When Employee Leaves

[...] If bad employees are leaving, it is good.

If good employees are replacing the bad employees who left, it is good. - Marc

What do you do when that person leaves?

• Keep your head (and the bridge)
• Humbly acknowledge the loss
• Re-highlight a social culture
• Have someone waiting to step up
• Give the new person their own space
• Move on
• Invite them back when appropriate

Some favorite actions to create engagement by Frank:

• Acknowledge them.
• Remember their birthday.
• Trust them.
• Create a tradition with them and keep it.
• Daydream with them.
• Praise more; criticize less.
• Give them your undivided attention.
• Marvel at what they can do.
• Introduce them to people of excellence.
• Keep the promises you make.

[...] The first thing to do is to control your emotions. A surprise resignation often inspires feelings of betrayal, anger and fear, and none of those emotions are necessary or productive. - David

[...] When an employee quits, it costs your company: downtime, customer satisfaction, hiring and training someone new. Know how much? Experts say it’s up to a whopping 250% of annual compensation. - Michael

[...] An employee has just resigned. The norm is that the employee tells you verbally that he or she is resigning from your company. Immediately ask the resigning employee for a resignation letter in writing with their final date of employment stated. - Susan

[...] it is time to start building a reputation as a great company to work for - Tabitha

Why do employees leave?

Reason #1 The Job or Workplace Was Not as Expected

Reason #2 The Mismatch Between Job and Person

Reason #3 Too Little Coaching or Feedback

Reason #4 Too Few Growth and Advancement Opportunities

Reason #5 Feeling Devalued and Unrecognized

Reason #6 Stress from Overwork and Work-Life Imbalance

Reason #7 Loss of Trust or Confidence in Senior Leaders

See also: 10 ways to keep the best employees.

[...] Smart employers will make it known that employees are welcome to work out their notice periods, since that ensures that employees will continue to give them that notice. - Alison

See also: What makes employees happy – More fulfilling

[...] Managers have powerful influence over events that facilitate or undermine progress. They can provide meaningful goals, resources, and encouragement, and they can protect their people from irrelevant demands. Or they can fail to do so. - HBR

See also:

• Motivation driven by progress, not by recognition – not so breakthrough idea
• Exit interviews
• Knowledge management is less about harvesting and more about connecting by Prashanth
• Are all employees knowledge workers? by John
• Employee Engagement A to Z by David
• Curiosità Webinar by David
• Managing the mobile workforce by David
• Videos on Employee Engagement by E. Liew
• Workforce engagement for 21st century by Jay

 

Slower is faster

Money is not the primary asset in life… time is.

If one works too hard for too long, one may start making too many mistakes. At that point one ought to slow down and enjoy simpler things in the short life of ours.

You can always earn more money. You can NEVER get your TIME back!

Hear it from a computer

Consider the eight sides that Mitch has just outlined about a stop sign (even if just a parody, still applicable ):

Only stop signs are allowed to have an octagonal shape. The more sides on a sign, the greater the danger if disregarded.

1. Slow down
2. Pay attention
3. Look around
4. Pause
5. Look within
6. Breathe deeply
7. Appreciate
8. Move consciously

Brain freeze:

• Went to a lunch break. Bought a bag of food from the shop. Drove home. Locked the car. At the apartment realized the food was missing. It was still in the car.

See also:

• Do less
• Slow down, sell faster
• Why time flies by as you get older.
• Boosting your energy
• Your brain on meditation by Jeff
• Attention Economics by Tara
• How to avoid information overload by Fred

Game Ontology

[...] An ontology provides a shared vocabulary, which can be used to model a domain – wikipedia

I have found this interesting Game Ontology Project which by describing different abstract aspects allows to compare different games in a higher view.

[...] the trick is getting them to decompile a game into the language of game design pattern. – Adam

The Game Ontology project distinguishes the following aspects:

• Goals (in-game objectives or conditions that the player must meet if he expects to succeed at the game)
   
  • Agent Goals
  • Game Goals
  • Goal Metrics
• Interface (the player and the game meet by means of presentation, input method, and input device)
   
  • Input
  • Presentation
• Rules (define what can or cant be done in a game)
   
  • Rules Synergies
  • Gameplay Rules
  • Gameworld Rules
• Entity Manipulation (altering the attributes or abilities of an entity in the game world)
   
  • Compound Action
  • To Collide
  • To Create
  • To Move
  • To Own
  • To Remove
  • To Rotate
  • To Select
  • To Manipulate Time
  • To Manipulate Gravity
  • To Customize

Then there is the 400 Project Rule List to list some rules to consider.

See also: A Logical Game Engine for Modeling Videogames (Drillbot 6000)

See also: Game Mechanics

See also: Game design as a new domain for automated discovery

See also: Understanding Games

See also: Philosophy of computer games

See also: Gamedev At StackExchange

See also: Deconstruction Game

See also: Metagames

Taking the shortcut without cutting corners

So there I am in need to apply accelerated learning tactics on a subject I need to absorb and make use of sooner than later. In order to do that I did some rapid research on the internet and this is the outline and take-away points I felt like being useful. Do follow the links to read more.

[...] If someone granted you one wish, what do you imagine you would want out of life that you haven’t gotten yet? – 77 Ways To Learn Faster

8. Take a hike. Changing your perspective often relieves tension, thus freeing your creative mind. Taking a short walk around the neighborhood may help.

14. Take a bath or shower. Both activities loosen you up, making your mind more receptive to recognizing brilliant ideas.

18. Every picture tells a story. Draw or sketch whatever it is you are trying to achieve. Having a concrete goal in mind helps you progress towards that goal.

35. Motivate yourself. Why do you want to learn something? What do want to achieve through learning? If you don’t know why you want to learn, then distractions will be far more enticing.

43. Read as much as you can. How much more obvious can it get? Use Spreeder (#33) if you have to. Get a breadth of topics as well as depth.

67. Do unto others: teach something. The best way to learn something better is to teach it to someone else. It forces you to learn, if you are motivated enough to share your knowledge.

[...] “In order for things to change, you must change. When you change, everything will change for you. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Success is what you attract by the person become.” - Jim Rohn

Learning by connections

The process of creating connections between ideas;õ

1. Confusion
2. First insights
3. Expand on insights
4. Trim back connections
5. Repeat

Confusion

You are searching for a pattern.

First insights

You acquire first seeds of understanding. To do that one has to be expose to as many explanations as possible.

Expand on Insights

One will start to find analogies and metaphors.

Trim back connections

Play devil’s advocate with your ideas. Reject idea connections which are flawed.

[...] If Neo could never be sure that he wasn’t in the Matrix, how can you and I be sure that we’re not in the Matrix? – by Moreland

Repeat

Previous steps need to be repeated to learn ideas deeper and make the core concept of the idea more obvious.

The above steps were about “a process of figuring out what you do when you learn well”.

Broader Rules and Tactics

Rule #1: Spend time practicing skills. Concepts are to be learned by connections.

Rule #2: Concepts before facts.

Rule #3: Cramming is unproductive. Unconscious mind needs time to build new connections.

Rule #4: Make use of concept checklists.

Tactic #1: Simplify ideas and retell them as the listener was 5 year old.

Tactic #2: Which metaphor does and idea remind you?

Tactic #3: Use combination of visualizations and demonstrations.

Tactic #4: Deeper research on an idea will let to discover more connections.

Learn more here from Scott’s article.

See also:

• Holistic Learning EBook
• Use Mind Maps to Achieve Your Goals
• How to learn
• Plan Do Check Act powered learning
• Be teachable by John
• I have learned too much; my head hurts by  Bill
• The hard is what makes it great by Tom
• Feynman Technique by Scott

Creative bursts

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inauguration Day, 1933 See also: Getting down to the Business of Creativity

[...] figure out how to get in the zone and do it as often as possible. – Trent

How does one deal with distractions? So how does one get into the zone? Here is one way to do it:

1. Door shut
2. People out
3. Phone off
4. Email/skype off
5. Coffe/tea on

[...] When I get back, I’m going to delete all the email in my box, so if it’s important, please re-send it next week. – Seth

Patterns that could be sabotaging your idea.

• Being a failure avoider
• Ego based achievement
• Ambivalence

Some tips from Nicolai about Sketching Strategies:

• Browse your sketchbooks
• Date your sketches
• Avoid erasing notes or removing pages
• Have tour sketchbook with you

See also:

• Office politics – stealing ideas
• Spend more time in the shower
• Create an idea factory
• 98 Percent Won’t Cut It
• What It Really Takes To Innovate by Mitch
• Need fresh inspiration? Take a trip down the memory lane by Debbie
• Don’t just create… Create Opportunity! by Kristen
• Creativity slides by Jakob
• 25 Awesome Quotes on Creativity  by Mitch
• Are you an idea addict?
• Which Idea is a Good One?
• Innovation is a distraction
• We do not know where we get our ideas  from
• Most important leadership quality is CEOs creativity by Christopher
• Quotes from Einstein by Mitch
• Innovation Comes creating new memories by Jay