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- WEW 7 - How To Build Better Employees, Be Intentional With Your Self Improvement, and Find Great Books
WEW 7 - How To Build Better Employees, Be Intentional With Your Self Improvement, and Find Great Books
At some point, AI will be so mundane that we just talk about it as software or computing. It will be everywhere. I remember reading a book on ubiquitous computing years back and really being hit by the point that computers are truly everywhere, from the LED glow stick sold cheap on the 4th of July to our heaters and other household appliances. We just don’t think of all these devices that way. AI will be unseen in that same way in the future.
Proactive Staff Improvement
Improvement plans for staff should not be a reactive measure, but rather a proactive approach to support driven employees in their growth. While it is not a company's responsibility to grow employees, providing opportunities for growth can be a valuable benefit for both the employee and the company. This doesn’t have to be in terms of promised promotions (don’t do that), but can be in the form of up-skilling or re-skilling individuals.
I understand the challenge managers face in recommending the right tools, books and resources to help their staff grow in their specific roles. I have also given unhelpful recommendations like suggesting employees to find a class or conference, or start a group. It's more effective to provide something specific and concrete.
Instead of suggesting an employee find a conference, tell them about a conference coming up that you think they could benefit from. But how do you “find” the time to do that for everyone on your team, especially if we are talking your extended org chat?
ChatGPT, the large-language-model artificial-intelligence-powered chat bot that has taken over every internet conversation, is currently flawed. It knows nothing about recent events and information, but it is still an expansive database that can jump start research. Leverage it to set context about the employee you have in mind and get book or conference recommendations. The chat below is an example of what I mean.
Recommend the specific things you find instead of generic learning. This not only helps to foster trust between you and the employee, but also provides specific and actionable opportunities for growth within the employee's role. This proactive approach can be integrated into regular one-on-one meetings to continuously support and develop the staff.
Being Guided By Your Goals
It’s no surprise I have very explicit life goals. They are clear but they change all the time. My current format is that I set 5 things I want to BE and 5 things I want to DO often.
These set incredibly clear context for me in everything I do and reassuringly give me a reason to say “no” to things, or drop hobbies or events that don’t help me towards them. For me these ten items aren’t about hustle culture or aggressive optimization, I came up with them as items that I define as being the roots of my happiness. So my rubric boils down to, if this won’t lead to happiness, don’t do it.
This may sound self-centered (and it can be), but it depends on your goals. One of your DO items could be donating or volunteering to charity. Or one of your BE items could be: “BE Generous.”
If you are like me, you get stuck with your goals often. You know what you want but what have you done specifically to make that happen? An exercise I employ is setting time periods such as 5 minutes, 2 hours and 1 month for each goal, and listing something for each that I can accomplish within that time.
One of my 10 goals, is “Be A Respected Expert.” The below is an example of my breakdown.
5 Minutes: Tweet my thoughts on a relevant trending topic2 Hours: Write and submit a blogpost to a major publication1 Month: Find and Speak At An Event1 Year: Publish A Book
The time periods don’t matter, but the intent of setting quick wins and mic-drop items that move you towards what you want does. This ALWAYS results in me reprioritizing my todo list. I use this personally, and I also use it at work. It relates just as strongly to corporate or departmental goals, and is a fantastic weekly exercise to keep you on track and moving forward.
My New Reading List
I have a new reading list. It won’t last long, because I will get through it quick, but its 100% built by AI. A combination of Google’s Talk To Books, and ChatGPT recommendations based on my specific goals. Really my own growth curriculum like I talked about above.
I was getting stuck in a cycle of reading what the algorithms of Amazon were recommending, but those are only based on what I’ve read, not what I want to learn and how I want to grow. You can see the list of books the robots and myself came up with on my LinkedIn: here