The choice hype: red, vermillion, maroon, magenta, mauve, blue, cyan, cobalt…

I recently came across a beautifully articulated and data-supported article on choices by Alex Birkett. Taking from where Barry Schwartz left off (on the Psychology of Choice), this article is a seller-side exploration of whether offering more choice to your buyers leads to higher (or lower) sales; or does reducing the number of options offered to your buyers actually peak sales.

I strongly recommend you read this full article, it’s a quick read. And if you haven’t already watched Barry Shartz’ TED Talk, you must, now. It’s embedded in this article:

http://conversionxl.com/does-offering-more-choices-actually-tank-conversions

I found this article resonated with me, having just recently developed a product strategy for a food service. These were the very considerations I was playing with.

For a generation grown up in the promise of post-industrial American consumerism, we take choice for granted. This article explores both extremes of infinite choices, and literally no choice (or super-limited choice).

It’s time corporations took a coffee break.

Look at Christoph Nieman’s cover for the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine. He refers to it as a “Coffee break”. There’s a beautifully crafted commentary drawn on a maze of machines. Machines of all kinds. “The whole idea of a machine is outdated”, Nieman says.

Large corporations are often like that. A maze of a conundrum of machines… systems of all kinds. The ZX81 computer was Nieman’s first. Mid ‘80s. One that could get three lines of code written, and store nothing. That illustration of the ZX81 has memories, stories, dreams. Today, it’s just that. Memories, stories, dreams.

Corporations often forget to move their ZX81s to the memory frames where they belong. As time passes, they often lug along so many of the systems, processes, policies and rulebooks that are at best outdated. They don’t want to let go of them. Just in case.

“I have a romantic attachment to these things—I wanted to anoint them into cartoon heaven.”, says Nieman. Very well said; for that’s what they are. Each system has a time and place. Living beyond its time and place is like a romantic clinging to the past.

It’s time corporations anoint their beautiful, once-upon-a-time-functional systems to corporate heaven, and took a coffee break.

Training as an event VS a continuous process

Very interesting article by Harold Jarche @hjarche : “enough training“.

https://t.co/gSqn0E8GgX?ssr=true

The context: “In a recent CBC News story, a railway conductor lost her job following a derailment. She claimed she was not adequately trained.” forms the starting point for his poignant appeal to training departments to start looking beyond structured, mandated training alone as a performance driver.

It’s a mindset that even the most advanced training organizations suffer from. Training and performance support are literally two key pillars of organizational performance. The fact that the two are NOT mutually exclusive, but rather need to co-exist is a point most L&D departments miss.

It’s really the tick-mark mentality that needs change. It’s also important to recognize that members of the L&D department are themselves victims of rather archaic rewards and recognition systems. Because it is easy to tangibly identify, organizations tend to reward L&D staff for a ‘training successfully completed’. Tickmark. Not employees successfully competent to excel at their jobs.

This, while measurable, is less than markable as an ‘event’. Therein also lies the crux of the problem… Of seeing training as an event, rather than a continuous process.

What are your thoughts on the role of training and performance support? Share them in the comments :).

 

Five Must-Have Sandbox Tools for Entry Level New Hire Onboarding

At art school, they never taught me a thing. They simply let me do. Let me fancy myself doing art. I learnt as I did. That made me think, my mother never taught me to cook. Shame, I think, for an Indian girl. But she knew better. I tried, I tasted, then tried and tasted, then again tried and tasted my way to ethereal cooking (even if I say so).

High Fives of a Successful New Hire Onboarding Program

Fact: Only 9% managers feel their company does an “extremely good” job of onboarding.

Fancy that. It’s like you’ve been granted a billion dollars of cash in bank, and you merely allow it to dwindle and waste away. That billion dollar grant is meant for you to power and grow your business. Don’t waste it.

New hire onboarding is your most strategic investment to building a highly effective workforce.

Sherry Turkle, and our misplaced obsession with tech

If you haven’t read Sherry Turkle, you need to stop everything and do that now.

As Arianna Huffington states in her recent interview with Turkle, “her new book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age cements her status as one of our pre-eminent thinkers on the ways technology impacts on our lives.”

Disruption at the ‘Cross’roads – A tribute to Jay Cross, the man who disrupted the learning world’s complacence

On November 6, 2015, Jay Cross decided it was time he did something better with his time… share a laugh with the angels about the quizzical human mind.

Why care?

I once hired an agency to do marketing and promotion for us. They promised a bunch of things, we agreed rates, and go. I was excited. because none of us had any skills in marketing and we believed they would add value to us.

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to. -Richard Branson

Countless business managers, leaders, business owners feel paralysed at the thought of “after training what”. These are not mega corporations, with oceans of people working for them.

…someone once made a courageous decision.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”

-Peter F. Drucker

It’s so easy to overlook. You take them for granted. They are like fixtures on our minds.

New entrepreneurs often muse about the success of other entrepreneurs. When faced with roadblocks, one after another, they look at the IBMs and the P&Gs and the Apples, wistfully.

In doing so, you momentarily forget that they too were there. Apple was exactly where you are now. 4 decades back. It’s easy to underestimate the journey that was the four decades. The courageous decisions they made each day of the four decades. For what you see is sheen. What you see is success.

Entrepreneurs, remember, you’re like artists. You’re creating something new. Like Paul Cezanne once famously said: ‘At each touch I risk my life.’