People quotes

Asking for opinions: employee surveys score way too positive.

The PRAIORITIZE team quickly realized that the modus operandi for employee surveys led to bad fuel for algorithms. Asking for opinions or agreement on statements (so-called Likert scales) invariably led to positively-biased outcomes: a more than 80% chance of scoring a 'sufficient' to 'excellent' score. Too good to be true. And too 'noisy' for prper calculations.

From opinions to verifiable facts and behaviour.

A Chief Financial Officer relies on hard numbers to tally the cash flow and predict whether the organization will make the budget. What if the CFO had to guess what the revenue or the costs for the month were. What if that CFO would ask managers about their opinion on how much they had spent (‘not that much,’ ‘a lot’); rather than get the hard numbers? That organization would be bankrupt in no time.

Everyone is part of the solution.

Transforming an organization usually affects a large part, if not the entire, organization. Everyone is part of the problem. Even better: everyone is part of the solution. And many will have an idea where to lay the priorities. That means objective asking employees for verifiable facts and for their outlook for the near future: this wisdom of crowd in action.

Define a different way of asking questions.

If the CFO has hard data: why also not create hard, objective data for business issues than can't be answered by roaming the corprate datawarehouse? The PRAIORITIZE people defined a new survey scale that asks for verifiable facts/behaviour. And this survey scale asks for two answers to the same question: what is the actual situation and what is the respondent's ambition/priorities for the next 6 months.

No more opt-outs or mandatory fields.

If upper management takes their managers and employees this serious, mandatory fields and opt-outs must go. If respondents do not know an answer than let it be. Opt-outs are a way of trying to steer the respondent in making certain choices. Steering response is introducing bias and interfering with getting the wisdom of the crowd.

Online. Real time. Personalized.

In a transformation, everyone is part of the solution. So, if management asks everyone for their input, it's more than logic to give everyone something in return. Given the scale of an organization in transformation that should best happen onnline. Give the usual time pressure during a transformation that should happen in real time. And as every respondent likely comes from a different starting situation that better should be personalised for every manager and evey employee.

What to do. How to do it. Who can help.

As everyone is part of the solution, Virtual Consultants take managers and employees by the hand. What to improve. How to improve (incl. step-by-step improvement suggestions). And who could help whom.