Strips of paper...

I read some thing interesting about a great Italian scientist called Fermi and his work in nuclear physics. It was about Fermi breaking down a complex problem into small chunks, measuring the small chunk and then extending it to solve the larger problem.

In the mid 1900s, Fermi used strips of paper to calculate the impact of an explosion! He basically threw strips of paper from his hand, measured it and extended it to calculate the impact of an explosion in kilotons. Don't quite know how accurate it was, but nevertheless a great attempt and a great learning for all of us.

Anyway, about a couple of years ago I was in a meeting with my colleagues and the topic on the table was some thing related to morale issues and what people thought about working in my company. So here is the problem statement, if you were a rock star cool manager who was responsible for improving the morale of the org, what would you do??

I don't know about you, but I would have probably gone around talking to people and telling them how cool it was to work here! But how would you measure it?? Well well, that is when this awesome guy called CC (www.clarkeching.com) came up with this awesome idea of measuring it on a scale of 1 and 10 and tracking it over a period of time.

He called it iNPS or internal NPS and was a pretty cool way of measuring morale. I took the idea and implemented it in my team as well. If nothing else it at least tells you where you stand at a point in time and what steps can help you get some quick gains.

I also added a little bit of my own flavor by asking the top 2-3 reasons for a particular rating. I used a wee bit reading from Edward De Bono's six thinking hats to collect positives one week and all negatives the following week. It was interesting to see how the scores went up during the positives week and the scores going down during the negative week. Good learning anyway, I think it's a great way of measuring and tracking a complex problem in an org.

What next... well well well, I have been thinking about my mood swings from being positive to being a complete cynic. Strips of paper would probably not work, reckon I should iNPS my mood for the day??