What Managers Don’t Know… Can Help Them! – Tip # 276

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Employees are doing something all managers and L&D leaders never know about,  but should. Individual employees are constantly figuring out how to solve problems or work better, faster, and smarter. Often they are meeting challenges that other employees just ignore, avoid, hide, “wing it” or revert to old solutions that are not working well.

Too often, no one finds out about their improvised strategies. Their manager might notice and say something supportive or keep it in mind at performance appraisal time. But most of the time, they just keep doing their job and don’t even realize that their solution doesn’t just save time or enhance the quality of their own work but could – if others learned about it –  add value for their entire group. One employee’s problem-solving strategy might help their department or entire organization increase productivity, reduce costs, improve work quality, help retain customers or even expand market share.

If you’re an operational manager, team leader, or Learning & Development specialist, you don’t have to overload your already full schedule further to get answers to questions like Who’s devising new solutions to problems similar to ones facing other employees? Who’s making breakthrough strategies? How can we encourage problem-solving and strategic thinking across all employees, not just our top performers?

Vignettes Learning has developed a workflow learning system called Situation Expert™ that you can adapt to your needs. Situation Expert assembles key tools for analyzing and solving problems. You can make sure all employees have access to simple visual templates and guidelines for tackling work challenges, but Situation Expert doesn’t stop there. Vignettes Learning has also devised ways to help employees:

Review key problem-solving tools and learn to use them
Generate possible solutions
Write up clear descriptions of successful solutions
Use an online “toolbox” that includes:
Clear categories of problems and challenges confronting employees in one or more work areas
Links to solutions other employees have developed for similar problems/challenges
Highly visual collection of key analytic and problem-solving tools to encourage strategic-thinking
Microlearning to help employees master any unfamiliar tools for solving work problems or meeting challenges better, faster, smarter
Easy-to-complete templates for writing up successful solutions to share with others

For more information, go to www.SituationExpert.com

Author


Tita Theodora Beal



Ray Jimenez, PhD
Vignettes Learning
“Helping Learners Learn Their Way”


Vignettes Learning Workshops
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2. Microlearning for Disruptive Results
3. Instructional and Experience Design for Workflow Learning
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6. Training Frontline Leaders as Learning Accelerators
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