So now you’ve opened communications lines with the people by openly and candidly broadcasting your businesses' problems, opportunities, dangers, and directions. Now it’s time to harvest the organizational wisdom. Be as aggressive in harvesting these organizational fields as you were in communicating. All the answers are out there somewhere in the organization. But constructive harvesting takes an open mind, an open door, a dialogue based process, personal time, and great sorting and filtering capabilities.
There are good ways to do this and some not so good. The currently popular idea of encouraging email inputs is not much better than the old suggestion box. Whether physical or digital they have the same problem; they present an easy way for people to gripe without the necessity (for you it’s an opportunity) of face-to-face dialogue. Sure email or text interaction is a form of dialogue, but face-to-face communications which also include body language, linguistic nuances, the opportunity to challenge without offending, the ability to ask the follow up questions, and other inter-personal characteristics make one-on-one live communications the most meaningful. The first comment, complaint, or suggestion is usually not very useful. The responses to the second or third, to the "however we have to consider this" comment, the "how would you do it if you had to face this issue?" question, is where you learn by gaining useful ideas and insights into the existing mind-sets or culture, and have the opportunity to gain personal-interaction-based trust.
Some management consultant years ago labeled this process “managing by walking around”. What you can learn by engaging in meaningful and challenging conversations concerning your company’s issues, conversations with a purpose, will be truly amazing. In addition, company employees, sensing that you care, will automatically be better followers as their respect for you grows.
Try it!
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