Needs analysis: the work experience
Thursday, July 10th, 2008Nearly every person who works at a company is excited, confused or frustrated about relationships with coworkers, company policies, and/or their work process day-to-day.
The needs analysis starts with a conversation with the person or people who hire me. Usually they feel responsible for what’s happening at the company, whether things are good or bad. And they have a vision or a goal. Usually this is some way to raise revenue or lower costs.
Maybe they want to reduce marketing costs by a third, or boost sales, or reduce turnover, or get press in the NY Times, or implement a new computer system for better customer satsifaction, or get 200 customers to be on a focus group panel, or stop department in-fighting, or have teachers change their teaching methods, or change a pension plan, or raise funds for a new building.
Using my experience as an executive coach, I try to check that this goal is “real,” that this is something you really do want, and not a way to avoid something else you want even more which you think you can’t get. Your goal becomes the core of my mission, what I’m accountable for helping get done.
There are always relationships, policies, or work that excites or confuses or frustrates the person who hires me — that’s why you hire me. So we talk about these things.
Maybe sales guys waste two hours every day talking at the water cooler instead of selling, or maybe you don’t know how to talk to the guys in IT, or maybe the company’s growing really fast and you’re not sure how you can keep doing the work you loved when the company was smaller.
That’s your personal wish list of things, if you could close your eyes and a genie would make it happen, you’d have.
As we talk, I try to figure out what work you most want to do. What actions excite you, and you’re also great at? These actions are your responsibility. As I hear what your coworkers’ wish lists are, I’ll try to see what they might do for you, and what you might do for them.
After I talk with you, I go around and talk with your coworkers. Every conversation is casual in a way that I’m great at. Sometimes it’s such a relief for someone to tell me what’s been frustrating them about working at your company for so long. The thing is, there needs to be an agreement that I’m doing my best to help them get what they want too. That’s really important to me.
Usually there are a few people who can really clearly articulate what is so exciting about working at your company. That’s so important! Because their enthusiasm, which has often been hidden, then can spread and inspire coworkers and, if we share these conversations through video or text with customers, can inspire customers too.
When many people describe a company, product, or service, they create a full picture which one person, even an expert, couldn’t even begin to create on his own.
Needs analysis of the work experience at your company gets coworkers excited and inspired about working together, shows a full picture of what’s working, what’s not, and how to move forward.
Something I’m great at is finding where everyone’s needs overlap. Nearly every time, I find that people who work together, even if they’re fighting now, want the same thing, deep down. Sometimes they want trust and communication. You can’t create trust and communication from thin air, so the next step is to work on a project together in a way that builds trust and communication. Unlike teambuilding where you go off-site and find new ways to express yourself, the incremental project management I do always helps coworkers do work at the company that they have wanted to get done.
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