Good Ideas Come From Everywhere

During our staff retreat on Wednesday, our conversation turned towards making a staff handbook.  We were talking about the different things we would want it to say and how useful a guide might be for our new employees.

I've never put together a staff handbook before, and have been thinking a lot about what I would want to include.  During the conversation, I was pretty sure that we hadn't come close to thinking of everything.

And then our 18-year old intern, Rebecca, announced that she was already on top of making a staff handbook. A few weeks ago, I jokingly said to her that if she could get together a great staff handbook, I would hire her full-time immediately. (I wouldn't actually because she just finished her freshman year of college and I want her to finish school--she knows this.)

On her own, Rebecca started reaching out to a handful of start-ups and asked them to share their staff handbooks with her so she could use them as a guide for making a draft for ScriptEd.

I am completely blown away by Rebecca's initiative.  She's clearly a very ambitious and talented young woman.

I also think that ScriptEd's culture plays into Rebecca's confidence in her own ability and agency.  I believe in empowering our staff, volunteers and community to shape the direction of ScriptEd -- It's as much their organization as it is mine. Giving people ownership over their work makes them more committed and invested in it. Plus, if I micromanage everything we'll never achieve the scale we need to achieve our long term goals.

Good ideas come from all sorts of people, and if we give people the agency to take ownership of those ideas and run with them, we'll achieve a lot more.