Apologies for yesterday's non post. And, bad news, I did not get around to completing any of my stated upcoming posts between then and now.
Instead, I'll post a preview of what I expect will go up most frequently on my new blog. This blog is going to focus on business management, sort of. I intend to figure it out as I go.
All I know for now is that I am aiming to get across one idea per post in less than five hundred words. Everything else is subject to change.
I'll be back on Tuesday with one of two posts- 'Proper Admin July- Books' or 'The Lost In Translation Final'. The post I do not do for Tuesday will likely go up on Friday so I suppose that is the schedule for next week.
Enjoy the sneak peek preview...hope everyone has a lovely weekend.
Tim
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So this Business Bro read about checklists once time...
Some number of months ago, I read Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto for about the eleventieth (approximate) time. I highly recommend it to anyone whose response to forgetting simple yet critical steps is
This post is not about checklists. It is about a research finding that Gawande references in the book. This finding stated that teams who know the names of each person in their unit outperform teams whose members do not know each other's names. I believe this finding was presented in the context of surgical teams but I am willing to bet it applies to all kinds of teams.
One result of having 'worked my way up' in my prior position was that I became an informal go-to person for certain miscellaneous questions. These included questions about names...
'How does she pronounce her last name?'
'Which of the Mikes is that?'
'Your name is Tom, right?'
The reason why so many of these questions came up was because the way we learn each other's names is challenging. Often, we get a quick introduction and exchange a couple of pleasantries before going our separate ways. For an office worker in a new job, this might happen fifty times during their first week. It is no small feat to remember even one new name- imagine learning fifty at once!
When I read this book, I suspected that not knowing names could hurt the business at some point. I certainly saw no argument for how not knowing names would help the business at any point. So, I looked for a quick and simple solution to try.
One lazy Friday, I enlisted one of our interns to go around the office, find out everyone's name, and make a seating chart in an Excel file. I checked it twice and emailed it to everyone.
The idea was very well received. Some people liked the formatting the intern used. Others found it hilarious that I butchered the CFO's last name. I managed to use the word 'cartography' in the email and I received a couple of nice remarks about that.
I'm sure some were relieved to just find out who the new person was on the other side of the office. It is hard to admit that you do not know someone's name, especially if that name is one of the seventeen total words that person has ever said to you.
Your solution does not need to include a seating chart. It might be name tags. And it is possible that knowing names might be irrelevant in some fields. That's OK. For our company, we were at just the right size to make the seating chart the ideal solution.
Plus, to be entirely honest, I had to send the new Mike an email and I had no clue what his last name was. I certainly was not going to admit I had forgotten it already.
Signed,
The Business Bro
