How Fair Process Will Get Your Employees to Love You in 7 Steps

Fair Process is Why Great Leaders Are Adored

Fair process is essential in leadership and management. While leadership is about coping with change, management is about coping with complexity. When we’re focused on coping and leading others through change, it is sometimes easy to forget how these decisions look to an outside party. This is even truer when the outside party doesn’t have the full story. The absence of clarity and facts can turn outside observers into doomsday predictors. If big changes are being carried out at an organization, an important part of the process is to think about how these changes will be implemented. Fair process is the way we handle and deliver small and major changes to an organization so that all stakeholders feel heard.

Let’s put this into context by looking at a scenario:

You could be the president, COO, or the operations manager at a factory or production facility and you know that production is good, but it could be better. You do your research and find that there’s a manufacturing method that could increase productivity by 20%. Best of all, there is no need for new equipment and the needed capital to put the method into effect is minimal. You take the information to your next leadership meeting and present it to your colleagues. The results are unanimous. Everyone on your team loves your idea. It is both simple and elegant. Best of all, you will be able to give all of your current employees a raise. Additionally, all managers will receive a bonus, three months after you implement the new method.

You develop the plan and implementation method. Your solution accounts for every contingency and question. Six months later, you gather everyone and show them the future of productivity. The company will be switching from the production line approach to having pods of people manufacturing from start to finish. You then announce that in three months, everyone will get a raise because of this system.

You expected to be showered with praise and the cheers of your employees. After all, you just made their jobs easier and even promised them a raise. But chances are people will completely hate your plan and most likely the only thing you will be showered with is contempt from everyone affected by this program that had no say in making it. You walk away not knowing what to think.

Note: This may seem farfetched, however, something similar happened with a well-known car manufacturer.

This is a prime example of the lack of fair process. Was the idea bad? Not in the least. Was implementation bad? Yes, horrible in fact. Let’s see how we could have prevented this problem through fair process:

1) Obtain buy in from peers and those you report to: You do the research and since it is favorable, you build out a plan. You then present it to your leadership team. The team likes it and wants to go in this direction.

2) State your position: You speak to the employees on the production floor in groups about the direction the company is going in. You tell them you are looking for improvement opportunities that result in better productivity. You assure that this is being done in order to further grow the company.

3) Build the process: You ask employees at all levels for feedback and ideas of how to best increase productivity and hold focus groups comprised of volunteers inside the company. You assure all parties involved that all feedback will be taken into consideration for the final decision.

4) Acknowledge the input: You announce to everyone that all feedback has been collected and that multiple ideas that are feasible for achieving better productivity have been presented.

5) Announce the process: You go on to describe the process to everyone and how management will take in all the information in order to weigh and test the ideas and possible solutions. Once again, assuring everyone that all ideas will be reviewed.

6) Due diligence: Assess all relevant ideas presented, in addition to your original idea. You then either take your idea as is, modify it, or pick another idea if it has better merit than the one you originally came up with.

7) Present the outcome: Gather everyone and show them the results of all the feedback. Explain why the selected idea was chosen over the others and what its positive effects will be.

The goal of fair process is to pursue the best idea. Using fair process is something we can do on a daily basis. It doesn’t have to be a structured process with small changes, in these cases the key is listening to others to obtain options and secondly to obtain their buy in. As changes become larger and can affect more people, it’s a good idea to plan ahead. The bottom line in fair process is that people want to be heard and not feel like they have no control over their own situation. Implementing fair process not only gives you better buy-in, but also gives the opportunity for real innovation through constantly listening for ideas presented by employees at all levels. As leaders, it is important we set direction, once direction is set our job is to listen, not impose. Fair Process is what sets great leaders apart in these times of great change.

Have you ever presented the right solution but it was received badly? Let us know in the comments.