This approach can be generally described as a structural approach to how people work. I look for the outside parts (how they interact externally) and the inside parts (how they stack ‘em and how they string ‘em).
Performing this survey at several levels of an organization can illuminate problems with alignment, structure, focus, communication, and adaptability. The purpose of the survey is to understand which of those problems can be leveraged best to serve the goals of the organization.
The survey covers twelve categories:
What records do you receive? Make?
Where does your time go?
What do you worry about?
What are the three main responsibilities in your job? How do you prioritize them?
How do you stay in sync with your boss?
How do you stay in sync with your staff?
[This is work as computation. I’m looking for input here, and for the structure of the processing routine.]
Describe the steps in your tasks.
Describe your tasks in terms of input, process, and output.
[Integrate the tasks into a spreadsheet format. Look for opportunities to digitize, eliminate, delegate. Look for decision points, flexibility, thinking.]
Describe your dealings with customers.
Describe your dealings with vendors.
Describe the interaction between you and your boss.
Describe the interaction between you and your team.
[How connected is this person? Look for time allocation, compare it to expectations and explain the variances. Also, see if they know who their “real customers” are. See if their interaction is something like, “As long as the boss isn’t complaining, I’m okay.”]
What are the last 3 movies you saw?
Books and magazines you read?
How do you get your news?
Describe a business practice that you chose to change in the past two years. How did it work?
Describe a business practice that you would like to change.
[Look for sharpening the saw. Look for indications that the person is flexible about how things are done, ready to adapt to changing conditions. Are they working a puzzle or playing a game? Look for a problem that keeps coming up over and over without effective resolution.]
How do you know what the people in your circle know?
How do they know what you know?
How do your customers know what you offer?
How do your vendors know what they need to?
[Look for situations where communication breaks down, either due to the structure of the interaction or to the choices of the participants.]
What measurable goals do you have this year?
What are the main activities and key ratios to achieve it?
How do you compare performance to plan?
[This is useful for everyone, even if they aren’t “selling” anything. It should give insight into the structure of their mental model of the operation, and into the performance measures that they use on themselves.]
How does your boss get the best from you?
If you hire people, what process do you use?
How do you let people know how they’re doing?
Name three things that you think should result in immediate termination of an employee.
Describe a problem that isn’t going away fast enough.
[Look for some thought about the relationship of skills /experience to job requirements. Look for constructive practices. Look for inconsistencies in practice and principle. Look for some concept of feedback cycles. Look for some indication that the group is headed in a direction, and try to understand what the direction is.]
What are your goals for the month, quarter, and year?
What are your boss’s goals for this month, quarter, and year?
Do the goals differ from the plan?
What are the organization’s goals for the short, medium, and long term?
What are the critical success factors in achieving those goals?
[Look for some indication that there is awareness and alignment of goals. Look for some idea of what is critical and what is not – and that the concept of criticality is based on goals. Also, look for some consistency between cycle planning and goals.]
What Key Values do you hold? For example, Fairness, Efficiency, Honesty, Quality?
What Key Values does your boss hold?
What Key Values does the organization hold?
[Look for alignment of values, awareness of values, and consistency of goals with values. This could be the most important single part of teamwork.]
What is the level of technology use in your work?
How well does it work? How old is your hardware and software? What support resources are available to you for problem solving? What resources are available for traditional training? What resources are available for creative implementations, such as new ideas and practices?
How often do you upgrade, replace, or add hardware and software?
Does the organization have a website? Intranet? Extranet? eCommerce? ERP? How secure are the information assets from accidental loss? Theft?
[Look for an over dependence on tools at the expense of work performed. Look for opportunities to leverage technology to do things better, cheaper, or faster. Look for how static or dynamic the implementation is.]
How are the other people on the team doing? Who’s doing a good job? Who needs help?
What one thing would you change about your boss?
What one thing would you change about a staff member?
What problem threatens the teamwork of the group?
[Look for whether a person is more concerned about what everyone else is doing than they are about their own performance. Look for real indications of political or personnel problems in the organization. Look for indications that anything other than the work is occupying people’s minds. This is actually very useful, if performed constructively. If each square on the grid changes color based on its perception of the effectiveness of the cells next to it, a pattern of “inflammation” would indicate possible areas where attention should focus.]
What makes the organization unique? Why is it there? What are its prospects?
How does it make a difference? How do you make a difference?
[Look for a sense of objective identity and valuation of the organization and person. Look for someone who can articulate the value proposition of the organization and themselves. Look for anything that seems important and doesn’t fit into the other 11 categories.]