's tasks and the mix of skills required are likely to be primary.

By the way: if your team has more than five people in it... oh-oh!

Technorati: teams management organizational development

Will dialogue build trust?

If lack of trust is an issue in your organisation, would dialogue be a helpful way through it? In this short excerpt from his book on conflict, Mark Gerzon makes a case for using dialogue in organisations, and usefully summarises some of what distinguishes dialogue from debate.

I can't see that Gerzon provides much evidence in this excerpt for his assertion that dialogue fosters trust (though I'm biased to believe this). And if it isn't obvious, I would add that I think the assumptions and attitudes inherent in dialogue can also represent a frame of mind with which you can approach any conversation: it doesn't have to be a facilitated process for groups as a whole to follow.

Technorati: dialogue organization trust