Enabling your organisation to have a voice

Disclaimer: I’m one of the members of the Live-Ask team, this article will reference Live-Ask as a potential solution, but it will also mention other methods and approaches to take.

Enabling everyone in your organisation to have a voice enables the collection of different perspectives and helps to create a positive and open feedback culture.

But, how do you get there? and what are the general benefits of such actions? Let’s slowly unpack these points.

Having the right mindset

The first and most important aspect to start with is that we have to be open and humble in the role that we are playing in the team / organisation. We should be comfortable to hear and accept critique in what we are doing, and be accepting of other opinions no matter if they are contradicting your own thoughts and opinions.

Provide a Safe and Anonymous Space

For many in the organisation, they may not have the courage to speak up or to ask hard questions because we humans have a general fear that if we raise concerns, saying something negative or just speak up, our livelihood could be affected. This is a topic which affects all of us, we have all been there, we wanted to raise a point but decided “Is it really my place to say this?” or “What will happen if I speak up?”, we might also fear discrimination or a punishment coming from our opinion and so we remain quiet but deep down we are festering on this topic, which can slowly cause ourselves internal conflicts which can grow out of control.

So, how do we enable a safe space that protects the people and enables everyone to have a voice? We have to build trust and that takes time and for some, they will never be at the point to put their hand up and speak and that is something we have to respect. The value we get as an organisation isn’t knowing WHO spoke up, but WHAT the topic raised is, because this might shed light on growing internal issues, perspectives we had not thought about and opportunities not explored.

Don’t Over Complicate the Question Gathering Process

There are many different methods for enabling a platform for such discussions or feedback loop, but be aware of things like requiring people to sign-in for tooling as this might add people to think there feedback is not anonymous. You can use simple surveying tools like Microsoft Forms or Google Forms for collecting feedback, but be aware that if the employee needs to log-in to fill in the survey, this might add friction to being able to feel free to write your thoughts down. The positive with this approach that it has a low barrier of entry, but you have to handle a lot of manual effort to see what people wrote and check for duplicates and similar topics, as people are not able to vote on topics they feel are interesting.

There are other great tools, such as Slido (https://www.slido.com) which offers you a suite of different solutions and tools depending on what you are looking for. Of course such toolboxes might be too much for the start as you want to first test and refine your platform for a feedback loop. That’s one of the reasons we developed Live-Ask (https://live-ask.com) to enable a very low friction approach to get up and running in less that 20 seconds!

Add to your organisations operating system

You’ve picked a method (tooling) for enabling your organisation to be able to give anonymous and open feedback, you now need to cement your openness to such a platform by creating a ritual for the event, which is consistent and regular. I would highly advise against one-off events as this sends a signal that you don’t really care but want to make an impression you do, this usually is a reaction to an event or a circumstance which you react to. This is not the best way to build trust and enable your organisation to have a voice. Create a reoccurring appointment which is at least monthly or at the maximum every quarter, this shows your commitment to the topic and starts to build trust as well.

We have talked about the HOW to enable your organisation to have a voice, by picking a tooling / method which is comfortable to use for all and presents an anonymous and frictionless approach for feedback gathering, and we have talked about HOW often you should have your ritual and why it should be a ritual and not just a one-off event. Now lets talk about the benefits for you as an organisation for enabling such feedback loops.

Everyone Benefits, especially you

We have a composition of people in the organisation which all bring different perspectives and points of view to the table as they are at different aspects of the organisation and see the same topic from complete different angles.

This is a huge benefit to the organisation, to allow others to voice their thoughts about topics, they would not normally be involved with. Not only that, having the ability to chip in ideas, questions, thoughts, concerns or points of view gives you a feeling that you are being listened to and that the organisation cares about your thoughts and opinions. This approach also supports an ever evolving team / organisation operating system in terms of the culture and serves as a layer which will help reinforce your mission and will enable the organisation not to become stagnant and helps to prevent it from rotting from the inside.

Let’s Recap:

• Define a tooling / method for capturing feedback as anonymously as possible, this generally only works when you have enough people to be really anonymous, this is usually around 20+ individuals
• Create a reoccurring ritual for your team or organisation to come together and go through the various questions & statements
• Mix the focus of the event from time to time with specific themes like “Work Remote Policy Q&A” or other topics which might be timely within the organisation
• The benefits you get are tenfold, different perspective to topics which matter, get a feel for the health of the team / organisation and see / hear the topics which matter to the people at that moment in time. Bringing the organsation together, building trust and enabling an open feedback culture

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