When we work in EOS sessions with our clients, we neither require, nor desire, Internet access. We do all our work together on white boards or easels with paper.
Further, we provide Leadership Team Manuals for each leader, which are 3 ring binders with paper documents we distribute and generate.
We are often asked why we still use paper and why we don’t encourage the use of laptops or iPads for everyone?
The reasons we use paper Leadership Team Manuals are several:
- They foster face-to-face interaction, which is best for building team trust and for ensuring people are “present” in the meeting.
- They provide a place to take hand written notes which often, but not always, reinforces learning.
- They provide a convenient place to store materials that you develop.
- They are a reference place for EOS principles and tools.
- Eyeball to eyeball is the most effective way of building trust.
How frustrating is it for you when you are in a meeting and everyone is glancing at their phones, tablets or laptops checking email, or worse, typing?
The first and fifth benefits above accrue to meetings which use whiteboards, or paper easels, instead of PowerPoint. Don’t you agree?
Graphic credit: EOS Worldwide
Last week I mentioned a simple EOS tool called the People Analyzer which our clients use to provide feedback to their employees on how well they are living the company values and how well they are doing their jobs. Both pieces are important. EOS calls it having the Right People in the Right Seats. You can find last week’s post here.
The People Analyzer provides for feedback on whether the employee is the Right Person – meaning that they share your values.
By adding three more columns to the people analyzer – G, W, & C – you can provide feedback to the employee as to whether they are in the Right Seat.
Specifically, do they Get It – do they understand the requirements of the position as spelled out in your company. Do they Want It – or have they just drifted into this job and are holding onto it for dear life? Do they have the Capacity to Do the Job. Do they have both the hard and soft skills required for this position? Do they also have the time and the energy?
The rating method here is even simpler than for the company values. There are only two possibilities,- Yes and No. An employee must have three Yeses or you have an issue. The seat may be too big or too small. Make sure all your employees are in the right seat. If the issue can’t be fixed by changing seats or training, then you owe it to all your other employees to allow this one to pursue their career elsewhere.
The People Analyzer is simple and consistent. It can and should be applied to all your employees – from the CEO to the receptionist. You can download a free copy here.
Do you have something this simple and consistent in your company which is used regularly?
Graphics credit: EOS Worldwide
Jay Shepard’s Gruntled Employees post of 12/31/11 calls the Annual Employee Performance Reviews The Dumbest Managerial Tool Ever. He offers four compelling arguments for this point of view. They mostly center around the reviews not being done in an appropriate time frame – when praising or criticizing employees behavior, its best done when both you and the employee will remember the incident. We couldn’t agree more. Just remember to praise in public and criticize privately.
EOS suggests one more idea which you should find useful. Every manager should have a quarterly conversation with all their direct reports. This would go a long way towards avoiding the traps Jay talks about in his post.
What would you talk about quarterly? We suggest that the conversation should center on how well the employee is living the company values and how well they are doing their job. Both pieces are important.
Companies implementing EOS use a simple paper and pencil tool called the People Analyzer to provide feedback to employees on how well they are living the company values. You can download a free copy here.
The example shown in the graphic uses EOS Worldwide’s values and shows the simple idea of rating the employee a “+” if they demonstrate the value most of the time, a “-” if they almost never demonstrate it, and a “+/-” if its 50/50. The BAR is the minimum acceptable rating.
Its simple and direct. The first time you use it, you can compare how the employee rates themselves vs how you rate them. The gap is what the conversation is about. In later quarters you can focus on just one value and why it is important and how it plays into this employees role, etc.
Next week, I’ll write about the other half of the People Analyzer, called “GWC”, which provides simple feedback on how well the employee is doing their job.
Do you provide feedback on values in your company?
Graphics credit: EOS Worldwide
