R.I.P. — Open Ended Questions

(The Beginning of Time — 2019)

The key to any good relationship is proper communication. That’s the main takeaway that longtime partners dish out when pressed for relationship tips from inexperienced parties. It’s also the secret sauce to In-N-Out burger’s almost flawless rating on Glassdoor. According to a survey of the reviews, proper communication ranks as one of the best features of working for In-N-Out. Past employees say that “the company does well in keeping associates up to date. The managers are great communicators and try to make scheduling work for you and run smooth shifts.”

If communication alone can help In-N-Out become one of the top rated employers on Glassdoor, what could it potentially do for you?

Just because you’re not in the Burger Business doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. How do you manage to replicate the same ingredients without getting burned on the hot stove? The best way to start is by setting up regular checkpoints.

Becoming a company that strives in the field of communication means that you have to, well, communicate. “We communicate just fine,” you may think to yourself, considering how you just spoke to your co-worker about your weekend plans when you both ran into each other at the coffee machine. But by setting regular checkpoints, whether they be biweekly or quarterly, you’re establishing a formal process. This means that people are not only used to talking about work, they’re anticipating it.

Now let’s go one step further: You’re speaking to employees regularly about how their work impacts the company, what they’re excelling at, and what they should be mindful of. People are loving it, they’re communicating at length, writing full paragraphs to answer each question you’ve laid out in front of them at each schedules checkpoint. In fact, people love it it so much that your company experiences a massive swell in employees.

Now what are you going to do? You’re communicating like a pro, but this process isn’t scalable to the level you’ve grown to, and you’re still relying on large open ended questions for each review. Each employee is still writing out paragraphs, but there have been too many departments and teams added along with the influx of new employees for you to keep track of.

You realize that you’ll never reach the heights on In-N-Out Burger’s frictionless communication flow, and feel a deep sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

You wake up to find that it was all a bad dream you had after falling asleep following a mid-day burger! You know that the Ghost of Corporate Communication’s Future sent you that vision to make sure you don’t repeat those destined mistakes.

Yes, you’ll attain In-N-Out Burger levels of communication, but you’re going to think of the future today! You’re going to ditch open ended questions from the start, because you know that they won’t be useful as your company grows from dozens to hundreds of people.

Instead, you rush to your office to set up a series of survey questions. You think long and hard about the numerical value assigned to each option, and calculate an ideal average that each of your team members should strive to. You include open ended questions sparingly, understanding that each non-numeric value is one more thing you can’t chart or detect patterns from.

You implement your appraisals and reviews at regular intervals and share the results with the relevant parties, growing your company over the years. You gain hundreds of new employees, all of whom love being part of an organization that communicates so easily. You go on to become one of the top rated companies on Glassdoor, and other brands use your score as inspiration for how to write about what makes for communication.

You sit down at your desk, and take a bite of your burger.