The Chief Reminding Officer: How to Build Your Plan

The one-page template that simplifies the process of making things stick

How to Raise The Bar

Here’s my favorite Winston Churchill quote:

“To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.”

No one’s perfect. But the best managers are always changing things. They’re constantly looking for the little tweaks that help their team hone their craft and improve their work. They are always raising the bar.

Andy Grove wrote in High Output Management about two “bar-raising” tools all managers possess: Training and motivation. You can either teach someone how to do something, or find a way to spark their enthusiasm for actually doing it. Makes sense. But Grove was missing an important third tool.

Reminding.

Good management is a kind of loop, made up of a constant, three-question scan. These questions are:

1. Do people know what they’re supposed to do? [Training]
2. Do they know why? [Motivation]
3. Are they actually doing it? [Reminding]

Many managers think their job is all about #1.

Good managers take ownership of #1 and #2.

But almost everyone forgets about #3.

Telling people what to do and why to do it is easy. Making things stick—real, lasting change and the reinforcement it requires — that’s hard.

Even people that know what to do need reminding to get it right. A lot of reminding.

And guess what? That’s your job.

Building Your Chief Reminding Officer Plan

Effective reminding is a three-pronged discipline. It requires:

• Feedback — Using feedback to help people “do this, not that”
• Recognition — Using authentic, in the moment praise
• Repetition — Creating simple cues and repeating them over and over

How can you master these skills?

Start small. You can’t catch everything. You have to pick your spots. Prioritize just a few gaps — the most important mindsets, activities, and skills that your team lacks — and relentlessly reinforce them. Over and over.

To do this well, you need a plan. Below is the template I use to help executives pick their spots, prioritize what to reinforce, and become Chief Reminding Officers. You can download your own printable version here. In 15 minutes or less, you can use this page to commit to the few most important “new things” you’ll reinforce with your team — the stuff you’ll offer feedback on, recognize, and repeat.

Here’s an example. Remember Kate? The Sales VP who trained her team, but didn’t reinforce what they learned? Here’s what her Chief Reminding Officer plan might look like coming out of her sales training if she did things the right way. It’s a simple process.

1. Reflect: Kate reflects on the most important “new things” she wants to stick.
2. Prioritize: Kate picks 1 “new thing” for each box — one to give feedback on, one to recognize, and one cue to reinforce over and over again. She
3. Commit: Kate writes it all down in her Chief Reminding Officer one-pager, shares it with her team, and keeps the plan at her desk. (Even Chief Reminding Officers need a little reminding.)

Here’s what it looks like when it’s finished.

Sharing Your Plan With Your Team

Why share this page with your team? This step may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s important. Here’s why.

1. It helps you commit + tells your team what to expect. When you publicly share a plan, you’re more likely to stick with it. And when you prioritize “what matters” from something your team just learned, it helps them zero in on what you expect. If you don’t know where the bar is, it’s very hard to meet it.
2. It demonstrates vulnerability. By creating a reinforcement plan, you send a signal to your team. “I know learning something new isn’t easy,” you’re saying. “That’s why I’m going to help you get it right.” By acknowledging the balance of learning and execution problems, you make it easier for people to speak up, ask questions, or share obstacles. This is how you build psychological safety, the #1 attribute of a strong team.
3. It follows the “tell ’em x 3” rule. As Dave Kellogg writes in his fantastic blog post on marketing messaging, “I’m practicing the “tell ’em, tell ’em, tell ’em” approach that all good salespeople, teachers, and speakers use: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them.” When you share the plan ahead of time, use it to coach/recognize/reinforce, and review later on how the “new thing” is sticking, you’re triple-stitching your team’s newfound clarity on what matters most.

Every Team Needs a Chief Reminding Officer

Teams that make things stick — the teams who successfully learn, incorporate, and master new skills— are different in one, un-ignorable way. Their leaders are committed to reminding the team — over and over — of where they’re going and how they’re going to get there. They recognize that “the single greatest problem in communication is the illusion it’s taken place.” They know that “when they’re sick of saying it, they are only starting to hear you.”

These leaders know, accept, and embrace that their teams need reminding.

A lot of reminding.

When I wrap up my sessions on “How to be a Chief Reminding Officer”, I often share this story from one of my favorite writers, the great coach Dan John:

“I can’t say it any better than what I learned from a deaf discus thrower with whom I worked a few years ago. He had become very good and I asked him his secret. He took his right middle finger and twisted it over his right index finger, and then slapped it into his left palm. In sign language, that means repetition.”

So pick your spots.

And don’t be afraid to repeat yourself.

All great leaders do.