You didn’t see it coming… | Issue #239
Why regular conversations about career progression are good for your business
One of your A-Players has just resigned. You only recruited them a year ago, and they’ve exceeded your expectations. But this has come entirely out of the blue. It’s a big surprise, and you can’t escape a feeling of huge disappointment.
I’m here to ask you why. Why didn’t you know this might happen? Did you miss an opportunity to develop them? Did you ask them if they were happy? As a manager, it’s your job to know these things.
Ultimately, if people leave your organisation without warning, it’s worse for everyone. Far better to know, have a plan and manage their exit. Then you can minimise the impact on customers and the rest of the team.
Our advice? Frank, open and regular discussion with all employees about their future. Let’s delve into why.
E244 | Simplifying How We Work To Drive Innovation And Growth with Lisa Bodell
How would you define meaningful work? And your team? If you’re struggling to find the right words, our guest on The Melting Pot this week has a few ideas to help you. How can you expect your team to do meaningful work if you can’t define it? Here’s a hint: it might not be about what you need to do, but what you should stop doing.
This week we learned from Lisa Bodell, best-selling author and CEO and founder of FutureThink, a business focused on helping companies simplify how they work to make space for driving growth and innovation. This has been Lisa’s passion for over twenty years, and she is all about taking a provocative approach to challenge our assumptions every day.
In this episode, Lisa and Dominic talk about how to get people to do more of the right things, building culture –specifically, how to cut the crap and stop stupid rules. She also asks what makes meaningful work, which she often finds leaders can’t articulate clearly. Lisa shares a few of the ‘killing’ exercises she uses with leaders to help them start investing their time and drive innovation.
Download and listen to learn more.
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Recommended Reads
Kill The Company by Lisa Bodell
In the ever-changing world of business, we’ve arrived at a point where process has trumped culture, where the race toward efficiency has made us complacent and unable to reach our potential. Stuck in the land of status quo, we’ve forgotten how to think. And the very structures put in place to help businesses grow are now holding them back. It’s time to Kill the Company. What this book suggests is simple: to SIMPLIFY by getting rid of things first rather than continually building on what doesn’t work; a form of spring cleaning for your organization. Innovation specialist Lisa Bodell urges companies to question assumptions and to challenge rules that have outlived their time. Killing these status quo attitudes makes space for change and more value-added work, like thinking. Bodell tells us that these changes need not be one-size-fits-all initiatives that are forced upon employees. Instead, we need to embrace smaller, positive behavioral changes that create ripple effects throughout the organization. Too many change initiatives simply add another layer of processes to the to-do lists of already overwhelmed and tired employees. Not this one. Innovation is supposed to make things better, not worse, easier, not more complicated. Kill the Company is your guide for simplifying and streamlining, then building and maintaining a place where everyone’s innovative spirit and energy fuel the long-term goals of your organization. A company that empowers its people to think critically, question relentlessly, and act boldly, to move from Zombies, Inc. to Think, Inc., will own the future.
Quote of the week
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
John D. Rockefeller
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.