Listening Impact

Cultural entropy is the amount of energy in an organisation that is consumed in unproductive work. It is a measure of the conflict, friction and frustration that exists within an organisation.  Barrett Values Centre

We don’t usually link the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy, a fundamental law of physics, with Listening. That is, until we try to understand why billions of dollars are lost as a result of unproductive work.

The natural state of the world is disorder or entropy, but “entropy can only be overcome by an organizing energy from an external force…We are fighting to show a chaotic world a glimpse of that which provides the only hope for stifling her natural and powerful spiral into disorder.”   J. Matthew Brunson, M.D.

That’s where listening comes in to play. It is the vital skill to stem the tide of counterproductive noise in the system.

Let’s take a very common example: selecting an item to be included in a budget.

Manager: We have some money remaining in the budget. It’s just enough to purchase the project management software we’ve wanted.

Direct Report: That would be great. I’ll talk to the vendor about costs and timing.

At that point it seems as though there’s order. But wait.

Another direct report says the money should go for additional headcount to ease burden on employees, customers lobby for price reduction, and the CFO wants to use the funds elsewhere.

Disorder. There’s no decision, players are frustrated, time has been wasted, and the issue has gotten complex.

Heeding Dr. Brunson’s advice, listening would have supplied sufficient energy to overcome the chaos that arose. The interaction devolved into a Ping-Pong match without any attempt to learn from one another to create shared meaning, the very essence of communication.

Similar scenarios occur constantly throughout a business day, pushing an organization towards chaos instead of pulling it towards sensible order. Following are three pointers to control entropy:

1. Listen to your stakeholders. Look beyond analytics and talk to real people to get at what’s behind the numbers. If you observe demoralized people, don’t hide in your office or ask their manager what’s wrong, talk to the people with the problems. If you’re losing customers, don’t send a survey, go and spend time with them. If the players in the budget item case would have asked some good questions and checked the answers, an informed decision could have been reached efficiently without wasting time and eroding trust in one another.

2. Teach your employees how to listen. Listening is a means, not an end, but it still requires skill to do it well so the process of listening is transparent and the emphasis is on content. The Golden Rule we’ve so often been taught, “Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You,” isn’t applicable for listening. Instead, it is “Listen to Others as They Want to Be Heard.”

3. Listen for and monitor the level of organizational entropy. Redundancies, employee and customer turnover, re-dos, too many/too few people copied on memos, active rumor mill, and pipeline inconsistency, are all indicators of disorder that’s already entrenched and doing great harm. One role of a leader is to observe the horizon for signs of emerging entropy, and act swiftly to gain control.

Good listening is an energy-saver and a productivity enabler.