Don't leave home without it...

Buy and always have with you a notebook you enjoy using. Consider this your Performance Improvement Notebook.

This may become both your best performance improvement tool and your best inanimate friend. I encourage you to use it to jot ideas, record creative thoughts, write reactions, plan your improvement, and track your progress.

Performance improvement is the primary reason to focus on employee engagement, right? Focusing on performance improvement is definitely a form of engagement, right?  Seems like a victorious circle.

You want that notebook with you all the time. You want to be comfortable, even eager, to open it and write the most spur-of-the-moment thoughts that contribute to performance improvement. So, you will probably chose to carry a small, comfortable, notebook or journal.

Here are 5 quick thoughts about having/using a Performance Improvement Notebook...

1. If you read this blog with attention to your employees' performance, consider giving each of them a notebook. Send me an e-mail with Notebook Coaching Tips in the subject line. I'll send you a one-page outline detailing how you can manage performance improvement with the Performance Improvement Notebook as your best tool.
2. Set a quantitative goal to build your "notebook habit." You may commit to writing anything in the notebook 3 times each day. The thoughts you'll generate when you think you have nothing to write will be truly beneficial. Ultimately. The habit of those 3 writings each day will build your use of the notebook into something powerful.
3. At some regular time review what you have written in the notebook. Perhaps once a week or once a month. Not everything you write will be beneficial immediately, but by writing (rather than trusting your memory!) you create a reliable resource.
4. Share that you have the notebook, use the notebook, and see performance improvement thanks to the notebook. By letting others know your process, you embed the action and look for results. Results then occur.
5. The notebook is not for "at work" only. You never know when you'll have a great performance improvement idea. Keep your notebook handy al the time.

Happy notebooking!