Most employees are great about showing up on time every day. Significantly fewer show up fully present – ready to make a difference with customers and the business. Many employees don’t pack their brains when they pack their lunches because many managers don’t ask their employees to think at work.
Sixty-five percent of employees do just enough not to get fired, according to statistics presented in Marcus Buckingham’s book, First Break All the Rules. His work with the Gallup Organization looked to define what degree employees are thinking and engaged in the workplace. This means more than half of employees don’t actively think their way through the day – they just follow the rules, do what they are told and little more.
Most managers do not take advantage of the thinking power of their employees. They seem content to have their employees simply do their jobs; they do not actively tap into their ideas, thinking and creativity. This wastes one of the most significant assets of the organization – the intellectual capital – the thinking power of the employee.
So how do you get an employee to think? Get in the habit of asking every employee these two questions every day:
1. “What if…?”
2. “What are two ways to …?”
Here are some examples:
• What if we allow employees to work more flexible hours, what would that do to performance?
• What if we eliminated two of our products or services; what would the impact be on customers?
• What are two ways to improve our marketing to our customers?
• What are two ways to attract great candidates to our company using social networking?
The format of the question isn’t as important as the discipline to constantly ask employees what they think. Tap into the resources you fund every week with your payroll. You paid for their thinking, now get what you paid for.
