The biggest contributor to poor productivity and employee morale may be your workspace walls.
The childhood game, Telephone, teaches us a lesson about the difference between what was said and what was heard. I remember some of the silly results from a simple sentence repeated down the line of elementary students who could only repeat what they thought they heard.
In business, inconsistent results can lead to disastrous outcomes. While your employees may not be playing telephone, thin walls or little cubicles, typical of many office layouts, contribute to a lot of assumptions and misunderstandings. It can be a recipe for disaster because people hear things that they shouldn't, information is understood in the wrong context, or they only hear part of the conversation. Rehashing and discussing the scenario eats up the time reserved for more productive activity and consumes employee's attention.
A client I'll call Betty had a small office staff and fragile room walls. Betty heard third-hand that a customer reported overhearing a phone conversation in the next room. Without further evidence, Betty was ready to fire the office manager for disclosing proprietary information to a recently terminated employee. Rather than conducting due diligence to discover the facts regarding the incident, Betty reacted emotionally, feeling angry, betrayed, and bemoaning the loss of what she had thought was a dedicated and valuable employee.
As we talked through the situation, she was able to calm down and revisit the issue. By checking facts, she was able to determine that the customer who initially called to report the incident was in a particular room at a time when the employee in question was not even in the building. Further fact checking gave Betty enough substantial evidence to have a purposeful conversation with the employee that had given out the information and terminate her employment.
Brian said, "Incorrect assumptions lie at the root of every failure," and that nearly 99% of assumptions are incorrect. Reacting with emotion and making assumptions are dangerous actions that can derail productivity, employee morale, and your bottom line. Betty was able to avoid firing the wrong person, (her dedicated and valuable office manager) and eliminate the snitch in her office.
Most leaders are working managers, and often they react to situations quickly since they are faced with a laundry list of daily and weekly tasks just to keep things running. Taking the time to dig through the facts may seem like a luxury at best, at worse, an unnecessary time drain, yet the consequences of running a business based on assumptions are detrimental.
Whether you have physically thin walls or those created by employees that don't respect company policies and protocol, it is worth your time and attention to investigating those Telephone games going on in your organization. Then, when you discover the disconnect, you can put things back on course by taking the time to check facts and make an informed decision, not an assumption.
At MF, an award-winning business consulting company, we partner with employees, management teams, departments, executives and individuals like you to identify what's holding you back on your trek toward success and discover what you need to get moving again. We don't impose solutions; we help our clients discover them based upon leveraging the talents, skills and knowledge they already have within themselves and their organizations.