Main Idea
Did you ever watch Star Trek? Do you believe in the Vulcan mind meld? Do you use that in your organization?
Expansion of Idea
I don’t know if you have every watched the old Star Trek series. If you look at them now, they are very low tech and very corny. (I know I just offended some Trekkies reading this.) One of the things that would occasionally occur is what they called a Vulcan mind meld. A key person in the series was Spock, who was from the planet, Vulcan. He would do a Vulcan mind meld which was a complete transfer of the minds with another person on the show. It involved some degree of risk because they never knew how it would be received.
I am not sure why I thought of this. However, if I questioned a lot of small business owners, I am pretty sure they think they have done a mind meld with their team members. The reason that I know this is that they frequently give their team members duties, a computer, a brief introduction (which was interrupted by five phone calls) and then told to go do work. Then they are frustrated by the employees not getting work done. I know that I am guilty of this at different times. I try very hard to spend time training my team but then I get pulled away and sometimes never really complete the training in a reasonable time period. What should we do instead? We need to really devote ourselves to the right training for each of our employees. This does not need to be all day offsite training. It can be regularly scheduled training for short periods that address specific issues. It can be used to address problems that come up. It can be used to raise customer service. A particular employee may need some specific skills and technical training.
If you are the boss, you need to carefully evaluate your plans here. If you are an employee, you need to take charge of yourself and ask for specific training where you have problems. The key is to develop a plan and stick to it as best you can. When you have hired good people, train them, systemize the training and follow up on the training, you will have no choice but to succeed.
Start by Asking Yourself these Questions:
Are there skills that I need to acquire?
Can we raise our collective skills by training?
Can I share some knowledge with my coworkers?
Do I have a plan to raise our skills?
For the advanced application, are there skills that can help our customers use our product or service better?
Have I scheduled the training?