PrimeGenesis Blog
Three Things To Remember When Onboarding Into A Smaller Organization
The same three things derail people onboarding into small companies as into large companies: poor fit, failure to deliver and an inability to deal with changes along the way. But the way to deal with those obstacles in smaller companies is different. You must fit with...
Three Essential Questions of Big Data: What? So What? Now What?
When you’re overwhelmed by an onslaught of big data stop and answer three essential questions: What? So what? Now what? This will help you get a handle on the data, think about its implications, and turn your insights into actions.
“What” gets at facts – which should look the same to everyone looking at them from any angle.
“So what” is about your conclusions from the facts.
“Now what” turns those conclusions into go-forward actions.
One of the keys to making this work is linking facts, conclusions and indicated actions. For many, this is not a new idea. A long time ago, statistician, W.E. Deming said, “In God we trust. All others must bring data.” Culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage and the emergence of Big Data makes embedding fact-based decision making in your culture that much more important.
How To Win At Office Politics
Let’s unpack that idea into purpose, politics, and navigating, keeping in mind that politics is inevitable in any organization of more than one person. Even if you’d like to pretend your organization is politics-free, it isn’t. Even if you’d like to ignore the politics and get on with the real work, you can’t. On the other hand, those that make playing politics their first priority often fail to get beyond it. Thus, the prescription for success:
Start by reconfirming your purpose.
Figure out the political landscape.
Take a principle-based approach to working through the politics with your allies.
Association for Talent Development Contributions
Work Less, Create More Value – The Art of Delegating
Scope is a function of resources and time. If the scope of what you’re trying to accomplish is too much to get done in a high quality way, you have to add resources, add time, or cut back the scope. In other words, say “no” to some of the less important items and non-value-adding steps. Think in terms of your options for completing tasks:
Do well yourself
Do yourself, but just well enough
Delegate and supervise
Delegate and ignore
Do later
Do never
Where Should You Play: When Theory and Practice Diverge
Where to play is generally the first of the five core questions a BRAVE leader needs to answer. In theory, this is done by solving someone’s problem after choosing which customers to serve and which of their problem to solve. Industries and competitors, business models, places in the value chain, and geography all play a role in the selection leaders make. In practice the criteria often interact in ways you can’t foresee.
Where Play Choices:
Which problem to solve (for which customers)?
Which business model?
Value chain focal point?
Geography?
MOOC Provider edX Partners with Community Colleges to Improve Workforce Readiness
Just as business leaders should consider following the flipped classroom model for business presentations, think about deploying a blended learning approach for employees working outside your main office. They have the same issues as students at community colleges: access and time. They don’t have access to the same content and teachers that are wandering around your main office. If they come in for meetings or workshops, they have to factor in travel time.
With a blended learning approach, you can provide them with videos and interactive assignments at their primary locations, and then pull them together either in regional hubs or your main office for one-one-one and group discussions as well as mini-lectures. It’s a way to give greater access and make the best use of our most precious commodity – time.
The Goldilocks Middle Way Between DIY and Outsourcing
The essence of the Goldilocks approach is breaking apart outsourcing decisions into their components
Beyond 10,000 Hours: The Constant Pursuit of Mastery
People will follow someone who takes them to a happy place in a happy way. But they will devote themselves to the cause of a BRAVE leader who helps them make sense of their behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values and environment.
Where Should You Play? The Secret to Investing Your Time and Talent for Maximum Impact and Reward
Where it matters is most likely going to be where there is an unmet need that has a meaningful impact on peoples’ lives. Where you can win is not just where you have strengths, but where you have differentiated strengths from others playing in or around your space.