How can a user manual improve employee experience?

Have you ever thought about creating a personal user manual for your employees? Here's how it could help improve employee and manager experiences.

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3 min read

 

“Want to know me? Read my user manual”

That was the title of this blog post that was shared with me by Adam Bryant at the NY Times New Work Summit conference in March 2016. Adam ran a conference session that really interested me where he discussed the idea of a company “User Manual” that would let employees in on what leaders or executives in the business want and the best way to work with them. The idea seems to have originated from an interview in 2013 with Ivar Kroghrud, a co-founder at Questback who specialize in getting customer and employee feedback.

The idea is that the user manual (or “UM” – it already gets an abbreviation) could shorten the learning curve for everyone in the company or the leader’s team.

Or is this an invite to bad behavior?

I was interested, but also a little worried that it could lead to a dictatorial “This is my way” – i.e. “My way or the highway” approach but Adam ran a good session explaining that a good CEO’s User Manual should be humble and should share things about the CEO that might otherwise take months or even years of experience to learn.

I ended the session intrigued so I drafted my own on the spot in the session’s break at the conference.

Curious to see what Glenn's CEO User Manual looks like? Head on over to his blog to read more...