Elevator Speech to Promote Staff Thinking

I was in an elevator going up. A courier runner had just entered the elevator. And then, he hesitated. When I reached my floor, which incidentally was the top level, the courier runner remained inside. Apparently, he had forgotten which floor he was meant to be going to. Although he knew the department, the floor was not indicated.

Every day, I would observe this same behaviour meted out by various people. As an idea, I decided to put in a suggestion into our official Staff Suggestion Scheme; why not include in the name of the department next to the elevator’s button? I thought nothing of it until I received a reply that it could not be done ‘because departments do move’. In my head, I was wondering, how often do departments move floors? Fortunately, my boss was wondering the same thing.

But it took us three whole months before the idea came into fruition. My boss had to take this suggestion to the Productivity Steering Committee chaired by the 3^rd ranking person in the company. The Committee, which consisted of managers in the Executive Team, met once a month. At the meeting, my suggestion was one of the items tabled. The Chairman turned to Michael, General Manager of Properties and basically asked him what the issues were. Michael promised the team that he would report back the following week after talking to his manager.

Guess what? After 3 months from my suggestion, the department name now sits next to the appropriate floor button. Organisations are not naturally structured to listen to their staff members for improvements, especially if these members are front-liners or come from another department.

Organisations consist of people of different personalities and outlook. Some personality types do not favour new ideas because the profile prefers things to be status quo. In addition, when we have a Manager-Staff or a Department to Department interaction, the element of power comes into play because most managers (or departmental experts) see themselves as being the sole custodians of ideas. It is always easier to say ‘no’ to an idea then to agree because two things happen:

• It shows that the manager/ experts knows better, and
• It reduces the need for the manager to ‘think’ because ‘thinking’ is an intense activity. Routine work is more ‘predictable’ and is ‘lazy on the brain’. ‘Change’ is too tough.

Most people gravitate toward a problem being more complex than it can possibly be. The problem with us is the more we think, the more complex it gets.

Consider the case of the elevator sitting outside of a building. A group of architects and engineers was trying to figure out how to put an elevator inside a building. Even as an engineer was viewing the El Cortez from outside to figure out how to resolve the problem, a bellboy suggested simply, “Why not put the elevator outside?”. And the world's first outside hydraulic glass elevator was created in 1956.

Hence, organisations build structures to get people to contribute their thinking. And good organisations see thinking as an essential culture. Consider the time when I was with the newspaper group again. Can you imagine the 3^rd ranked person and the executive managers of the leadership team meeting once a month just to review ideas submitted by staff members? Or consider the influence of the CEO of Marriott Hotel Group who reads all the complaint and complimentary letters coming in from their customers? Surely they have better things to do than that. Or do they? At senior level, their action has a telling effect on shaping the culture. They are role models. It tells you how serious they are at what they do.

When I was a manager having staff members reporting to me, one of the things that I am always mindful is that as staff, we should never suffer from organisational incest. We must look out. So, twice a month, I expect my staff to visit another company and learn one or two things new that they can use in our organisation. I arranged for the organisation to pay for their visits. And I ask them for a one-pager report. That way, I kept staff members fresh and enthusiastic and always looking for new and creative way to improve.

So, if our organisation really wants to believe in its people, it starts with senior management role-modeling and an organisation structure that builds new ideas and promotes managers who do.

Food for thought even as you are in an elevator.