Day 17 – 27 January 2014
It takes a very wise, brave or stupid person to ask those who work with them for their opinion on how things are. I’m not sure which category I fall into, perhaps all three but we have been working with an organisation called OnBrand Partners for a couple of years now and one of the things they do is just that.
They help us with what they call a Pulse Check, an opportunity to gauge the temperature across all the different functions and locations that make up the ICT Services. Diagonal groups have been set up with representatives from all corners of our team who met to paint a picture of where we are. These sessions seem to follow the same pattern. Most people are reluctant to get involved at first as they have too much to do or can’t see the point yet after a few minutes Darran and Pete get them engaged and by the end everyone agrees they were worthwhile.
Today we met to give it a go ourselves and to get the feedback from the latest round. The process starts with twelve simple questions about how we are operating as a service. Everyone gets to rank them from we’re appalling to we rock and this gets the ball rolling. Of course working in ICT means that we end up arguing about the questions.
We talked about building our brand promise by developing our customer experience, delivering services using our behaviour guide rails, and using stories to engage our team in meaningful conversations.
There were lots of comments to take in from the Pulse Check sessions, written on post it notes. Some were true and others harder to believe, the problem was knowing which were which but then the truth is an amorphous concept, there is just perception and probability. I remind myself that you should never ask a question that you’re not prepared to hear the answer to.
One of my managers told me that I take this too personally and I guess he is right. This is personal and I’m going to sleep on it before thinking about what to do next.
This was my first day without a desk.
Learning points for today: Everyone thinks they need clarity but live with ambiguity; Changing culture is very hard and takes time and; There is still opportunity out there.
Today’s enjoyment rating 7/10 – A bit of a curate’s egg.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 
Asking a few people how they feel is all well and good, especially if the people are carefully picked.
If you truly want to know how your people feel you need to ask all of them.
A questionnaire, sent to all would do this.
If its made anonymous most people will give a true opinion, although some of us are happy to put our name to what we say.
Yes, agree, that’s why we got someone else to pick the people to represent all levels, locations and thinking (hopefully). If I was going to hand pick this group I think I woudl have got soem different results. Don’t forget we have the servecheck which we do in July.