70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. When you have great managers who can maximize the potential of every team member, you have delivered on the new global will which is a great job and a great life.Inspirational messages are important but they’ll have no significant impact unless leaders build a strategy to bring multiple teams together and make great decisions.

What Makes A Difference In An Organization

Millennials and Generation Z want a purpose, not just a paycheck. They are no longer pursuing job satisfaction—they are pursuing development. They don’t want bosses—they want coaches. They don’t want annual reviews—they want ongoing conversation. They don’t want a manager who fixates on their weaknesses. They want a job that is no longer a job—they want a life.

Not Just A Job

The old boss-to-employee, command-and-control leadership environment has “worked” when it comes to building process-efficiency systems, engineering large building and creating infrastructure. But the top-down leadership techniques of the past have not adapted to a workplace that now demands coaching and collaboration to thrive.

Organizational Change Is Hard

Beyond luck, which some right decisions are attributed to, there are three keys to success:<ul><li>Leaders know their limits, meaning their strengths and weaknesses.</li><li>They apply critical thinking and identify high-risk blind sides.</li><li>They use analytics-driven evidence.</li></ul>

Make Great Decisions

Culture begins with your purpose, meaning why you are in business. It lives or dies day to day through your managers. Culture determines your brand which is how employees and customers view your company. A world-class culture inspires your most talented employees to create superior customer experiences. When an organization makes a brand promise but fails to deliver, it loses credibility with customers and especially employees.An organization’s performance improves when its employees understand what differentiates its brand.

Organizational Culture

There are five general innate traits/tendencies that predict performance across job types. They are motivation (drive for achievement), work style (efficiently organizing work), initiation (taking action), collaboration (building partnerships), and thought process (solving problems through assimilation of new information).Four criteria for successful hiring.(1) Prior experiences and achievements,(2) Innate tendencies,(3) Multiple interviews, and(4) On-the-job observation.

Hiring Analytics: The Solution

Traditional performance management is set up to rank and rate employees and to “correct” their weaknesses. This approach often fails to actually improve performance. So how can managers know the right balance between praise and criticism for employees? A serious review of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses is essential to exceptional career development.To inspire exceptional performance, managers have to lead with meaningful feedback based on what each person naturally does best. Employees in today’s workforce expect their managers to coach them—primarily based on their strengths.

Strengths-Based Conversations

Organizations and teams with strengths-based cultures consistently outperform their competitors, but knowing everyone’s strengths is not enough to create change.It takes ongoing conversations, reflection and practice to successfully integrate strengths into your organization’s daily routines.(1) Start with the CEO or it doesn’t work.(2) Require every employee to discover their strengths.(3) Build an internal network of strengths coaches.(4) Integrate strengths into performance management.(5) Transform your learning programs to maximize the time each person uses to improve competencies.

 Five Steps to Building a Strengths-Based Culture

Every company experiences good turnover and bad turnover.What does a successful exit look like?(1) The employee feels heard.(2) The employee leaves feeling proud of their contribution.(3) You create a brand ambassador.The experiences and interactions people have during their employee life cycle in your organization will determine your retention of star employees and ultimately your employment brand. All this depends on how well your managers coach each person you hire.

The Exit

Transform your managers into coaches by teaching them to meet these three requirements:(1) Establish expectations.(2) Continually coach.(3) Create accountability.Employees whose managers involved them in setting goals were nearly four times more likely to be engaged than other employees. Employees who receive daily feedback from their manager are three times more likely to be engaged than those who receive feedback once a year or less.Performance measurement needs to be paired with individualized development to keep it connected to business goals in the employee’s mind.

The Three Requirements To Make Managers Into Coaches

Pay and promotion discussions need to be consistent with the development and real career progress.While pay is a personal matter, criteria for pay increases and promotions should be transparent. Don’t use forced rankings to determine pay or promotion for small groups, assuming each team has high, middle and low performers. Generally, most employees want some form of incentive pay and they want autonomy and influence over their pay. When your employees have high well-being, they perform better, so make financial well-being an organizational responsibility

The Money And The Position

The No. 1 reason people change jobs today is “career growth opportunities.” Experts recommend offering ambitious and productive employees these new paths for advancement beyond becoming a manager: (1) individual achievement as a manager or high-performing contributor, (2) personalized development toward a career path and (3) flexible career paths with different options for different stages of life.

Make “My Development” The Reason Employees Stay

Two-thirds of U.S. employees have been either not engaged or actively disengaged in their jobs and workplaces during this time. A high-development workplace requires much more than just administering surveys. Measurement on its own doesn’t inspire change or boost performance or improve the workplace or business outcomes.A culture of high employee development is the most productive environment for your employees. High-development cultures are CEO and board initiated, educate managers on new ways of managing, practice companywide communication and hold managers accountable.

Creating a Culture of High Development

About half of great managing is rooted in hardwired tendencies, and the other half comes from experiences and ongoing development. Great managers inspire teams to get exceptional work done, set goals and align resources for the team to excel, influence others to act by pushing through adversity and resistance, build committed teams with deep bonds, and take an analytical approach to strategy and decision-making.

The Five Traits of Great Managers

Managing isn’t a great experience for most people. Work is worth more for them than for the people they manage. Managers report more stress and burnout, worse work-life balance, and worse physical well-being than the individual contributors on the teams they lead. Gallup recommends development programs consistent with building a strengths-based culture, shifting from being a boss to being more like a coach, and requiring executives to have strengths-based conversations once a week with each manager or team leader.

How to Develop Your Managers

Diversity categories include race, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, lifestyle, personality characteristics, height, weight, other physical characteristics, family composition, educational background, tenure with the organization, political ideology, and worldview which essentially constitutes the full spectrum of human differences. How does a leader address them all? The solution lies in how your employees feel about three requirements. “Treat me with respect,” “Value me for my strengths,” “Leaders will do what is right.”

Diversity And Inclusion

Organizations globally need a much higher proportion of women in the workplace, not just because it benefits women, but because it’s good for business. Gender-balanced work groups have a greater capability to get work done and meet customers’ needs. On average, women are more engaged than men, and female managers tend to have more engaged employees than male managers. The top challenges facing women who work at paid jobs fall under these three areas: unfair treatment, pay inequity, and work-life flexibility.

The Gender Gap

Almost universally, men and women mention “balance between work and family” as one of the top challenges that working women in their countries face. Whether an organization offers flexibility and whether it actually honours flexibility are two different things. Some organizations have an explicit policy about flexibility, yet they implicitly pressure employees to be in the office or make them feel guilty for leaving work to take care of family matters during the day. Each individual employee—women as well as men—defines what a good life and career mean for them.

Women in the Workplace: Work-Life Flexibility

Employees in the new workforce aren’t looking for amenities such as game rooms, free food and fancy latte machines. They are looking for benefits and perks that will improve their well-being, meaning those that offer them greater flexibility, autonomy and the ability to lead a better life. U.S. employees are the most likely to change jobs for health insurance, which is an expense that, for most, is increasing and cutting into their discretionary income. More than half would change jobs for bonuses, a retirement plan, paid vacation or flextime.

Benefits, Perks and Flextime

Today’s employees demand autonomy and flexibility right down to where they work and how their workspace is designed and arranged. Slightly more than half of American workers say they would change jobs for one that offered them more flexibility. More than one-third would change jobs for one that allowed them to work where they want at least part of the time. The three office features employees want are privacy when they need it, personal workspace, and having their own office.

The New Office

Creativity in organizations is essential. Many organizations say they want their employees to be highly creative. Yet most employees don’t believe that they’re expected to be creative or think of new ways to do things, even though every job has the potential for creativity. No one is closer to the job than the individuals doing it. Even when employees strongly agree that they’re expected to be creative, only half of them are given time each day to do so or believe they can take the risks required to be creative.

How to Manage—and Nurture—Creativity

A must read for leaders, CEOs and Founders.

Packed with 52 discoveries from Gallup’s largest study on the future of work, It’s the Manager shows leaders how to adapt their organizations to rapid change, ranging from new workplace demands to managing remote employees, a diverse workforce, the rise of artificial intelligence, gig workers, and attracting – and keeping – today’s best employees. Who is the most important person in your organization to lead your teams through these changes? Gallup research reveals: It’s your managers. While the world’s workplace has been going through extraordinary historical change, the practice of management has been stuck in time for more than 30 years. The new workforce – especially younger generations – wants their work to have deep mission and purpose, and they don’t want old-style command-and-control bosses. They want coaches who inspire them, communicate with them frequently, and develop their strengths. Packed with 52 discoveries from Gallup’s largest study on the future of work, It’s the Manager shows leaders how to adapt their organizations to rapid change, ranging from new workplace demands to the challenges of managing remote employees, a diverse workforce, the rise of artificial intelligence, gig workers, and attracting – and keeping – today’s best employees. Who is the most important person in your organization to lead your teams through these changes? Decades of global Gallup research reveal: It’s your managers. They are the ones who make or break your organization’s success. When you build great managers -- ones who can maximize the potential of every team member -- you will see organic revenue and profit growth, and you will deliver to a every one of your employees what they most want today: a great job and a great life. This is the future of work. It’s the Manager includes exclusive content from Gallup Access -- Gallup’s new workplace platform, chock full of additional content, tools, and solutions for business. Your book comes with a code for the CliftonStrengths assessment, which will reveal users’ Top 5 strengths.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Who will lead your workforce during rapid change? Gallup research reveals: It’s the manager. While the world’s workplace has been going through historic change, the practice of management has been stuck in time for decades. The new workforce — especially younger generations — wants their work to have deep mission and purpose. They don’t want old-style command-and-control bosses. They want coaches who inspire them, communicate with them frequently and develop their strengths. Who is the most important person in your organization to lead your teams through these changes? Decades of global Gallup research reveal: It’s your managers. They are the ones who make or break your organization’s success. Packed with 52 discoveries from Gallup’s largest study of the future of work, It’s the Manager shows leaders and managers how to adapt their organizations to rapid change — from new workplace demands to the challenges of managing remote employees, the rise of artificial intelligence, gig workers, and attracting and keeping today’s best employees. Great managers maximize the potential of every team member and drive your organization’s growth. And they give every one of your employees what they want most: a great job and a great life. This is the future of work. It’s the Manager includes a unique code to take the CliftonStrengths assessment, which reveals your top five strengths, as well as supplemental content available on Gallup’s online workplace platform.

Jim Clifton

Jim Harter

It's the Manager

As humans, our ability to make the right decisions is limited by the many constraints of our minds. One such constraint is the availability bias — our tendency to make judgments based on previous experiences that are easily recalled. When some piece of information is quickly brought to mind, we incorrectly assume that it’s an accurate reflection of reality.This <a href="https://nesslabs.com/tag/cognitive-biases">cognitive bias</a> often leads to the illusion of rational thinking and, ultimately, to bad decisions.

What We Easily Recall, We Believe

In 1955, Dr Herbert Simon formulated the notion that memory limitations can affect decision-making. Simon further elaborated that it’s not possible for humans to consider every piece of relevant information. Instead, we focus on the data within our minds that’s readily available and thus seems to be the most pertinent.Simon’s research opened the door to the modern examination of decision-making processes, and the shortcuts we utilise to reach conclusions.

The History Of Availability Bias

There is a natural human tendency to assume that examples we can readily think of are more relevant than they truly are.For example, if you’re looking for a new note-taking app, you might go for a particular tool because you recall that a friend recently raved about it. Or, if you read about a plane crash in the news a week before you are due to fly for work, you may overestimate the likelihood of your own plane crashing.

Demonstrating Availability Bias

Availability is an ecologically valid clue for the judgement of frequency because, in general, frequent events are easier to recall or imagine than infrequent ones.However, availability is also affected by various factors which are unrelated to actual frequency. If the availability heuristic is applied, then such factors will affect the perceived frequency of classes and the subjective probability of events.Consequently, the use of the availability heuristic leads to systematic biases.

Frequent Events Are On Top Of Mind

Availability bias can also influence consumer’s beliefs about perceived risk. Availability bias can also impact self-evaluation.Even doctors can misdiagnose patients as a result of the availability bias. A recent experience of a health condition makes it easier to recall and therefore increases the chance that a subsequent patient might be misdiagnosed with the same illness.

Availability Bias Is Everywhere

Instead of going for the most obvious solution, which is likely to be heavily influenced by your most recent experiences, conduct research and generate as many potential solutions as possible based on factual data. You can practise deliberate <a href="https://nesslabs.com/brainstorming">brainstorming</a> on your own or with your team. This not only helps to manage availability bias, but may also lead to the generation of innovative solutions that you may not otherwise have considered.

How to Manage the Availability Bias: Deliberate Brainstorming

Red teaming is similar to playing devil’s advocate. It involves rigorously challenging ideas and assessing ideas from an opposing point of view to discover flaws or shortcomings. The aim is to avoid making unsound decisions and mitigate potential adverse events. As part of red teaming ideas, decision-makers should explore alternative solutions, interrogate the underlying facts, and try to view the decision from an impartial point of view to thoroughly test the integrity of a decision.

Try “Red Teaming” Ideas.

Self-reflection can take the form of journaling, talking out loud to yourself, or thinking deeply about a decision while <a href="https://nesslabs.com/focused-mind">away from distractions</a> — for example while taking a walk. Taking time to reflect on decisions prior to executing them allows for a delay that will reduce the power of the availability bias, so that other ideas have the necessary space to surface.

Self Reflection

While the mind’s shortcuts make decision-making quicker and easier, they can lead to less-than-ideal solutions. As you have seen, the availability bias may lead to poor personal and professional decisions. While it’s impossible for this cognitive bias to be completely overridden, you can avoid some of its most negative effects by brainstorming, red teaming ideas, and implementing a self-reflection practice. These strategies will help you take a more objective view of the information available to you.

The Bottom Line

As humans, our ability to make the right decisions is limited by the many constraints of our mind. One such constraint is the availability bias, our tendency to make judgments based on previous experiences that are easily recalled.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

Availability bias: the tendency to use information that easily comes to mind

On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America's 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

What president has served 3 terms in office?

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains the only president to have served more than two terms.

history

History

FDR wins unprecedented fourth term

Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women's suffrage movement. Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she traveled around the country delivering speeches in favor of women's suffrage. Susan B.Founded: American Equal Rights AssociationBorn: February 15, 1820, Adams

What was Susan B Anthony famous for?

Susan B. Anthony was a suffragist, abolitionist, author and speaker who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Susan B. Anthony

Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed by Odoacer, a German barbarian who proclaims himself king of Italy. Odoacer was a mercenary leader in the Roman imperial army when he launched his mutiny against the young emperor.

Who deposed the last emperor of the Roman West?

Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed by Odoacer, a German barbarian who proclaims himself king of Italy. Odoacer was a

communication

Communication

Western Roman Empire falls - HISTORY

Self-development and growth are not luxuries; they're a necessity for success.It actually benefits your entire life.There is no magic pill or single formula to create the absolute best “you” possible.There is no switch you can press to instantly become a different person.No one can do it for you.If you want to do your personal growth then only you have to do the heavy lifting.

10 Easy Ways To Become A Better Version Of Yourself

There are some good habits, techniques, and attitudes that you can put into practice to be more like the person you want to be.Of course, to be the best version of yourself is not necessarily easy.It takes time and continuous effort. It is an ongoing process.Everyone is born with the capability to be a better version of themselves.Once a person accepts that he/she has the power to change herself/himself, he/she is ready to start creating a successful and amazing self. These 10 tips help you in knowing who you are as a person and the type of self-improvement you seek.

Habits, techniques, and attitudes

If you constantly think about what other people will think about you when you fail, then stop yourself immediately.Failure is a natural process and it is not the signal of the world ending. Realize this truth.So, don’t let the fear of failure hold you back.

1. Failure is not the end of the world

Always live in the present moment and celebrate your small wins.Prioritize yourself.Live your life to the fullest to please yourself rather than others.Your people-pleaser role will lead you to depression, stress, and health issues.So quit pleasing people. It will help you in regaining your self-confidence.

2. Live to please yourself rather than others

Positivity plays an important role in self-improvement.So always surround yourself with positive self-talk.We all do self-talk.It is a normal process but when it includes negativity, it creates a problem.Eliminate some negative vocabulary from your life dictionary such as but, can’t, try, should, and won’t.

3. Surround yourself with positivity

Have trust in your abilities.Sometimes it’s good to take risks such as if you have a fear of facing interviews then go for it, face it.Take a class, learn a new skill, and challenge whatever it is that is holding you back.Take a risk and have faith in yourself.Positivity can open doors to success for you.

4. Learn to trust yourself and take risks

When is the last time you did something creative or something that you actually love to do?Do it. It will create a positive impact on your life.Also, try to learn something that can help you in becoming a better version of yourself and would have an optimistic effect on your work, life, or study.

5. Learn something creative every day

Always surround yourself with positive great people.They will help you in all ways to bring out your best.It is one of the most important steps that you can take for your personal growth and improvement.Commit to surrounding yourself with only amazing people that help you in a constructive way.

6. Understand the importance of positive association with great people

When life gives you an amazing opportunity, go for it.Don’t wait for other people to say “yes” to life with you.Start living your own.Sometimes you feel like quitting while working on your dream.But, remind yourself of all the great things that you already have and all the great things that are coming into your life.Keep that excitement level high about your work and life.Always be thankful for the amazing life that you have.

7. Say “yes” to life

Love yourself just as you are.This self-love will only support your procedure of becoming the best version of yourself.Always remember no one in the world is perfect and will never be.So, take a deep breath and say “I love myself” and see how that feels.We can never do our personal growth if we constantly put ourselves down.So, be thankful, learn to forgive, and love yourself.It doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you indestructible.

8. Fall in love with yourself

For many people, smoking is a weakness and a comfort.If you are one of them then quit smoking.But, if you have an addiction to it you can switch to alternatives like vaping.It is considerably less harmful than smoking and an effective way to kick the smoking addiction.Quitting smoking is a transformational procedure that will change your confidence in yourself, your health, and your life.If you work on quitting your weakness then ultimately you are opening new ways for your self-improvement and personal growth.

9. Keep in mind that strength grows out of weakness

Wearing the right attire elevates your self-confidence and helps you in gaining the attention of others.Confidence is the key to success and it helps you in putting your best foot forward.If appropriate dressing can build your confidence level and lead you to success, then what you are waiting for?Go for it.You can read every day about how to be a better version of yourself, but it’s no alternative for actually doing the work.

10. Dress for attention and confidence

If you want to be a better person in some way, don’t waste your time. Start it right away!Nobody else can do it for you.The effort has to come within you and you have to stick with it.The fact is that there is no “best” version of yourself: only “better.”

Start immediately

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”-Jane Goodall

Self-Improvement Quote

10 Easy Ways to Become a Better Version of Yourself

These Are The Best Ways To Become A Better Version Of Yourself And Change Your Life Through Self-improvement, Self-love And Developing Your Personal Growth.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

habits

Habits

People's confidence usually matches their ability and the situation. If they're under-confident, they may not take on opportunities that could benefit them. If they're over-confident, they may agree to things when they're out of their depth. As a manager, you should pay attention to the confidence displayed by your direct reports. When they seem overconfident, it's beneficial to help them recognise the reason why they should temper their enthusiasm.

Over- and under-confidence

People often show overconfidence when unaware of how a situation can lead to bad outcomes, even in cases that may seem simple. For example, a client may be considering multiple offers you are unaware of, a competitor may be working on a similar product, or the market may take a downturn just as your company prepares for an IPO. If you’re working with someone who does not recognize the difficulties that situations can cause, it’s important to increase their awareness of some factors beyond their control.

Under-appreciation of the situation

Some people believe they're more highly skilled than they really are. They often fail to appreciate the complexity of expert performance, which adds to their overconfidence.  One way to help is to work with your team on hypothetical situations so that they can get a glimpse of what they still need to learn. You should be explicit about what aspects of their performance they need to improve without undermining their confidence.

Over-appreciation of skills

Overconfidence can lead to arrogance. Arrogant people value their own opinions, skills, and knowledge over that of other people. It can be helpful to talk with these team members about their respect for others in the organization. Reflect on some of their words and actions to help them see how they come across to others. It can also be helpful to point out great things that other people in the organization have done to reinforce the expertise of colleagues.

Lack of recognition of other people's skills

career

Career

How to manage someone overconfident

Competitive advantage fades away faster than any time in recent memory. In the 1980s, if you had a performance edge over your competitors, you could reasonably expect to continue being a leader for around 10 years, on average. But now the half-life of that advantage has shrunk to just one year. That means that short-lived success is actually still very common, but sustained success becomes very hard and very rare. That means that, actually, reimagination is the new execution. In order to stay on top, or even just to tread water and stay still, you need to constantly reimagine your business.

Reimagination Is The New Execution

But reimagination is not so simple if you already have a highly successful business model. We become prisoners of the mental models that underpin our past success. In fact, Martin Reeves found in dealing with businesses that you can’t really stretch your strategy unless you stretch your mind.Now play is of course a great way of stretching your mind. Reeves is not suggesting literally that executives huddle around a conference table with a big pile of Lego bricks, for example; instead he’s created a series of imagination games to help executives to stretch their thinking.

Business Play - The Imagination Games

Let’s suppose that you’re stuck in the rut of seeing the world through the lens of your past and current success. Reeves would recommend the “Anti-Company Game,” and here’s how it works. You get a piece of paper, you create a list of everything which is essential to your strategy - everything which underpinned your past success, everything which is core and sacred - and then you flip it. You create the exact mirror-image list of assumptions, and then you make the best business case for this antiself. You’ll be surprised at the ideas that it triggers.

Game 1: The “Anti-Company Game”

You’re the CEO of a hotel chain. Inconveniently, you don’t actually own any hotels or any rooms or even operate any hotels or any rooms anywhere. Ridiculous - quite possibly - but actually, how would you know the difference between ridiculous and the merely unfamiliar, untried and uncomfortable? Actually, had the executives of hotels played the “Anti-Company Game” before 2007, they might have been able to foresee the appearance of Airbnb, the hotel-less hospitality company, and they might have been able to stave off disruption by preemptively disrupting themselves.

The “Anti-Company Game” Example

On the edge of your industries - on the edge of every industry - are a population of maverick companies that are taking a bet against the incumbents’ business model and their view of the future. Actually, they have no choice because to be a miniature version of the incumbent would not be viable. Now, it’s easy not to notice them - many of them are small companies. It's easy to deliberately overlook them with some justification. Many startups disappear fairly quickly after being founded. And it’s very, very tempting, given all of your experience in the business, to judge them.

Game 2: The “Maverick Game”

“Do these mavericks know what they’re doing? Does their business model make sense? Will they ever make any money?”But instead of judging them from the comfort and the confidence of your position, try assuming that it’s they that have the right bet on the future. Think about the consequences of that for your business model. Try making the best case for their idea.

… Or, The “Switch Game”

You are the CEO of a company that makes equipment that makes semiconductors. Naturally, you’d probably spend most of your time and attention on your main customer industry, the electronics industry. And if it so happened, that a couple of maverick bioscience companies were tinkering with your patents and your technologies, you might overlook that as a distraction, an irrelevance.

The “Maverick Game” Example

But actually, Brooks Automation, a leader in the field, decided to take a close-up look at such a group of mavericks to see whether it could learn anything. And it realized that, actually, the same techniques and technologies which can be used to handle delicate semiconductors can also be applied to other fragile and easily contaminated materials, like biological samples. And puzzling on the significance of this, they reimagined how to handle and store and transport and label and identify biological samples. In fact, they became a successful pioneer in the new industry of automated biobanking.

Now, not everything in business goes according to plan. In fact, sometimes the plans go horribly awry. But you know what? That can be a source of inspiration, too. Enter the “Pre-Mortem Game”: your role in this game is to write the obituary for your company, which is going to fail with 100% certainty in 5 years’ time. What is the cause of death? What will have been the point of failure? Why will it have failed? How will it have failed?

Game 3: The “Pre-Mortem Game”

The challenge in the “Pre-Mortem Game” is that it’s easy to be seduced into the baseline fallacy. The baseline fallacy is the idea that it’s the current business model which is the low-risk bet. And of course that tends to be true until it isn’t true, at which point it’s probably too late to do anything about it.

The Trap: The Baseline Fallacy

Your employees are an early-warning indicator. They will have intuitions if the model begins to slip, but it’s very hard for them to speak up. And it’s even taboo for them to speak up when the business model is under pressure. But when executives create playgrounds - spaces for the safe exploration of alternatives and alternative scenarios - then you get to tap into your employees’ considerable experience about the vulnerabilities and the weak spots and the blind spots of your company.

The Way Out: Your Employees

It’s probably been quite a while since we last visited the local banking branch, right? Had bricks-and-mortar banks played the “Pre-Mortem Game,” perhaps they would have heard their employees expressing some concerns about the gradually dwindling flow of customers to local branches. And perhaps they would have been slightly less taken by surprise when companies like NewBank, a digital native, seized, very rapidly indeed, on that opportunity to convince, to date, more than 40 million Latin Americans that in-person transactions in real buildings were a quaint but obsolete relic of the past.

The “Pre-Mortem Game” Example

It’s only when you bring your vulnerabilities into full view in this way that you may be motivated to reimagine your business and to do so in a robust manner. It’s why the Roman Catholic Church invented the role, the position of the Devil’s advocate in the 16th century to test the future consequences of its decisions to appoint new saints. They did that by imagining what would Satan say or propose or counterpropose, in addition to the normal procedure of thinking about the big man upstairs.

Beatification, Canonization And The Devil’s Advocate In Business

Any human being, any employee, any team and therefore any company can harness human imagination. It’s a defining trait of our species. Failures to imagine in business are really failures of leadership. Business is a serious matter, but it should not exclude play. When leaders embrace play and imagination games, they can unlock the imagination of their employees, uncover disruptive new strategies and renew their lease on the future.

An Infinite Game Shouldn’t Be Played Like A Finite One

Successful business strategy is about actively shaping the game you play, not just playing the game you find.

The essence of strategy lies in creating tomorrow’s competitive advantages faster than competitors mimic the ones you possess today.

Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.

Strategies for taking the hill won’t necessarily hold it.

Play is spontaneous and pleasurable but, more importantly, it accelerates and derisks learning. When we’re kids, it helps us to try out new behaviors, to refine those behaviors and to imagine what is not but what could be or what will be. Martin Reeves, a business strategist dealing with adults, argues that, in fact, play in business is not just possible: it’s essential and even urgent. Here’s why.

To thrive in today's competitive economy, you need to constantly reimagine your business. So what's the secret to sustained success? Strategist Martin Reeves makes a pitch for embracing play to spark innovative business ideas -- and invites you to try out a series of imagination games that he uses to get leaders to stretch their thinking and dream up new possibilities.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

business

Business

The Business Games: Why Play is Essential for Business

Psychological safety plays a key role in fostering innovation and collaborative group dynamics where all team members feel comfortable being themselves.psychological safety at workIn psychologically safe teams, employees feel accepted and respected. Psychological safety also helps foster a more inclusive work environment, which opens the door to greater creativity, innovation, and increased employee retention.

7 keys to create psychological safety at work

A team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves. Here are five dynamics for high-functioning teams:<ul><li>Dependability: Workers count on one another to do high-quality work.</li><li>Structure & clarity: Roles, goals, and execution plans for the team are clear.</li><li>Meaning of work: Workers are doing something that is personally important to each of them.</li><li>Impact of work: Workers believe the work they’re doing matters.</li><li>Psychological safety: Workers can take risks on the team without feeling insecure or embarrassed.</li></ul>

What is psychological safety?

1. Inclusion safety: Members feel accepted as a part of the team – they’re wanted, appreciated, and don’t feel excluded from the group.2. Learner safety: Team members are able to ask questions, experiment, make mistakes, admit when they make mistakes, and even ask for help.3. Contributor safety: Members feel safe to offer their own ideas without fear of embarrassment or ridicule. They’re adding value to the team and making a difference.4. Challenger safety: Group members can question others (including those in authority) and suggest significant changes to ideas, plans, or processes.

The four stages of psychological safety

It’s clear that organizations seeking to empower their people and improve performance should be focusing on psychological safety, but what does that look like in action? Learning and development teams can help cultivate psychological safety at work by taking the following 7 steps.

Keys to cultivating psychological safety at work

Allowing employees to be their authentic selves at work helps break down barriers toward the first stage of psychological safety – inclusion safety.To ensure that all members of a team feel like they belong:<ul><li>Equip leaders to promote inclusive workplace practices and learn the six Cs of inclusive leadership.</li><li>Facilitate open conversations during learning programs where employees can share their authentic perspectives.</li><li>Train recruiters and hiring managers to identify and manage their own implicit biases.</li><li>Monitor inclusion within their organizations using Gartner’s seven key dimensions.</li></ul>

1. Foster inclusivity

Honest, fair feedback is a core tenet of a psychologically safe workplace. As workers progress through the learner safety stage of psychological safety, they need to be able to learn from their peers and admit mistakes, all in the spirit of learning and growth – without the threat of demerits or performance documentation.To help create a culture in which this is encouraged, offer training programs that teach employees how to give feedback appropriately and why it’s important to do so.

2. Create a feedback-driven culture

A positive team climate is defined as an environment where team members value one another’s contributions, care about one another’s well-being, and have input on how the team carries out its work.Leaders are responsible for setting the tone for this type of climate through their actions and more specifically, their leadership techniques.A positive team climate is an environment where team members value one another’s contributions, care about one another’s well-being, and have input on how the team carries out its work.

3. Leverage leadership

Offering employees lessons on emotional intelligence can directly impact levels of psychological safety at work. Emotional intelligence training includes topics such as how to sense the emotional states of team members and build positive working relationships.

4. Build emotional intelligence 

Humans have been hardwired to process challenges by a boss, co-worker, or subordinate as a life-or-death threat.Because of these evolutionary responses, challenger safety is perhaps the most difficult stage to reach on the path to psychological safety. But building trust can counteract this challenge.Trust can either be a roadblock or a highway, but demystifying trust is a key step in building it. Teams should talk openly about specific actions that can help members trust one another more – such as transparency around daily tasks or timeliness when turning projects in.

5. Increase trust

It’s important to continue monitoring psychological safety at work as it does evolve over time. Here are a set of questions to measure psychological safety among work teams.<ul><li>If you make a mistake on your team, is it held against you?</li><li>Are you able to bring up problems and tough issues?</li><li>Do people on the team sometimes reject others for being different?</li><li>Is it safe to take a risk?</li><li>Is it difficult to ask other team members for help?</li><li>Do people on the team deliberately act to undermine your efforts?</li><li>Are your unique skills and talents valued and utilized?</li></ul>

6. Measure psychological safety

Virtual interactions can be more beneficial than we realize for creating psychological safety.Although screens can make it harder to read body language, they can also help employees practice active listening during calls. In person, it can be socially awkward to make eye contact for long periods of time. Video calls remove this barrier, so team members might be able to pick up on social and emotional cues more, and better understand what the speaker is saying as a result.

7. Be intentional when remote

Studies have shown that organizations which cultivate a growth mindset – one where it’s okay to fail – have happier employees and more innovative cultures. Supervisors in such organizations rate their teams as more collaborative as well.Building psychological safety at work comes naturally in this sort of culture. Teams can work with leaders to establish these norms. Organizations that put psychological safety first in these ways will be the ones that thrive.

Final note

7 Keys to Create Psychological Safety at Work

Organizations seeking to empower their people and improve performance should focus on cultivating psychological safety at work.

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