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Archive for October, 2009

Improving Organizational Performance without Training

Monday, October 19th, 2009

By William Seidman

I’m currently working with graduate students at San Diego State University on one of my favorite topics: improving organizational performance.

We’re looking at non-training ways to improve performance.

Now a team in this class is going to study Cerebyte - you can find us on their website, which is a truly interesting place:  “PINOT,” Performance Improvement Non-Training Solutions.

Washington, DC: I’ll present A Scientific Approach to Corporate Cultural Change (That Works-and How!)  to the ISPI Potomac Chapter in Washington, DC,  Nov 10, 2009 at 6:00 pm EST.  Sign up here, and I’ll see you there!

 

 

Posted in best practices, captology, management consulting, organizational assessments, organizational change | No Comments »

Both Sides Win in This Tournament

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

By Michael McCauley

Logo Tournament  uses the power of the internet to provide companies with logo designs. It used to be that a company would work with a single artist or design shop to create their logo.  It costs a lot and is usually a slow process, as anyone who’s gone through it will tell you.

This site turns the tables. You post your request for a new logo as a “contest.” Your contest includes information on your company, a description of what you do and/or want, the time limit you have and the fee you’ll pay. Then anyone can submit a design. You pay only the designer who submits the design you select. With this approach, you have hundreds or even thousands of designers creating ideas for you - and you get to pick the best one!

Is this the future of the service industry? I think it could be, especially where the client’s needs are easily defined or the solution requires great creativity.

Why not have as many creative people as possible working to solve your problem?  

This approach offers advantages for the service providers too. Now anyone can have access to any organization, essentially bidding for their business with your talent. It creates a highly competitive environment, but one in which the best could certainly prosper. What do you think?

Posted in best practices, business | No Comments »

Keeping it Simple: When “Good Enough” is Best

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

By Michael McCauley

An interesting article by Robert Capps,  “The Good Enough Revolution“  explores the ways in which what consumers want from products and services is changing:  buyers now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, and quick and easy over slow and polished. In fact, their very definition of “quality” is changing!

Capps sites examples such as the decrease in CD sales and the explosion of MP3 downloads, the increase in Skype usage (Skype now accounts for 8% of all international calling minutes) and the huge increase in the use of Hulu over standard TV. All of these growing alternatives have much lower quality and significant limitations over the old standards, yet they continue to grow. Why? Because they are all quick to access, easy to use and free or virtually free. They are good enough.

Is this phenomenon localized to consumer electronics alone? The answer is “no.” “Good enough” is also gaining traction in the legal and health care professions, and in the military. We have also seen consumers in the consulting and training world also begin to adopt this approach. Our wisdom discovery sessions have gained popularity partly because they enable organizations to develop best practices in less than one week, where a traditional consulting approach might take a month or more. Often, keeping it simple equals “good enough,” which is fine.

Maybe you’ve run into this approach in other areas. If so, we would love to hear from you. In your experience, when is good enough ok?

Posted in business | No Comments »

Training for Learning and Real-World Application

Monday, October 12th, 2009

By William Seidman

I’m working in two settings now where there’s a tension between traditional classroom instruction and experiential learning.

Most training organizations like to train, which means classrooms, instructors, and - sometimes -elearning.

Most people prefer to learn, and they learn better when they can immediately apply what they’ve learned.

The art of training is to make classroom content tie tightly to real experience.

The art of experiential learning is to ensure that the right content is learned.

The trainers often want to drive the program, but this really doesn’t work.

Experiential learning is more powerful and effective, though it absolutely needs formal classroom instruction for specific skill building

Most of the people we work with stop talking about training and start talking about “learning activities” that include many forms of experiential learning as well as classrooms and elearning.

This broader definition is a good idea - the best idea - because it leads people to retain what they’ve learned and to be able to apply it to their real world.

Posted in best practices, mentoring, optimization, organizational change, personal change, team learning, training | No Comments »

Re-energize and Passion-up: When Good Female (and Male) Managers Want Out

Friday, October 9th, 2009

By Rick Grbavac

Smart women in management make companies stronger and keeping them requires concentrated programs. This comes from the research that economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett performed in preparing her newest book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down. In tough times, “high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men - 84 percent compared with 40 percent - to be seriously thinking” of leaving their companies.

In her article “Are Your Best Female Employees a Flight Risk?” Hewlett asserts that women were not thinking about leaving to spend more time with their families but, rather, because “they no longer felt challenged by or passionate about their work.” So companies such as Intel and Johnson and Johnson have created programs to address issues directly related to their senior management women. 

The idea in the article that jumped out at me was the idea of women managers losing their passion. I don’t think that this is a problem only for women executives. All knowledge workers from time to time need to re-energize and passion-up. The lull in business activity over the past year weighs heavily on all of us. It is time to re-vision, energize yourself and passion-up for this economic recovery.

Posted in best practices, company culture, employee retention, employee turnover, knowledge workers, management consulting, organizational culture | No Comments »

 
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