Drive on a country road at night without your headlights and you will surely run off the road and hurt yourself. Manage your business without a robust two-way (up and down the command chain) information flow and you risk the same results. Running blind - in the dark or without information - is a formula for disaster.
Today, employees are the eyes and ears of all businesses. Employees connect with customers; these customers tell employees critical things about products, services, competition, needs and values. When information moves easily, there is a constant dialog "up" from employees and "down" from management. Both sides are sharing information to respond to changes, to take advantage of opportunities and to solve issues. Interrupt this critical pipeline and both sides work in the dark; performance suffers, employee and customer loyalty decreases and results suffer.
Our world has changed. In our early years, we lived in an agrarian age where we hunted, gathered and tamed the land by planting. Information movement then was marginally important. We progressed to replacing man and animals with machinery in the industrial age where horsepower replaced muscle power. As we moved from making food to making things, information flow increased in importance but mostly in one direction - from management to employees. Today, horsepower has given way to brainpower as we have moved to a new intellectual or information age. Much of manufacturing has moved offshore; it has been replaced by our intellectual service economy. In this economy, information is power; information drives knowledge and knowledge drives performance. Today, organizations succeed or fail in their ability to quickly move, share, assess and use information.
Our fast-paced world requires a robust two-way (up and down the command chain) approach to information movement. Management must share the business mission, issues, challenges and meaningful information with employees to help them feel connected, involved and competent. Employees must share what they see in their daily roles to keep management informed about customers, competition, working conditions, opportunities, problems and other things that can impact business. Though both parties know this, few do it well. Managements, stuck in industrial age thinking, selectively share information with employees. Employees respond by limiting their contribution and observations. The performance power of today's workforce is in the thinking in each employee. When not encouraged, valued or supported, this important asset becomes valueless.
Today's economy requires quality information to make successful and fast decisions to stay competitive and successful. Organizations with managements that openly share what they know, details of the business, successes and challenges earn greater loyalty and greater contribution from their employees. They invite employees to share what they know, think and value. They encourage a powerful two-way exchange.
Managements that make decisions in isolation (without sharing information or accessing the collective genius of its workforce), run the risk of making shortsighted and ill-informed decisions. They also fail to activate the thinking, trust and loyalty of their employees who need direction, context and support to maximize their performance. These employees disengage and stop all meaningful upward information flow. In today's information rich age, this alienates an organization from its customers and workforce.
With information, you must move it or lose it. Share it. Eliminate all the obstacles to insure an unobstructed flow. And once it flows, discuss it, invent with it, plan with it and use it. Consider these ways to improve the information flow in your organization:
Movement (down) from management:
• Define important information that can be shared with employees - this includes core values such as the vision, mission and key strategic items; performance statistics such as sales, margins, and profits; efficiency statistics such as improvements in expense captions, employee turnover statistics, and progress on strategic projects. Develop a list of meaning monthly information to be shared with employees.
• Once the content is developed, create a strong internal information sharing process - consider a company intranet, standard monthly reports, management newsletter, a letter from the CEO or other way to share critical information with all employees.
• Increase face to face time with employees to build personal contacts and to encourage employees to openly share their thoughts, suggestions and ideas. Consider a live web meeting if face to face time is not possible. Insist on and be known for candid communication; this creates trust and respect.
• Involve employees in discussions of business challenges, issues and opportunities. Require employee participation, thinking and feedback.
• Acknowledge all employee suggestions and ideas to encourage continual contribution. Publicly applaud suggestions that are implemented.
Movement (up) from employees:
• Set up a process to formally review information from management; meet monthly meeting to review and prepare employee feedback. Brainstorm, invent, create and propose responses to organizational challenges and opportunities. Present all employee responses to management.
• Require employees to submit 2 performance improvement ideas (or other type of ideas) each week to management. One idea should be based on an inside review of the organization; the other idea should be based on perspectives seen outside of the organization. These ideas should be reviewed monthly by management with proper follow up and reporting.
• Develop contact process with customers to gather customer perspectives; summarize and share these regularly with management.
• Create an employee liaison to management; this employee would summarize the emotions, feelings, observations and perspectives about the workplace and working for the organization to management.
Today, information is the key to performance and results in every organization. The more information flows, the more robust the ideas, innovations and responses are in succeeding in today's complex business environment. The most significant asset any organization has today is the collective knowledge of its employees; to activate this power source requires easy and open information movement. Managers share organizational information with employees; employees share ideas, suggestions, observations and opinions. Both are critical to stay competitive and to run a powerful business. Limit the flow from either side and the organization runs off the success road. Information is power; move it or lose it.
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