Your people see the problems you can't. Here's how to ask.
Three Groups Who See What Leadership Misses gives you 30 questions for the people who spot the problems first: new hires, veteran operators, and the people who work across teams. Ask them well, and the costly problems that never reach your desk start coming out.
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The bigger your organization gets, the less you hear
The problems that cost you the most rarely make it to your desk. They get smoothed over on the way up, until something bleeding hours on the floor reads like a minor delay by the time it reaches you.
The people living with it usually know what's wrong, and often how to fix it. They just don't get asked.
This guide is the practical part: who to ask first, and the questions that get them talking. You can start this week with one group and a few short conversations.
Questions for the three groups who see what you can't
Each group needs a different question to open up. The guide gives you a ready-to-use set for each, plus how to run the conversations.
New hiresFresh eyes catch the clunky tool and the rule nobody can explain, before they get used to it too.
Veteran operatorsThey know the workarounds keeping things running that never made it into a process doc.
People who work across teamsThey see the duplicated work and the handoffs where things stall between departments.
Also in the guide
- What to listen for after each group
- A simple way to ask that gets people talking without putting them on the spot
- A bonus set of questions for your vendors
Built for leaders who can't be in every room
Past a certain size, no leader can see everything at once. This guide is for the ones who know the best thinking is out on the floor, and want a practical way to go get it.
This is for you if
- You're a CEO, COO, or VP of Operations at a company of roughly 150 to 1,500 people
- You run frontline-heavy operations across many locations or shifts
- You suspect the people closest to the work see problems you don't hear about
- You want a practical set of questions you can start using this week
You can ask, but you can't ask everyone
A few one-on-ones can surface real problems. Reaching the night shift, the site you rarely visit, and the people you never pass in the hallway takes time you don't have, and even face to face, some hold back because they're talking to the boss.
Tell Jules asks these questions for you. Your people join a short call or chat, about seven minutes, in 55 languages and counting, whenever it suits them, and it asks the follow-ups that get them talking. You see every problem and idea in one place, each with a starting point to size it, the risk to watch, and who to involve. That's the kind of insight companies hire consultants to go looking for, straight from your own people, in weeks.
Good to know before you download
A downloadable PDF covering the three groups who notice what leadership misses, with 30 questions in all, ten for each group, what to listen for after each one, a short method for asking about problems first, and a bonus set of questions for your vendors. Keep it on hand for your next round of one-on-ones.
No. The questions work in your own one-on-ones, but doing it by hand only gets you so far.
Tell Jules helps you reach everyone, hear problems candidly, and surface the ones costing you most. Start a free trial with one team of up to 25 and see what you’ve been missing.
They do different jobs. A survey measures sentiment across a lot of people at once, and it does that well. This guide surfaces the specific operational problems your people see and their ideas for solving them, the job companies usually hire consultants or launch top-down initiatives to do.
Keep them to about ten minutes, one person at a time, across a desk or over coffee. The privacy matters: people speak more openly when they don't have to worry about a colleague's reaction or contradict the boss in front of everyone. With Tell Jules, the conversation runs about seven minutes and happens whenever it suits each person.
Yes, if you choose that mode. You decide how responses come back: confidential or attributed. Confidential means each person gives a name and a unique code that are never shared with you, no transcripts leave, and you see the problems and ideas in aggregate. Either way, conversations are handled in line with HIPAA and SOC 2, Tell Jules never connects to your systems, and we never train on your data.