Do Open-ended Questions lead to conversations?

Alright, so you have allowed employees to bring their devices of choice.  Now what?  

You first need to provide some governance and allow for some input from those outside IT and Security to help balance security and usability.  We are not going to talk about “device management” (However, there are mature tools available).

We are discussing your challenges to providing methods for communication and interaction beyond phone calls, text messaging, and email.  These types of interacts are generally “closed” conversations or “private”.   

By providing some additional controlled methods to communicate creating higher transparency and encouraging broader collaboration to improve processes, increase revenue, giving others a voice to sharing ideas and thoughts.  

I ask, if you have seen the Movie JOBS; he challenges his team to provide him with a device that can play music with no constraints, do you believe Steve Jobs was encouraging collaboration.

By providing a place for employees to start a conversation (outside of email) in an “open” area or “public”; you may even want to include some business partners outside your company as part of your extended team.

Give it try!  Post an open-ended question about increasing revenue, reducing costs, or seek productivity improvement ideas.  Then, encourage and reward engagement through some specific controlled questions back to those engaged.  You might be surprised with some of the responses especially when your audience is provided a channel directly into your decision makers.

Consider this hypothesis:  What if you post a question such as; “Please share your ideas to increase revenue for (a product or a service)?  Pick something related to your companies’ ability to generate revenue.  Give it try; what question did you post to get your company engaged to increase revenue?  Did you follow up with a controlled question to sharpen your sword?