The Story Behind the Story
Andrew Hill writing in his column, ‘On Management’ for the Financial Times commented on a visit to the Director’s Forum in Vienna where fans of the late Peter Drucker voiced fears about the way data is wielded to crush human insight and inventiveness. Essentially his piece argues that data represents only half the story for business leaders and Andrew promotes the case for a mix of quantitative and qualitative insight in developing strategy.
“For now, some of the tools measuring customer satisfaction are as blunt as those smiley-face pads you find at airports, asking you to assess your experience. I still wonder how the airline I flew with last summer interpreted the input from the cheerful toddler who was repeatedly stabbing the angry-face icon on the machine at the departure gate.
“Insights from a few users can still be valuable. Justin King (ex. Sainsbury’s CEO) advises against ignoring the shopper who complains she waited 15 minutes at the self-service tills, even if your spreadsheet shows the average wait is two minutes. Her perception may tell you more than the whole dashboard of data.”
Understanding data ‘spikes’
His observations connect with our own observations on engagement surveys, the classic source of quantitative data on your employees. Everyone does one nowadays but few companies seem to investigate the “story behind the story”, pushing to understand and act on the “spikes” which the data reveals. In which case the output from engagement surveys serves as little more than a vehicle allowing you to ‘tick the box’ which indicates that employees have been engaged with and to update your engagement score in the annual report.
Since Human Capital is fairly universally acknowledged as a firm’s greatest asset, the issues around engagement deserve a little more attention than this. Whether seeking to understand dynamics around leadership behaviours, corporate integrity or the UK government’s current hot topic of “productivity” it is worth investing in understanding what factors are really at play and then thinking about how you can address them. Our own contribution to the challenge is the FTI Forums tool, and below is a summary of what it can do. A simple, cost effective and potentially massively powerful way to dig beneath engagement score findings and well worth exploring.
Introducing FTI Forums
Most companies deploy a regular engagement survey. The survey will highlight issue and opportunity areas but the insight is at a superficial level. Few are able to gather depth of insight around key ‘spikes’ which will enable them to understand the real drivers at work and how to manage them successfully. Our fti forum tool allows clients to engage with representative panels of employees and confidentially explore the real issues at play. They are run as open forums curated by the fti research team usually over a period of two to three weeks. Results are analysed and summarised in a report with recommendations for strategic action plans. Senior managers find them an effective and practical tool which they use to help them understand issues in depth and take action fast to address them.
For more information on FTI Forums, please contact info@forwardthinkinginc.com.