Tick the boxes to onboard well

box-ticking

"Just ticking the boxes" is generally meant as an insult.  It implies someone is going through the motions without thinking beyond the task. Sometimes that is exactly what is required. If everyone innovated every time they did something there would be no consistency.  With consistency comes reliability.  Some tasks need to be performed as designed [...]

Committing Your Reserves

stockpile

One of the most important decisions in most endeavors is when to commit your reserves.  When do you put all the information on the table?  When do you move your most important people onto a project?  When do you release the funds required for success?   Plan – Pilot – Roll While I'm sure he [...]

The Stupid Edition of Intuition

deer

  Sometimes letting people trust their guts is a very good thing.  Sometimes it’s not.  Here’s one way to think about the difference. Conscious Competence Model Consider the conscious competence model.  People learning new things move from: unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence to unconscious competence The move from unconscious competence to conscious [...]

Onboarding Progress

“…making progress in one’s work – even incremental progress – is more frequently associated with positive emotions and high motivation than any other workday event”.  So says Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in “What Really Motivates Workers” in the Jan/Feb 2010 Harvard Business Review based on their research with 600+ managers. So what? Amabile and [...]

Simon Sinek on How Great Leaders Inspire Action

I was struck by Simon Sinek’s TED video on How Great Leaders Inspire Action.  (Those of you who are not familiar with the TED videos should stop reading right now and click through to www.TED.com and get familiar with them.  Many of them are truly astounding.) One of Simon’s core concepts is that people don’t [...]