On Sunday, March 9, at 0200 hours in the early morning of 2014, most of the United States will engage in an exercise called Daylight Savings Time and we will move the clocks forward an hour, making it darker early in the morning and extending daylight in the evening.

It has some historical anchors, but various sources estimate the actual cost in lost productivity to be somewhere between $400 million and $2 billion, with people generally losing an hour of sleep in addition to having to adjust all the manual clocks in their life. (Most cannot remember how to reset the clocks in their cars!)

So, as an alternative to the lost productivity and in recognition of the need to improve workplace productivity and involvement and engagement, I am going to propose we create and celebrate Spring Forward Monday, where supervisors and managers should spend some special time with their people working on the issues of productivity and alignment.

The basic idea is pretty simple:

Things may not be working smoothly. And some round wheels are already in the wagon. So, let’s take a bit of time to stop pushing and pulling and talk together about some of the perceived issues and opportunities and how we can implement some changes and improvements. Most people feel that managers do not listen to ideas, so let’s use this special day for this special purpose: communications!

So, we want to choose to do something that looks more like this to better involve and engage everyone in the workplace and hear their ideas for improvement:

We want to engage all those feet in moving things forward, more better faster.

The conversations could focus on shared goals, missions and visions, and alignment kinds of things to clarify expectations and provide performance feedback or it could focus on themes of issue identification and opportunity implementation.

You can view a 3-minute video on the basic idea of Spring Forward Monday by clicking on the image above or by clicking on this link.

There should be lots of positive impacts for something special like this, including the simple recognition that ideas for improvement already exist and that we should be choosing to do some things more better faster.

Click here to find more information about this specially priced, $5.95 Square Wheels Engagement toolkit by clicking on the link below:

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

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Scott’s blog on Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.