52% doesn't tell you what to do on Monday

The employee satisfaction survey results are in. The engagement score is 52%. Not bad. Perhaps even slightly higher than last year.

But what does that score actually tell you?

For one person it stands for trust, space and enjoyment. For another for workload, distance, or the sense that their contribution goes unseen. All those experiences disappear into the same average.

That doesn't mean an engagement score has no value. A score reveals trends, makes comparison possible, and can indicate where more attention is needed.

But an average doesn't yet tell you what lies behind it. And therefore not what you should do differently on Monday either.

When strategy becomes personal

That limitation becomes especially visible when you ask employees how they relate to the strategy.

One person immediately sees where their own contribution lies. Another mainly sees risks. A third understood the presentation, but still doesn't know what the strategy asks of them in daily practice.

On paper they work from the same strategy. In practice they act from different pictures of that strategy.

As long as those pictures stay invisible, it seems as if everyone understands the same direction. The differences only appear later: in decisions that don't connect, employees who wait, and conversations in which the leader has to explain the intention again and again.

That brought me to a practical question:

How do I ensure that people gain clarity about their relationship to the strategy and start acting on it, without me, as the leader, having to be present at every conversation?

First, a picture

During a single day I asked employees to capture their relationship to the strategy in one image.

No score. No open answer. First a photograph.

That may sound like a small difference, but a photo asks something different of you than a number or a written answer.

You can't get away with "fairly satisfied" or "I largely understand the strategy". You have to choose what you show. What represents your position? Where is there space? Where does it chafe? And what does that say about your possible contribution?

Later that day we laid the prints side by side on the table.

For the first time there was no average to hide behind. Some images showed space. Others energy, distance, or an obstacle that had gone unspoken until then.

There was no right or wrong image.

But each image did ask something of you: more clarity, a choice, a conversation, or something that person needed in order to truly contribute.

What a colleague makes visible

Something else happened that I hadn't fully anticipated.

People saw a colleague's strength, sometimes for the first time. Not because someone named that strength in an appraisal, but because the image made it visible.

A photograph made it possible to ask:

• What do you see in this?
• Why is this important to you?
• Where could this strength make the difference?

So the conversation was no longer only about what employees thought of the strategy. It was also about what they themselves could contribute and what they needed from each other and their manager to do so.

The day therefore didn't end with only more understanding.

Employees could name more concretely where their strength lay, what held them back, and which next step they could take. The manager didn't have to formulate those answers for everyone. The images helped employees discover them for themselves and discuss them together.

The score doesn't have to go

The organisation didn't immediately scrap the engagement score afterwards. Nor does it need to.

A number can show that something is changing. A picture helps you understand what lies behind it and where movement is possible.

The photos didn't disappear into a report afterwards. People hung their print next to their desk or used the image as their screen background.

That kept the chosen position visible, even after the shared day was over.

Employees were no longer only part of the organisation's strategy. They had chosen their own position within it and could act from there.

From individual pictures to movement

That is what I use Picture First™ for.

In a single day, each person explores for themselves:

• How do I look at the strategy?
• Where does my strength lie?
• What does this mean for my contribution?

Then the team lays the images side by side:

• Do we see the same thing?
• Where do our pictures diverge?
• What needs to become clearer?
• What do people need?
• And what is actually going to change?

An average score tells you a number.

A picture shows what lies behind it, and what you have to do on Monday.