Some people live their lives as though joy were a very limited resource. As if they were allocated an amount at birth, squandered much of their share during childhood and must now, as responsible adults, hoard their remaining supply for some unspecified time in the future. Given these parameters, why would anyone in their right mind waste joy on work?
Let me think. Artists often do. Teachers do, I hope. The waiter at my favorite Wausau restaurant, The Back When Café, does. The vendors I do repeat business with do. The most successful leaders I’ve known do. The organizations that thrive, year in and year out, do. If you agree with the conventional wisdom that joy is an endangered species, then these people are fools. The day will come when they’ll simply run out of their allotment of joy—and won’t you have the last laugh then. However, what if they’re wrong? What if you run out of life with your allotment of joy untouched?
Work is a great place to express joy. If you look, you’ll see that there are so many little opportunities for happiness when you work with people you respect, do tasks that make a difference, and use the talents you’ve been given. If you read that and don’t agree that your job affords those possibilities, then you’re either in the wrong job or not paying attention. No matter which is true, you can and should make some changes.
Remember these thoughts as you listen to the answers to this question. Do people find joy in their work at your organization? What are the implications for you if they don’t? You can help people find joy in their work by showing them how what they do matters. Many people in today’s workplace have no idea how the things they do on a daily basis affect the success or failure of their organization. A receptionist needs to understand that the way he answers a phone could make or break the biggest deal your organization may ever have. A filing clerk needs to know that her daily efforts make it possible for the customer service team to respond quickly to a customer request. A pipe fitter deserves to look at the architect’s drawing and know that, because of her efforts, the building she’s working on will shelter the children at a daycare center. It is your job to help all team members understand the importance of their work. Do that and watch the joy spread.
The company knew they had to do something. Customer satisfaction ratings were dropping, employee turnover was rising, and nobody wanted to talk about morale. Serious competition was looming. A group of leaders were appointed to do something about the situation and to do it fast. Meeting after meeting produced idea after idea. Consultants were hired, and a final decision was reached.
“We’ll create a video that tells everyone why they should be happy that they work here,” they decided. “We’ll prove that the future’s bright by showing our grandly produced video to everyone. Spare no expense,” they said. “Just get it done.”
So, the script was written, the actors were hired, and the locations scouted. Production began and money was spent. The final version was shown to the executive team and they beamed at each other. This would do it; things would change now. After all, they had spared no expense.
Employees were ushered into the meeting room and given plastic cups filled with sparkling grape juice. The lights dimmed and the video began. The music was powerful and the videography impressive. The leaders sitting in the front of the room led the applause and raised their glasses in a toast to the renewed commitment they were certain everyone in attendance felt. People filed out of the room talking about their weekend plans. That’s when I heard one of the participants say, “I can’t believe they’re trying to get us to put our hats back on with that crap!” No one else seemed to hear his comment. Curious, I followed him out of the building and asked, “What hat?”
“Oh,” he replied offhandedly, “When I first started, fifteen years ago, we all had hats with the company’s name and logo. I was like most guys; we wore them all the time. We wanted everyone to know where we worked. We were proud to work here. I haven’t worn my hat for a long time.”
Many organizations, in an attempt to improve morale, spend dollars, time, and energy externally and forget that morale is an inside job. Please don’t ask consultants to help you improve morale in your organization. Start by asking this question yourself of the people on your team, really listen to the answers, and go to work.
This question marks a change in the focus of our inquiries. Until now the questions have asked people to share the facts and information they know. Fact and information answers are important—in fact, business runs on them. But they don’t tell the whole story. Organizations are filled with people, and people are filled with feelings. Leaders who believe that they can focus their work on the tasks at hand and leave the “soft stuff” to the human resources department shouldn’t really call themselves leaders! If you choose to continue to accept my challenge and focus your attention on the way people feel about working in your organization, the next several questions are the perfect place to start. Remember, the process is simple—ask, listen, and say thanks. Take the risk. I know you can do it.
Remember those questions on intelligence tests that give you a list of words and then ask which word doesn’t belong? Try this one: Enthusiasm, Passion, Excitement, Fun, Work. What is your answer? Hopefully, you came to the conclusion that this was an example of a poorly constructed or trick question. They all go together, don’t they? Or, maybe you’re wearing your Dilbert hat and wonder why anyone would bother to ask such an obvious question. Work has nothing to do with those other words. If that’s your response, shame on you! Think of the energy an organization would have if everyone in it agreed that enthusiasm, passion, excitement, fun, and work were synonyms. What could your organization accomplish if just half your employees believed that? Has it occurred to you that even 15 percent would be an improvement? Are you clueless about how people feel when they enter your doors? Believe me, how your employees feel as they start their workweek provides great insight about how they’ll interact with each other and with your customers. When you decide to start talking about the feelings that fill your workplace, make a commitment to find, support, and showcase the positive ones. Don’t read that to mean you should ignore or dismiss the negative emotions; just don’t make them the center of your action. Look for ways to increase enthusiasm for solving problems, ignite passion for learning, encourage excitement around success, foster fun as a stress reliever, and discourage seeing work as a four-letter word. You’ll be doing your job.
Many organizations develop a list of values—conduct they uphold as their guide for the behavior of all employees. These values are often published and distributed. Too often, these values are thought to be real just because they’ve been put on paper, but they become fiction in practice. Values are too important to exist only on paper— they need to live in an organization’s daily activities.
The challenge successful leaders should give themselves is to use their values as a measurement and evaluation tool. Leaders need to praise and encourage the good behaviors, monitor the difference between actual and desired behaviors, and correct bad behaviors before they become institutionalized. The challenge for most leaders is to maintain an accurate picture of the real state of their workplace. This question can help you do just that. When leaders understand that organizations, like people, have both good and bad habits, there is potential for positive change. Finding the gaps between what gets said and what gets done gives you a place to start. Think about what you would (and have) done when confronted with situations where your stated values have been contradicted. If you say you have respect for people in your values statement, would you fire your top salesperson because they repeatedly berated the clerical staff? If you value creativity, would you decline a job because you couldn’t see any way of adding innovation to the client’s existing processes? If, according to your mission statement, customers come first, would you withhold a bonus for the vice president of customer service when your customer service targets were missed? What about your own bonus? Do you practice what you preach? Believe me, if you don’t live your stated values, there will be gaps between the behavior you want your organization to practice and the behavior I’d observe if I spent time with your people. Finding those gaps should be your priority, unless, of course, you want to revise that value list you so proudly print in your annual report. This question begs for a follow-up. Try this one—How can we get our behavior back on track?—and listen well.
One of the most often identified roles of a leader is that of barrier buster. Leaders get into trouble when they fall into a pattern of doing the jobs of the people who report to them rather than creating an environment that allows the right people to do the right things. Successful leaders are eager to help their people find ways to be productive by coaching them appropriately. They let their teams know that if they encounter a barrier that is beyond their ability to tackle, the leader expects that the team will ask for help. That is the moment when leaders need to roll up their sleeves and get to work on behalf of the team.
But what happens when the leadership team is the barrier? Asking What does our leadership team do that gets in the way of you doing your job? requires persistence and courage.
Persistence because the first time you ask this question, you are most likely to be answered with a quick “nothing” or “they’re doing okay” response. Don’t miss the internal dialogue that will undoubtedly be running through the answerer’s mind. “What kind of a fool does this person take me for? Like I’m going to answer this question!” And honestly, can you blame them for thinking that? So, ask the question, but don’t expect quality answers the first time around. The more you ask other questions and handle the answers appropriately, the more likely it is that when you ask this question again, you will get more truthful answers.
Courage because the responses you get might be painful to hear. It has been my experience while working with leaders that the farther up you are in the hierarchy, the less likely you are to receive an accurate picture of the organization’s day-to-day workings.
Unless, of course, you’ve been asking questions long enough to be trusted. You may hear things about your team’s behavior and maybe even about your own behavior that will require some soul-searching and change on your part. Don’t ask this question if you’re not ready to hear and act on the answers. By the way, if you’re not ready to act—get ready fast!
For years we have all joked and/or raged about the “it’s not my job” attitudes we’ve encountered in organizations, big and small. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself if there is a customer somewhere who thought that way about your organization? Or have you honestly wondered if you’ve got employees that are looking for jobs elsewhere because they believe that no one in your organization cares enough to fix internal systems? Dr. W. Edward Deming,the man whose name is forever linked with quality, believed that 85 percent of quality problems in the workplace are caused by systems, not by an individual’s inefficiencies. Our organizations are filled with policies and procedures that prohibit people from doing their best to satisfy our customers, and you need to know where it’s happening in yours.
This is the first risky-to-answer question we’ve encountered in our list. The answer to this particular question can often be a department or a person’s name. Please remember that an answerer may need some time to decide whether or not it is actually safe to tell you the truth. Describing an outdated policy or explaining an easy to streamline procedure is a fairly safe answer. Identifying a bottleneck department or an obstructionist co-worker is another decision process entirely. You will have to consider time and place when you venture forth with this question. A comfortable pause after asking a high-risk question will facilitate your receiving a thoughtful and productive answer.
A word of caution: One of the ground rules of good questioning is that when a question is asked and an answer is given, the questioner does not (and often should not) respond. Given an answer, you should simply acknowledge the information, clarify any ambiguities, and assure the answerer that their opinion is valuable and will be considered. If you express an opinion or make a promise based on a single response to your question, you might find yourself in the middle of something more complex than that one answer indicated. This is especially problematic when a response to your question points a finger at an individual. An emotional reaction from you may satisfy the answerer but cause great difficulty for the other person mentioned. Your best response to this situation is “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. As I understand it, your situation is [restate the problem]. You have my word that I will look into this matter and will get back to you with a resolution. Please know that I appreciate your efforts to make our organization better.” Now your job becomes one of detective. By asking more questions and listening to the additional answers carefully, you’ll be able to fulfill your promise to deliver a resolution to the original answerer. It may not be exactly what they wanted or envisioned, but they will appreciate the fact that you kept your word and followed through.
Not many organizations choose to have conferences and hold meetings where I live in northern Wisconsin. (Maybe our annual snowfall has something to do with that decision.) That means that, to do my work, I need to travel. When you stay in hotels often, you sign your name frequently. Check-in. Check-out. Room service bills. Bar tabs. Snack from the gift shop. Each form has three lines, one for your room number, one for your signature and one for the PRINT YOUR NAME command. The other day I realized that, because I paid attention in penmanship class, my signature is perfectly legible. So I declined to follow the PRINT YOUR NAME command. The server who picked up my check noticed this omission and asked, nicely, if I would print my name. “Why,” I replied, “since my signature is perfectly readable?” “Because you have to,” he announced. “Not necessary,” I answered. “I’ll have to call the manager,” he said. “Give the check back to me,” I demanded. With the offending charge slip back in my hands and tempted to lower his tip, I scribbled my name illegibly in the heavily disputed PRINT YOUR NAME space. Why, if my handwriting is a nonissue when I pay for a meal in the hotel’s restaurant directly with my MasterCard, does it become a matter of state security when I want to charge something to the hotel bill that will eventually be settled with the aforementioned MasterCard? Not a big deal, but enough of an annoyance to encourage me to find a restaurant outside the hotel for dinner the next time.
Your customers never encounter a policy or procedure problem when they do business with you, right? When was the last time you checked? Every business needs systems, policies, and procedures to function. Employees need to understand their jobs, the technologies that support their work, and the boundaries that limit their authority. Leaders need to deliver decisions in context, envision opportunities for the future, and watch budgets. Where is the voice of the customer heard? Internal systems are seldom viewed from the outside, and until they are, you can’t call yourself customer-friendly. The only way to understand how your systems and processes feel is to ask a customer. Just as it is impossible to proofread something you’ve written, it is impossible to judge your own systems with a clear eye. Asking this question of lots of customers can be an eye-opening experience, and the answers might provide some clear directions for changes that need to be made to your policies. Making things hard for your customers, even when it’s by accident, isn’t a good idea.
