SHIT Meetings

Recently We have started the concept of SHIT (Say Honest Important Things) meetings with all the employees. These are the meetings where we open up and say honest things about the performance and expectations to our employees. I was really skeptical at the start of these and now I have to admit the sheer success and transparency these meetings have created amoung our employees. Virtually now everyone knows where they stand and what is expected out of them. Sticking to honest important things has also given us the edge and everybody a chance to look at their blind spots and work around or correct it. My Whole last year can be summarized in one lesson I learnt which is "Any system/process put in place without tying into the organizational goals/vision is bound to fail" I have been wondering why so many of my good initiatives were failing despite my pressure to stick to it. For eg I started a task tracker and asked all our employees to fill in the time they spent on different tasks so that they can see their progress over a time period. It sustained for a week before everyone dumped it. Now I tied it with the organization goal we started analyzing the time we spent on each project and we have setup a requirements tracker which would help us prioritize what we want to work. Now the task tracker is a must and should for us to make intelligent decisions on the delivery dates and now the system is working like a charm as people understood the significance of the role of the system and how it is important for the organization.