NOBL Academy

How Chrysler’s Problems Board Resolved Chronic Workplace Issues

Rather than brushing off chronic but seemingly minor problems, tracking them can empower employees to resolve issues and add up to an improved workplace.

Quick Studies

How Percolate’s Onboarding Process Prepares New Employees

Welcoming new employees with a consistent on-boarding process is a great way to spread your company’s culture from the very beginning, and can help bring people up to speed faster, which will ultimately make them more productive.

Explainers

Plan Your Week Based on Energy & Engagement

While we’d all like to think that we’re highly productive all of the time, the reality is that our energy and focus waxes and wanes throughout the week. By planning ahead, you can save your best time for your most important work.

Quick Studies

How Facebook Recreates the Customer Experience

Not only should you put your customer needs front and center, you should attempt to recreate the customer experience for your teams. Help them simulate experiences outside of their immediate view and encourage teams to design solutions for your most constrained customers in order to develop strategies for further growth.

Explainers

Five Ground Rules for Effective Meetings

Meetings aren’t holding you back from getting work done—ineffective meetings are. Implementing simple meeting rules every time your team gathers will help your company achieve a healthy and effective meeting culture.

Tools

How to Run a Decision-Making Meeting

Making decisions puts a quick stop to endless conversation at meetings and gets people back to being productive.

Explainers

Balancing Risk in the Budget Planning Process

It’s essential to review how your budget is allocated based on risk. All too often, it’s easy for innovation to be caught between optimization and disruption, when that work should be focused on disruption and delegating optimization to other teams.

Quick Studies

How Apple Uses Random Words to Brainstorm

Using random words as inspiration can help you draw new parallels and find surprising insights.

Quick Studies

How Twilio Scaled Its Values With Its Operations

Values are more than words, they’re a guide for daily behavior. Moreover, they are living, breathing descriptors of the business and its people. Develop a recurring habit of reflecting and revising your values so they never become out of date.

Quick Studies

Ernst & Young Looks Beyond Universities and GPAs in Hiring

If your organization uses college performance as part of its recruiting process, it may be worth rethinking how your organization hires and evaluates job candidates—otherwise, you might be missing out on top talent.

Quick Studies

Appoint a “Tenth Man” or Devil’s Advocate to Make Better Decisions

Too often in meetings, emphasis is placed on coming to a decision that causes the least amount of friction amongst the team. However, when the focus is only on group consensus, teams lose sight of the problem they originally set out to solve.

Quick Studies

How B. Good Retains Its Best Employees

Although these benefits may not be “disruptive” or revolutionary, they are small gestures that add up to satisfied employees who stick around longer. Look for simple ways that you can show your employees that you value their contributions.

Quick Studies

How Spotify Scales Post-Mortem Meetings in a Large Organization

Don’t let the size of a team stop you from engaging the full group in developing and sharing learnings from the work. Break up your team into smaller teams, each focused on a specific topic, to conduct your Agile Retrospectives.

Quick Studies

How Upstart Tailored Performance Reviews for their C-Suite

Providing feedback is essential to any employee’s growth, but make sure that you are measuring the right qualities when evaluating your leadership team.

Quick Studies

FreshBooks Uses Blind Dates to Encourage Collaboration Across Teams

While rapidly scaling your internal team, prevent silos from developing by encouraging mingling between different departments and provide ongoing opportunities to collaborate.

Quick Studies

Basecamp Publicizes Employee Benefits to Recruit Talent

Employee benefits do more than keep your current people happy, they also motivate others to join you. Moreover, what a company offers in benefits says volumes about their values and practices.

Explainers

The Fatal Gap Between Organizational Theory and Organizational Practice

Cutting-edge management fads are causing great companies to bleed out. The distance between the theoretical conversation and the reality of work is just too far. The average employee is already overworked and undertrained; asking them to learn the management equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons on top of their workload is foolish, if not inhumane.

Explainers

Five Questions Every Manager Should Ask Themselves Weekly

As a manager, it’s all too easy to get lost in the work on your team’s plate rather than engage with the people doing the work. These five questions, if reflected on each week, will help you pull your head out of the weeds.

Explainers

The Two People Every Meeting Needs

Designating roles within a meeting will keep everyone clear on how they are supposed to contribute, and make them feel that the meeting is worth their time. It also helps identify next steps that need to be taken after the meeting to keep making progress.

Quick Studies

Adore Me Gives Employees a Bonus Check When They Resign

Treating your team well while they’re employed is still the best way to improve recruitment and retention rates, but unconventional employee perks like a resigning bonus can be a factor of your company culture that helps set you apart.

Impossible is temporary.

How Chrysler’s Problems Board Resolved Chronic Workplace Issues

How Percolate’s Onboarding Process Prepares New Employees

Plan Your Week Based on Energy & Engagement

How Facebook Recreates the Customer Experience

Five Ground Rules for Effective Meetings

How to Run a Decision-Making Meeting

Balancing Risk in the Budget Planning Process

How Apple Uses Random Words to Brainstorm

How Twilio Scaled Its Values With Its Operations

Ernst & Young Looks Beyond Universities and GPAs in Hiring

Appoint a “Tenth Man” or Devil’s Advocate to Make Better Decisions

How B. Good Retains Its Best Employees

How Spotify Scales Post-Mortem Meetings in a Large Organization

How Upstart Tailored Performance Reviews for their C-Suite

FreshBooks Uses Blind Dates to Encourage Collaboration Across Teams

Basecamp Publicizes Employee Benefits to Recruit Talent

The Fatal Gap Between Organizational Theory and Organizational Practice

Five Questions Every Manager Should Ask Themselves Weekly

The Two People Every Meeting Needs

Adore Me Gives Employees a Bonus Check When They Resign