We have just had day 2 of Happier Working Lives and the buzz and engagement in the room has continued from day 1. The key focus of the day was problem solving.
In my last blog, I wrote about how the teams were going away to ask their colleagues the ‘what matters to you’ questions and look at whether staff were having a mostly good or mostly bad day and why. All teams came armed with their responses!
The teams came up with themes from their data collected. They then dot voted which three issues were most important to them, this provided the immediate themes to look at. The teams did a few interactive sessions to look at how to make improvements, for example adding their ideas, then asking another team to add their ideas too.The one part that did resonate with all the group was to think differently and ask themselves ‘what would David Attenborough do?’which provoked fruitful debates within the teams.This then led onto De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and how to think about problem solving from different perspectives, from processes & actions to caution & negatives.
The teams now have their ideas that they are going to take back to their colleagues and start going through the PDSA Cycle. To illustrate the PDSA cycle the teams undertook an activity using tennis balls; they had to decide an order in which the tennis ball would be passed and try to do this in the fastest possible time. It was surprising how competitive the teams became! What they took away from this process, was that it is ok to ask other teams what they are doing, ‘pinching with pride’ springs to mind. Why reinvent the wheel, when you can make a few tweaks!
To end the day, we looked at gratitude and the power of saying thank you, as this could mean the difference between a good/bad day. Research suggests (Grant & Gino ) that when people experience gratitude from their manager, they are more productive. There was a variety of thank you cards made available, everyone was asked to choose a card, write it and send it to someone that they work with. This is something that I regularly do, as I think it is important that people are recognised for what they do. Think about how it feels to receive a Thank You…….
So, on that note, thank you for taking the time to read my blogs.