I am reading “The Hard thing about Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz. I love the importance he provides to people. He says “Take care of the people, the products, and the profits – in that order”. In the book he pays a lot of importance to one-to-one meetings as well. I’ve always believed that an easy way to measure the importance a manager gives his people is by looking at the number of hours he/she spends on one-to-one meetings & grooming talent. Personally, I’ve had a huge difference in performance when managers spend more one-to-one time with me. Ben Horowitz goes a step further and says that CEOs (and managers) should design training courses about the company, its product and other decisions taken by the company. He argues that while McDonalds has a training course for its staff, how come more complex jobs in our organisations don’t have job specific training schedules?

This is his case for why training (conducted by the manager – as other trainers don’t know much about your company) is a high priority:

Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manger can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in you subordinates’ performance, you company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the expenditure of your twelve hours.

Wonderful perspective to keep in mind.

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My super-public habit tracker 

May: Exercise 1 Blogging 6 Meditation 2