Original and Published Articles
From H.R. Reporter, Chief Learning Officer magazine, Talent Management magazine and exclusively online
Practical Innovation
The 'Hows' and 'Whys'
What is it that some businesses last only a few years while others last centuries? The answer lies in their ability to continuously innovate. The issue is that most people don't want 'creativity' or 'innovation'. "That is the way we have always done things around here." they might say.
Innovation means thinking differently. It means thinking differently about your products, your processes, your employees. In other words it involves CHANGE. Change is like a wave. Either you can ignore it, in which case the change will overtake you and you will drown or you can get a surfboard and ride the wave. It may not take you where you thought you would be, but it will be a whole lot better than drowning (and you may enjoy the ride itself). Organizations that are innovative are change-ready.
How to Build a Culture of Innovation
With Disruptive Technology and Influencers, 'Innovation' and 'Creativity' shouldn't be confined to the wall in reception
It was one of those rare moments of candour you get when dealing with senior management. “I know that our mission statement talks about innovation and creativity,” an executive once hesitantly told me. “But we really don’t want people thinking outside the box. We just want to make the box cheaper.”
Translation? She wasn’t really interested in innovation and creativity. She just wanted to keep costs down. What this conversation demonstrated to me was that for many individuals and organizations there is no clear understanding about what innovation and creativity mean in a business sense and there is a fear attached to new ideas.
What Do You Do with the Survivors?
How career transition services can also be used to help those who have survived the lay-offs and outplacement
We had a project at a large financial services institution a few years back. They had read my second book Flexible Thinker Guide to Extreme Career Performance and decided to bring us in to do a series of half-day workshops to help their employees manage their own careers. The organization had gone through some major changes and the organization, quite wisely in my opinion, had decided that they many of their staff were dependent on the organization to manage their career. “They were in a loyalty mindset,” commented the Vice President of Human Resources “where their security was dependent on longevity. We wanted to shift them to a commitment mindset where their security rested on their accomplishments.” Support was also set up internally through the web and mentoring/coaching. The results were startling. People knew how to measure their accomplishments and became focused on becoming performers, knowing that that was they would be rewarded and their security lied.
Faster, Better, Cheaper
Tying learning into real organizational results
I always love to hear course design guru Thiagi speak (www.thiaigi.com). He consistently gets away with saying things that no other keynote in the world can. At the International Alliance of Learning (www.ialearn.org), I had the privilege once again in hearing his ‘pearls of wisdom’. Strangely enough, it was not just what he said that intrigued but the hand-out. He put together a list of principles and procedures that in my opinion provide a very good basis for course design and that we have applied in our courses. Here are his 12 principles for faster, better, cheaper course design:
Turning Survey Results into Action
A Practical Approach to Employee Engagement
by Bonnie Nixon
You have done your employee surveys. Now comes the tough part - turning numbers into action. The survey can be either your greatest weapon in employee engagement or your worst enemy. If you act on and follow through with the surveys, people will become engaged because they feel that they have a voice. If not, it will have a detrimental effect as 'another empty iniative'.
Here are some practical ways to turn surveys into action:
click here to read moreThe Actor's Way for Facilitation
The thing I remember most about my Six Sigma training was the facilitator. An engineer in his late 50’s, he had white hair and a wrinkled shirt. I remember walking into the room and seeing something I had not seen in many years – an overhead with a large stack of acetates next to it. Oh boy, I thought, this should be fun. Well, about an hour into it fun was the last word I would use to describe him. He spoke in a monotone that makes Ben Stein look exciting and expressive. It got to the point that one woman in the group actually fell asleep there and, with her head cocked back and open, started snoring. I kid you not. This woman in the middle of the class was snoring. How did it affect the facilitator? He just kept droning on and on. At the break I went over to him and asked him if he noticed the woman sleeping. “Yes,” he replied matter-of-factly, “it happens to me all the time. Doesn’t it happen to you?” I replied that it never happened to me and, if it did, I would throw something at her (an orange) and get her to do something.
Can You Have Too Much Diversity?
Replacements Ltd. has always taken a great deal of pride in receiving the first perfect score for the Corporate Equality Index. Their founder and CEO, Bob Page, originally worked as an auditor for the State of North Carolina. However, as a gay man, he worried that exposing ‘who he was’ would get him fired. When he started Replacements, he did so with the desire to prove that you could build a company that embraced diversity and was still profitable. The result is a corporation with 550 employees, a top 150 internet company and one of the most successful companies in the tableware industry. “We have over 20 different languages and nationalities represented in our workplace.” says Bob. “If you have performance issues, we will work with you. However, if you make a derogatory comment about a person’s nationality, race, religion or sexual preference you will be fired on the spot.”
Does Human Resources Have an Impact?
Let's ship all the jobs to China!
I had an interesting conversation at the recent Talent Management Summit in Las Vegas. I was having dinner with a vice president of human resources for a company when he asked a provocative question. “Does what we do really have any impact on an organization? Can organizations still treat people like crap and make money?” I have to admit the question took me initially off guard but, like all great questions, has really gotten me thinking. There are a lot of companies that treat their people as cattle and (at least in the short term) make money. The idea is to churn and burn. In other words, squeeze every last ounce of energy from a person and then, when they burn out, bring in the next set of people. 100 people out the door, another 100 in!
How to Create and Effective Onboarding Strategy
I was reading on the internet that 80% of all new hires decide within the first 6 months whether they are going to stay with their current employers or begin looking for ‘new opportunities’. Whether this is figure is the result of research or not (or simply overblown), it does point out the importance of quickly incorporating new hires into the workplace. Onboarding, or the formalized process of incorporating talent into the organization, is the hot topic right now in human resources. From a strategic view, it makes a lot of sense.
Strategies to Attract and Retain Talent - Stay Interviews
From H.R. Reporter, October 6, 2008
Has anybody ever thought about the logic of asking people why they are leaving when they have one foot planted out the door? I remember on my exit interview when they asked me why I was leaving. Part of me wanted to say, “Geez, because my manager is such a hypocrite that I would rather be boiled in hot oil than have to work with her another day.” I did, however, know better. Why burn a bridge (although the bridge has since been torched)? No, I gave some answer about want to move on, etc. My only thought was I wish somebody (other than my manager) had asked me while I was there and maybe I could have stayed within the consulting firm in a different area. Oh well, c’est la vie!
Creating a Culture of Learning
Training doesn’t work! That is the axiom that many people have lived by for years. The reason is that training is the magic wand that one waves in the air and suddenly everybody comes back changed. But, as we all know, it never really works that way. You can almost hear the manager say, “Hey, I sent you to that class to make you smarter and you are coming back dumber. At least go back to what you used to be. I can deal with that.” It reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I cut out a long time ago. Dilbert is shown in the office holding a binder when his boss asks him “Well, how did that training event go?” Dilbert then answers ruefully, “Great, now I have another binder that will sit above my desk and collect dust.” In the final panel, Dilbert’s co-worker asks him if he was able to secure funding for the project they were working on. “Yes,” says Dilbert. “I think I got it out of the training budget.”
They Won't Buy if They are Asleep
Why presentation skills are essential for sales
Christmas was going to come early. I was about to see some I was going to have a chance to see cutting edge technology that a leading corporation would be unveiling. On paper it was going to be a great presentation. and the excitement was palatable. The person presenting would be a software engineer who would talk about how this new technology was signaling the direction the company was moving. It was really an amazing opportunity for them as well to take advance orders and generate excitement.
7 Ways to Attract and Retain Talent
Most organizations never utilize their greatest asset in the battle for top talent - their culture. A number of studies have been done on attitudes of what people are looking for in the workplace. However, if you think of it in terms of what motivates you in your career, many of the items on our list simply follow common sense.
Here is our list of 7 ways to attract and retain talent:
Why Most Organizations Hate Real Diversity
From Talent Management magazine - February, 2008
Growing up in a Jewish home, I never really understood what it was like to know the disappointment a child feels when they finally learn there is no Santa. That was until recently. After 11 years of having my own consulting practice, I decided to join a large and fast growing human resource consulting practice. A friend who worked there told me it was a good place to work and I went through four months of interviews and psychological assessments. I had read the books that they had written and were familiar with their good reputation for teaching leadership to organizations. I was going to be working with people who I felt understood and valued what made me different. I was going to learn how these great thinkers were able to apply what they taught to create what should be the perfect workplace.
Boy, was I wrong! No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.
Click here to read more
Moving Beyond the Mission Statement
Innovation and creativity shouldn't be confined to a wall in reception
From Chief Learning Officer magazine - February, 2008
It was one of those rare moments of candor you get
when dealing with senior
management. “I know that
our mission statement talks about innovation and creativity,”
an executive once hesitantly told
me. “But we really don’t want
people thinking outside the box.
We just want to make the box cheaper.”
Translation? She wasn’t really
interested in innovation and
creativity. She just wanted to
keep costs down.
Using Multiple Intelligences to Build a Culture of Learning
"I am a visual learner." commented one workshop participant. "But they tell me that the only way I can learn is to experience it. I need to both see and do in order to really internalize the material. So what does that make me?"
A Strategy for Learning by Example
My Uncle Jack never wrote a book on leadership. I would be surprised if he even ever read one, much less attended a leadership workshop. He is not an expert in learning design, high performance consulting or how to engage any of the generations in the workplace.
Thinking Outside the Bag
Here are some exercises for team thinking breakthroughs.
Teamwork Tango
As a lifelong dancer, and a dance teacher of various forms of partner dancing, I have always focused not so much on teaching specific steps, as on how to work together. The goal is for the couple to move across the dance floor as a single, harmonious entity. To accomplish this, the key is for both partners to fully communicate with each other. I have also long been aware that the best leaders on the dance floor are those who are equally capable of dancing in the follower’s role. In fact, when I teach dance, I insist that everyone try both roles