An Atmosphere of Wanting to do More
Our client was now ready to move to the next step in their cultural change journey: the formation of employee driven “project teams.” One of the teams chose to tackle the much disputed recently changed comp time policy instated by management – as in discontinued changed. Clearly this was another dumb management decision that lacked sensitivity and creativity. The team was so confident they would quickly discover a favorable solution that the even discussed the second topic they would want to tackle. The project team was comprised of front line staff as well as two supervisors functioning as facilitators. Our stories hero, is a front line operations person and a vocal proponent of resolving this issue in no more than two hours.
Suffice to say that the project team learned a lot about all that was involved in formulating the management policy and while they ultimately did not change it, they had a greater appreciation of the issues subtleties – not happy but engaged. The “aha” moment came when the formerly vehemently opposed to the comp time policy employee stated “I didn’t know this issue was so complex, I can’t believe I thought fixing this would only take a couple hours.” About a month later when we had a chance meeting with our hero he told us, “I’ve learned so much through this team and it makes me want to find a way to do more.” Creating an atmosphere where employees want to do more now that’s priceless!
