Making Business Matter (MBM)

E7 – You Do Your Best Work Under Pressure? You’re a Tight Deadline Junkie

Do you leave everything to the last minute? Do you find yourself burning the midnight oil time after and time to meet deadlines? Yet, somehow, every time you pull of a masterstroke of genius and deliver. You deliver, not just on time, but you deliver your best work. You might just be one of the many tight deadline junkies. Listen to this podcast to learn more.

Read the Tight Deadline Podcast Transcript:

“Deadlines are a fundamental part of working in business. Are you one of those people like a baseball player? Running for the home run, and you slide in on the last base just as the umpire says, “Yep, you’re home”? My name is Darren and you’re at the home of Sticky Learning MBM, trainers to the UK grocery industry, and experts in making learning stick.”

“Today I’d like to talk to you about tight deadlines. A lot of people are one of those baseball players that just slide in and get the home run, and you might say, “What’s wrong with that?” I’d say nothing, except the stress that it causes. Then people will say to me, “Ah, but I do my best work under pressure”. I’d say to them, “Research disagrees”. In fact, when we’re stressed scientists have proved that our IQ drops to that of a teenager. So when the adrenaline is running, when the cortisol is going around our body, what’s happening is we’re getting ready for fight or flight for the sabre-toothed tiger, but of course, they don’t exist anymore.”

Leaving Things to the Last Minute

What happens at work is when we really need to be our best, make our best decisions, what’s happening in our IQ has dropped. So, you think that you do your best work under pressure, it’s not true. What happens is you get very stressed under pressure and you seem to get a lot done, but let’s look at that a whole different way. A lot of people slide in, getting their deadlines done just on time. A bit like when they go for a train and they’re almost proud to jump on the train having run across the platform as the doors are bleeping. “I made it,” and yes you did, but let’s look at the stress that that caused, and was it really worth it?

“There is an alternative, and it’s not going to be an alternative that you’ll want to embrace, because part of you really likes to the rollercoaster ride of that adrenaline rush. Here’s my challenge. You’ve got a manager who is erratic, disorganized. Often sliding in at last base just to get the deadlines done. Whilst that’s quite exciting, is that really the person that you would want to work for? Would you prefer someone that’s more measured? That knows what they’re trying to achieve? Let’s call it st

E6 – Not Having Effective Meetings? Are You Wasting Valuable Time? Answer: Have More Meetings! We spend most of our working lives in them. Yet, they are rarely an effective...

E6 – Not Having Effective Meetings? Are You Wasting Valuable Time? Answer: Have More Meetings!

We spend most of our working lives in them. Yet, they are rarely an effective use of our time. In short, we simply aren’t making the most of them. In fact, the problem is we aren’t having enough of them! Listen to this podcast to learn how to have more effective meetings.

Here, we argue, that shorter and more regular meetings will keep your team on track. This will allow your meetings to be more effective.

Read Effective Meetings Podcast Transcript:

“Meetings, you’re having them all day long and they’re not as effective as they could be. You know this. My name is Darren and you’re at the home of Sticky Learning, MBM, Trainers to the UK Grocery Industry. This is another short and sticky story about meetings. Along with emails, you spend most of your time doing either those or meetings and they’re not as productive as you want. Most people feel this, they could be a lot more effective and maybe in the past, you’ve reached for a book or you’ve done some research online to try and figure out how to make meetings more effective. And what you’ve probably found is that the advice is about setting objectives.”

Setting Objectives

“Objectives are good advice, it’s just not great advice and that’s because of how many people really set objectives for meetings? They do for the really, really important ones, but beyond that, the day to day meetings, they don’t. Smart objectives would be ideal, but for me it’s the difference between if you’ve seen the film, A Few Good Men, it’s the difference between paper law, as Sam says, when he’s fighting a court case with Tom Cruise, the difference between paper law and trial law is the difference between someone writing a book who was intellectually right. You should have objectives for meetings, but in reality, it ain’t going to happen. So let me see if I can share a story about how you might do it differently and I’ll follow up with some practical tips that I hope will help.”

Have More Meetings to Get More Done

“When I was a kid, we had maybe more changes of seasons than we seem to now. We had extreme summers, it seemed, and extreme winters, although maybe I look back at my old childhood with rose-coloured glasses. I remember going to school one day and it had been snowing all night. I’d woken up, I was probably about nine years old, and how excited I was that snow was on the ground, and walking to school was really exciting. You’ve probably had that feeling. And throwing snowballs at each other all day, going out to the playground, fabulous.”

“Over the next couple of days, the snow fades and it’s not as exciting, but playing with snowba

E7 - You Do Your Best Work Under Pressure? You’re a Tight Deadline Junkie

Do you leave everything to the last minute? Do you find yourself burning the midnight oil time after and time to meet deadlines? Yet, somehow, every time you pull of a masterstroke of genius and deliver. You deliver, not just on time, but you deliver your best work. You might just be one of the many tight deadline junkies. Listen to this podcast to learn more.

Read the Tight Deadline Podcast Transcript:

"Deadlines are a fundamental part of working in business. Are you one of those people like a baseball player? Running for the home run, and you slide in on the last base just as the umpire says, "Yep, you're home"? My name is Darren and you're at the home of Sticky Learning MBM, trainers to the UK grocery industry, and experts in making learning stick."

"Today I'd like to talk to you about tight deadlines. A lot of people are one of those baseball players that just slide in and get the home run, and you might say, "What's wrong with that?" I'd say nothing, except the stress that it causes. Then people will say to me, "Ah, but I do my best work under pressure". I'd say to them, "Research disagrees". In fact, when we're stressed scientists have proved that our IQ drops to that of a teenager. So when the adrenaline is running, when the cortisol is going around our body, what's happening is we're getting ready for fight or flight for the sabre-toothed tiger, but of course, they don't exist anymore."

Leaving Things to the Last Minute

What happens at work is when we really need to be our best, make our best decisions, what's happening in our IQ has dropped. So, you think that you do your best work under pressure, it's not true. What happens is you get very stressed under pressure and you seem to get a lot done, but let's look at that a whole different way. A lot of people slide in, getting their deadlines done just on time. A bit like when they go for a train and they're almost proud to jump on the train having run across the platform as the doors are bleeping. "I made it," and yes you did, but let's look at the stress that that caused, and was it really worth it?

"There is an alternative, and it's not going to be an alternative that you'll want to embrace, because part of you really likes to the rollercoaster ride of that adrenaline rush. Here's my challenge. You've got a manager who is erratic, disorganized. Often sliding in at last base just to get the deadlines done. Whilst that's quite exciting, is that really the person that you would want to work for? Would you prefer someone that's more measured? That knows what they're trying to achieve? Let's call it strategic thinking, and has a really good understanding of what the plan looks like for the next 12 months or the next few days, but isn't trying to hit deadlines just as they happen or passed."

Tight deadlines: Egg timer running out

 

The Last-Minute Multiply Effect

"That's exciting, but the stress is huge, and multiply that as a cascade from top to bottom in a company. The guy at the top is working on a last-minute tight deadline. Because he couldn't think further ahead than a few weeks. That cascades to the next level down. The next level down. And by the time it gets to middle management or below they're running around like headless chickens. Stressed, making decisions at last minute on something that's probably pretty important for that company. This would not be the image I suggest you want to portray."

Why Do People Just Hit or Just Miss Their Deadlines?

"So, let's look at why. Why do people just hit or just miss their deadlines? Why not turn in a report a few days before? Well, the reason is they don't trust themselves. Let me say that again. The reason is, they don't trust themselves because let's imagine a scenario. You've got to write a presentation for a customer in two weeks time, Thursday by 5:00. The meeting happens on Friday at 9:00 AM. Now, you've had this for a couple of weeks and you're very busy. You're working on emails, and voicemails, and meetings. And all those other things that you've got to do. So, you put it off and put it off."

"Then what happens is you get to Thursday, you know this thing has going to be done, and you want to work on it but you've been taken off to this meeting, or that meeting or this sudden idea has come in that you've got to work on, or this project. So, you stay late on Thursday. You've missed your own tight deadline but you'll stay late, and now you're working on your own time. You've had a really long day, probably a nine, 10 hour day, and what's happening is you're trying to do your very best work when you're most tired. When you have the least energy. That can't be good. It's an important customer meeting, yet you're not giving it the energy that you should because you were busy."

A Hard Deadline Prevents Tinkering

"Now, the reason you do that, you probably have a late-night or pull an all-nighter into Friday morning, is because if you had started that piece of work, which let's say took six hours, if you had started it on the Monday previous you would have finished the piece of work six hours later."

"Here's what happens next. You start to tinker. You start to play with the font, you start to look at the images, you start to have some great ideas about other things that you could do to make it really, really powerful, and they're great. That is the reason why you don't trust yourself to do it beforehand, and almost subconsciously your mind has worked out that if you do start it Thursday at 7:00 PM and you pull an all-nighter, you're constrained by the deadline of the meeting the next day. So, you can't tinker with it. The tight deadline is a hard deadline."

What If You Could Start It Before?

"What about if you could start it before? If you could trust yourself to only work the six hours or, let's say the seventh hour, the last hour being something really fabulous because you've got the time. What you would end up with is a perception by others that you're organized, you know what you're doing, you're not a stress head."

"A lot less stress for you. Maybe you just added that little something extra to that presentation too. Because you had a little bit more time. Not playing with the font or the image because they're not overly important but there's one idea, maybe this roleplay that you did with another colleague, to make sure that your messages came across. Because presenting shouldn't just be about the slides, it should be about how you present, what body language you use, what tone you use. Anticipating the questions is more important than just the content."

There's a Better Way to Do It

"So, moving from being LastMinute.com because it's very stressful and you are perceived to be disorganized and not really know what's going on, yet you're sliding in on the home run. Feels great. I'm suggesting that there's a better way to do it, and that is to trust yourself. To trust yourself and become aware that if there is a deadline, you'll start the piece of work way before the deadline, and you will commit to yourself not to tinker with it but only to work on really great ideas that help dramatically improve, in this case, the presentation."

"If you do that, you will find you start pieces of work earlier, you can get more done, you're more productive because you're using a higher IQ. It's less stressful, and you will rise up the ranks quicker. Because you are perceived to be someone who gets things done calmly, organized, and with an edge that makes your presentations in this case even more effective."

Final Thoughts

"So, this is me leaving you with a challenge. Don't be a stress head. Don't slide in like the exciting baseball player because you like the rollercoaster. Instead, do what we encourage you to do, which is a term called get the hares running. Get the hares running is about, "I've got a presentation to do in two weeks. I need to get some data. That's the bit that's going to take the most time, so I'm going to get the hare running. Just like the hare at a greyhound race. And I'm going to ask Bob to get me the data for three days time". That way you can begin the presentation with the data in three days time."

"Give yourself a deadline of, "I'm going to do it all of this day, and then I will stop because I haven't had any other great ideas, and the font is fine, and the images are great." Then leave it alone. Trust yourself that you can leave it alone. Then move on with another piece of work. Knowing that piece of work is ready to go when you pick it up on Friday. So, get the hares running and don't be LastMinute.com. Thank you."

Episode 6 - Not Having Effective Meetings? Are You Wasting Valuable Time? Answer: Have More Meetings!

We spend most of our working lives in them. Yet, they are rarely an effective use of our time. In short, we simply aren't making the most of them. In fact, the problem is we aren't having enough of them! Listen to this podcast to learn how to have more effective meetings.

Here, we argue, that shorter and more regular meetings will keep your team on track. This will allow your meetings to be more effective.

Read Effective Meetings Podcast Transcript:

"Meetings, you're having them all day long and they're not as effective as they could be. You know this. My name is Darren and you're at the home of Sticky Learning, MBM, Trainers to the UK Grocery Industry. This is another short and sticky story about meetings. Along with emails, you spend most of your time doing either those or meetings and they're not as productive as you want. Most people feel this, they could be a lot more effective and maybe in the past, you've reached for a book or you've done some research online to try and figure out how to make meetings more effective. And what you've probably found is that the advice is about setting objectives."

Setting Objectives

"Objectives are good advice, it's just not great advice and that's because of how many people really set objectives for meetings? They do for the really, really important ones, but beyond that, the day to day meetings, they don't. Smart objectives would be ideal, but for me it's the difference between if you've seen the film, A Few Good Men, it's the difference between paper law, as Sam says, when he's fighting a court case with Tom Cruise, the difference between paper law and trial law is the difference between someone writing a book who was intellectually right. You should have objectives for meetings, but in reality, it ain't going to happen. So let me see if I can share a story about how you might do it differently and I'll follow up with some practical tips that I hope will help."

Have More Meetings to Get More Done

"When I was a kid, we had maybe more changes of seasons than we seem to now. We had extreme summers, it seemed, and extreme winters, although maybe I look back at my old childhood with rose-coloured glasses. I remember going to school one day and it had been snowing all night. I'd woken up, I was probably about nine years old, and how excited I was that snow was on the ground, and walking to school was really exciting. You've probably had that feeling. And throwing snowballs at each other all day, going out to the playground, fabulous."

"Over the next couple of days, the snow fades and it's not as exciting, but playing with snowballs, the best place to get your snowballs to get them into a ball was at the bottom of a tree where the snow had drifted up against the tree. You probably know what I mean."

"So you've got up to the base of the tree, grab a load of snow, make it into a snowball and throw it at the nearest kid. Fabulous. My point of saying that is if you were to look at a tree when it's snowed, you'll see that the snowdrift is on either side. I'm suggesting that to have more productive meetings, you should have more meetings. You won't find that in any book. And if the tree is a meeting, then what happens is the actions, and the things that get done, are the snow to the right and the snow to the left of the tree."

Are you wasting valuable time in meetings?

 

Making Meetings More Productive

"So if you want to get more done from the meetings, you want people to take more actions, you'll find what they do is think, "Ah, I've got a meeting today at two o'clock. Damn, I should have done the action from last week." And people do their actions either just before the meeting or they come out of a meeting and think. "Okay, I'll get that done while it's fresh in my mind." So they get their actions done just before the meeting or just after the meeting."

"So if you want more productive meetings, make them shorter and make them more frequent. So instead of an hour every two weeks, I'd have half an hour every week. Because what that does is hold people's feet to the fire. They do it for themselves and you can do it. The meetings coming up, they'll get their actions done or you hold their feet to the fire."

"Why didn't they do their actions in the meeting? Or they'll come out with a meeting and think, either because you have said it, or because the action is fresh in their mind, they need to get this done. The metaphor is, imagine a whole row lined up with trees and the snowdrift either side, the snow represents the actions that people do just before or just after, and the trees represent the meetings. In summary, if you want to have more productive meetings, make them shorter and make them more frequent. So that's the snow tree metaphor."

ACE

"The other part I'd like to share with you is something called ACE, if you can imagine the ace of spades playing card. The books say that we should have objectives before we go into the meeting and they're right. We're unlikely to do that, although we know it's intellectually correct."

"My suggestion, if you're meeting is typically an hour and typically six people, as you'd go into that meeting, take the role of chair. All that means is grabbing a piece of paper and taking the first 7%, seven minutes of a meeting and writing down the agenda points that you want to know in that meeting. So the first part is, what do we want to nail in this meeting? Agenda point A, agenda point B, and you're writing them down and you write a full list. The second part of that is only once you've written a full list, do you then agree with the group what the top three that we want to get done and you start those, and it might be C, F and G. It doesn't really matter."

A: Agenda

"The important part and this is where your facilitation skills will be challenged, is when you write the list, don't allow the group to debate the list. Just get a full list of what everyone thinks we ought to cover in this meeting. Great. You've written that down and made a full page in front of them. The second part is what do we absolutely need to crack? Take Pareto's Law, the 80/20. What's the 20% that will make 80% of the difference? And it's normally three things, and make a star by those. Again, you must stop the group from debating and having the meeting. This is just structuring the meeting of what we want to get done. So the first letter is A of ACE and that's agenda. Make sure you take the first few minutes of a meeting to write the agenda."

C: Capture

"The second part is C and that's capture. Absolutely make sure that someone captures the actions. We've all been in meetings, which were great and then come out of those, there are no actions, no one knows what really was supposed to be done, but you think Ron or Bob should have done it, and then guaranteed, you come back to the next meeting and Ron and Bob both look at each other and thought and say, "I thought you were doing it." And the whole meeting was non-productive."

"So the C is for capture. Make sure someone captures the actions and really, really simple if they capture it on a piece of paper, three columns. The first is the what. So the first column is what. What is the action? The second column is who. Who is the person that's going to get it done and caught? The next column is when. When are they going to get it done by? So you've got the what, the who and the when."

E: Evaluation

"Ideally for speed, you want someone to type that straight into their laptop. Bear in mind, there is a risk with that, that whilst they're typing actions that maybe they'll just have a glimpse at their emails. So you'll need to be the judge of whether they can write it down or type it straight into their laptop. So that gives us the C, which is capture. And the last one is taken a few moments at the end for E, which is evaluation."

"This is all about continuous improvement and making the meetings better for the future. It shouldn't be a 20-minute debate, it should be a few minutes, a maximum of about three, four minutes. What one thing could we do from this meeting next time to make it more effective? Well, we should get Bob to attend, or we should make it 45 minutes, or we should hold it in venue B, whatever that thing is. You as the chair then take that, it gets added to the actions for next time, and what you'll find is you're continuously improving that meeting and it's productivity output. So that's ACE. So imagine the ace of spades, you've got A for agenda, C for capture, and E for evaluation."

Number the Action

"When someone captures the actions, just the last point to note is to make sure that they number the action. So when you come back to them next time because remember this might be a conference call, we're going through action one, action two, action three. And the very first thing we ought to do at the next meeting is to pull out the previous actions to see if they have been done. Let's not create another 20 actions before we figured out whether the first 20 we created in the last meeting have actually been actioned."

Final Thoughts

"So in summary, snow trees, because people do their actions just before or just after a meeting. So if you want more productive meetings, have more of them, but make them shorter. Remember, outlook defaults to either half an hour or an hour, but there's no reason it can't be 20 minutes or 45 minutes. And then the next part is, remember the ace of spades. A stands or agenda, C, capture, and E, evaluation. Hope you'll have many more productive meetings. Thank you."

Episode 5 – The Annual Appraisal is Lost

In this podcast, we discuss a simple technique to make the annual appraisal useful at work. One of the mainstays of business has always been the annual appraisal.

Since time and memorial business people have struggled to use them as an effective tool for business. There is a better way.

Read the Annual Appraisal Podcast Transcript:

"Annual appraisals just don't work the way you're doing them. My name is Darren Smith and you're at the home of Sticky Learning, MBM, trainers to the UK grocery industry."

The Traditional Annual Appraisal

"I worked in the corporate world for many years, commuting to London, working for one of the top four UK supermarkets. It was time for the annual appraisal, and what happened at this time where people were taken into rooms in pairs. The line manager took the report in for these long going meetings around the annual appraisal and the documentation was huge."

Has it Changed?

"That's probably no different to what you're doing today. You're either a report or a line manager knowing that the dreaded annual appraisal adds very little, yet they've done year in year out at most companies."

"So let's call him Richard. We'll change the names to protect the guilty. I go into a room with Richard, my line manager at the time. I'm a cheese buyer. We sit down and we begin. The first few minutes of this is an annual appraisal. We're here for maybe an hour, an hour and a half. We're going to talk about your performance."

Don't Start With Feedback

"Now what we should have done at that point is taken the objectives that I'd been set and run through those. But Richard started with feedback. What he then did was pull out a book. Now, I'd seen this book over the last 12 months. But, I didn't really know what it was apart from he'd written some things in it. I thought it was what some time managers call a daybook, where you just sort of jot down meetings and notes and so on."

Annual appraisal: Effective business tool

 

127 Things I Did Wrong

"Well, this book, he opened it, I think he was on about page 12 or so. He opened it on page 12 and my name was at the top. What he'd done and been doing over the last 12 months as he had captured 127 things that I'd done wrong. 127 things that he hadn't told me until my annual appraisal that these are the things you could do better or you'd done wrong were his words."

"I was shocked. Now, in my early twenties, I didn't know that this wasn't the right way to do appraisals. I had no idea. And what happened over the next, I think it was an hour, hour and a half, he went through each of the 127 items and asked me why I'd done it wrong."

Give Feedback Regularly

"Now that's an extreme example, and you're probably thinking, yeah, that would never happen to me or I'd never do that, and you're right, it probably won't or you won't do it to another individual, to one of your reports. The point is still the same. You should not wait 12 months to give feedback."

"Lord Mark Price, who used to be the managing director for Waitrose for many, many years before he became deputy chairman for the John Lewis Partnership, says that on average people get feedback once every four months. Now I think that's really better than where it was back then in the early nineties, but it's still not good enough."

What the Objective of an Annual Appraisal Should Be

"The objective of an annual appraisal should be a summary of the feedback over the last 12 months to support the individual to find the themes of things that are good and could be better in order to improve that individual's performance."

"So I was sitting there. Richard opposite me, and we're running through 59, 60, 61 of these things that I'd done wrong, and some biggish and some small. And what did I take away from that? Well, I took away that this was the way to do it, but actually, as I learned over time, I realized you can learn as much from a bad boss as a good boss."

Best Practice in What Not to Do

"And the one particular learning I took from that annual appraisal was I knew how it should not be done. Every instinct in my being knew this can't be right because the obvious, why didn't you tell me these things 11 months ago when some of them had happened or 10 months ago when a few more because I could have improved my performance. I could be a better person. A better worker. A more effective employee for you and this company by now. But, you've waited 12 months to tell me these things. That can't be right."

"This is how the annual appraisal was set up. You give feedback at this time. Then you talk about how the individual performed against their objectives. You did not do it any other time. Crazy. Absolutely crazy."

How it Should be Done

"Feedback should be given regularly, and feedback can be used as the F word, but if we can get beyond that to feedback can be good. Feedback can be constructive. It's all feedback."

"If you can let people know what they do right, what are they going to do? They're going to do more of it. So let's tell them when they get something right."

Shamu the Killer Whale

"And that reminds me of a story from one of our trainers. Sally, who talked about Shamu the killer whale. When it was a baby and it was learning, you could imagine it swimming around its great big swimming pool."

"What happened was every time that Shamu crossed a red line, which was a piece of rope on the floor of the swimming pool, they gave it a fish. And what then happened over time was they raised the rope. So what they were effectively saying to Shamu was every time you go over this thing, you get a fish. Okay, there's the reward action circle going on."

"Then eventually, what you see at Sea World is a giant killer whale, or just a killer whale, one of those big whales jumping over a rope."

People Need Constant and Regular Feedback

"And we need to do more of that with people. Tell them when they've got it right and they'll do more of it and yes, you've got the flip side of that coin. Tell them when they've got it wrong or it could be better and they'll stop doing less of that stuff. We all want to be better at what we do. No one comes to work to do a bad job. They need that constant regular feedback. We don't need to wait 12 months to give it to them."

A Simple Tool

"So here's the very, very simple yet effective tool. You can use as a line manager, but actually individuals can do it with each other. Let's say you're a line manager. The simple tool is you're good because blah, blah, blah, you'd be even better if. So it might be an individual's just finished a piece of work or a project, or you've come out of a meeting and let's say maybe they've seen a customer or seen a buyer."

"You were really good because when you presented the slides, you had real enthusiasm. You would have been even better if you had prepared some questions that might've come our way so that you didn't stutter. A simple piece of feedback."

Try and Do a Piece of Feedback Every Couple of Week

"And over time, you're giving that feedback. Let's not say once every four months. But, let's try and do a piece of feedback every couple of weeks. Or, at the very least once a month. Then by the time, we get to the annual appraisal, here are the themes that are running through the feedback for the year."

"Number one, you're presenting very enthusiastically on slides. Fantastic. Number two, you could prepare better and then what you've got is more of a summary of performance rather than the great big surprising reveal that often goes on. That shouldn't happen."

"Neither the line manager or the report should come into that appraisal and be surprised with a big rabbit being pulled out of the hat. It should be more, we roughly know what we're going to say to each other. Let's work on what the themes are. We can figure out how we can help you to improve your weaknesses. Let's celebrate your strengths and off we go."

Final Thoughts

"So if you have to do an annual appraisal, and many corporate companies still do, although there are a bunch moving away from them. If you have to do the annual appraisal, let's make sure it's a summary of feedback over the last 12 months and has no surprises. And the simple tool is, you're good because of XYZ. You'd be even better if ABC."

"Thank you for listening to our short and sticky stories."

E5 – The Annual Appraisal is Lost In this podcast, we discuss a simple technique to make the annual appraisal useful at work. One of the mainstays of business has...

E5 – The Annual Appraisal is Lost

In this podcast, we discuss a simple technique to make the annual appraisal useful at work. One of the mainstays of business has always been the annual appraisal.

Since time and memorial business people have struggled to use them as an effective tool for business. There is a better way.

Read the Annual Appraisal Podcast Transcript:

"Annual appraisals just don't work the way you're doing them. My name is Darren Smith and you're at the home of Sticky Learning, MBM, trainers to the UK grocery industry."

The Traditional Annual Appraisal

"I worked in the corporate world for many years, commuting to London, working for one of the top four UK supermarkets. It was time for the annual appraisal, and what happened at this time where people were taken into rooms in pairs. The line manager took the report in for these long going meetings around the annual appraisal and the documentation was huge."

Has it Changed?

"That's probably no different to what you're doing today. You're either a report or a line manager knowing that the dreaded annual appraisal adds very little, yet they've done year in year out at most companies."

"So let's call him Richard. We'll change the names to protect the guilty. I go into a room with Richard, my line manager at the time. I'm a cheese buyer. We sit down and we begin. The first few minutes of this is an annual appraisal. We're here for maybe an hour, an hour and a half. We're going to talk about your performance."

Don't Start With Feedback

"Now what we should have done at that point is taken the objectives that I'd been set and run through those. But Richard started with feedback. What he then did was pull out a book. Now, I'd seen this book over the last 12 months. But, I didn't really know what it was apart from he'd written some things in it. I thought it was what some time managers call a daybook, where you just sort of jot down meetings and notes and so on."

127 Things I Did Wrong

"Well, this book, he opened it, I think he was on about page 12 or so. He opened it on page 12 and my name was at the top. What he'd done and been doing over the last 12 months as he had captured 127 things that I'd done wrong. 127 things that he hadn't told me until my annual appraisal that these are the things you could do better or you'd done wrong were his words."

"I was shocked. Now, in my early twenties, I didn't know that this wasn't the right way to do appraisals. I had no idea. And what happened over the next, I think it was an hour, hour and a half, he went through each of the 127 items and asked me why I'd done it wrong."

Give Feedback Regularly

"Now that's an extreme example, and you're probably thinking, yeah, that would never happen to me or I'd never do that, and you're right, it probably won't or you won't do it to another individual, to one of your reports. The point is still the same. You should not wait 12 months to give feedback."

"Lord Mark Price, who used to be the managing director for Waitrose for many, many years before he became deputy chairman for the John Lewis Partnership, sa

The return on time & money invested is zero.

You work in the corporate world, you attend 1-day training courses. You come back and get on with your work. Nothing changes. We spend 10 years at school going to lesson after lesson. Yet, we then get out into the big wide world and expect to learn a skill between 9-5 in a training course. It simply can not happen.

E4 - Do You Attend 1-Day Training and Do Nothing with It? Are You Failing to Make Learning Stick?

Have you ever attended a 1-day training course, returned to the office and done nothing different. You're one of many who fails to make learning stick.

The return on time & money invested is therefore zero.

In this podcast, we discuss this common story; You work in the corporate world, you attend 1-day training courses. You come back and get on with your work. Nothing changes. We spend 10 years at school going to lesson after lesson. Yet, we then get out into the big wide world and expect to learn a skill between 9-5 in a training course. It simply can not happen.

Similar to when you learnt to drive. The average person takes 40 driving lessons. And then they pass. In the science of learning, this is called, 'Spaced Repetition'. It simply means that we learn, we take a break, we learn, we take a break, and so on. Also, we are applying what we are learning all the time, as we drive. In short, we are making the learning stick. Yet on 1-day training courses, we learn the theory, there is some practice, but not enough.

Read the Make Learning Stick Podcast Transcript:

"People go on one-day training courses, come back, and nothing's changed. My name is Darren Smith, and you're at home with Sticky Learning MBM, trainers to the UK grocery industry. So I spent 15 years in the corporate world and I attended one-day training courses. HR would come along or you'd have your appraisal and there'll be a list of courses that you could attend, my team could attend, and you'd worked through some sort of very complex process to arrive at Bob needed time management skills, or John needed negotiation skills, and the date was set with HR. These guys went on a training course normally with a bunch of other companies, but it could be internal."

No One Questions Why Our Behaviours Don't Change Following Training

"Now here's the surprising thing. We go to school, we have double English every week, if not two lots, for many, many years to try and get us to understand that topic and then when we leave school, we go to the corporate world, spend a huge amount on training. I'd expect our behaviours to change and of course, they don't and no one really questions it. You'd go on a course, you come back, your manager might say, "How was it?" That was fine. And you try and get on with the rest of your day, which was piling up. And that's all you really thought about whilst you were on this one-day training course."

"So for 50 plus years, who can blame anyone? The norm is you go on a one-day training course, you come back and nothing changes. Nowadays, the learning gurus understand about blended learning or 70/20/10, but what I want to talk about is really simple. It's doing learning or training and then changing behaviour. Because if you're not, all that's happening is learning transfer. You're going on a course or you're talking to someone or you're learning something and they're passing on that information, but you're not doing anything with it. As someone once said, information without application is just entertainment. And whilst the courses that I'm sure you're going on aren't that entertaining, that's all that's happening. You're being entertained. Because we're not achieving that crucial behavioural change. Aye, you're doing something different when you're at work."

Three Simple Steps to Get the Most from Your Training Investment and Make Learning Truly Stick