Using Remote Workers: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Post-pandemic, remote work arrangements are here to stay. The 5th Annual State of Remote Work 2021 from Owl Labs found that nearly 50% of workers in the U.S. would be willing to take a 5% pay cut to continue working at least part-time from home. And employers are embracing this arrangement too. There are several good reasons for doing this, but unfortunately there are some pitfalls to consider.

The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal pointed out that “All of humanity’s problems come from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” He didn’t mean sitting quietly in front of a laptop responding to emails. The best thinking comes from structured reflection — and the best way to do that is keeping a personal journal.

Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development

Not only is the majority of training in today’s companies ineffective, but the purpose, timing, and content of training is flawed. Want to see eyes glaze over quicker than you can finish this sentence? Mandate that busy employees attend a training session on “business writing skills”, or “conflict resolution”, or some other such course with little alignment to their needs. Like lean manufacturing and the lean startup before it, lean learning supports the adaptability that gives organizations a competitive advantage in today’s market. It’s about learning the core of what you need to learn, applying it to real-world situations immediately, receiving immediate feedback and refining your understanding, and then repeating the cycle. In order to begin practicing lean learning, organizations need to move from measuring credits earned to measuring business outcomes created. Lean learning ensures that employees not only learn the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reasons, but also that they retain what they learn.

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