Change

  • The Tech Industry – Which Game Are We Playing?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    But in other areas of life, that’s not at all how the game works. War, business, education, etc. are not finite games. It’s not clear who all of the competitors are, the rules change and there’s no one “score” that everyone has agreed upon. Maybe most importantly, it doesn’t end at the allocated time, it goes on and on with some of the competitors giving up over time and dropping out of the game.

    The problem Simon identifies is that when the game is infinite, but you play it as if it were finite, you end up in a quagmire.

  • A Business Lesson From Reading Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    She uses these stories as a jumping-off point to talk about goals and failure. When the goal is to finish the marathon, anything other than that is a failure. Despite the change in circumstances, the risk of doing more damage to themselves, and the fact that no one would find fault in them for stopping, they went on with this myopic focus on hitting their goal.

    It got me thinking about OKRs. You know, those quarterly, semi-annual, or annual goals we set for employees during performance reviews, and then measure them solely on whether they hit those goals or not. As if the world doesn’t change in the middle of the time period and forces us to react in a way that might not be part of our stated goals.

    It also got me thinking about company-wide goals like market share, revenue, etc.

  • Does the Workplace Have a Role in Our Current Mental Health Crisis?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    So, while I wouldn’t place the blame for all of our anxiety coming from a pandemic, climate, racism, sexism, and violence, I do believe the workplace has a role to play when it comes to supporting the human beings who work for you in dealing with all of that, and a responsibility to not add to it. Unfortunately, I see a lot of leaders who don’t seem to care about either of those things. IMHO, they don’t deserve to have employees.

  • Linked – It’s Time to Face the Three Challenges of Learning

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    That being said, this isn’t going to change. If the people who work for you aren’t continuously learning your organization is going to fall behind competitors who are learning. The folks who want to learn will end up working for those competitiors. You’ll be left with a group of employees who are comfortable doing the same thing they’ve always done and aren’t interested in learning anything new.

  • Linked – How to invite introverted students to share their thinking in class

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Over the last few years though, as the number of online training sessions and meetings has grown exponentially, I still see it though. There are a significant number of users who will use Teams or Zoom chat instead of speaking up in many forms of gatherings. We should recognize that the chat tool is a perfectly legitimate way for people to interact with a speaker and each other during online meetings. Many people, but especially introverts among us, will be more comfortable chatting like that during a meeting. As a trainer/speaker, it becomes paramount that you learn to pay attention to what is happening in chat or have someone in the meeting be responsible for keeping up with the chat. Otherwise, you’re ignoring part of your audience.

    The other interesting thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is that beyond providing a message board to start the class discussion, it’s also provided ahead of time. Those introverts who need a little time to process new information before providing any input are going to be much more likely to have something to add when there is time to consider the topic.

  • Linked – Adam Grant’s 7 Commandments for Successful Hybrid Work

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    They focus on hybrid work, I think these commandments should be applied in every situation. I don’t care if you all work in the office full-time, remotely across the country full-time, or any combination in between.

    Intention, communication, setting expectations, and living the example will go a long way with your team. There’s no reason to not follow these commandments for working as a team, regardless of location. This is a great outline for how to set the rules of engagement, provide the proper tools and solid communication, and continually measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing.

    How does your team measure up to the experts?