It’s back to school time.
As we approach the middle of August, schoolteachers around the country are busy preparing their lesson plans for the year ahead. These lessons detail the specific content that will be taught as part of the designated curriculum. History teachers may be emphasizing European History or World History, while Math teachers may be focused on Geometry or Algebra. In all cases, successful lesson plans require thoughtful planning and effective teaching. They must also be very specific and focused on exactly what we want our students to learn.
It’s no different for your organization.
The process of driving the culture within your organization is largely a teaching function. We can’t assume or expect our people to know what we expect of them unless we very clearly define what that is. Similar to creating a lesson plan or a curriculum, we should be just as thoughtful in defining what we want our people to do and how we want them to do it. Then, we need to make sure we reinforce these behaviors with our teaching and coaching.
Creating Your Curriculum
There may be numerous “subjects” you’d like to teach your employees. You may want to teach communication skills, teamwork or extraordinary customer service. Regardless of what you’d like to teach, you must first start with defining, with incredible clarity, what you want your people to do. Not doing so is like having students show up to a class where there is no lesson plan. It’s a good bet that there wouldn’t be a whole lot of learning taking place! Whereas, if you take the time to carefully articulate exactly what you’d like your team to learn, you’re setting the table for successful learning.
Teach, Reinforce and Repeat
With a well-crafted curriculum in hand, the teaching (and learning) can begin. We need to be just as intentional in our teaching as we are in creating our curriculum. Recognizing different learning styles and looking for multiple opportunities to reinforce our teaching is essential. Some of our team might be kinesthetic learners, where they learn by doing. Others may be more visual or auditory learners. It’s up to us to make sure our teaching appeals to the various learning styles. Then, we need to make sure we’re continually reinforcing and repeating our teaching over and over again. As important as the curriculum is, an effective plan that fosters continual teaching and learning is just as important when creating a lesson plan for success in your organization.
The Fundamentals System provides all of the important elements required to help you create a curriculum and a process to teach, coach and reinforce it. An apple for the teacher is optional; the creation of a high performing organization is not.
If you’d like to learn more, just give us a call, shoot us an email, or pick up a copy of our founder, David Friedman’s latest book, Culture by Design.