Der Grüne Pfeil

If you've ever driven in Germany and had to stop at a traffic light, you might have noticed a square sign to the right of the red light. The sign is known as the “grüne Pfeil” or green arrow and it's there to signal to drivers that they can “turn right on red” providing they stop to check it is safe to do so. While the vast majority of road signs are simply there to prohibit, mandate, warn, or inform us, the green arrow is far more driver‐friendly.¹

Not only does it give them the right to ignore another traffic regulation that could unnecessarily delay them, but it permits them to choose whether or not to exercise that right. I think that makes it one of the most helpful road signs I've ever come across and the perfect introduction to the first element of the HUMANS framework.

H Is for Helpful

The principle behind “Helpful” is that the more helpful our employees find what we are asking them to do, the more likely they are to do it. Conversely, the less helpful they think it is, the less likely they are to do it. A simple way to think about it is the concept of headwinds and tailwinds. Things that are helpful are like a tailwind propelling us towards our end goal; things that are unhelpful are like headwinds, that slow us down.

Since “Helpful” is the first element of the HUMANS framework, I will briefly explain the three main ways in which we can use it. The same principles apply to all of the later elements. The three ways that we can use “Helpful” are as follows:

1. The first is that we can explore the degree to which our employees will find what we are asking them to do, helpful or unhelpful. If we discover that what we are asking them to do is unhelpful, then we may also wish to explore an additional area: how helpful or unhelpful the idea of what we are asking them to do is. The idea behind this is to try to establish whether the reason they find something unhelpful is a matter of principle, or whether it is the way in which we have implemented the request. We might, for example, have taken something that would ordinarily be viewed as helpful and made it feel unhelpful. In that case, there may be options to adjust the way in which we make the request of our employees.
2. The second is that we can identify ways in which we can make what we are asking our employees to do feel more or less helpful; in simple terms, how we frame the request. If we want to deter something, we can try to find ways to make it feel less helpful, if we want to encourage something, we can try to find ways to make it feel more helpful.
3. The third is that we can use it to explore how helpful they find the alternatives to what we have asked them to do. If our employees find noncompliance or partial compliance to be notably more helpful or unhelpful than compliance, then we can think about adjusting how we approach our request. For example, if not doing what we're asking our employees to do is seen by them as being significantly more helpful, we may need to make adjustments. Or, simply be aware of the fact when assessing the risk.

What Is Helpful?

We're all familiar with the word “helpful”. We use it to describe explanations or actions that we feel have increased our knowledge, solved a problem, or been otherwise useful. If someone is helpful, they've said or done something that improves things from our perspective. To help us think about how our employees might perceive things and what we can do to shift their perception, here's a simple example.

Imagine we own a car dealership and we are going to ask our employees to log a report each time they interact with a potential customer. This will provide us with useful management information about how many potential customers we are speaking to and how effective those interactions are. From our perspective the reports are helpful. But will our employees think writing the report is helpful? On the face of it, the answer is likely to be “no”. It will take time and either prevent them from speaking to potential customers, or require them to work longer hours in order to complete it.

So, how might we make it more helpful from their perspective? The answer is to make it worth the effort. I don't mean financially; just because you pay someone to do something doesn't make what you're asking them to do more helpful! It might make completing the reports more palatable, or even attractive – something we cover under “Salient” – but it wouldn't make them more helpful. Nor, by the way, does making the report easier to complete; that will make it more manageable, which is covered in the third element of the framework, but not more helpful.

The way we can make the report helpful is to think about what happens after it is filed. If it is merely entered into a contact database and they never hear about it again, then from the employee's perspective, that's not particularly helpful. Nor is using the data we gain from it to admonish the people filling it in; though, you could argue that if it is also used to encourage or reward good performers, then they may find it helpful! But those being admonished, won't. If, on the other hand, we provide them with insights – for example, sharing lessons learned on how to close sales more successfully – then they're getting something that will make the exercise feel more helpful.

As with all of the elements of the HUMANS framework, we also need to think about the alternatives available to them. It might seem more helpful from their perspective not to write reports and have more time to serve customers, or to fill in “tick box” reports that are useless, but technically compliant.

We'll come back to the car dealership reports when it is useful to do so for other elements. For the remainder of this chapter, I'm going to highlight a few of the dynamics that can make things more or less helpful from our employees’ perspective.

Timing Is Everything

One of the key drivers as to whether something is helpful is timing. Get your timing right and something neutral can seem helpful; get it wrong, and something that might otherwise be helpful, can suddenly be rendered unhelpful.

We know this from our day‐to‐day lives. Those times when we're bombarded with ads for a product we were researching online, but have now bought, so no longer need; I don't know about you, Amazon, but I think one trampoline is more than enough! Signs warning us about roadworks that are going to disrupt our journey, that appear at a point when it is too late to find an alternative route. Or, simply when someone responds to a request with two simple words: “Not now.”

Timing, as they say, is everything. An intervention that comes at a time when a decision has already been made is too late. Equally an intervention that comes too early will have less, if any, influence.

Key Questions

For each element of the framework, I will highlight some key questions that the element seeks to explore. These are not designed to be an exhaustive list of all the questions we might ask, but are there to help guide us as we explore each element. At the end of each chapter, there is a list of additional questions that are relevant to that framework.

Since we are looking to understand how our employees are likely to think and not how we would like them to think, the questions are all framed from that perspective. Although the questions are phrased in a binary manner, the answers they produce are more likely to be scalar in nature. The key questions which “Helpful” is seeking to answer are:

1. 1a. Is what they are asking me to do helping or hindering me?

   If the answer to 1a. is “hindering”, then we might also wish to explore whether this is driven by the idea of what we are asking them to do, or the execution of it. In some circumstances, we might also wish to understand to what extent something our employees find helpful is because of the idea of it, as opposed to the way we have gone about it. In that case, 1b. would also be useful.

2. 1b. Is the principle of what they are asking me to do helping or hindering me?
3. 2. Is there an alternative to what they are asking me to do that would be more helpful?
4. 3. Is this a good time for them to be asking?
5. 4. What's in it for me?