
The REI parking garage in Denver, Colorado. REI is a strong performer in employee engagement, and getting stronger. The company makes and sells outdoor recreational equipment, and naturally, many of its employees have an interest in environmental issues. This building, the former city trolley system power plant, is itself "reused." Outstanding among its numerous environment-friendly features is the one-acre intensive greenroof above the parking garage. Companies that make investments in alignment with employee values greatly enhance employee engagement. But REI does much more. It operates a "company campfire" — essentially a collection of blogs by executives and managers, which are open to comment by employees, about half of whom have participated. Intentional efforts to enhance employee engagement pay multiple rewards, including elevating the value of status reports. Photo courtesy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
People who work in project-oriented organizations are familiar with a fact of life called "status report." Report recipients are usually higher in organizational rank than report authors. Often, recipients actually have supervisory authority over the authors. Status reports are usually documents that contain enough information for report recipients to do their jobs.
The difference in organizational authority between authors and recipients leads some recipients to believe that they can request status reports in any form and format, with content of whatever nature they want. Some of these requests are unrealistic.
Unrealistic report requests have consequences. Reports become superficial. They arrive late. They're outdated. Some are even fictitious, in whole or in part. Some report requestors attribute low report quality to substandard performance by report authors, but unrealistic demands for report content, format, and frequency are often the root cause.
There are constraints on what we can reasonably expect of status report authors. Here's Part I of a set of requirements that enable status report authors to produce useful reports.
- Belief in the value of the report
- When status report authors believe that their reports are valuable to the report requestors, and that the reports are useful for performing legitimate management functions, report authors are more likely to produce valuable reports.
- Said differently, when report authors believe that their reports aren't read, or that they're used only to find fault or to question the performance of the authors or the teams doing the work, those report authors are less likely to produce reports worth reading.
- Psychological safety
- Psychological safety is an attribute of a group. It is the degree to which group members, as a whole, believe that personal risk-taking will not lead to harsh judgment of the risk-taker by the group. In psychologically safe groups, members feel empowered to introduce new ideas, or question accepted ideas, or report what they know.
- Low levels of psychological safety inhibit members from reporting conditions, events, or prospects that conflict with the group's established views, or which conflict with the group leader's preferences. Low levels of personal engagement
tend to limit the care, energy,
and passion of authors of
status reportsIn psychologically unsafe environments, as compared to safe environments, status reports are more likely to represent the wishes of the supervisor than they are to represent truth. - Personal engagement
- Personal engagement of employees is a measure of the degree to which they regard themselves as involved with and committed to the goals and objectives of their roles in the workplace, and consequently, the goals and objectives of the larger organization.
- Low levels of personal engagement tend to limit the care, energy, and passion of authors of status reports. They might produce the reports, but they will do so late, or superficially, or disingenuously, or with language that obviates actually gathering valid information.
We'll continue next time with several more constraints limiting what we can ask for in status reports. Next in this series Top
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Communication at Work:
Why Dogs Wag Their Tails
- If you've ever known a particular dog at all well, you've probably been amazed at how easy it is to
guess a dog's mood, even though dogs can't speak. Perhaps what's more amazing is that it's so difficult
to guess a person's mood, even though humans can speak.
Interviewing the Willing: Strategy
- At times, we need information from each other. For example, we want to learn about how someone approached
a similar problem, or we must interview someone about system requirements. Yet, even when the source
is willing, we sometimes fail to expose critical facts. How can we elicit information from the willing
more effectively?
When Fear Takes Hold
- Leading an organization through a rough patch, we sometimes devise solutions that are elegant, but counterintuitive
or difficult to explain. Even when they would almost certainly work, a simpler fix might be more effective.
Achieving Goals: Inspiring Passion and Action
- Achieving your goals requires both passion and action. Knowing when to emphasize passion and when to
emphasize action are the keys to managing yourself, or others, toward achievement.
Barriers to Accepting Truth: I
- In workplace debates, a widely used strategy involves informing the group of facts or truths of which
some participants seem to be unaware. Often, this strategy is ineffective for reasons unrelated to the
credibility of the person offering the information. Why does this happen?
See also Effective Communication at Work and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming May 25: On Reporting Noncompliance
- Regulating compliance with process design in organizations requires monitoring process usage. Typically, process monitors depend on reports by process participants. In blame-oriented cultures, fear of retribution can limit what these reports contain. Available here and by RSS on May 25.
And on June 1: Mental Accounting and Technical Debt
- In many organizations, technical debt has resisted efforts to control it. We've made important technical advances, but full control might require applying some results of the behavioral economics community, including a concept they call mental accounting. Available here and by RSS on June 1.
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