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Notes on Simplicity Survival Handbook by Bill Jensen

(very useful chapter on meetings & another on getting the orientation you deserve)

Pre-work:

• Know: What's the one thing I want people to know, understand, learn, or question?
• Feel: How do I want people to feel when I'm done?
• Do: What do I want people to do as a direct result of my communication?

The shortest steps to commited action:

Connection to their workload

List action steps

Expectations for success

Ability to achieve success

Return to that person

Presentations

• Turn the point you want people to know into a question and turn the question into an interactive exercise with the audience
• Never present, always provoke conversations
• Rules of thumb:
  • one hour presentation = 20 slides max
  • half-hour = 10 slides

Types of Meetings:

• Brainstorming
• Connecting
• Making Decisions, Planning Next Steps
• Information Sharing
  • "This type of meeting should be completely banned. Today, there are more efficient/effective approaches. Anyone who proposes an Information Sharing meeting should be drawn-and-quartered and then boiled in oil"

5 Biggest Time Wasters

1. Meetings
2. Dealing with communication from others
3. Communicating with others
4. Your boss micromanaging or undervaluing you
5. Worktools and processes designed for company success, but not necessarily yours

Become a pushback zealot

• Say "no" more often
• Question more often
• Call "time out" and "whoa" more often
• Just do it

New employee orientation ideas

1. Far less indoctrination in the Company Way and company policies
   1. "If I can't figure out the Company Way from the people around me, then you've got a problem"
2. A lot more clarity on departmental and personal goals
3. A lot more mentoring and networking
4. Getting me what I need to do my work
5. Holding my manager accountable for the success of my orientation

Getting the Orientation You Deserve

1. Before accepting, ask about the company's new-hire orientation. If necessary, ask for:
   1. homework (2-3 of the following)
      1. department's past 3 months goals and performance
      2. department's 3 biggest projects in the past 3 months
      3. department's goals and objectives for the next 3 months
      4. department's most recent quarterly review
      5. company's most recent quarterly review
      6. manager's yearly goals
      7. customer satisfaction reports for the past 3 months
      8. sales reports for the past 3 months, plus projectsion for the next 3 months
      9. any company-wide communication from the CEO in the past 3 months
      10. most recent cost-cutting initiative
      11. most recent department-wide training initiative
      12. most recent proposal your department made to senior management
   2. names of 20 people you should talk to during your first month on the job
      • key decision-makers / day-to-day hubs / networkers / gatekeepers / content experts / gadflies / manager's boss / alliance parters / best & worst customers
   3. 2-way review after 3 months
2. ask to meet manager on first day to review what you learned from homework

Your First 100 Days

1. network, network, network
2. deliver a quick win
3. under promise, over deliver
4. set a personal 100-day goal separate from whatever your manager expects
5. celebrate other people's successes

Questions to ask your boss to help clarify new goals

1. Help me understand how this changes what I've been doing?
2. Got suggestions for my first steps?
3. What's the best way to get started?
4. What does successs look like?
5. What should I watch for to be sure I'm making progress, and am on target?
6. What tools and support are available?
7. What's in it for me? Or for us?

Leadership skills

• Drives for results
• Builds winning teams
• Earns respect and respects others
• Inspires trust and is trusted
• Communicates Effectively
• Valued coach and mentor
• Valued citizen and community member

Fix your worktools

1. Build great organization productivity tools
2. Build great personal worktools and spaces
3. Build great connecting, collaborating, and learning tools, and spaces
4. Measure, track, and continuously improve all tools and processes based upon
   1. Clarity
   2. Navigation
   3. Fulfillment of Basics
   4. Usability
   5. Speed
   6. Time
5. Create a culture focused on personal productivity

Fix training and development

1. Learning is fundamentally social
2. Learning is embedded in communities, groups, and teams
3. Learning is an act of participation
4. Knowing is a part of, but different from learning. Knowing depends on engagement
5. Engagement is inseperable from empowerment
6. Failure to participate results in failure to learn
7. People are natural life-long learners (as long as they're not bored)
8. Tie improved performance management to improved training and development
9. We live in the attention economy. Deal with it. Now.
10. Manage the attention economy paradox
    1. Create the space and time to think, debate, challenge, probe, question, provoke, and make connections

All great workplaces focus on. . .

1. Credibility
2. Respect
3. Fairness
4. Pride
5. Camaraderie
6. Return on, and respect for, employee assets
7. Willingness and ability to embrace transparency
8. Ability to deliver personal productivity
9. Great workplaces are great, yet. . . . It's the work, baby. . . It's the work! And it's peer-to-peer value.
10. Willingness and ability to address the last taboo -- Stress