To have successful change we need leadership. The one common element that defines leaders is that they have followers. To foster an organizational culture that maintains sustainable leadership employees have to be willing followers. Some of the key feelings employees need to sustain leadership is trust, ownership of decisions and a sense of self control. Traditional models of social action research have been used to achieve these ends. Practitioners have used qualitative participation, through workshops and focus groups. Consultants have used these practices and achieved limited results. The challenge with this model is the limited scalability. The amount of human and monetary resources needed to have broad-based participation is rarely practical, and as a result this model focuses on manager participation and perceived thought leaders. In our communities we would not accept this as full participation, and in our organizations we don’t have to accept this either.

Using employee surveys strategically we can achieve a much fuller participation. The researcher may still use a mixed methodology where workshops and focus groups inform the survey design. Planning is supported by survey results. The important principal to remember is how can we in a practical way involve all employees throughout our key decision making processes? This does not suggest asking every employee about everything, but rather developing a strategy where all employees are asked about important business issues once or twice a year. Equal access and participation will improve the key dynamics of leadership throughout the organizations, and communicators can offer leadership in advocating for these new channels of participation.

The social research models this concept is based on: Action Research
Action Science

In an earlier blog, I suggested we needed to be brave to conduct research. This article, “A major mistake that managers make” provides insight into why we may not want to gather possibly negative feedback. It also highlights the risks our organizations take when we don’t seek criticism of our decisions.
Ackoffcenter Blog Link

“But the only kind of mistake their organizations take into account are errors of commission. Then, to avoid censure one must try to minimize such errors. This is accomplished when managers do as little as possible. This is seldom a decision made consciously; rather it is a culturally imposed disposition of which most are unconscious.”
(Russell L. Ackoff, p.7)