How to Better Approach Problems 

Did you know that one of the best ways to come up with a solution to a difficult problem is by giving yourself more restraints? By giving yourself artificially small deadlines, or imposing additional challenges, you may come up with more exciting solutions. What if your budget was cut in half? What if you only had until Wednesday to complete your new Code of Conduct? How would you do it? Paradoxically, creativity and innovation often come from restraints. And by making your problem bigger or harder, you may improve your outcome. Click to Tweet

Should I Stay in Contact With My Previous Employer? 

When you’ve left one workplace to take a new job, it can be easy to let your friendships stay in the old office. Instead of making a clean break, try to choose at least one person to keep in touch with from your old job. Perhaps you’ll need a reference some day from the job, or you’ll want to use a template or a vendor that you used previously. By actively keeping at least one colleague from each job you’ve left, you’ll grow your network and your ability to draw on different sources of inspiration and experience to benchmark your program and solve dilemmas. Click to Tweet

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Compliance Training 

While it is often true that Boards and managers love to evaluate training by the number of hours invested by staff in the training, a better way to measure your training is to gauge how much your participants learned and retained. By following up with a selection of them to ask about their experience, or to ask them a follow-up question, you can find if your training was effective, instead of simply completed. Click to Tweet

How to Conduct Better Internal Investigations 

When you’re performing an internal investigation, try to stay neutral until all the facts are in. Human nature is to decide on a point of view and then look for facts or information that proves your viewpoint correct. But in an internal investigation it is critical that you stay neutral until everything has come out. By recognizing that your instinct is to not be neutral, you can work to ensure a fair outcome for all involved. Click to Tweet

How to Have More Productive Conversations

How many times have you had a conversation with someone where you think you’re on the same page, only to find out weeks or months later that they don’t remember the same thing you do, or worse yet, don’t remember the conversation at all. Whenever you have an important conversation where a decision is made or strategy is set, be sure to commemorate the conversation in writing. It doesn’t have to be extensive. Simply write, “Thanks so much for the meeting. We decided…” It will protect you in the future if there are conflicting memories of what happened. Click to Tweet