Tomorrow, the beginning of our Crowd Wisdom program, will be another experiment in giving responsibility and power our Steinberg interns. We'll get together in the morning to share ideas on whatever topics the interns want to talk about.
The question I have needed an answer to for a long time is this: How can I help interns be productive and energetic at the beginning of the day? Our interns are great, and we already have a strong working environment, but the mornings usually seem to start off just a little bit slowly.
I keep a long mental list of problems, issues, and concerns, and I'm always on the lookout for solutions. (I suspect most managers and teachers do this.) I recently read a terrific article in The Atlantic entitled What Makes a Great Teacher?. The story is largely about Teach for America's efforts to discover what makes great teachers so great. They identify practices like walking around the classroom (instead of staying glued to the chalkboard) and having an established routine for each day, so students know exactly what they'll be doing next.
It immediately struck me that many of these insights are easily applicable to management. One of the practices that interested me was writing a Problem of the Day on the chalkboard every morning, and students who come in get right to work on the problem. Could I do something like this at work?
Interns often have great ideas that I'd like to flesh out some. Mark Averell, for example, suggested an internal website that would aggregate Sacramento- and Capitol-related news sources, tweets, legislative hearings, and district events. After he built it, he asked me for ideas of other resources he could add to the site to make it useful for interns. Other interns working on projects hit roadblocks, and come to me for ideas to get around the obstacle. I can make suggestions, but I would rather tap into the creativity and intelligence of all the interns in the office.
So, Crowd Wisdom! Each morning we'll get together to solve problems and share ideas for doing things. I've created with a list of things to discuss, and each intern can vote for the things they want to talk about most. Each intern has 5 votes, which they can allocate however they like between topics. Interns can add topics that they think other interns would like to talk about.
What will prevent this from becoming a traditional, energy-sapping meeting, or an artificial "motivational" pep-talk? Well, meetings in our office have never been the soul-numbing affairs they seem to be in other offices. We all seem to enjoy our meetings as opportunities to share what we've all been working on. This probably has something to do with the fact that my boss doesn't use meetings as an opportunity to lecture the rest of us - our meetings are used for sharing information and ideas. We'll use Crowd Wisdom get-togethers the same way.
We'll only meet for 10-15 minutes, and we'll focus on exercising creativity and taking action. Interns in our office are already excited about work (interns often ask if they can come in more often than they're currently scheduled), so I'm not worried about it becoming an artificial event. I think this sort of program wouldn't work if they weren't already motivated.
But I think the biggest reason I'm confident Crowd Wisdom will be a success is that it's another opportunity for interns to exercise their creativity and initiative. This event isn't about me; it's about the interns and their work. They'll choose what we talk about.
This will also solve another problem I've been having - I can't keep interns' to-do lists stocked, because they work too quickly! Mornings are especially dry, because it takes me a little while to pull together new tasks. Interns currently jump into working on their Ownership Initiatives, but this will give them the opportunity to work on something else in the morning in case their Initiative is on hold for some reason. Beyond this, it will also create a get-'em-started atmosphere in the morning as we convene around a shared problem to solve. This is as much about creating team spirit as it is about providing tasks for eager interns.
I'll post updates as Crowd Wisdom develops and evolves. Share in the comments if you have some regular form of morning check-in with your colleagues or subordinates to get things started in
The question I have needed an answer to for a long time is this: How can I help interns be productive and energetic at the beginning of the day? Our interns are great, and we already have a strong working environment, but the mornings usually seem to start off just a little bit slowly.
I keep a long mental list of problems, issues, and concerns, and I'm always on the lookout for solutions. (I suspect most managers and teachers do this.) I recently read a terrific article in The Atlantic entitled What Makes a Great Teacher?. The story is largely about Teach for America's efforts to discover what makes great teachers so great. They identify practices like walking around the classroom (instead of staying glued to the chalkboard) and having an established routine for each day, so students know exactly what they'll be doing next.
It immediately struck me that many of these insights are easily applicable to management. One of the practices that interested me was writing a Problem of the Day on the chalkboard every morning, and students who come in get right to work on the problem. Could I do something like this at work?
Interns often have great ideas that I'd like to flesh out some. Mark Averell, for example, suggested an internal website that would aggregate Sacramento- and Capitol-related news sources, tweets, legislative hearings, and district events. After he built it, he asked me for ideas of other resources he could add to the site to make it useful for interns. Other interns working on projects hit roadblocks, and come to me for ideas to get around the obstacle. I can make suggestions, but I would rather tap into the creativity and intelligence of all the interns in the office.
So, Crowd Wisdom! Each morning we'll get together to solve problems and share ideas for doing things. I've created with a list of things to discuss, and each intern can vote for the things they want to talk about most. Each intern has 5 votes, which they can allocate however they like between topics. Interns can add topics that they think other interns would like to talk about.
What will prevent this from becoming a traditional, energy-sapping meeting, or an artificial "motivational" pep-talk? Well, meetings in our office have never been the soul-numbing affairs they seem to be in other offices. We all seem to enjoy our meetings as opportunities to share what we've all been working on. This probably has something to do with the fact that my boss doesn't use meetings as an opportunity to lecture the rest of us - our meetings are used for sharing information and ideas. We'll use Crowd Wisdom get-togethers the same way.
We'll only meet for 10-15 minutes, and we'll focus on exercising creativity and taking action. Interns in our office are already excited about work (interns often ask if they can come in more often than they're currently scheduled), so I'm not worried about it becoming an artificial event. I think this sort of program wouldn't work if they weren't already motivated.
But I think the biggest reason I'm confident Crowd Wisdom will be a success is that it's another opportunity for interns to exercise their creativity and initiative. This event isn't about me; it's about the interns and their work. They'll choose what we talk about.
This will also solve another problem I've been having - I can't keep interns' to-do lists stocked, because they work too quickly! Mornings are especially dry, because it takes me a little while to pull together new tasks. Interns currently jump into working on their Ownership Initiatives, but this will give them the opportunity to work on something else in the morning in case their Initiative is on hold for some reason. Beyond this, it will also create a get-'em-started atmosphere in the morning as we convene around a shared problem to solve. This is as much about creating team spirit as it is about providing tasks for eager interns.
I'll post updates as Crowd Wisdom develops and evolves. Share in the comments if you have some regular form of morning check-in with your colleagues or subordinates to get things started in
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