Capability mapped to services offered - How "Skip Level Meeting" helped ?

In today’s world, somehow our capabilities don’t meet services that we offer. In few scenarios, we have lot of capabilities, but not able to map them with the services that we provide. On the other hand, we claim to offer lot of services, but we don’t have matching capabilities.  Another killing thing is hierarchy, your organization may have very flat structure, but there will be little bit of hierarchy. And once there is hierarchy, you will get perspective of your subordinates about the issues/information and not the actual information. Looking all this, we have a question that what should we do to map  capabilities and services that we offer? How we connect to entire team members? It is not easy, but definitely not very tough. There are many management tools such as VRIO analysis, Pyramid of Purpose, The Hoshin Planning System and many more, which help us to meet capabilities to the service in different manner. These tools are really good and results are also very impressive. All these tools are developed and used in cabin and no communication is done with actual workforce. However, recently I have used a simple tool – “Skip level meeting” to connect to members of my team. Normally, I used to get information from my subordinates and frankly speaking, I used to get perspective of my subordinate. Earlier, I was not getting raw information, but wrapped information into the perspective of my subordinates. This skip level meetings helped me understand the core issues and also to reach to my team directly. It helped me to understand the real capability of the team based on which I can fly high. Now I know, how much to speak in front of my client, what need to be done to map services offered with capability of team, what is the improvement area and at last I got the tool to establish a direct path of communication between my team member (actual working force) and myself. Very simple tool, but very effective. After practicing this for more than month, I have more confidence on my team and they seems to be more motivated. I am able to put my ideas/thoughts in front of my team and directly get their feedback/ideas without any intermediaries. With this I don’t want to say that my subordinates are not playing their role, but they have also started using this tool. It just take 30 minutes per week, which means that you can meet maximum 52 members of your team in a year and you have to spend only 26 hours in a year, but has lot of impact. Don't ask anyone to nominate the members, with whom you are going to speak. If you continuously perform Gemba Walk in your organization, you will come to whom to speak.

Skip level meeting helped me to understand real capability of my team and based on which, now I speak to client and if I need to improve my capability, I have a method to directly persuade my team members. Creating a culture is very difficult, but once you are successful……you have wings to fly……..

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Increase your likes

 There are five sources of power in organizations namely, coercive, referent, legitimate, expert and reward power as identified by American sociologists John French and Bertram Raven. A person who uses Referent* and Expert⁺ power, collectively known as personal power gets more likes.

To test the above hypothesis, we started a program called ‘peer-to-peer recognition’ in our team. In this program, each member of the team nominates his/her peer providing justification for nomination. The person, who receives maximum nomination, gets a token of appreciation. In our first such initiative, we received 22 responses and 11 members were nominated. One member received maximum 6 nominations. Almost everyone, who nominated the person, had provided justification that the nominee had good knowledge and was always ready to help others. To quote one of them: “[the said person] is very open and helpful to the team in all technical issues”.

In the 2^nd round of peer-to-peer recognition program, more members participated in the program and we received 35 responses. The competition was much tough this time and 19 members were nominated. Two members received highest of 4 nominations each. Strikingly, the phenomenon was the same again and similar justifications were given. One of the justifications was “I would like to nominate [members name], for his dedication and enthusiasm to share his knowledge of applications. These days’ people are not willing to share any knowledge, but his attitude towards knowledge sharing is quite appreciable. His knowledge sharing sessions were very helpful for me to step into this environment.” Both the members were nominated because of their knowledge and willingness to help others. In fact, the other members, who received nomination, were also appraised by their peer for their knowledge, hard work and willingness to share their knowledge with others.

It is interesting to note that a person, who has good knowledge and willingness to help others, got maximum number of likes in both peer-to-peer programs. Moreover, none of the members nominated his/her lead or manager. As we can see, we don’t have to be in a leadership or senior level role in an organization to have some form of power. In fact, the most respect is garnered on those who have personal sources of power. There is more respect for these individuals than for those who have power simply because they are the boss in the business. It has been shown that when employees in an organization associate the leadership’s power with expert or referent power, they are more engaged, more devoted to the organization and their role within it. Employees are also more willing to go the extra mile to reach organizational goals (cited from quickbase.intuit.com).

Take away: Increase your personal power to increase likes.

*Referent power is derived from the interpersonal relationships that a person cultivates with other people in the organization.

⁺Expert power is derived from possessing knowledge or expertise in a particular area.