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    Making Business Child's Play: Gain an Edge in the Workplace Using Essential Management Skills That Are Second Nature to Parents and Children
    Making Business Child's Play: Gain an Edge in the Workplace Using Essential Management Skills That Are Second Nature to Parents and Children
    Making Business Child's Play: Gain an Edge in the Workplace Using Essential Management Skills That Are Second Nature to Parents and Children
    Ebook131 pages2 hours

    Making Business Child's Play: Gain an Edge in the Workplace Using Essential Management Skills That Are Second Nature to Parents and Children

    By Adam Margolin

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    About this ebook

    Making Business Child's Play demonstrates the importance of mastering the skills and techniques we possessed as children and exhibit as parents. By identifying the parallels between what goes on at home and at work, it demonstrates how we can transfer behaviours to be more successful within a business environment.

    Making Business Child's Play is for people looking for practical, action oriented ideas about business behaviours in an accessible entertaining style. It is written to be read in less than two hours, ideal for your next train journey or flight. It is not written as a textbook but provides lots of insights, hints and tips across a wide variety of topics through a very personal series of stories and analogies about the author and his two young children.

    The book is for all types of people across all types of industries but is perfect for aspiring managers with young children working in an office environment. So, if you are interested in a book which takes a fresh innovative look at common subjects then this book is for you. It will help you gain an edge in the workplace using essential management skills that are second nature to parents and children. Once you have finished reading, you will have discovered an array of practical tips and techniques giving you a changed and enriched perspective as a manager and/or a parent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9780957176416
    Making Business Child's Play: Gain an Edge in the Workplace Using Essential Management Skills That Are Second Nature to Parents and Children

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      Book preview

      Making Business Child's Play - Adam Margolin

      written.

      Introduction

      Muhammad Ali said children make you want to start life over. I personally wouldn’t go quite that far but having children has certainly had a huge impact on my life and really made me think differently. When I started writing this book, I had been married for five years, was the proud father of a beautiful little three-year-old girl Jolie, and had an eight-months-pregnant wife. Fatherhood is a challenging, eye-opening and enlightening experience but what I never expected was to wonder why I don’t approach things like Jolie or her friends. When and why did I (and other adults) lose the ability to ‘behave like a child’?

      A book focused on behaviours exhibited by children and parents may seem like a very strange concept for a business publication. However, the motivation and inspiration for writing this title came from personal frustration and a growing sense of how things could be different if I learnt how to stop compartmentalising my life and applying what I knew in my home life to my working identity.

      Making Business Child’s Play is for people looking for practical, action oriented ideas about business behaviours in an accessible entertaining style. It is written to be read in less than two hours, ideal for your next train journey or flight. It has been inspired in style and length by a number of what I believe to be hugely powerful business books including Who moved my cheese?; The One Minute Manager; Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Feel the fear and do it anyway and more.

      It is not written as a textbook but provides lots of insights, hints and tips across a wide variety of topics through a very personal series of stories and analogies about my children and me. The book is for all types of people across all types of industries but is perfect for aspiring managers with young children working in an office environment. So, if you are interested in a book which takes a fresh innovative look at common subjects then read on. Once you have finished reading, you will have discovered an array of practical tips and techniques giving you a changed and enriched perspective as a manager and or a parent.

      There are so many things that a child naturally does better than an adult and there are some behaviours that adults try desperately to recapture. The example that jumps immediately to mind is posture. Just have a look at a group of young children (up to 5 years old) and you’ll notice that they move with ease and agility. Then have a look at some older kids and you will start to see some hunched shoulders. Finally, if you look at adults, you can see that these problems have fully developed. The Alexander Technique teaches people to re-establish the natural relationship between the head, the neck and the back, a relationship which can usually be seen to be working powerfully, beautifully and effortlessly in small children. Whilst the Alexander Technique has become internationally-renowned and taught all over the world, so many other behaviours which come naturally to us as children are lost as we become older and there are no techniques to help us find most of these skills again.

      The flip side of the same coin is intriguing and involves looking at how we behave as parents (or teachers, carers, aunts, uncles etc.) Fatherhood has forced me to behave in a way that is designed to help my children develop and grow, and I wonder why I don’t exhibit these behaviours more in the work place. If I did, how much better would things be for me and my team?

      I told Jolie I was writing a book in which she was featured. I asked if she was excited and she responded No. It’s not useful. It’s nonsense. I truly hope this is not the case!

      Chapter 1

      Preparing for a new arrival

      Before my daughter Jolie was born, my wife Elisa and I spent a long time preparing for her arrival. We had to find room in our home, which meant throwing out lots of ‘essential’ items and clothes to create some space for a new child.

      It’s amazing how we had expanded to fill the space available and yet when we needed to reorganise, it wasn’t actually that hard. My parents are a great example of this in reverse. Since my sister and I have moved out, they have spread to every cupboard and room in the house, even though when we lived there they managed to confine their belongings to just their own room.

      As you might be aware, children need a LOT of stuff. We had to buy a cot, sheets, bedding, sleeping bags, a rocking chair, a changer, a room thermometer, bathseats, a high chair, a buggy, clothes, muslins, dummies, bottles and the list goes on and on. We researched, discussed and agreed on every purchase and made all the necessary preparations. When Jolie was brought home from the hospital, we were ready for her. Now of course it wasn’t all smooth sailing. For example, we bought a cot which I decided to build a few days before Elisa’s due date. As it transpired (and yes, I should have counted the pieces first!) it was missing a side. This then had to be returned and we only just managed to get it back and build it before Jolie came home from the hospital. Nevertheless, we had prepared for her, and when she finally arrived she slotted into our home fairly naturally. Our son, Fraser’s arrival was even easier as we knew what to expect, had been through it before and had a lot of what he needed already in the house.

      Can you imagine bringing a child home from the hospital and only then considering where they might sleep? Or what they might eat, sit on or wear? Or which room they will go in? Of course not. All of this planning is carried out beforehand to make the transition for both the parents and the child as easy and as positive an experience as possible.

      From my experience, this is almost always the exact opposite of what happens at work for new starters. You hire someone new to the company, and the day before they arrive, they call or email to ask what time they should come in on their first day. You panic as you realise you are in no way ready for their arrival and tell them 10am to give you some time to prepare. You rush round to IT to explain that you have a new starter who will need a computer, a desk, a chair, an email address and so on. IT are as helpful as ever and tell you that there is a minimum one-week lead time (if not three weeks!) needed for all such requests but they will do the best they can to accommodate you. You then realise that you haven’t prepared an induction programme or even a set of documents to read and so you desperately try to get meetings in people’s diaries and any information printed out and shoved into a ring binder. The next day your poor new member of staff arrives to be greeted with a fairly brief office tour and a series of introductions to people they won’t remember. You don’t show them how to log into their computer (if they have one) or how to dial an outside line on their phone. You don’t tell them what they are expected to do and you are probably in meetings you can’t get out of for most of the day which means you sit them in a seat which is probably not actually at their new desk and hand them a folder of semi-relevant information to read.

      What a terrible first impression to make, and that new starter is probably already questioning why they accepted the position. A few days later, if they are lucky, they have finally met a few relevant people, been set up properly with all the necessary equipment and can actually start their new job. What a waste of time, effort and money and what a shame that you haven’t harnessed the time when that new member of staff is most keen to learn and impress.

      The solution is really simple. You should look at this new employee as an opportunity to show off your company. As managers (and as an organisation) you will never get a second chance to make a first impression. As such you have to spend time and effort preparing for a new employee’s arrival to help ensure they are successful in their role.

      In the USA, the process of a new starter being set up properly within a company is called employee onboarding. It is designed to ensure that the new starter feels wanted, relaxed, equipped and supported. These positive feelings will undoubtedly increase the chances of the new starter making an impact in the short, medium and long term. And what’s more, the happier and more satisfied the employee is, the more successful they are likely to be and the longer they should remain with the company.

      To position a new starter for success is actually very easy and all you really need to think about is what you would like a new job to be like. Before they start you need to have prepared for their arrival. You should plan a thorough induction process with meetings set up with key members of the team. You should provide your colleagues with a full briefing on what you expect your new starter to get out of the meeting and should give your colleagues a copy of the new starter’s CV and job specification. Each meeting should follow a similar format and include a summary of their own position, where there are overlaps between their role and the new starter’s role and any expectations for working together going forward. You should also spend some time

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