Challenge & Selection

The tool that has helped me with an issue at my organization was the tool of ‘mind mapping’. The  organization I work for conducts an engagement survey every quarter to gauge the satisfaction of the  employee across their area of expertise, manager and peers. My team consists of 33 employees and for  the last 3 quarters the survey results were way below the industry average the rest of the company was  receiving. I came up with the idea of mind mapping after having heard about it at the Hazel Wagner  Tedx talk a while ago.

Each of these 33 employees belong to different clients, this helped me break them into teams and to tell  them to map the issues they were facing with their work, client and manager. This would then help me  identify core problem areas and find a solution to each one of them.

Application

The process spans over a week, where 1 hour is given to each team to gather and discuss openly the  issues they are facing. These engagement survey questions are divided into four parts, people, process,  project and self. With the use of sticky notes, whiteboard and paper a free hand is given to the  employees to map out an ideal scenario for each question. The focus being on what would make them  happier and how they can in turn improve the performance of the client deliverable and add value for  the company.

As Taylor Solitario explained in the class, that mind mapping allows us to see the patterns that emerge  from data in order to save time for reading long reports that say the same thing. This technique helped  my team think differently, and more openly as compared to when putting them on a spotlight to ask  them what the issue was. Most time they would never speak up and talk about their problems. This  process allowed them to discuss openly amongst peers who they trust to bring out the issues to the  higher management.

In that one hour, each team drew up various problems they were facing with regards to work life  balance, flexibility in office hours and work from home policy. Issues of favoritism amongst certain  managers to employees also came up.

Insight & Approach

The result of this activity provided insight into the problems that the employees were not comfortable  discussing in an open forum and preferred to use the sticky note approach of what works and what does  not in a more anonymous manner.

Proper steps were implemented in place to address the concerns of the employees with a work from  home rotational chart that would give everyone the chance while keeping up with office guidelines.  Mandates were given to employees to remove work emails from their personal mobile devices to  ensure their time off work was spent without distractions from work emails/calls.

Confidence was restored in the minds of the employees towards the company and the team, the next  quarter engagement survey results improved drastically and the team now uses various forms of this  mind mapping technique to solve small to complex issues that may arise in the workplace.

