Give Up Control and Grow

In part 2 of my series with Kevin Jones, I asked for details on his company viaPing and the work he’s doing around employee feedback. We’ve all seen the yearly, or in one case every 3 year, employee feedback surveys. We take them and very rarely see any results or actions taken as a result. Kevin’s thought of another method that he’s helped companies implement and it’s called viaPing and it’s a methodology of daily employee feedback. Yes, daily.

GiveUpControlandGrow-Ep38

This talk is not just about his company it’s about loosening up control, giving employees more room to take chances, and creating opportunities for conversations to begin among all levels and departments of  your company.

Kevin Jones works with companies to help them reimagine and change the way they work, operate, and how they engage their employees.  The only way to do this is to challenge the status quo.

Kevin is an advisor, international speaker, and videographer, his expertise lies in organizational strategy, Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs), initiative adoption, and bringing the best out of employees.  He focuses on the human side of business and technology. Kevin’s clients include NASA, Lowes, JCPenny, Dell, and many other well known companies.  He’s authored two e-books, and produces videos that help communicate how we can challenge the status quo.

Questions

How can you create communication methods so people who don’t know each other to meet and share ideas to create solutions?

Like the invoicing team at the consultants, what departments could start asking questions to the users to improve how they operate?

Resources

Kevin Jones at vinjones.com – https://vinjones.com/

Employee Engagement measurement tools at viaPing – https://viaping.com/

Kevin Jones interview on the Switch and Shift podcast The Rebel Leader, Our Complicated Fascination with Employee Engagement – http://switchandshift.com/fascination-employee-engagement

http://www.xplane.com/

Notes Taken During Editing

Q 2423 We don’t care what our employees think.

Engagement and employee feedback can be more effective if it’s more grassroots.

Employee feedback should be more often than once a year. It should also be shared with each other to begin conversations.

Don’t assume management needs to solve the problems. Create something insourced management – let it come from the bottom/inside up.

Employee feedback needs to be the beginning of the conversation.

Be more open and let employees know the obstacles to change.

Initiative Adoption – how do you get your teams to adopt initiatives?

One thing – does it align with how your team works?

With a robust employee feedback mechanism, you may see better adoption of new initiatives because they come from the people they affect and not from “on high”.

Portrait Artist – I discovered Meredith Binnette at my son’s school’s senior art show. She drew this picture of Kevin after looking over his website and his press photos. She’s recently graduated high school and is pursuing art in college. Meredith, good luck in your pursuits.

The Inspired and Intentional podcast/business show is copyright 2016 by it’s owner.  The music is Funk Game Loop, Kevin MacLeod Royalty Free from Incompatech.