The Most Important 15 Minutes Of Each Employee’s Week
I first learned of the concept of 15five reports from Gregg Johnson almost 10 years ago. Gregg was then Senior VP of Starbucks, and was one of my most influential mentors. In one of our formal mentoring sessions, he told me about his little-known secret tool, that gives CEOs and managers instant visibility so complete that it renders the workforce transparent.
Transparency translates into previously unattainable levels of accountability, clarifies focus company-wide, and helps executives identify the highest performing and most valuable team members.
The tool he told me about was a 15 Five Report. He’d been using one for years, paper based, and I began to use one with my direct reports while I was the Chief Operating Officer for 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. They worked. I was bought in. When I began coaching CEOs on growing their companies, I started getting them to use the tool with their teams as well.
Then, in 2012, I discovered a company called 15Five. They had nailed the implementation of this process into an elegant and simple product. Each week, employees at every level take 15 minutes to answer custom-designed questions. The responses are automatically rolled up into a report that management can read in 5 minutes.
15Five is also a highly efficient communication tool that CEOs and managers can use to respond directly to their employees. They can hand pick management and executives to add to each specific report, and comment amongst themselves within the interface. In this way, employee feedback leads into effective conversations which transform into actionable results.
Rather than guessing about the nebulous state of individual employees and entire teams based on yearly reviews and the occasional one-on-one, you can receive insightful comments delivered right to your door every week. You will never again miss critical pieces of information that often go unnoticed, costing you time and money.
A clear communication channel is critical for organizations that are looking to scale, and that is why I recommend 15Five to every executive I coach. They are able to consistently use this lightweight tool to maintain radical transparency over their entire workforce, from management all the way down to the front lines. Each employee feels that they have a voice and an intense drive to remain accountable for their performance.
I cannot overstate the benefits of using 15Five as a brilliant framework for information gathering. You can instantly uncover and resolve the biggest obstacles to success, maintain momentum on key projects, identify your best talent, and support those with the greatest potential. This is likely the most valuable tool available for organizational transformation and success.
This tool ends up being the most impactful 15 minutes employees spend in their week.
Category: Business Growth & Strategy Communication & Alignment Leadership
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If you look at this, it is like a simple tool to gather what a Lean Board or Information Centre (or for our Caterpillar friends CPS Board) would tell you in terms of getting the critical measures of success visible so they can be monitored, if slipping, or actioned if there is a containment or countermeasure that can be out in place. It is a great concept and there is nothing more powerful than having key salient points and indicative measures to tell you where you are at any point, in time and real time.