While hosting an employee empowerment workshop for the Mexico operation of a Canadian company, I emphasized how important it was to listen to every single employee’s voice during the exercise. As you can see from this photo, everyone was on board with that concept…including the company dogs!
Using concepts originated from my experience as a trainer at Toyota/NUMMI, we created a Problem Solving Team process that had four objectives:
- Improve morale and teamwork through group activity
- Increase communication and team member involvement
- Increase problem solving ability
- Solve problems
Notice the order of the objectives. If team problem solving activity occurs, morale, communication, involvement and skill development increase AND problems will also be solved. Increased engagement occurs when the leadership team puts in place a process that teaches, supports and encourages its members to see problems in their scope of control as their problems to solve. Ownership creates improved engagement and morale.
You do not need to include the company dogs in the group activity to be successful, although it may help with out of the box ideas. You will need a defined process, easy to implement problem solving tools, training on facilitation, and time to meet.
One of the keys to success is to pilot the process with a team that is motivated and willing to use new tools. It takes a group willing to take risks, experience something new, make occasional mistakes, and share all of the learnings with others. Whenever I teach this process, a key element at the end of the process is to discuss the lessons learned. Those lessons become quite valuable to everyone else participating by leveling up in the skills needed.
It is more about continuous improvement than perfecting it out of the gate.
Contact us today for a conversation of the tools available to create more engagement, empowerment and ownership of the business thereby building a better, more competitive conscious culture™. Conscious Culture Group® would love to partner with you and your staff to build a great place to work that attracts, retains and motivates the best possible staff.
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