Claim OwnershipStrategies for the Workplace
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Description
These podcasts will help you develop key workforce skills:
• Effective Communication
• Teamwork and Collaboration
• Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
• Decision Making
• Time Management
• Adaptability and Resilience
• Technical Literacy
• Career Planning
• Professionalism
Each episode is applicable in many industries and are ‘evergreen’, relevant and appropriate over time.
Each episode starts with a brief overview of a concept, which is followed by an application section that either goes into greater detail or discusses how the idea can be applied more broadly.
There is an expression, “Experience is what you have just after you need it.” Particularly early in your career, you will be exposed to many new professional situations, and you will learn things and gain insights in the process. Unfortunately, because the terminology, business challenge, or interpersonal dynamic will be unfamiliar to you, your ability to engage, contribute, or lead will be less than you wish. After all, it is hard to be confident, poised, and show executive and management potential when you may feel unsure of the territory.
These episodes are intended for a professional in the early stage of his or her career.
Whether unfair or not, the pool of young professionals in any organization is observed by executives and quickly sorted into those with more management potential and those with less. The folks with promise are quickly moved into the position of team leader or first-line manager. This gives those selected a career advantage because they get to practice leading and managing. They are also exposed to the ‘management curriculum’, a set of topics that entry-level staff do not work through. My hope is that digesting the material in this book will better equip you to engage and your performance will mark you for advancement.
• Effective Communication
• Teamwork and Collaboration
• Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
• Decision Making
• Time Management
• Adaptability and Resilience
• Technical Literacy
• Career Planning
• Professionalism
Each episode is applicable in many industries and are ‘evergreen’, relevant and appropriate over time.
Each episode starts with a brief overview of a concept, which is followed by an application section that either goes into greater detail or discusses how the idea can be applied more broadly.
There is an expression, “Experience is what you have just after you need it.” Particularly early in your career, you will be exposed to many new professional situations, and you will learn things and gain insights in the process. Unfortunately, because the terminology, business challenge, or interpersonal dynamic will be unfamiliar to you, your ability to engage, contribute, or lead will be less than you wish. After all, it is hard to be confident, poised, and show executive and management potential when you may feel unsure of the territory.
These episodes are intended for a professional in the early stage of his or her career.
Whether unfair or not, the pool of young professionals in any organization is observed by executives and quickly sorted into those with more management potential and those with less. The folks with promise are quickly moved into the position of team leader or first-line manager. This gives those selected a career advantage because they get to practice leading and managing. They are also exposed to the ‘management curriculum’, a set of topics that entry-level staff do not work through. My hope is that digesting the material in this book will better equip you to engage and your performance will mark you for advancement.
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This sports metaphor refers to the practice of shifting to low-risk, defensive, and time-consuming activities as a tactic to preserve a desirable position until the window of opportunity to unsettle matters passes. Basically, the goal is to keep what you have until the chance of losing it is over. In sports, a team that is ahead might slow the pace of play or assume a defensive posture to hold on to the lead until the game is over. Regarding personal or corporate conduct, it may be prudent to do little while exposed and wait for a better time to act boldly.
Project scheduling is a rich field, but in a nutshell: projects consist of activities that consume resources and have associated costs. An activity can be almost anything, although typically, someone does something. Resources are often people’s labor, though they can also be machines, facilities, etc. The start of one activity may depend on the completion of one or more other activities. Given that everything can’t happen at once, a project winds up being a succession of activities that consume time, resources, and money.
Should you need to announce a decision to a team or organization, you have several options:
Tell each person individually, in private.
Tell everyone at the same time.
Tell some people, charging them to tell others.
Tell only those who need to know.
The point is not which method is best or that this is an exhaustive list. The point is to have a method and be transparent and consistent (as appropriate) about how communications are made.
Analyze every task before proceeding. If you have no choice, at least you know what you might be getting into. If you have a choice, the analysis may lead you to embrace or avoid the work.
“I’d rather have spent more than I needed to than less than I should have.”
While this advice may seem self-evident and trivial, the point is to pause and evaluate risk rather than simply agree that risk exists and then dismiss adverse events as unlikely and therefore immaterial. It never hurts to ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong?”, to inform a decision. Decision over-optimism is not good, and neither is decision paralysis.
Determine whether you might benefit from historical data and can gather it or whether you have a novel situation where historical data has no bearing on a forecast.
By adopting a standard, each party, gains access to the other parties — no need to incur a customization cost for each integration. As the network grows, competition reigns, innovation is rewarded, and efficiency is maximized.
Recognize that single points of failure and other concentrated risk can exist and to mitigate them through redundancy, distributing authority, and so on.
Approach others’ statistics with a degree of skepticism and try to understand what is being reported, and perhaps why it is being stated a particular way. Similarly, consider how you should report your statistics.
As an exercise, before you are about to send an email, consult a thesaurus and throw in a few synonyms. Substitute a few less-common words for ordinary ones.
Goods and services do not sell themselves, and in the planning process as well as during periodic reviews of progress, you need to consider what barriers are inhibiting sales and how to overcome such hurdles. What’s more, these comments hold when selling yourself, an idea, etc.
t is vital to understand the level of eagerness on both sides of any negotiation. Ideally, you can take it or leave it, and your negotiation counterparty is hungry. Conversely, if you are eager and they are not, you can expect to get a poor deal.
If your organization has a single product or service, you have nothing to sell in response to the question, “What else do you have?” If you have a set of unintegrated, stand-alone offerings, this can be described as a catalog. A product line may characterize things that have similar branding and, perhaps, some limited coordination. A product suite is the name for things that truly work well as a group.
Typically, you are engaged in more than one task and thus must prioritize among them. Often, your work depends in some way on someone else’s. A challenge emerges when the priority level you have assigned to an activity is misaligned with the importance another party assigns to an interrelated task.
A stock is fractional ownership of a company. The stock may provide payments (dividends). The amount of such payments and the schedule for when they are paid, while not guaranteed, is usually quite predictable. Should you wish to buy or sell stock, the market will set the price.
Categorization comes up often and you need a method for managing the sorting. In general, the more effective and consistently applied the technique, the more smoothly each categorization process will run, and the more readily the organization will accept the results.
A decision tree is a diagramming tool that aids in making decisions. Generally, the tree begins at a single point from which you must choose among a small number of options. Often, this point is a question that you answer ‘yes’, or ‘no’. Answering ‘yes’, leads down one path, ‘no’ another, each path leading to its own new juncture. After several choices, you find yourself at some end point. Overall, the branching pattern and many possible paths may make the diagram resemble a tree.
The mean or average of a set of values is the result of adding up all the values and dividing by the number of values. The mean is particularly handy when values are about as likely to fall above as below the average, such as peoples’ heights or the average transaction amount at a retailer or service wait times. The mode is the most frequent value in some set. Using mode makes sense when items are discrete things and not mathematical quantities.
Organizations can grow organically by investing proceeds into new facilities, equipment, people, etc. Another growth strategy is to partner with another company or institution for mutual benefit. Before embarking on a partnership, you should evaluate candidates carefully.
One way to think of the scope of a conference is on a continuum. Let’s think about this range through the example of a simple get-together and a wedding. At the easy end is, say, a modest party at your home. You need to worry about getting the word out, food, selecting music, and maybe arranging some games. Much more complicated is a wedding, where you may have to rent a venue that you must book in advance, there are invitations to print, a band to vet and book, a complex guest list to curate, seating arrangements to plan, an official to schedule, a photographer to select, a bar tender, drinks, and caterer to secure, wedding party outfits to purchase, a rehearsal dinner to plan, and importantly, a budget to work within.
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