As your organization faces the twin challenges of strained budgets and burned-out workforces, what can you do to keep your employees engaged? While it may not be as impactful as a promotion or a raise, don’t underestimate the power of symbolic awards, such as private thank-you notes or public displays of recognition. These simple interventions can significantly improve employee motivation, according to research.
It’s really hard to make massive gains in skill, performance, and talent, especially overnight. But it’s fairly easy to make small changes every day. So if you’re pursuing major improvements, leverage lots of small, easy wins instead.
As we move into the new decade, Forrester is identifying forces that will require organizations to rethink the one-size-fits-all model and move to an approach that shifts the balance to more local-specific services and delivery.
Agile methods can accelerate product development and process improvements. They can also help engage an organization’s most valuable employees, deepening their connections and experiences in ways that pay off for the company in the long run. But agile teams are not stand-alone entities; they’re embedded in broader collaborative networks. By taking that reality into account, leaders can design them so that they make the most of talent inside and outside teams, avoid overload and burnout, avert potential disruptions, and achieve their objectives better and faster.
SWOT analysis is a recognized tool to identify an organization, product, or service’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Yet, despite the tool’s wide use, it’s often conducted ineffectively, making the analysis less than insightful with no clear path to action. Part of the problem lies in focusing on internal factors — strengths and weaknesses — first. But by turning it on its head, you can conduct a better analysis that can result in more actionable strategic recommendations. First, gather an inventory of relevant environmental conditions — the threats and opportunities. Next, explore internal strengths and weaknesses. Finally, generate recommendations using this simple sentence: “Given the condition of [external factor], our ability to [internal factor] leads to our recommendation that we [recommendation].” By looking at the external conditions first and internal internal attributes second, you will generate a better set of clear-cut and supported ideas for moving forward.
It is very, very easy to get lost in the day-to-day. There’s always some fire to put out, or some recurring task that needs doing, which makes it hard to focus on big-picture stuff.
This is what a Quarterly Think Day is all about. The idea is to take time and space to reflect, learn, and prioritize for the next three to six months. I learned about this concept from Jessie Link, VP of Engineering at Twitter, at a LeadDev Together conference session on personal development.
I decided to try it out. I found it a good way to prioritize, think strategically, and re-energize. I’m going to talk about what I learned, but first, let’s talk about how to plan your own Quarterly Think Day.
If your goal is to level up the performance of a senior leadership team. There are many models and frameworks available to assess team behavior and performance. Each of them has pros and cons in different situations.
One of my favorites comes from the psychologist David Kantor and is called the Four-Player Communication Model. It applies to any team solving problems and collaborating to reach common goals. Each role is fairly simple to understand, yet getting them working together on a team can be a balancing act.
Collaborating with someone you haven’t met before can be awkward. You may feel inclined to simply introduce yourself and “get to work.” But before you dive into your joint project, spend some time getting to know each other better, so you can work together more effectively. (An hour is usually enough.) Here are some questions to guide that conversation.
Even if you’re not launching humans into space, here’s three lessons every business can learn from SpaceX.