NOBL Academy

What Does “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” Really Mean?

Many of us are limited by our work personas and wish we could be more authentic with our colleagues. Increasingly, we hear people advocate for bringing “our whole self” to work, but what are the limits of that advice and when is authenticity actually damaging to a team?

Quick Studies

How an Extreme Offsite Led to eBay’s Turnaround

When corporate bureaucracy slows innovation, it takes unorthodox measures to break through. A secret offsite gave eBay’s team the focus they needed to develop a new solution.

Explainers

What You Need to Know about Your Team’s Psychological Safety at Work

The most important factor in any high-performing team is psychological safety: that is, the feeling that it’s safe to take risks in front of the group. But how do you foster it?

Explainers

Why Culture/Market Fit Is More Important than Product/Market Fit

Product/market fit was a term coined by Marc Andreesen and defined as, “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” Culture/market fit is similar, yet even more foundational. Find yourself a healthy market, yes. Then develop a culture that can deliver product/market fit.

Quick Studies

How IBM’s Performance Management Pivoted to Match Its Business Strategy

When IBM started focusing more on innovation and speed, their CHRO had to re-evaluate how employee performance was measured.

Tools

How to Make Decisions that are EPICS

Uncertainty, politics, timing, resources—making the right call is rarely easy. And when we talk about decision making, we often ignore critical aspects of the decision making process in favor of speed or own biases.

Explainers

What to Do When Teammates Don’t Share the Same Motivation

Individuals don’t have to share the same motivation to achieve a shared outcome, but they do need to trust that others are looking out for their interests.

Quick Studies

How NASA’s Pirate Paradigm Challenged The Status Quo

When an organization enters a hibernation period where innovation slows and bureaucracy mounts, renegades can shake everyone out of complacency. Renegades, like NASA’S Pirates, can work outside of the organization’s norms to spot emerging problems and invent radically new responses.

Quick Studies

Patagonia’s Twist on the Exit Interview

When an employee announces their decision to leave the company, it’s imperative you learn from their experiences, both good and bad. An exit interview is often the last chance you’ll have to do so. But both parties need to be focused on learning, growing, and knowledge-sharing.

Explainers

How to Make Risk Feel Less Risky—And Why It’s Essential for Success

We’re gonna go out on a limb here and say that you didn’t get to where you are without taking a risk. Maybe it was moving to a new city in pursuit of a job opportunity. Maybe it was volunteering to lead a project that had never been tried before. Or maybe it was saying “no” to a lucrative offer because it compromised your long-term goals.

Explainers

When Followers Don’t Follow

Even the most progressive leaders will find themselves on particularly hard days asking themselves, “Why doesn’t my team do what I need them to do?”

Explainers

Personality Tests Don’t Work, Here’s Why and The Alternatives

Personality tests, we think, help us understand ourselves better. But in reality, they are often a self-gratifying exercise that gets us no closer to understanding ourselves or others.

Tools

How to Define an Organization

It can be difficult to give order to the mess that is an organization. After all, business is the commercialization of human interaction and well, people are messes of complexity. Our tool, the Org Charter, helps make sense of all that complexity.

Tools

Group Decision Making Model: How to Make Better Decisions as a Team

There are lots of group decision-making models. Explore each and find one that works well for your group’s needs and circumstance.

Explainers

The Futures of Work: Fixed Vs Fluid

Regardless of what the airport bookstore shelves tell you, there is no single future of work. There are multiple organizational futures stretching out in front of every company, and the road best taken is dependent on the environment around you.

Explainers

How to Reduce Decision Fatigue

Every day, we are faced with decisions that can range from seemingly minute to hugely impactful. Making decisions as a group is complicated even further by the addition of different perspectives, personalities, and opinions, so it’s easy for decision making fatigue to set in.

Quick Studies

Impossible is temporary.

What Does “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” Really Mean?

How an Extreme Offsite Led to eBay’s Turnaround

What You Need to Know about Your Team’s Psychological Safety at Work

Why Culture/Market Fit Is More Important than Product/Market Fit

How IBM’s Performance Management Pivoted to Match Its Business Strategy

How to Make Decisions that are EPICS

What to Do When Teammates Don’t Share the Same Motivation

How NASA’s Pirate Paradigm Challenged The Status Quo

Patagonia’s Twist on the Exit Interview

How to Make Risk Feel Less Risky—And Why It’s Essential for Success

When Followers Don’t Follow

Personality Tests Don’t Work, Here’s Why and The Alternatives

How to Define an Organization

Group Decision Making Model: How to Make Better Decisions as a Team

The Futures of Work: Fixed Vs Fluid

How to Reduce Decision Fatigue

Four Rules Slack Follows When Using Slack

How to Identify a Problem by Asking Questions

How REI Responded to Employee Criticisms Online

The 5 Signs of a High Performing Team, According to Google