At one point in my career I had a CEO tell me after I started my new job that I had “the most dysfunctional team he had ever seen.” I thought, “what did I get myself into?” Most managers will, at some point in their career, have to deal with dysfunction on a team at work. You may be part of a dysfunctioning management team, or you may inherit a team that was not set up for success. Even with a degree in Business and a Masters in Technology Management I, like most business professionals, was never formally trained to deal with dysfunctioning teams. So what do you do when confronted with a team that doesn’t trust, doesn’t commit and simply doesn’t work because of the dysfunction?
There has been a lot of talk of immigration lately. In both directions. Americans crashed the Canadian immigration website last week and there has been non-stop talk about keeping non US citizens out of the country for months. This topic is personal for me since I am married to an immigrant and my only sibling migrated out of the US several years ago. I have worked as a non-national in Japan, so I too have experienced what it is like to be a non-citizen living and working in a foreign country. Why is it that when the subject comes up people immediately think about undocumented laborers instead of the brilliant minds that crave the freedom and innovation that only the United States seems to be able to provide?
Training employees is smart business. But what if you are working for, or running, a small to mid-sized company that has no established employee training program? If you are spearheading this initiative, you will probably have a limited budget until you can prove the return on investment for training.
How do you get started, and how do you do you create effective training on a limited budget? At a minimum you will need the following for a successful training program:
The first task is to get a sponsor, if you are not the sponsor and you will need to use resources from other departments this step is critical. While the other work can be delegated this first step is a prerequisite to moving forward and it is up to you to get this approval first.