Blog Archives

How Many Single Points of Failure Does Your Organization Have?

9/26/2018

by Matt Boltz

Every organization is at risk of the “Lottery Winner” scenario. One or more of your employees hits the lottery jackpot and doesn’t ever have to show up to work again. They are gone but the work still has to get done. Do other members/managers of the team know how to do that person’s job? Are processes documented and are the process documents up to date? Are other members of the organization cross trained on the lottery winner’s tasks? If you answered ‘No’ to these questions then your organization may have an issue with Single Points of Failure.

Flow and the Workplace

9/18/2018

by Matt Boltz

The concept of flow has been around for a very long time and is commonly known as being “in the zone” or being focused, engaged, and happy with the activity you are performing. Flow is an extremely valuable concept that can be applied to many different areas of life. The best breakdown of flow I’ve heard was in an interview with mixed martial arts coach Firas Zahabi. He uses flow in terms of fitness and training his fighters, which include arguably the best mixed martial artist of all-time in Georges St-Pierre.

3 Principles of an Effective Workplace: Principle #3 - Education

9/12/2018

by Matt Boltz

Education is the third Principle of an Effective Workplace. Once you start a role at a new organization it will typically take anywhere from 3 months to a year to get comfortable in your new position. Why does learning stop when you have been assigned a role and trained on the tasks you will be responsible for? Most people enjoy learning new things and want to be challenged. Why can’t someone in Finance learn about what the Marketing team does and possibly contribute to that team? That person in Finance may have been studying marketing in their own time or may have a skill set that is a better fit for Marketing.

3 Principles of an Effective Workplace: Principle #2 - Collaboration/Cooperation

9/5/2018

by Matt Boltz

The second Principle of an Effective Workplace is Collaboration/Cooperation. I covered the first principle, Individualism, in the prior blog post. For a real-life example of how these two principles work together we can look at the offense of a football team. There are 11 players on offense and each one is responsible for their individual assignment. Through communication and practice these 11 individuals with 11 individual tasks work together to execute the play. The offense of a football team will not be successful if the individuals do not complete their job and if they do not collaborate and cooperate with each other.