Reverse Flow

Reverse Flow Meetings provide an organization with a way to get employees involved:

• • Let employees be heard.
• • Allow employees to make suggestions that will help management manage better.
• • Identify and remove barriers to performance within the organization.
• • Develop better solutions to solve problems for continuous improvement.

The Navigator facilitates the meetings acting as a conduit for communication between the management team and the employee input team.

The Reverse Flow format allows information to travel from the employees at the “bottom” of the organization to the management at the “top.” This enhances the traditional top-down flow of information with valuable employee input.

Duration
Meetings are once per month for about one hour.

Meeting Format
Existing Cards

There is a brief review of each task card from the previous team meetings.

• • This will help the team get focused on the meeting.
• • The team will be more aware of the management team status.

The team reviews the employee input task cards from previous meetings.

• • Each card is compared with the corresponding Reverse Flow Task Card Response Form received from the assigned decision-maker.
• • The owner of each card must decide what to do with the card.
• • If the owner of the card is not present, the card is noted with an "A" for absent next to the current review date and the next review date is noted.
• • Post older cards near the top of the board to facilitate the review process.
• • Cards with no owners should be placed at the bottom of the board.

Topic notes are briefly noted on the card. This is to encourage communication between the owner of the card and any interested parties that may read the card. Too much information leads to invalid assumptions leading to incorrect conclusions. Whereas, less information will prompt questions and dialogue.