So many employees are behind in the first moment of their workday. They are caught in workplaces that have cultures that do the same things over and over, regardless of how their environments change; they don’t commit to regularly challenging employees to constantly learn, rethink their jobs and value, and try new things. They are stuck living yesterday’s workday over and over.
In a period of exponential change, the most successful organizations are flexible and opportunity-focused; they empower their employees to constantly learn, involve them in new tasks/responsibilities and require them to try new things.
These organizations constantly gather new ideas, perspectives and opportunities – the key to developing a responsive and successful performance strategy. The more today’s managers help employees learn, grow and try new things, the more they encourage more robust employee thinking which is critical to sustainable company results.
I come from a large Italian family. Being both a large family, and Italian, we rarely went out for dinner (there were too many of us and besides, our food at home was terrific). However, I do remember one time when we went out to a smorgasbord – a buffet. My siblings and I descended on the amazing food tables and started to fill our plates. Dad called us back to our table, took our large plates away and gave us small plates instead. We were then instructed to follow him two times around the food tables – not taking anything – we were just to see what was available. The third time around we could help ourselves to small portions of things we had never tried before. He promised that if we did this, we would discover at least one new favorite food – we would change the way we think. He was right. I discovered artichoke hearts – and still love them today.
The point? Great managers constantly guide their employees to “walk around the company table” and let their employees explore and try things – through both formal learning and on-the-job learning. This expands not only what employees know, but it encourages broader and more strategic employee thinking – employees find areas of greater abilities, develop greater skills and bring stronger performance to the organization.
Additionally, an organization focused on constantly growing and educating its employees significantly influences employee loyalty. And the key to a powerful, high-performing organization is a stable, consistent and free-thinking workforce.
bottom line, changing workplace, employee education, employee performance, learning, skills, workforce
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 5:16 am and is filed under For Managers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
