Workplace Transformations To Facilitate Range
I'm reading Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. Range is how he expresses a breadth of skill and it's very important for success. Here are 10 ways a workplace could increase range in its employees.
1. Walking Meetings
Having a meeting while walking through a park would not only be healthier, but facilitate inspiration and ideas.
2. Hybrid Work
Working from home not only allows time to be spent on hobbies or non-work tasks, but the change of scenery and context between office and home creates a wider mental ecology.
3. Hobby Clubs
Encouraging wider pursuits and bonding. A lunchtime chess club, an investor's group, etc.
4. Lunch & Learn
Departments make presentations on what they do or their latest projects to reduce the silos that exist within a company.
5. Job Shadowing
An accountant follows an engineer around for a day. Vice versa, etc.
6. Departmental rotation
Rotate employees through different departments. They may not be trained, but their familiarity with the organizations processes would enable them to hit the ground running.
7. Sabbaticals/Extended Leaves of Absence
People try to hold down a job while writing a novel, or consider quitting to find the time and risk financial ruin. Not enough jobs allow you to leave but come back after a time of 6-12 months.
8. More Vacation
Vacations enable trips to new places, or renovation projects or other pursuits.
9. Mandatory Training in non-Work Subjects
Employees can and should spend some of the training budget on underwater basket weaving or other flights of fancy.
10. Test the Employees
The book describes tests for skills like critical thinking, logic, estimation that are cross-disciplinary. Use these kinds of tests to see how employees are doing with these abstract meta-skills.
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