Most organizations rely on their research people, top management, and outside experts for the information they need to run their businesses and to solve their problems.

These people do their best to contribute to helping the organization – lending their expertise. A lot of money is spent on these resources; sometimes they are quite successful and sometimes they fail badly. Communication, however, is the most important.

As a society, we honor Ph.D.’s, experts and professors for their great learning. They often develop fine theories about problem-solving and learning. Often, we defer to them to do our thinking and to solve our problems. This is okay for tough technical problems, but we depend on them too much. Now AI has come into this dynamic.

When I was a plant manager, I asked the engineers to go into the plant and to talk directly and openly with the people who were running the production operations. Their first reaction was to resist because the engineers said that those people did not know the technology. I pushed them further, pointing out that those running the processes live with the processes and have a lot of information that the engineers did not have, and the engineers could teach them the critical technology. As they talked together a lot of new information surfaced that was very helpful.

Not only did the operators of the processes learn more about the
technical aspects of what is happening and the “why” of the processes,
but the engineers learned a lot from the operators – how they have to
troubleshoot, for example, what different temperature and flow concerns
surface and how they have to respond, what alarms/alerts are
most difficult for them to address.

A big mistake many managers make is to ignore the huge amount of information and energy that the people across their organization actually have. Top management, engineers and experts have only half the information they need to successfully solve problems.

When they build trust among the people, they become willing to share what they know. As they all talk with each other, they discover that even more information emerges. The gap between work as imagined and work as done almost disappears. People open up and begin to use their discretionary energy to help to improve things. This discretionary energy is a gift the people will give in this environment.

Some Basic Keys… Relationships and Communication

Relationships are so important. We all need to be treating each other with respect, listening to each other, and learning together. Caring for and helping each other is also very important.

Being sincere with each other is also important. Telling the truth and respecting the ideas people bring up is also important. As people begin to speak up, it can feel quite risky so let’s make it safe for them.

Dedicating time each day to go into the organization, talking with the people about substantive issues, listening carefully, and helping people to solve their own problems is another important thing you can do. It is about learning how to hold “deliberate conversations of meaning – specifically looking for betterment.”

The Payoff

As these interactive, learning processes develop, the collective intelligence of the organization goes up, everyone gets smarter. More and more people begin to solve their own problems and find that this is quite satisfying and fun. As this spreads, the performance of the entire organization improves, problems get solved more quickly, close to the actual work and earnings improve.

Call me at 716-622-6467 and let’s discuss how focused conversations can help your organization make a huge difference too.