We all may be familiar with management reviews and feedback styles such as SMART and 360 Degree, but here's an ultimate case (which is generally not-feasible) in today's post-COVID realignment, but a CEO of a smartboard company decided to call all 600 or so of his employees in 27 countries to flatten out and clarify any uncertainty that was occurring during the global shutdown.

One day, I decided I needed to call everybody. It was during COVID. Maybe it was just because I was sitting at home going, "I wonder what they're up to, what they're thinking, what they're worried about." 

Income inequality is soaring to all-time highs around the world, so the delta between those in management and in non-management often seem like residing on different planets. Breaking those barriers and building community consensus is paramount to repairing relations that exist between management barriers, especially in today's uncertain business climate.

Town halls are often seen as doing the bare minimum for employees, as just a formality — not actually listening to the concerns or alarm bells that may be coming up the chain. 

Smart Technologies CEO, Nicholas Svensson said the following:

It was astonishing to me that you could do that much work, and it had almost zero impact with respect to communicating some of the key things you wanted to communicate. We backed off on the town halls. It was monthly. Now, we're down to once a quarter.

Having a candid conversation without fear of reprisal is the trait of what good leadership looks like in an often-corporate world of mealy-mouthed CEOs. This is important and vital to righting the ship that is your company. This missed in the race to "AI-ify" everything in an organization. First you must get your house in order before creating synergies and streamlining operations.

Implementing AI for AI sake is a lost leader and creates more problems than it solves. It's back to the basics, and serious feedback is the logical beginning to this, especially firms that consistently miss the mark.

 One piece of feedback I got from talking to the product development group was "Man, we're always jumping around from project to project," and "You guys are changing your minds all the time." So, we said, "OK, once we start, we're going to finish a project."  

Candid feedback to management often doesn't show up in reports. Breaking down these barriers to communication and creating organizational synergies must come before line of business synergies, or any potential gains in growth will never occur in the first place. 

CEOs like Svensson understand this is vital to understanding what employees think. They are the ones completing the work and seeing first-hand what problems arise. 

 Calling employees has become more of an annual thing — about 10% of the job. The calls are 30 minutes a person. It gives me a sense that I have a finger on the pulse, and so there's a certain level of kind of calm that comes with that. You have a feel for what's going on — what's up, what's down.  

Granted, no leader can be expected to call every employee but getting down to what really matters — the individual workflow, can create perspective on what a company can be doing better in the realm of HR, efficiencies in communication, and ultimately grow. Growth cannot occur by cutting for cutting sake. Cutting communications will ultimately be the end of the road.