Moving your organization into, and through, an uncertain future takes courage, confidence, and a lot of comfort with ambiguity, even in the best of times.

And then when the world is as uncertain as it has been for, oh, most of the last decade or so, the leadership challenges only expand.

If you’re a leader in these uncertain times, you may have these concerns:

“How do I know if we’re on the right path for us to succeed…or perhaps, even to survive?”

“How can I let the people I’m leading know which direction to move next…and how can I do that as rapidly and clearly as possible?”

Leading well in uncertain times works best if you can create just enough structure to reduce unnecessary uncertainty in your organization, and yet not so much that you lock your team into an inflexible, maladaptive position when the world they’re operating in changes quickly.

Set your team up to be able to turn the best intentions and limited resources into maximum results on behalf of your customers and your company…before your competition can.

Leadership in unpredictable circumstances requires the ability to read your environment well, especially the significant changes in it. And then you must have the ability to communicate that well, and to inspire appropriate action, as a result.

When you do, you give your company or team far more opportunity to respond well to changing circumstances, reducing the changes they’ll be blindsided by them.

Here are a few tips for creating the right team signals, and then using them well in the uncertain circumstances:

1. Figure out the relevant details you have to pay close attention to.

Not all information is valuable. Lots of it is just noise.

But some details are absolutely crucial to your success.

Unpredictability and uncertainty doesn’t have to hold you back.

Knowing what signs and signals you must pay close attention to can make or break you. It tells you where to direct your attention, action and resources, leading most likely to success.

It’s almost inevitable that there is something valuable you can monitor, measure, and track that will help you stay focused and moving ahead well, together.

2. Figure out the minimum daily, weekly, and monthly communication requirements for your team to function well in current and foreseeable circumstances.

At a minimum, who needs information, to do what, if you have can provide it to them?

When do they need the information?

How do they need to receive the information – what channels, and in what format – in order to be able to understand it, and act on it well, and in a timely fashion in these circumstances?

3. Use the same terminology…and make sure you are.

It’s easy to believe you’re communicating well with someone, only to find out that you’re talking about very different things even though you’re using the same terms.

Here’s one non-work example to illustrate the point:

What comes to mind when you think of the word, “vacation”? (Just for fun, and to make this a graphic example, describe it in enough detail that you wish you could take that vacation right now).

Now ask three other people the same thing, what they think of when they hear the word “vacation.”

The odds are, you’ll come up with four VERY different ideas of what a vacation is.

In normal, everyday discussions you have to get on the same page to make any conversational headway, especially if there is any kind of agreement you need to reach, as is the case on almost any team.

Clear communication, starting with common terminology, is all that much more important when information comes at a premium (if the information is available at all), attention is limited, fear is running high, and the risk of error is very high, as well.

4. Listen. Don’t just stop talking…really LISTEN.

You may think you’re listening when you’re not talking. Often, though, our thoughts and fears are chattering away rapidly, keeping us bound up in our own concerns, even as we seem to be listening.

Still those attention-blocking concerns of the past, present, future – and places you’d really rather be at the moment.

Make space for new information to come in.

5. Create the time and space for dialogue now and then, when you can.

Uncertain times call for stronger than average teamwork.  You can’t dictate teamwork, legislate it, expect it, or inspect it in. I was in several different circumstances recently when leaders took this approach – trying to dictate teamwork, without engaging the people whose best efforts their own success depended upon.

Ultimately you have to inspire teamwork, for followers have to trust their leaders, if they are to follow fully, and with best effort.

Create ways for dialogue to occur in the simplest, most user-friendly way possible.

This, alone, can go a long way to opening up channels for essential information to flow out, and back in…leading you and your team more surely to success, even in uncertain times.

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Are you running into a roadblock, facing a problem you can’t seem to solve, no matter what you do?

A good solution exists – you just know it does – but you can’t see or grasp it yet?

If so, take a step back.

Consider the problem from a fresh perspective.

Good ideas often emerge if you change the way you look at, frame, or approach a problem. Often, trying a new creativity tool can help you consider a problem from a new point of view.

Here are three tools you can use to provide a fresh perspective. One of these, or other similar creativity tools, may lead to the breakthrough you seek:

——————

Fresh Coat of Paint

1. Think of successes and achievements in your work and life.

2. “Relive” each of these successes for a minute or two. What did each experience look, sound, and feel like?

3. Next, when you think of these successes, what color comes to mind, if one does?

4. Now, think of the problem you’re trying to solve.

5. When you do, what color comes to mind?

6. Imagine taking the color you associated with success and painting or pouring that color on the problem.

7. What does that circumstance look and feel like now, in the new “success” color? Are there ideas, impressions, or new solutions that emerge as you imagine experiencing this transformed circumstance?

8. Complete the exercise by writing down impressions, images or other details that may be helpful as you solve the problem.

——————

Fast Forward

1. Imagine “fast forwarding” to a time when the problem has been solved. What do you see, hear and feel in that problem-resolved world?

2. Now, look back from that time, to where you are now. As you imagine the path to success, how was that problem solved?

3. Complete the exercise by writing down any ideas, impressions, images or other details that may be helpful as you solve the problem.

——————

Random Word

1. Think of the problem you’re trying to solve.

2. Describe the situation you expect you’ll experience when the problem has been solved.

3. Now, select a random book that you see nearby.

4. Open to any page.

5. Without looking, point to a word. Now look at it. What’s the word?

6. Answer the question, “What else does this word make me think of? How might these ideas help me see the problem in a new way? How might these ideas help me solve it?”

7. Complete the exercise by writing down any ideas, impressions, images or other details that may be helpful as you solve the problem.

Conversational skills can make a difference in team success, as they can in many other parts of work and life. When team members care about each other, as well as the work they’re doing together, it increases the chances they will succeed.

Good conversation has common characteristics, no matter who’s involved, or what subject is being covered.

Compare two very different conversations you’ve had in the past year. Think of one very satisfying conversation, and one that was unsatisfying or frustrating in some way.

What was the difference between the two experiences?

The following were probably some of the characteristics of good conversations you’ve had (and the opposite was probably true of unsatisfying ones, as well):

– People were fully “there,” and discussion was shared and free-flowing.

People in the good conversation were fully present, and committed to the discussion. They shared the give and take that good conversation involves. No one person or group dominated the floor, or had the burden of carrying the conversation on their own.

– There was a creative flow, and a sense of discovery.

In satisfying conversation, there’s often a sense of a flow, an exploration, in a way, as you share ideas and learn about each other – and often, learn about yourself, as well – in the process.

– You felt you could be honest in the discussion, and were. You felt that others were comfortable being honest, too.

You had no sense of trying to crack through a shell or a mask that you or others in the conversation had created to keep others away, or to block or prevent a high-quality conversation and experience together.

There may have been other reasons why the great conversation you recall was so memorable, but these are some of the most common ones.

If your conversational skills could use a tune-up, don’t be afraid to admit you’d like to learn and practice.

For starters, find and observe a friend who’s a good conversationalist. That’s probably not your friend who talks the most.

It’s the friend who draws others out, and engages them in a satisfying give-and-take…and seems to be able to do that in almost any situation.

A good conversationalist doesn’t try to control the conversation – unless it’s an interview, performance or meeting, but those are other experiences, entirely.

He or she can let go, and trust himself and others in the dialogue, as it happens.

Try to learn from good and great conversationalists. Ask them how they do what they do so well, and ask for their advice on how you can improve.

Practice skills and abilities they show in their easy and free-flowing conversation. Practice their mindset before and as they’re in conversation, if they share that information with you.

Also, increase your curiosity about others with whom you’re trying to have a conversation.

If you’re often nervous when talking to others, talking less, rather than more can help.

Learn to be comfortable with silence.

Ask more questions. Listen.

Let someone else share the floor, and the responsibility for good conversation.

Also – and this seems deceptively simple, but it’s an important thing – make sure you’re taking deep breaths so you’re as relaxed as you can be.

Taking deep breaths forces you to slow down, calm down, and relax a bit, and helps you to stay present. And that’s all part of being a good conversationalist.

The ease, confidence, and flexibility being a good conversationalist offers you can take you far.

As a final review for now, keep in mind these simple guidelines:

Care

Share.

Be there.

Be curious about other people.

Be open, be honest.

Breathe.

Relax, and let go.

Being a good conversationalist is an increasingly rare skill. It can lead to many great opportunities and wonderful experiences, if you learn to trust and let go a bit.

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Have you had the experience of feeling unseen, even though someone was talking directly to you?

Perhaps they said something to you like, “I know what you’re thinking!”

And then, as they announced what they were sure was true for you, it turns out they couldn’t have been more wrong?

Or maybe you’ve been guilty of that, yourself.

Projection is often at least part of what’s going on.

Projection is when someone “assigns” feelings they are having to someone else, often because they either do not see, or are unable to accept those thoughts or feelings in themselves.

When you are the one who has been “assigned” an erroneous feeling or thought by others, it can take a bit of time to realize what’s going on, and to try to untangle the stories people have created, or the misinterpretations that have been “cooked up,” somehow.

Projection is fairly common, and causes other problems.

It can lead to miscommunication, at a minimum, and various issues that arise when people are wasting time, effort, and precious resources, trying to solve the wrong problem – or busying themselves with a story but not trying to improve the situation, at all.

Projection can start from some simple observation, followed by assumptions and misinterpretations.

When we may draw these erroneous conclusions, they’re often based on our own past experiences, the way we believe we would have felt in such a circumstance, or any of many reasons why we assign a particular meaning to what we observed.

How can you reduce your own tendency to project, even if you can’t guarantee that it will never happen?

First, simply observe.

- What do you see?
- Would you hear?
- What do you feel?

Next, be aware of what you’re interpreting from what you observe.

- What do you interpret?
- Why are you interpreting it that way?
- Do you need to interpret what you observe?
- How could these assumptions or interpretations be helpful to you in some way?
- Could your observations or interpretation help other people involved, if they are correct? If so, how?
- Instead of interpreting, how can you check with the person, or people, involved to see if your assumptions are correct?
- If need be, how can you help the people involved? How can you check to see if that’s what will be most helpful to them?

Ask, don’t assume.

Be curious about the other person’s experience.

Care about what’s happening to that person, and in their world.

If you don’t care about what’s happening to the other person, what’s the point of taking the time and energy to form an opinion about this particular situation or how they’re handling it?

Free yourself and others of opinions you’ve formed if there’s no role you can play in improving the situation, or supporting those involved.

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“Investors are investing in you, the team”

That’s what companies who seek venture funding are advised, as they were once again, many times, at a boot camp for startups where I was a mentor recently.

“We’re investing in the team” is easy to say.

It’s not always easy to understand.

That’s especially the case if you haven’t had a lot of team experiences, and more specifically, if you haven’t had a lot of business team experiences and roles.

To really understand “We’re investing in the team,” you have to understand teamwork in a visceral sense.

And sometimes, frankly, it helps to have been on, and to have led very successful and less successful teams, as well.

“We’re investing in the team” is far easier to grasp if you understand the risks, opportunities and tools of teamwork and leadership.

And often some of the best learning occurs when you’ve had excellent but also less praiseworthy experiences on, and at the helm of a team. You learn a lot, like it or not, from having to scramble to create success from impending failure.

Fundamentally, what “We’re investing in the team” means is that investors – whoever they are – are looking to see if you and your leadership team can:

1. Turn a great idea into a company and then a growing flow of profits
2. Work well together
3. Turn your strengths as a team into something far greater than your strengths, as a group of separate individuals
4. Connect well with your prospects and convert them into customers
5. Organize people and resources to meet the opportunities and challenges you face, some of which you know, and many of which you don’t…yet
6. Attract a great team
7. Engage the team in your vision and keep them engaged through the ups and downs of startup life
8. Lead without squashing the strengths and enthusiasm of individual members of the company
9. Adapt well, as a team, as conditions change – because they will
10. Admit when you, as a leader or leadership team, need help
11. Listen and learn from customers, advisors, employees, and other members of your team
12. Make good decisions
13. Lead effective implementation of decisions
14. Grow and change, as individuals and as a leadership team, as the need for your leadership evolves
15. Let go of the reins, as appropriate, and delegate well
16. Show courage without foolishness
17. Get over, around and through the barriers that are presented to you without, in the process, causing other problems downstream
18. Be an alchemist, sometimes making progress in lieu of funding, sometimes stretching cash, and always turning the resources you have into more and better results than one initially might expect
19. See the path to success, and keep seeing it, and keep leading your team to it as it changes occur, obstacles emerge, and distractions happen
20. Handle success well

There are other things that investors are looking for, too, when they say they’re “investing in the team.”

You can rest assured, however, that if you do the 20 things on this list well, and if you do them better than your competitors, you’re well on your way to success, however your company is funded, whoever is at the helm.

Think about what would give you confidence that a startup company and leadership team were likely to succeed, if you were an investor, trying to guess which company was most likely to succeed from among the many on which you could place your bets, and your money.

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Do you have decision phobia?

Some people do, and it can be very life- and progress-limiting.

Decision-phobes may not know why they’re fearful of committing to one course of action instead of leaving their options endlessly open.

Perhaps their fear is based on having made big mistakes in the past.

Or perhaps they felt that perfection was expected from them with each and every step they took. And as a result, they began to stay cemented in spot, rather than to take the risk of making one misstep, no matter how recoverable it was.

Decision-making doesn’t have to be scary.

If the decision is one that you’re familiar with and have made successfully before, or if the risks of making a mistake are low, the information gathering can be very quick.

If a decision has large, clear risks, all the preparatory phases will take more time and careful thought.

As you get ready to make a decision, there are ways you can further reduce the risks. Here are a few:

- Rehearse
- Look at the costs and benefits of all options and choose the best one
- Use scenario analysis
- Test your decision with experts you trust
- Create a decision diary for high-risk decisions

Here’s more detail about each of these options:

Rehearse

Imagine the outcomes.

Envision a successful outcome of the decision-making process that meets the requirements of the customers for the decision. If you need more information about this, learn more about creating decision-making frames.

Now imagine yourself being comfortable making the decision, and comfortable with the outcome of the decision.

When you imagine that, what does it tell you about the process, and the decision, itself?

Look at the costs and benefits of all options and choose the best one

List the various decisions you could make.

Now list the costs and benefits of each option. If a more analytical approach will increase your confidence in the decision, use weighted criteria. Evaluate how each possible decision meets each criterion, and see which option “wins,” when viewed analytically.

Use scenario analysis

Create scenarios of most likely circumstances. Then exaggerate these scenarios by imagining far better outcomes and far worse outcomes.

Now, fortified with the wide range of scenarios, consider which ones seem most likely.

Test each possible decision in these most likely scenarios.

See how that affects your decision, if it does.

Test your decision with experts you trust

One additional way to reduce the risk of the decision is to find experts you trust. Test your decision with them.

See if they advise you to consider something you had not seen, or to weight decisions in a different way than you anticipated.

Create a decision diary for high-risk decisions

Just by writing down your decision-making, you may make better decisions. It’s like writing down goals to increase your chances of reaching them. The simple act of writing tightens your focus, and can improve your logic and the completeness of your thinking.

Here’s a simple way to create a decision diary:
1. Write down the decision you have to make.
2. List the customers of the decision and what success would be like for them.
3. Record your assumptions.
4. List the decision you’ve made and what you expect to have happen.
5. Use this information if the decision needs refining, changing, or when you are improving your decision-making process.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

High quality decision-making depends on good information, well-used.

Excellence in this stage of decision-making requires that information:
- Be cost-effective to obtain and evaluate
- Reduce the risk of the decision that is being made
- Be available at the right time and place for the decision to be made

The basic thing you’re doing when planning information gathering is to figure out what information you need, what information you have, and then figuring out how to fill in the gaps with the best information you can get in the time, and with resources you have available.

There are three key things to guard against in this process:

- Assuming you know more than you do about the situation you’re evaluating, including the risks involved in the decision you’re making
- Assuming the future will be like the past and present
- Investing lots of time and resources gathering much more information than you’ll ever need for this decision-making process

These are the basic steps involved in gathering good information to make decision-making easy…or easier:

1. Prepare.
2. Consider what information you need.
3. Clarify what information you already have.
4. Identify what information you still need.
5. Make a plan to get the information.
6. Get the information.

Here’s more information about each of these steps:

1. Prepare.

Review the decision you’re making, and the risks involved in each of the possible outcomes.

Consider what the cost is to you of the riskiest outcomes, no matter how well prepared you are for good decision results.

This will help you understand the possible cost of a bad outcome, and what the benefit of good risk-reducing information may be.

Also, list the assumptions you’re making. You may need to come back to them at some point in the decision-making process.

2. Consider what information you need.

Consider what information you want to make this decision with confidence.

Now consider what information you really need to make the decision. It may be more, or less than the information you planned to seek.

Plan to check some information that will challenge or verify the most critical assumptions you’re making. These assumptions, if incorrect, greatly increase the risk of the decision you’re making.

3. Clarify what information you already have.

In some cases, you may already have all the information you need. The information may already exist inside your company, but just not be widely used now.

Look at what you have now, and whether it is current or complete enough for the decision you’re making.

4. Identify what information you still need.

Look at the gap between the information you need, and what you have.

Figure out what how much time you have to get the information, and what resources you have to do so.

That’s important to know because there are usually more and less expensive ways – and more and less effective ways – to get the information you need, depending on the data sources you use.

Remember, also, that you may never have all the information you want, even when you have all the information you need.

5. Make a plan to get the information.

Choose the information source or sources that are most likely to get you the best information most quickly and cost-effectively.

Create a clear and effective plan to get the information. As with any good plan, if you’ll be dividing the information-gathering tasks among several people, make clear assignments, set clear expectations about the work that will be provided, when it is needed, and in what format.

If you’re not the person who will be using the information to make the final decision, decide how you’ll get the information to the decision-makers in a format that they can use, when they need it.

6. Get the information.

Be prepared to change your approach, getting more or less information, depending on what the results show, as the information comes in.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Which answer makes the following statement true for you?

Decision-making is easy:

- Often.
- Always.
- Almost never.

If you find decision-making an ordeal – and many people do – you can make it far easier with a good decision-making process.

A good decision-making process starts by creating a good decision frame.

Creating a good decision frame is almost like describing the missing piece that you’re looking for as you try to solve a jigsaw puzzle.

When you create an effective decision frame, a good decision can almost seem to fall out of the process automatically.

That’s because it will seem familiar, somehow, when you’ve carefully considered what the ideal solution is, what the priorities and options are, and when you’ve done your research to know the costs and benefits of each possibility.

Well-framed and researched, a good decision will become clear, almost naturally.

These are some of the things to consider as you create your decision frame:

- Know what problem you’re solving when you make this decision
- Understand who the decision customers are
- Understand what decision criteria and priorities will be used to make the decision
- Be clear about what’s in and what’s out as this decision is being made
- Understand who will make the decision and how they’ll make it

To frame the decision, answer these questions:

1. What’s the problem you’re solving, specifically?

Be clear about what problem you’re solving with this decision.

Without a well-defined problem statement, or a clear goal, you can go off-track right from the beginning of the decision-making process.

Know what you’re aiming for.

2. Who are the customers of this decision? Do they see the problem the same way?

Many people can be involved in making a decision, but not everyone has to live with the outcome of the decision.

The primary decision customers are the people who are most directly affected by the results of the decision, whatever they are. with these customers want an ideal decision

3. What do these customers want in an ideal decision?

Customers’ needs and wants may be two different things.

What do the decision customers want in the decision that’s made and implemented?

What do they need?

If you don’t know, ask them, or ask a representative sample of people who will be affected by the results.

Understand their priorities, as well.

What is most important to them in the decision and its outcome? What can they live without, if they must?

4. What’s in and what’s out as you make this decision?

When you’re making a decision to take a certain course of action or commit resources in some way, you’re also deciding not to do something else.

And sometimes the real problem with decision-making is not that it’s hard to say “yes” to one course of action, but rather, that it’s harder to say “no” to another one.

Know what you’re choosing not to do when you’re making this decision.

If you’re planning a vacation, for example, and have children who will be on the trip with you, you may put a higher priority on a well-planned series of activities that will keep them busy and happy than you do on luxury accommodations you might choose if you were planning a romantic trip for two.

Consider, also, any constraints you have for the decision that’s being made.

For example, are there cost restrictions or deadlines by which the decision must be made and all actions fully implemented?

Be clear about all the requirements for the decision and a good outcome.

5. Who will make the decision, and how will it be made?

Know how the decision will be made, and who will make it.

For example, will a committee be making the decision and each person in the group has one vote?

Will a committee be advising a final decision-maker?

Is a person making this decision by him or herself?

Understand what a win is to each person involved in making the final decision. Understand what failure is to each person, as well.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

A colleague stopped me the other day after a meeting. She was worried about her son, still in elementary school. He’s competitive, and that has many benefits in the world in which he’s being raised.

Still, she thinks he may be becoming too competitive for his own good.

“He’s starting to be afraid to try new things,” she explained.

“He can’t stand to lose. He thinks that if he doesn’t try something new, but stays with what he knows, he’s far less likely to lose,”  she added.

Are you afraid to try new things because you can’t stand to lose?

Are you afraid of being a learner again? On the way to mastery of any skill, there’s always some uncertainty, experimentation, and failure that goes along with eventual success.

Is it possible that you’re too competitive for your own good?

You may actually be handicapping yourself, if you restrict yourself only to activities you can win.

If so, may be missing a lot of good experiences and great people.

And you may never uncover some of your greatest strengths, talents you never found you had because you chose the safe, known road rather than venturing beyond it.

Is it possible that you create unnecessary stress and competition in situations where it has no real value…to you or anyone else?

If you’re too afraid to try something new, you could soon be frozen in place (or frozen out of it), unable to adapt and change at the same pace as the rest of the workplace and world.

Don’t lose the race you’re trying to win by being afraid to try.

The skill it would be useful to master is learning how to learn well…and then knowing how to turn learning into valued results.

Here are some of the other things I advised my friend, the mother of the little boy who knows how to win, but is quickly becoming afraid to try:

- Applaud initiative, including good attempts and steady progress.

- Reward learning experiments.

- Encourage activities and learning where there is no clear winner.

- Look for ways to take competitiveness out of circumstances where it has no value, or may be a detriment to the desired experience or skill development.

Let the learner plan and dictate his or her learning path.

Reward the learning process.

Skills of the future include having the ability and initiative to direct one’s own learning  effectively, the ability to discern and gather high-quality information, the ability to synthesize much information, high quality decision-making and action taking.

Don’t handicap yourself by putting competition in places where competition doesn’t belong.

Ask yourself the next time you think your competitiveness maybe making things worse:

- What’s the point of competition here?

- Is competitiveness adding to the overall experience or taking away from it? How is it affecting the other people who are involved in the experience, in addition to me?

If you think you may be too competitive for your own good, try this test:

Let someone else be first in line once in a while.

You’ll survive the experience. And believe it or not, you may even find you enjoy it even more from that spot.

If you found this post valuable, share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Could your company use a glossary?

“That’s ridiculous!” you reply?

You might be surprised.

As a consultant, I must go into a company and quickly learn as much as I can in order to come up to speed rapidly on foundation knowledge.

More often than you might guess, as I’m going through the rapid-cycle learning process as I begin a project with a new company, I’ve found that employees don’t know, or don’t agree on the meaning of some of the company’s most-used terms and acronyms.

Consider these examples:

For one project I had one day to “crash learn” as much as I could about the basic technology and terms involved in a major process. I was leaving the next day for a three-day offsite where I was helping the client company finalize a cross-company product delivery process.

To learn as much as possible, and as rapidly as I could, I dove right into all available information about key terms, processes, roles, responsibilities and other knowledge that was important to have for the process design and improvement work to be successful.

Eventually, I’d gone as far as I could in the process of learning on my own. I needed to clarify some things and met with a few people to close the gaps in my understanding.

I asked one manager fairly high up in the organization what one key acronym meant.

She admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she didn’t know.

And the tough thing was, she was outside of what might be considered, unofficially, as the “statute of limitations” on when she could safely admit she needed to learn some of basic information at the company, too. I could ask the question she needed to because I was clearly in learning mode. She was supposed to have “graduated” it already.

At some point, it’s somehow assumed that people know what they need to know to do their jobs.

But if they don’t, and they’re afraid to ask, where do they go?

And who asks the question of the employees who work for them (and makes it safe for them to answer it honestly), “What do you need to learn, or know, that you don’t, to be successful in this job?”

In a second example, I was helping to create onboarding tools for a rapidly growing company.

The learning processes and tools I was helping the client company create were designed to help the cross-functional teams get established quickly and consistently, and start performing well together as quickly as possible.

We were editing a final draft of one product in the set of team tools.

In a meeting with two fairly senior people in the group, we discovered that each thought a key acronym meant something different.

They realized that many people in the organization were using the same acronym to mean different ways, and that it may have been just one of many miscues in a job and role that required excellent communication.

Is it possible this is happening at your company?

Eliminate the primary causes for miscommunication wherever you can.

One easy place to start is to make sure is to make sure that commonly used acronyms and terms are consistently defined.

In addition, make sure that other foundation knowledge that it’s important for employees to have is readily available. At a minimum, this is important to have when new employees join the company, or move to new jobs inside the company and need to get up to speed quickly and consistently.

Here’s how you can make your own glossary:

1. Make a list of key terms and acronyms.
2. Assign a person to complete the glossary by gathering and writing the definitions for the terms.
3. Ask a few people to review the glossary, noting additions or changes that they think need to be made to it.
4. Refine the glossary, reconciling any differences of opinion about what terms or acronyms mean.
5. Post the glossary on your website in a place where it will be easy to access and use.
6. Include contact information for anyone who needs to get more information about any of the terms, or to contribute new terms to the glossary.

In the process of creating and publishing the glossary, you may find other information you need to share, or to train people on.

Do everything you can to ensure that communication is clear and effective for the people working in your company. It can make a far bigger difference in effectiveness and business results than you expect.

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