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First, we have to agree on what AI is. Then, we can help employees adopt it.

In March, tech gurus including Steve Wosniak and Elon Musk signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI development, citing “human-competitive intelligence (that might) post profound risks to society and humanity.”

More recently, Geoffrey Hinton, hailed as the godfather of AI, quit Google so he could air his concerns independently. In a 2021 commencement address, Hinton said, “I believe that the rapid progress of AI is going to transform society in ways we do not fully understand and not all of the effects are going to be good.” For Hinton, the downsides seem to outweigh the benefits, like improvements in healthcare. The risks he envisions range from job elimination to lethal autonomous weapons. He also says AI might create a world where we will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”

Speaking of misinformation…these stories made it to the table at The View, where hosts weighed in. They talked about the pros and cons of AI, but couldn’t even agree on what AI is. Notably, Whoopi Goldberg said that she defines AI as something “sentient” that “can think for itself.”

Whoa. I’m not saying a robot boyfriend is not in my future, but sentience is NOT what the scientists are talking about. There’s a big difference between smart or fast or autonomous and self-aware.

The lesson for those of us who help the workforce deal with change is this: AI is scary to some people, and possibly for the wrong reasons.

Let’s say your organization is adopting AI to gain efficiencies, reduce costs, or deliver better customer value. How should you approach employees about it?

1. Mind your language.

Maybe don’t call it “artificial intelligence.” I’m not suggesting lying to people; just the opposite. Explain exactly what the new technology will do.

The term “AI” can be triggering. Moreover, “AI” is too broad a term to be useful when talking to employees. AI is a huge category; labeling a new tool “AI” gives very little information to the people who are desperate to know how it’s going to change their work lives.

Think of it this way — will your AI solution detect and prevent dangers in the workplace? Say that! Call it Safety Software. Is AI going to supply customer service agents with better, faster answers to help customers? Say that! Call it Your Customer Service Assistant.

2. Get real.

Approaching any change, what do employees want to know? They want to know how it will affect them – their job responsibilities, their daily tasks, their compensation, their team performance, and their job security.

Get ahead of the resistance by answering questions honestly and thoroughly. Yes, even the bad news. If your new AI… sorry, Customer Service Assistant…will eliminate jobs, be up-front about it.

Most important: document and communicate the day-to-day work that will be different after implementation.

If you don’t tell people the story, they will fill the gap with their own.

3. Reframe AI.

Is the anxiety warranted? Maybe some of it. But AI can also benefit workers — sometimes in big ways. In fact, some employees have already adopted the positive mindset you’re hoping for. A Pew Research study shows 37% of workers are “purely excited” about AI.

And there’s plenty of evidence to back their enthusiasm. AI solutions, like tech before it, can take mundane, focus-intensive tasks off employees’ plates, freeing them up for more analytical and creative work.

One real-world study showed that AI offered big benefits for inexperienced or less-skilled workers by raising the quality of their work and productivity to be on par with their best-performing colleagues.

Armed with facts, examples, and those 37% already excited about it (your “early adopters”), you can – with authenticity — frame your AI adoption as a win-win.

When we need to worry about killer robots, we’ll worry about killer robots. In the present day, lead the change by taking these three steps. You can definitely make AI work for both your bottom line and your human workforce.

Where change managers need to focus in M&A

Companies thrive on growth. Mergers and acquisition provide fast inorganic growth. So they’re not going away; the challenge is to make M&A better.

The people issues with M&A are many. For example, the term “merger” sounds like an integration of equals, but that’s rarely the case. Most often, there is a perceived “winner” and “loser.” So an uneven merger, or an acquisition, severely impacts those on the “losing” team.

That’s one reason mergers and acquisitions feel threatening. They generate fear, anxiety, and outright resistance in much of the workforce. Yet organizations often overlook the people implications. Employees are left to “figure it out,” which further damages engagement and productivity.

Organizations in the throes of M&A need the power of their people, so there is a lot riding on change management. Change managers have to address M&A at three levels.

1. Strategy

Change managers rarely build the business case for a merger or acquisition. But they must use use that strategy, and the rationale behind the deal, to help the workforce transition at the both organizational and individual levels.

The business case typically includes access to a new market, addition of a new product or offering, increased market share, and/or operational efficiencies. Additionally, senior leadership often uses the M&A as an opportunity to refresh the corporate strategy.

Change managers have to translate that complex content into messages that speak to employees.

They want and need to be in the know.

At a minimum, employees must be clear on the “why” — the organization-level purpose, vision, values, and strategy. Employees also need to understand the individual impacts: how their daily activities support those things.

2. Culture

M&A always has cultural implications. People deal with any change differently depending on the cultural context.

Employees from the “losing” organization often feel like they’ve been dropped into the world of the dominant organization’s culture; they struggle to survive and succeed.

Culture is especially important when blending companies from different locations across the world. In that case, employees of an acquired company are navigating two culture shifts: the dominant organization’s culture and the dominant geographic culture.

Change managers should start by assessing the dimensions of the companies coming together, and the geographies (if applicable). One good tool is the the Trompenaars Model. Knowing the cultural dimensions can help change managers design the right interventions and engage people effectively.

Here is a good video on Trompenaars Culture Dimensions.

Read more about it in Riding the Waves of Culture by Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner

Once the team understands the cultures coming together, they can create change management interventions that resonate with each employee group. They can also help acquired employees migrate to the new culture.

3. Organization, Process, and Technology

Most change managers have had the phrase “People, Process, and Technology” drilled into their minds. In M&A, all three are equally critical.

Employees often experience changes to the organization structure, the processes they engage in, and the technology they use. They need to work in different ways, with different people and tools. No wonder they are often fearful and anxious about the change. It’s a big challenge for a change team.

Most change managers have a favorite methodology to navigate this type of situation. Emerson is no different and, you guessed it, we have our own methodology. A key principle behind our methods taps into psychology to make the change feel familiar, controlled, and successful. They are the “levers” we pull – each activates a different brain mechanism to propel the change.

Familiar

What are the stakeholders comparing this change to? Can we point to a time when they successfully navigated something similar? If so, let’s talk about how this is similar.

Are employees comparing it to something negative from the past? If so, let’s talk about how this situation is different. Additionally, we might make the change look good by comparison (e.g., what would happen if we didn’t change).

Controlled

Most people don’t like surprises. How can we make the event predictable?

Showing people what is coming, and when, is a must.

The messages may not always be rosy from an individual employee’s perspective, but it’s better to be transparent. In the absence of sound information, people will make up their own stories – and act accordingly.

Address the perception of chaos. Show structure in the approach and future state. People need to see roadmaps and org charts.

Try to find ways to give employees some degree of choice. People love to have choices on big things like position in the new organization or on a project, but even small choices help individuals navigate change. For example, the organization might offer flexible working hours, choice of technology, or options for work location.

Successful

Engineer small wins. A merger can feel overwhelming. Break the change into small, attainable, milestones.

Celebrate!

Feeling successful and celebrating with others makes us feel good and want more. Simple things like successfully navigating a single new process or completing an initial transaction in a different system should be cause for celebration.

Conclusion

M&A is not going away. In fact, many believe that there will be an uptick of M&A activity throughout the rest of 2023. M&A is a classic trigger event for change management. However, the complexities and nuance of M&A situations often call for anything but change management as usual. The stakes are high!

Should you use it to create your content?

ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can revolutionize the way you approach content creation. In this article, we’ll explore some of the ways ChatGPT can transform your content creation process and help you produce high-quality, engaging content faster and more efficiently.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and understand natural language, allowing it to generate responses that are similar to those of a human. This technology has a wide range of applications, from chatbots to language translation and even content creation.

How can ChatGPT transform your content creation process?

Generate new content ideas.

One of the biggest challenges of content creation is coming up with new and engaging ideas. ChatGPT can help you overcome this obstacle by generating a list of potential topics based on your input. For example, you could provide ChatGPT with a general topic or keyword, and it would generate a list of potential angles or subtopics to explore.

Improve your writing skills.

ChatGPT can also help you improve your writing skills by analyzing your content and providing feedback on areas that could be improved. It can identify issues such as sentence structure, tone, and grammar, and provide suggestions for improvement. This feedback can help you refine your writing style and produce content that is more engaging and effective.

Save time.

Creating high-quality content takes time and effort, but ChatGPT can help you save time by automating certain aspects of the process. For example, you can use ChatGPT to generate outlines or rough drafts of articles or blog posts. This can help you get a head start on the writing process and save time on research and planning.

Increase efficiency.

ChatGPT can also increase your efficiency by providing answers to common questions or inquiries. For example, you could use ChatGPT to generate a list of FAQs related to your product or service. This can save you time by answering common questions and reducing the need for manual responses.

Personalize your content.

ChatGPT can also help you personalize your content for your audience. By analyzing your target audience and their preferences, ChatGPT can suggest topics or angles that are more likely to resonate with them. This can help you create content that is more engaging and effective, leading to higher engagement and conversions.

To Recap

ChatGPT is not just a powerful tool that can transform your content creation process—it’s a stunning example of artificial intelligence at its finest.

In fact, you might be surprised to learn that ChatGPT was the one who wrote this entire blog post. That’s right, using its advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, ChatGPT was able to generate high-quality, engaging content from scratch, without any human input. It’s a testament to the incredible capabilities of modern AI technology, and a glimpse into a future where machines and humans work together to create amazing things.

A global retailer once hired me to help install PeopleSoft—it was their 3rd attempt. Their pain is not uncommon. Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is a vital management tool, but its implementation can often be a nightmare.

For example, the average cost of an ERP implementation is $4.5 million or 6% of revenue. The average time to implement is 1-3 years. (!) With these painful stats in mind, it makes sense the Wall Street Journal once described SAP implementation as a “corporate root canal.”

Here are five questions you need to ask and answer before implementing an ERP.

1. Who is on the team? The most common mistake is to assign responsibility to IT and whichever department will use the system the most. Those two silos typically don’t appreciate the implications of their decisions on the groups who will input, maintain or receive outputs from the system. This can scuttle your ERP. Instead, get a cross-section of expertise on your team. Every group interacting with the system should be there.
   

   Your ERP team should be made of your best employees—their decisions will impact how this system (and your business) will run for years.

2. What one behavior drives the business case? If your team is serious about the business case, they must articulate what they need people to do in clear, tactical terms. Then focus, focus, focus; focus relentlessly on that. An IT firm spent millions on enterprise resource planning to help them make money on license renewals. The one activity they needed most from their sales team was to call clients the month before their contracts expired. Because they didn’t make that specific request, sales people didn’t do it consistently. The firm could not hit the business case; it was wholly based on “license renewals”—a lovely concept that no one acted upon.
3. How are we managing first impressions of the system? Shteingart, Neiman & Lowenstein’s 2013 research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, shows that “first experience has a disproportionately large effect on subsequent actions,” something they labeled “outcome primacy.” In other words, first impressions matter. So the first employees who touch the system—starting with requirements definition—had better be wowed. Only someone in marketing should be giving the project a name. And if user acceptance testing sucks, stop implementation. As Kahneman and Tversky found, we feel the pain of loss more acutely than the pleasure of gain. We compulsively avoid anything that smacks of failure. Manage the employee experience as rigorously as you manage the project itself.
4. Who will be our first users? In the 1960s, Everett Rogers published a book called the Diffusion of Innovations, which analyzed why certain ideas and products capture the public’s imagination. He mapped those who adopt the idea against a bell curve, showing that 3.5% of the target group are eager early adopters, and 13.5% are positively predisposed to change. You can use this to create momentum. If you want your ERP to look like a winner, find the early adopters. Enlist the 3.5% for system test, and the 13.5% for UAT. Pilot with these employees intentionally. They’ll make the system seem safe and successful to everyone else.
5. How are we ensuring the system is employee-centric? Employees don’t think about the system. They think about their jobs. Training must be about how to use the system in the context of their jobs. What will they do, day to day? Where will new tasks and handoffs take place? Where are the data and tools they relied upon—which will stay and which will be replaced?

Generic ERP training is a waste of time and money. Train people to do their jobs, not use a system.

Enterprise resource planning is one of the most invasive and expensive undertakings your company will ever face – even if it’s “cloud-based” and “intuitive.” If you get these five things right, you’re ahead of the game and on your way to a return on your investment.

Which model is best for your business?

As the field of organizational change management evolves, so do the organizations themselves. More than ever before, our clients are waking up to the current pace of change and the stakes they face. They know they need strong change skills to survive.

In recent years, we’ve been helping organizations build their own internal change management functions. We partner with them to build the skills, methods, and tools they need to drive change from within.

Here’s how we help clients stand up their own change management team.

We encourage our clients to clearly define their Change Management Community of Excellence (CoE) strategy. In other words, how do they plan to operate their change management business? We recommend they select one of these four models.

• Self-service – Business owners become the change management practitioners and use self-service change management tools to execute the work.
• Limited service – Business owners become the change management practitioners with minimal guidance up front. In this approach, the CoE will act as advisors up front and then the business owners will use self-service change management tools to execute the work.
• Co-service – Business owners are in an equal partnership with the CoE to drive changes. In this approach, the CoE is a key member of the project team and will lead and/or support the change effort.
• Full service – The CoE leads the change effort while the business leaders act as sponsors of the work.

Their approach for delivering change management services may evolve over time but we encourage them to think about this early, so they have a starting point.

Based on the model they choose, the organization identifies individuals who will be their new change practitioners. Then we ask our client to select a current project to use as an immersive learning example for the new team.

Next, we conduct training on the basics of change management.

These sessions prepare the new change resources to articulate the need for change management, use fundamental change principles, and employ change methods and tools.

Skill-building happens during various change management working sessions specific to the chosen project. We use the real work of the project to coach the new change practitioners as they use change approaches and tools. The sessions get the team ready to tackle future change projects as they arise. In other words, everything they learn is transferable to their future change initiatives.

Some of the sessions include understanding what methods they already have.

Where we find gaps, we help the team develop methods, tools and templates to add to their toolkit. Other sessions help them to determine who the project’s stakeholders are and how they are impacted. We use other sessions to develop the overarching message for the project. Key Behaviors sessions identify the employee behaviors they need to modify or reinforce to drive the change.

Then, using all the information we gathered from those working sessions, we work with the team to develop stakeholder-specific plans they will execute. These interventions create positive momentum to engage with the change and, hopefully, achieve the project goals. As the team executes the plans, we coach them and get them comfortable in their new roles as change management practitioners.

Finally, we help them use metrics and track the success of their efforts. Seeing new practitioners realize their impact on the organization is rewarding. It’s been a lot of fun helping organizations grow in an area I love.

They tackled AI, onboarding, streamlining, CRM, and leadership.

We got to work on some epic stuff in 2022. Here’s what a few of our clients invested in last year.

	A global professional services firm helped employees get up to speed on Artificial Intelligence. To create the new Artificial Intelligence Academy, we built learner personas, illustrating the technical and professional skills they will need to help clients understand AI solutions. Then we partnered with a technical training firm to script, design, and develop a simulation so learners can practice their new skills in an AI project scenario.
	A national water solutions company onboarded over 500 new team members, doubling in size. HR and functional teams built a program to welcome, train, and motivate their new team members. Onboarding involved 40 trainers, 118 classes/modules, 1007 learners, and 11,396 hours of training.  We also jump-started a formal leadership development program for all people-leaders in the business.
	A global retail client boosted their organizational change management capability. They launched a new Organizational Change Management (OCM) office to handle the increase in transformation projects impacting employees. We helped the new OCM team align on a custom change management methodology. We also built tools, templates, and a digital playbook on SharePoint to help project managers and change leads execute the methodology consistently.
	An international business upped revenue by cross-selling existing digital assets. Our client wanted more of their international customer base to buy and use their digital products. Subject matter experts for 20 existing high-impact digital assets helped us create short, self-guided, virtual, interactive learning programs for the firm’s practitioners. Each program teaches the “who, what, when, where, and why” for all 20 assets. The training boosted confidence and instilled new behaviors to lead client sales conversations.
	A global retailer streamlined their contract labor supplier pool to reduce complexity and risk. We helped hiring managers make the business process and technology changes feel “familiar, controlled, and successful.” We aligned the future-state processes with what was familiar to them and presented the “what’s in it for me” for the new tool. We created roadmaps for stakeholders, providing visibility and individual control as the changes rolled out.
	A global professional services company invested in critical skills. They targeted skills to improve innovation, decision-making, and collaboration. We helped design, develop, and deliver the program, which uses bio-psycho-social practice to boost critical thinking, empathy, communication, and resilience.
	Three clients improved the customer experience with Customer Relationship Management (CRM). We helped these three companies by shining a light on the people side of their CRM implementations. Specifically, we helped employees understand how their jobs would change and how to “survive” the transition to a new CRM. We analyzed the impacts on them, engaged the workforce, prepared them for go-live, and built internal change capability for the long term.
	A U.S. DOE Office of Science national laboratory built behaviors that drive change. We helped the lab identify the key employee behaviors that would foster positive change: collaboration, role clarity, and proactive leadership. We then created ways to focus stakeholder attention on the right behaviors and provide coaching to leaders.
	A well-known brand turned their people leaders into consultants. They acknowledged that their own managers were operating as consultants to their internal and external customers, solving problems and influencing change every day. We curated the licensed content from Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting book, then designed and built custom learning for a global audience. This client now sees management through the lens of a consultant, who is “flawless” when they are being direct and authentic with their customers.

What moving to a new house can teach us about enterprise learning

Sometimes the last bit of something is great. You know how those yellow ice cream cones have a little grid in the bottom that gets filled with ice cream? That last part is magic — the perfect balance of ice cream and cone. Also great: the last part of a story, giving us the satisfying closure we need.

And then there is packing to move, where the last ten percent can feel like 110 percent. You think you’re nearly done, but the last few tasks keep dragging on.

It. Just. Won’t. End.

At the end of August, I moved to a new place; it was, in fact, that last ten percent that challenged me the most.

I drive a Honda Accord, which can only hold so much. It had to carry me, a large dog, snacks for me and the large dog, many plants, and a few other necessities. Then I realized it had to hold things that didn’t make it into the moving truck. I tried shipping a couple boxes; I made use of every spare nook in the car. Then I came to terms with the fact that some things just weren’t meant to go.

It occurs to me that this also happens when organizations are planning a learning experience for their teams. So often it is a big event— rare, much anticipated, and needs to fit “everything” in. Or so we think.

Do we really need to train on everything?

At Emerson we rely on 3 Cs to help us make those tricky calls. Is it: Common, Critical, or Catastrophic?

What does this mean?

• Common: Is it something that is fundamental to daily work? Is it something a lot of folks need to know or do?
• Critical: If nothing else happens, what must get covered? What is absolutely necessary?
• Catastrophic: Is the risk high? If someone doesn’t do this correctly could there be a significant negative effect on the function, business, or our customers?

It is important to recognize that everything can’t—and shouldn’t—be crammed into a learning event. When we find ourselves making use of every last bit of the time set aside for learning, it’s a sign to pause and ask, “What really needs to fit in?”  There has to be breathing room. There has to be room for dialogue, application, and actually digesting the experience.

I’m pledging to adopt Common, Critical, and Catastrophic for any future moves. Is it common—do I rely on it for my day-to-day life? (My dishes) Is it critical—a must have or something worth the cost to move? (My big couch) Is it catastrophic—fragile, perishable, or irreplaceable? (My dog!)

If the answer is yes, it is worth keeping.

You’re judging me. As you read, you’re evaluating whether what I say is true or false. You’re deciding whether I’m credible. You’re gauging my words against your experience to determine whether or not my advice will work for you.

Your people do the same to you. They judge every word you say and write, and every action you take. It’s constant and unconscious, and it’s hard-coded in their DNA to keep them safe.

And what’s behind it—the comparison—is a leadership superpower, if you know how to use it.

People constantly, actively, and unconsciously compare.

They compare your price to what you charged before, and to what they can get elsewhere. They compare their raise to what they read on Glassdoor. They compare your presentation to what they heard on the grapevine.

These comparative judgements affect behavior. People buy, join, quit, collaborate, adopt, undermine, and make deals based on those comparisons.

As you lead, ask yourself: What are they comparing this to? If you know the answer to that, you can create trust and influence behavior.

Here’s why.

Comparisons help us gauge safety.

Scary or sweet?

What’s your reaction to the picture above?

If you have been bitten by a dog, this picture is upsetting. If you love dogs, you might find the picture endearing, knowing that “mouthing” is a sign of attachment. You have compared this picture to your experience and responded based on that.

At Emerson Human Capital, we see it in business as well.

Research shows that the most successful source of new hires is referral. Why? Because the employer compares the candidate to the trusted employee. The candidate compares the company to their friend’s stories. Both the company and the candidate feel safer moving forward.

This is also true for sales. Sales people often look for referrals or “warm leads”—an introduction by a friend. They know that the buyer will assume their experience with the friend will be similar. That makes the sales conversation safe and increases the chances of succeeding.

If you want your team to feel safe, learn what they might be comparing against from their experience, and make sure it’s safe.

Comparisons determine value.

Let’s say you want to buy an airline ticket for your next vacation. You might find a United flight for $1,240. Then you check American. They have flights, but they require layovers. You go back to Google Flights and suddenly see the rates across all the airlines have gone up to $3,950. Now, the original price feels like a bargain. The $1,240 price didn’t change—what changed is the price you’re comparing against.

Reed Hasting, Co-CEO, employed this comparison strategy when he described Netflix’ performance on the July 19, 2022 earnings call.

“Looking at the quarter…we’re executing really well on the content side…we’re talking about losing 1 million instead of losing 2 million.”

Most people want to associate their initiative with something that’s good, to make it feel safe. However, negative comparisons are powerful when you need people to act.

For example, my parents had a beautiful RV they wanted to sell. The dealer so loved it, he kept it at the lot entrance to impress people as they arrived. The camper sat there for over a year. Finally, we asked him if he had another vehicle that was less appealing. He did. So we asked him to park our RV next to it, and price ours slightly lower. The camper sold within three days.

A value comparison is about changing the conversation.

It’s about taking a person from one reference point to another. Academics call this reframing. If you want your people to see value in what you’re doing, compare against something that shows value.

Comparisons help us learn new information.

When we learn something new, we compare it to what we already know. That helps us retain and recall information. When we don’t have a good comparison, we have to create a new category in our mind, which makes information much harder to learn.

Let’s say you plan to visit our office in a month. I tell you the office door code is 3120, but you cannot write it down. You may or may not remember that number. But, if I tell you it’s the Chicago area code with a zero, it’s more likely you will remember it. You have a way to hook the new data to something you already know.

If you want people to remember something important, compare it to or contrast it with something familiar.

Comparisons create expertise.

A novice understands a category. An expert understands differences between similar items within that category. For example, if I ask you to tell me what a fish is, you’ll probably say that it’s something that lives in water, uses gills to breathe, and fins to move. But an expert can identify a muskie from a salmon based on precise characteristics, like the shape of the tail, the color of the skin, the size of the eyes. An expert developed that expertise by learning the differences between fish.

If you want your team to be experts, help them understand precise differences.

Comparisons evoke emotion.

A vivid comparison will make dull data come to life. Let’s say you’re showing a financial report that shows a new business unit with great potential but poor performance. You can show graphs on a PowerPoint slide with arrows pointing up. But you capture imagination if you describe the new business unit as Rich Strike, the 80-to-1 come-from-behind winner of the Kentucky Derby.

The CEO of a food products company recently announced a reorganization. His goal was to normalize the reorganization. This company had multiple flavors of their products, which required them to change the configuration of their manufacturing lines every day. To employees, that was a normal, predictable operation. So, he compared the reorganization to reconfiguring a product line. It made what could feel frightening seem normal.

People don’t change in response to data.

They change—they act differently—in response to how they feel about what you say. Your comparisons are a powerful tool because they impact the emotions that drive behavior.

Leaders create meaning by interpreting events, memorializing history, and describing a compelling future. Events are about meaning, and nothing helps people create meaning like a strategic comparison. To be effective, you need to know what people are conjuring up in their minds, and if necessary, change that reference point. You need the right comparison.

The recent wave of layoffs is dizzying. One company after another; thousands at time.

What if YOU are one of the thousands? When the dust settles, is there a way to make the most of your transition?

We think so. At Emerson Human Capital, we use brain science to help employees and organizations change. We’ve learned that moments matter. That means people process experiences differently based on whether they are at the beginning, middle, or end of an event. You can use these moments to your advantage.

Ends

If you’re leaving a job, you should know that endings leave a lasting feeling that retroactively colors the entire experience. So be intentional about how you end things.

Ends are a great opportunity to establish meaning.

If you’ve been laid off, you might feel the meaning has been decided for you: you’re unemployed and your efforts weren’t valued. But we urge you to take that power back.

Decide how you want to define this ending for you and your co-workers. What impact do you want to leave? What feelings do you want to have when you look back on this time?

Do the things that will make that happen. Maybe you want to create a transition package for your team, so they’re in good shape after you go. Maybe you decide to write goodbye emails or have lunch with colleagues. Maybe you take a printer out into a field and destroy it with a baseball bat. Note that we are NOT advocating violence against office equipment; the point is that it’s up to you.

Beginnings

First impressions are the bomb. They are like a bomb going off in your brain—it’s receiving a ton of new information and evaluating all of it as fast as it can. Is this situation good or bad? Safe or dangerous? Do I like it or not? First impressions set the tone for a person’s entire relationship with another person, event, or entity.

That goes for you (the new person joining an organization) and your new colleagues and leaders. The start of a new job is a chance to grab people’s brains and turn them into a fans or foes.

First, give yourself a great start.

Begin a new job well-rested and well-dressed. Maybe even treat yourself on your first day—it might sound silly, but these things actually change what happens in our brains. Second, assume good will. Many organizations are just not great at onboarding. If your new work home is one of them, recognize that onboarding is a finite process and doesn’t represent your day-to-day life on the new job. But if your organization is giving you a warm and thoughtful welcome, congrats! Your good first impression of your new company will carry you forward.

Next, give your new co-workers and leaders a great start. They’re unconsciously forming first impressions of you. Everything they notice will have an out-sized effect on their idea of you, at least until they get to know you. Don’t freak out, just be intentional about it. Speak, act, and present your best self.

So, if you’re caught in the craziness of a layoff—after you smash the printer—stop, think, and make it better.

P.S. If you are an expert in behavior change and you were recently laid off, are interested in a new career or know someone who is, take a look at Emerson Human Capital’s careers webpage. We’re hiring!

Don’t let the Meeting Monster steal your productivity.

It’s 8 a.m. You’re locked and loaded with a fresh cup of coffee—fueled up and ready to go. You open your laptop and see a wall of emails. You imagine a full day spent in Outlook.

But wait, you haven’t even checked your calendar. Dread rises as you move your cursor to that little icon that will define the rest of your day. Click…

There it is: the Meeting Monster. A menacing hulk of back-to-back meetings just ate your productivity.

Now, maybe you’re one of those optimistic creatures that tackles another day of meetings with gusto. If so, please sprinkle some of your magic dust on the rest of us, for whom a booked calendar means a full day of conversation, followed by a late night getting the actual work done. That, my friends, is how eight hours becomes 16. It’s the new math.

But all is not lost…

Here are some tips for vanquishing the Meeting Monster:

1. Prioritize. Decide what’s mission-critical and filter out the rest. To borrow a page from president Eisenhower’s time management methodology, The Eisenhower Matrix, relegate the stuff in Quadrants 3 and 4 (Urgent/Not Important; Not Urgent/Not Important). Identify it, then dismiss it.
2. Say no. Sometimes, you have to. But don’t abuse the power of “no.” Use it when it’s essential to hit your targets and commitments. And, if you’re a people manager, empower the team to wisely wield that gavel. Coach them on priorities and support them when they say “no.”
3. Block time for “actual” work. No matter your craft, vocation, or role, at some point you have to stop talking and start working. How? Use the Meeting Monster’s own tactics: block time on your calendar for work. It will show others you’re not available and give you the structure and space to deliver.
4. Find other ways to engage. In the post-Covid business world, working from home is common. Sometimes meetings are our way to keep remote teams connected. But meetings aren’t the only way. Consider other channels. For example, start a “Crazy Encounters” Teams chat board, asking coworkers to share non-work-related stories. It will lighten the mood and you’ll get to know colleagues in a broader way. Besides, team meetings are mainly status updates anyway, right? Speaking of which…
5. Dump the status meeting. A round table report-out might not be the best use of everyone’s time. Instead, try a weekly status report that’s, ahem, emailed…or, better yet, posted on a digital chat board. You could even use a project management platform like Monday.com. As members interact with status updates and mark completion in real time, your passive meeting becomes an engaging way to share progress.
6. Make the meeting collaborative. If you’re going to get everyone together for a meeting, make it count. Consider polling your team on topics they want to discuss and create sessions based on interest. For example, you might have team members with pressing questions on “best practices for conducting a needs assessment,” or “top 5 approaches for overcoming an objection.” Use your time on a forum that addresses issues and delivers the answers people need.

Meetings are necessary, but not always the most effective tool for communication or collaboration. Attend when they are mission-critical, then give your calendar some white space.

In addition to work time, you’ll get unstructured time, which is critical to creativity and performance. If you constantly draw water from the well without replenishing, it’s going to run dry. Downtime fosters inspiration. Need that next big thing? A 30-minute walk in the park might deliver a gusher of ideation!