Okay, March 12 is a Monday.And you can choose to do a bit of Disruptive Engagement if you choose.

March 12 is also the Monday after Sunday morning’s loss of an hour’s sleep as we set the clocks ahead each Spring.   zzzzzzzzzzzz….

AND, it will be one of the low productivity workdays — it is also called Sleepy Monday based on research — and you know people will be dragging.

(How many of your people or co-workers do you think will
go to bed an hour earlier Saturday night?)

Spring Forward Monday -- make it engaging and motivatingSo, with most people dragging, and with this a known problem, why not choose to do something differently? Why not recharge their batteries and increase involvement and low motivation and teamwork (sometimes not really good anyway) by facilitating a meeting focused on their issues and their ideas for improvement?

Choose to be a Draggin’ Slayer. Seize The Day!

Spring Forward Minday illustration on disengagement of workersOur experiences show the dragging can be short-lived as people get involved with the Square Wheels® metaphor as a vehicle to discuss issues and problems.

Simply talking about their perceived Square Wheels will generate many Round Wheel solutions to make things roll more better faster.

Tons of research show that workers want to make improvements and will work on teams to look at the ideas for improvement and offer ideas and energy for implementation. They simply need the collective thinking and support of their workgroup to really understand the issues more clearly and to better define some solutions.

Spring Forward Monday® - A Square Wheels / Round Wheel opportunity for actively engagingPeople are pretty good problem solvers and when they know that something IS a shared problem, they will collaborate to define the perspective, needed resources and support. They can find solutions and if the solutions are their idea, they will be more motivated to implement those ideas. It is an issue of ownership and active involvement; you really cannot push them to make improvements you think are needed, since they resist your changes…

Nobody ever washes a rental car.

Square Wheels® are interactive facilitation engagement tools designed by Scott Simmerman and are a tool for innovationSo, it is about choice.

Your choice to to continue to do things the same way or to actively involve and engage your people to interactively consider things from different perspectives and defining some issues and refining some ideas for workplace improvement.

This kind of interactive discussion can be held at the front-line worker level or even among the top management team, although workplace realities would suggest that the people pushing the wagon know a lot more about the realities and problems than the wagon pullers.

Most organizations do have the tendency to work like this and we will note that our experience proves that the Round Wheels are already in the wagon — those good ideas already exist. It is simply a matter of identification of the better ideas once the bad ones are recognized for what they are.

The reality is that the Square Wheels® actually DO work, they just do not work smoothly…

Square Wheels One is a metaphor for performance improvement by Scott Simmerman

Square Wheels® One is our main illustration about how things really work.

So, with that perception about how things really work, you can use your imagination to guess at what might be done differently.

You can choose to be a Draggin’ Slayer on Spring Forward Monday® or continue to let things thump and bump. You can choose to improve involvement and engagement by involving and engaging your people in a new vision of how things can roll to the goal.

People WANT to be involved. Even the ones that say they don’t will get involved and engaged, since they so-often complain about how things are working and this is the perfect venue for them to contribute! So choose to involve everyone. Let people make some better choices and own the process of implementing workplace improvement.

Square Wheels engagement on Spring Forward Monday by Performance Management CompanyIf we have gotten you interested, here are some simple resources. One is a 2-minute video overview of the whole idea that we produced for 2017.

Spring Forward Monday Video Overview of Square Wheels

You can also purchase a complete $25 toolkit to support your effort with our metaphors and materials. The package contains:

  • The Square Wheels One image
  • A Leader’s Guide for facilitating the session
  • Participant Worksheets/Handouts
  • A collection of Square Wheels Posters that can be used as anchors to the insights gained as the group rolls down the road.

Spring Forward Monday Square Wheels Toolkit for involvement and motivation

And, you can access The Square Wheels Project to complete a 30-minute optional course on facilitating workplace improvement through facilitation. It is a general course, but focused on our metaphors and worksheets. And it costs only $10 as we gain traction for our approach to organizational performance improvement and motivation of workplaces.

The Square Wheels Project is about facilitating engagment and improvement

We are continually working hard to make this simple tool available directly to supervisors and managers who need simple and effective tools for motivating their people. Doing this on Spring Forward Monday™ would be a nice touch, but doing one of these sessions any time would be of high impact and benefit.

 

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott SimmermanDr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
Connect with Scott on Google+

Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Spring Forward Monday® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company


Note that this is a rewrite of the article on SFM that we published in 2017. If anything, there are even more research showing that the idea of doing things differently will have multiple positive impacts on people and performance.

 


Also published on Medium.