Andrew Powell

I'm a big fan of BJ Fogg's concept of a "Tiny Habit." Rather than trying to start with a big change (which is often hard, and empirically rarely works) one should instead start with a tiny change. Once that small step becomes routine, it becomes easier to add to it. For example, if someone wants to get outside and exercise each day, they shouldn't try to force themselves go for an hour-long run every day all of the sudden. Instead, commit to putting on your sneakers on and taking one step outside each morning. It's fine if you go immediately back in after, but if you force yourself to make that small step a habit, it's much more likely to grow into a short walk, then maybe a longer walk, then maybe a run organically over time.

We made "Building Exceptional Relationships" a core part of our culture by making it one of our values. Dealing productively with conflict is one of the most important parts of achieving that value. When new people join the company, we explain what we mean by that value and then provide examples of how each person can practice it in work: how to give and receive feedback, how to raise issues proactively, etc. It takes intentional effort and work, but by establishing it as an expectation from day one, we build good habits together across the company.

At Learn to Win, we find a quick quiz is a simple and effective way to assess whether people know what they need to know. Our customers are often shocked when they get their first quiz results and see significant knowledge gaps in their workforce that they did not previously know existed! Also, an added benefit of the quiz is that people learn after they complete the assessment because they realize they did not know something they may have been confidently wrong about.

Many of the challenges around "engagement" can either be solved by cultivating more extrinsic or intrinsic motivation to learn. I'm usually a fan of finding ways to tap into people's intrinsic motivators - what do they actually already desire, and are there ways we can connect with those aspirations and interests such that they engage in the learning process more fully? Sometime's the core gap in someone's engagement is that they fail to see how the assignment, lecture, course, etc actually connect to what they hope to achieve in life, and maybe the best answer is to adapt the content or the framing to make that connection much more compelling and direct.