What makes people effective and efficient?
Being efficient and effective can be interpreted in multitude ways. According to wordweb,
Effective : Producing or capable of producing an intended result or having a striking effect
Efficient : Being effective without wasting time, effort or expense
The answer to the question in hand is simple: People are always effective and efficient when they are HAPPY.
A follow-up question would be:
How do we know what makes people happy?
Again, answer is simple, ASK them. Only they can tell whether they are happy or not.
However, there are challenges here:
1. Each person is DIFFERENT
2. Each person is different at different TIMES
3. People respond in different ways for same stimuli at different SITUATIONS
So it is important for us to adapt based on
1. Person’s NEED
2. Person’s SITUATION
3. It is more about understanding each one emotionally.
I always get this question:
Will people tell me, when they are happy and what makes them happy?
Well, the answer is YES, only if they TRUST and they believe that the person asking:
1. CARES for them
2. Is genuinely interested in their well being and
3. There is no hidden agenda.
What did we do?
We use HAPPINESS INDEX to measure how happy people are.
We collect feedback from each of the team members on a regular basis (every fortnight). We analyze and act on it.
There are 4 parameters which we collect:
We ask each person, how happy they are related to their:
WORK, TEAM, LEAD and ENVIRONMENT
Work involves the daily activities that the person is involved and expected to accomplish
Team includes all the members with which the person interacts to accomplish the desired goal
Lead is ideally a senior person who is a stakeholder involved to enable the person
Environment is any external factor that impacts the person related to achieving the desired goal for the team
We ask them to rate them on a scale of 1 to 7 [1: Very unhappy and 7: Very happy]
What do we do with it?
We ANALYZE the feedback on 2 aspects:
1. Whether the feedback for any parameter is less than the threshold [we have kept it is as at least 5]
2. Trend on feedbacks over a period of time
Accordingly ACT, we plan for face to face discussion with team members. We do discussions for both aspects, when we find the trend that people are happy as well as unhappy. The advantage is that we understand what makes people unhappy and we also understand what makes happy people happy.
It definitely was not an easy journey. There were skepticism initially this was launched and many team members gave a 7 of 7 for most parameters. However, when this was continued over a period over time, the team members understood the usefulness as well as importance.
