Use
'Planning Prompts' to Get Results Without micromanaging
In addition to thinking
about how your company can work toward its loftier goals this year, on a smaller scale, you might also
be wondering how to help your employees set and achieve their own
objectives.
Katherine Milkman, an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the
University of Pennsylvania has two words: planning prompts.
"Whenever you want to help somebody
follow through on a goal, one thing you should do is actually prompt them to
think about exactly when and where and how they will accomplish that
goal," Milkman told Knowledge@Wharton.
She recently looked
at the the effectiveness of planning prompts in the context of health and
wellness and found that when people are asked to write down the date and time
of a health appointment to get a flu shot or a colonoscopy, they are
significantly more likely to follow through.
The most novel part
of Milkman's findings? Because her research involved simply prompting
participants to form a concrete goal -- and not confirming whether or not they
actually did -- she concluded that social pressure isn't a critical part of the
process.
"A lot of past studies involving planning
prompts actually involved face to face contact or contact over the phone with
someone who asked you to walk through a plan," Milkman
explained. "What we actually did is sent a simple mailing.
You never interact with another person."
In other words, after
an initial nudge, your employees are likely to execute their plans without any
micromanagement.
"It's just the act of forming a plan privately that can really
increase follow through," Milkman said.
http://www.inc.com/laura-montini/the-case-against-micromanaging-your-employees-this-year.hmtl.html?cid=em01014week03d
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