Culture
How Leaders Can Build Connection in a Disconnected Workplace (via HBR)
- Make workplace connection a ritual. Friendships need positivity, vulnerability, and consistency.
- Make it easy to ask for support.
- Make onboarding more experiential.
- Make recharging a reality.
Learning and development
How to Build a Successful Upskilling Program (via HBR)
- Empower your employees to own their career development (although the article’s premise said that employees are having difficulty understanding how to actually do this, so…)
- Show that learning ideas actually go somewhere instead of a suggestion box that no one checks
- Provide a roadmap for what the learning plan actually is
Leadership Training Shouldn’t Just Be for Top Performers (via HBR)
- Assumption 1: success is the result of individual effort (i.e., people aren’t successful because they don’t work hard enough). Problem: people that don’t stand out don’t get the training to help them improve.
- Assumption 2: past performance predicts future performance. Problem: people eventually get promoted to a role where they can’t perform well (Peter Principle), and roles are no longer stable so we must value learning agility instead.
- Assumption 3: motivated employees benefit most from development. Problem: we don’t give people with less time in the seat the skills to improve more quickly.
Productivity
When Lower Intensity Leads to Higher Results (via HBR)
This article compares professional athlete training, where most time is spent at low intensity, can apply to areas of business. The thesis is that high-intensity training for about 20% of the time and low-intensity training for the other 80% negates the need for medium-intensity work. I wonder if this only works for “bursty” types of activities where there’s lots of waiting for an opportunity, and then you go 100% when it’s needed; the author lists investing, sales, R&D, and M&A.
Technology
Convincing Your Company Leaders to Invest in New Technology (via HBR)
- “Sometimes, when faced with a difficult decision, we need a catalyst to force us to make it.”
- “…a key behavioral barrier which sees them struggle to convince themselves that investment is worth the effort or potential risk, particularly if they don’t boast unlimited budgets.” Basically when you’re in survival mode, long-term thinking takes a back seat.
- Other mind traps… group think, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, all-or-nothing thinking, status quo supported by confirmation bias
- Reframing…
- FOMO (our competitor’s digital strategy is XYZ)
- Tech-driven strategy is the new standard (“which tech do we adopt” vs “do you want to adopt tech”)
- Ask leaders to imagine scenarios where tech is or is not adopted and remind them how their decisions impact others