Written by: Hazem Hassan
Edited by : Asmaa Omar Deraaz, Mona Timor Shehata.
Published by: Amira Haytham
This era is not only the era of information but also the accurate detailed information, and the more we get them in the right way, the more we reach the most suitable and effective decisions in life general and specially in our businesses.
In business and management information means everything. It has several meanings:-
- “Goals” have to be achieved.
What happens when there is a shortage in detailed information? This is very problematic, and this is the main point of this article.
Let us analyze a more practical case. “Why do I have to work on this task?” How many times did you receive this question from your employee?
This question means that there is a shortage in information and your employee tried to find the benefit or point of the task you assigned to him/her, but he/she came out with nothing, so he/she decided to ask you ‘why?’.
It is a problem, but is this the main problem?
No, the main problem is when you can’t answer his/her question to find the point of carrying out the task.
You as an employerhave to ask yourself this question not only before receiving it from your employee, but also, during setting the organizational and the departmental goals; why does my employee have to work on this task? And what is the point of achieving this task?
Employee Based Management sees the “Why Question” as an important tool for finding out the justifications for the matter.The digging technique is considered the tool for doing so, through asking the “Why-Questions” till reaching the original reasons behind the task.
The more you show the reasoning behind the tasks and goals you assigned to your employee, the more he/she will produce the behavior you want and reach the performance you planned for.
Let us say you created a task (T) for your employee, you can follow the following steps:
- Find out the surface-reasons which in our case are A, B and C.
- Answering this question “why do these surface reasons exist?” will produce a new type of reasons with higher degree of depth and importance. TheSecond level reasons here are A1, A2, A3, B1, C1, and C2.
- The same “Why question” be repeated with the reasons you get from the second level. Here in these third level reasons you will come up with valuable reasons.
- The third level reasons are not the final stage, but it is an ongoing process till reaching the link between the task and the organizational goals.
- Find a correlation between the different reasons’ levels, whetherdirect or indirect , and with high or low percentage. (Link first level reasons with second level reasons with third level reasons)
The Digging technique and the Performance.
Knowing more detailed information is not only for what to be done as a “Task” but also for why these results take place? What are the main and deep reasons behind these results?
Let’s say you have an employee-X in your dept.-Y and his/her Performance Equation is:
P = A + B
P: is the employee-X’s performance
A and B: are the components of the performance which you know.
The question here is; to which degree you know both components?
If you know A by 70% and B by 80%, so we can say that you control P by 75%, which means 25% of your employee’s performance is not controlled by you, and what you cannot control, you cannot predict its future.
So how to get this 25% ratio back to the controlled area?
When you start working on your employee’s performance (I mean the strategic analysis that leads to the perfect domination) try to find new areas to measure and new ratios to get…The more you break the performance into its initial reasons and causes the more you control it and the more you reach new levels.
After deep analysis would come up with new reasons, wif there are more factors that cause the performance or play a direct role in shaping the performance but you do not know them.
Let’s say
P = A + B + C
A, B and C here are performance causers.
The next stage after finding the roots and the reasons is to translate them into numbers.
For example:-
A represents 33.75%,
B represents 58.68%
C represents 7.57%.
That is the best way to know where you have to focus and where you have to invest your time and your resources.
What are the benefits of using the Digging Technique (DT)?
- Finding out the justification for the task will help you give a meaning to your employee’s task.
- Engaging your employee with the organization will be based on realistic reasons.
- Your employee will feel with the importance of the tasks created for him/her.
- It is a practical implementation of “My Employee is My Strategic Partner.”
- Your employee will be useful and effective to the organization and you will have his/her input which means he/she will add value to the organization, which also means “innovation”.
The Digging technique is an approach to know more about the way to perfectly control.
Don’t forget to keep on digging↓↓↓↓↓↓