SIMPLE RULES FOR SUCCESS

I was watching a documentary a couple of weeks ago and I was amazed to know that there is a retail sales man in the US who sold 1,425 new cars in one year alone. As a matter of fact, he is World’s Number – One New Car Salesman. The title was given to him by the Guinness Book of World Records and he still holds it.
Yes, Iam talking about none other than Joe Girard the world’s greatest salesman. As I watched his success story, I identified these simple rules for success:

1. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF – Give yourself a pat on the back at least once every day and say “There is no one else in the world to match your fingerprints, to match your voice, to match your features or to match your personality. You are number one and God has given you a special talent which makes you unique”.

2. CARRY THE RIGHT ATTITUDE – Associate with others who know how to sell themselves, who are winners; Avoid the losers from now on and put negative thoughts envy, jealousy, greed, hate out of your life; Clean your thoughts and the way you look at people; Love Your Job; Use a battery charger be one yourself. Please remember, Attitude is everything.

3. COMMUNICATION – Avoid negative words and those which hold you back; sharpen your listening skills and use the move forward words. Work on your language and master the art of communication.

4. PRESENTATION – Dress to the occasion and know the importance of body language and how it affects you. Be sensitive to others; know the rules, look around before you play.

5. SELL YOURSELF – Before you sell your products, services and ideas, sell yourself. If your customers know you, they trust what you say and buy what you offer. Know your strengths and capitalize on it. Use every opportunity that you get to be successful.

6. MANAGE YOUR EMOTIONS – If you have given your 100%, don’t worry about the results as it is just a matter of time. Think positive always; take time to smell the roses; spare some time for your loved ones.

Get into Meditation, sports, movies, shopping, travel or what ever you like to control stress. Don’t depend on Tobacco and Alcohol as they are not the only stress busters.

I learnt a lot from this documentary. All of us are chasing success today. However many of us might not know what success means and how success can be achieved. These golden rules have influenced me to great extent and Iam sure it would add a lot of value to you as well.

My Top 10 Free resources for training

Following training tools are free and help you control costs. You do not have to worry about slashed training budgets.

1. www.wikispaces.com – ( Free Learning Management System)

2. www.wiziq.com – ( Free Online Teaching, Web conferencing & elearning)

3. www.udutu.com – (free, web-based course authoring tool. I use Udutu to create content)

4. www.dimdim.com – ( you can use dimdim for online meetings,elearning and webconferencing)

5. www.jaxtr.com -( you can save a lot of money on international calls)

6. www.hpage.com – ( you can create a website for free in 15minutes)

7. www.surveymonkey.com- A free tool that lets you to design surveys and questionnaires.

8. www.whereisdoc.com – Website which provide you a lot of presentations to refer.

9. www.businessballs.com/teambuildinggames.htm – Website which provides you with management games and much more

10. http://moodle.org/ – Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.

Assessing the ROI of training

If people are your most valuable asset, it’s the right time to look at your training programmes as investments in your organisation’s human capital and not just as an expenditure.
Why evaluate training?
To validate training as a business tool
Training is one of many actions that a company can take to improve its performance and profitability. Training alone cannot improvise profits. If training is evaluated, it can be compared against other strategies that are incorporated to improvise productivity and revenue. Hence it is critical to for a business to assess its success rate.
To justify the costs incurred in training
We all know that when money is tight, training budgets are amongst the first to be sacrificed. Only by thorough, quantitative analysis can training departments make the case necessary to resist these cuts.
To help improve the design of training
Training programmes should be continuously improved to provide better value and increased benefits for an organisation. Without formal evaluation, the basis for changes can only be subjective. It is important that the content, delivery, administration and effectiveness are in sync with the organizational objectives.
To help in selecting training methods
These days there are many alternative approaches available to training departments. Using comparative evaluation techniques, organizations can make rational decisions about the methods to employ. It could be Instructor Led courses, elearning, Virtual classroom, WBT or a mix of all.
Criteria for measuring training success

Direct cost and Indirect cost: All Direct & Indirect costs that are associated with the training including design & development, Delivery & Logistics, Evaluation costs and others.

Efficiency
Efficiency is a measure of the amount of learning achieved relative to the amount of effort put in. In practical terms this means the amount of time it takes to complete a piece of training. Efficiency has a direct relation to cost – the more efficient a training method is, the less it will cost.
Timing
‘time is of the essence’ – Most of the times a training needs to be completed by a given date if a particular business objective is to be achieved. In these situations, the extent to which a training programme performs to schedule is a critical measure of success.
Networking and output
Trainings help to enhance your network. It is a platform to share the best practices, meet people and explore opportunities. Off late HR meets, Export meets and other professional meets build your network and provide knowledge that has a direct impact on your business. These meets could be called as platforms which provide trainings & enhance your management skills.

Reactions
Reactions are what you measure with the ‘feedback forms’. Reactions are important because, if trainees react negatively to your courses, they are less likely to transfer what they learnt to their work and more likely to give bad feedback to their peers.
Learning
Learning, in terms of new or improved skills, knowledge and attitudes, is the primary aim of a training event. Learning can be measured objectively using a test or exam or some form of assessed exercise. If a trainee has to achieve a certain level of learning to obtain a ‘pass mark’, then the number of passes may be used as an evaluation measure. Another important aspect of learning is the degree of retention – how much of the learning has stuck after the course is over.
Behaviour change
If a trainee has learnt something from a course, you hope that this will be reflected in their behaviour on the job. If a trainee employs what they have learnt appropriately, then their work behaviour will meet desired criteria. Behaviour can be measured through observation or, in some cases, through some automated means. To assess behaviour change requires that the measurements are taken before and after the training.
Performance change
If, as a result of training, trainees are using appropriate behaviours on the job, then you would expect that to have a positive impact on performance. A wide variety of indicators can be employed to measure the impact of training on performance – numbers of escalations, sales made, TAT and so on. It is hard to be sure that it is training that has made the difference without making comparisons to a control group – a group of employees who have not been through the training.
Return on investment as a measure
Return on investment (ROI) is a measure of the monetary benefits obtained by an organisation over a specified time period in return for a given investment in a training programme. Looking at it another way, ROI is the extent to which the benefits (outputs) of training exceed the costs (inputs).
• ROI can be used both to justify a planned investment and to evaluate the extent to which the desired return was achieved. However, it can not measure all aspects of training success
•
The process of calculating ROI
To calculate ROI you must first make estimates or obtain measurements of the costs and benefits associated with a training programme. As you will see, the calculation of ROI is then a relatively simple process. Let’s start with the costs …

• Forecasting and measuring costs

Design and development costs

• Promotional costs

• Administration costs

• Delivery costs

• Training materials & Logistics cost
Evaluation costs

Forecasting and measuring benefits

The financial benefits of training can not be measured in terms of reactions, nor the amount of learning that has been achieved; not even the extent to which behaviour may have changed. The real benefits come from improved performance – traditionally the hardest training outcome to forecast or measure.
So, what do we do when faced with this difficulty – back away and focus our evaluation efforts on easier measures? No, we do the very best we can, because all other measures fail to reflect the financial reality that training must pay off – in hard cash.
Let’s look at the major categories of benefits. Note that these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive – in some respects they provide alternative ways of looking at the same underlying benefit. Because of this, you should be extremely careful not to include the same basic benefit under more than one of these headings.
• Labour savings

• Productivity improvement

• Other cost savings

Income generation

Calculating return on investment

Return on investment tells you the percentage return you have made over a specified period as a result of investing in a training programme. On the assumption that benefits will continue to accrue some time after the training, then the period that you specify is critical to the ROI figure you will obtain. You may like to specify a period that fits in well with your organisation’s planning cycle – perhaps a year or two years. On the other hand, you may wish to calculate the period to correspond to the lifetime of the benefit, in which case you will need to know how long the average student stays in a position in which they can continue to apply the knowledge and skills being taught.
It is relatively simple to calculate return on investment:
% ROI = (benefits / costs) x 100
Payback period
Another way at looking at ROI, is to calculate how many months it will take before the benefits of the training match the costs and the training pays for itself. This is called the payback period:
Payback period = costs / monthly benefits
Payback period is a powerful measure. If the figure is relatively low – perhaps only a few months – then management will be that much more encouraged to make the training investment. As a measure, it also has the advantage of not requiring an arbitrary benefit period to be specified.

There are more ways of measuring the quantitative and qualitative benefits of ROI which shall be discussed in the next few posts.

20 Critical factors to know about Training and Development

Training is defined as planned learning experiences designed to provide workforce with the competencies needed to perform their current or future jobs.

 

Training is referred to as teaching specific job related skills and behaviour. Whereas development is more general than training and more oriented towards individual development besides fulfilling organizational needs. Development provides knowledge and understanding to individuals so as to enable them function more effectively in organizations through problem solivng, inter personal relations and decision making.

 

One has to understand the difference between Training and Development

 

Training	Development
Training focuses on technical aspects	Development focuses on theoretical skill and conceptual ideas.
Training is concerned with specific job skills and behaviour	Development is concerned with related enchancement of feneral knowledge and understanding of non technical organisation functions.
Training is mostly for non managers	Development is for managers and executives
Training focuses on current roles	Development focuses on current and future roles
Training focuses on short terms gains	Development is for the long term
Training is job oriented	Development is general in nature and strives to inculcate initiative,enterprise,creativity,dedication and loyalty amongst executives
Training is one shot deal	Development is a continious on going process
Training may result in enhancement of a particular job skill	Development mayh result in persoanl growth and developmetn of overall personality
Training is the result of organisational initiative and hence motivation is extrinsic	Motivation is intrinsic

 

 

20 Critical factors to keep in mind about Training & Development

 

• Viewing T&D as the tangential to the business: Potential performance improvements that are neglected or mismanaged affect productivity. A productivity increase of only 5% (which is easily achievable), can have a major impact on the bottom line.

 

 

• Managing T&D: Training and development requires a specialist who can manage this function and align training with organizational objectives. Generally HR Generalists Manage too many things and may not be able to provide the required focus. T&D is a subsystem of the HR however, it requires special skills to deliver goods.
• Measuring the ROI: Three questions need be asked after each delivery. Did the behaviours change as we expected?What are the measurable results? Were the employees satisfied with the class?

 

 

• Focus on Development areas: Good Managers know that pointing out opportunities for improvement in a tactful and effective

 

 

• Ensuring that T&D has the right manpower: Minimum of two training managers ( in an organization of 300)are needed to provide comprehensive services which include a balanced assessment of company needs;providing focus to all segments of the business;obtaining access to the best vendors to fulill the needs; ensure that the efforts reap  measurable results.

 

• Competency mapping: Leadership, Management, Decision making, Team work, Technology and other competencies can take a longer amount of time to master. It is extremely important to map the competencies as against the required competencies to carry out the jobs successfully to meet the organizational goals.

 

• Delivery of training programs: Trainings need a mixture of three ingredients namely relevant content, good design and strong delivery.Only the most skilled subject matter expert can excel.

 

• Approach: Trainings  cannot solve the potential issues and improvise    performance. Mentors need to be identified from each group who could monitor and provide on the job training/tips which for sure can provide quick results. Business development Team, Operations,HR and the trainings team need to work together to achieve the desired results.

 

• Training need analysis: Traditional methods of analyzing the needs might not help. A 360 degree feedback should be taken from the managers, customers, stake holders and other relavant groups to understand the crucial trainings that one needs. Other internal & external factors should also be noted when conducting the TNA. For ex: trainings on financial management might help the employees to manage their finance when the whole world is talking about economic crisis. Trainings on stress management, personality development and health might serve as a strategic initiative.

 

• Technology & Logistics: It is extremely important for an organization to have an elibrary or an elearning portal which encourages the workforce to take up self paced and WBT courses at a convenient time. Elearning cannot be the right solution to reduce cost. A training program should be a mixture of ILT (Instructor Led Training), elearning and on the job training.

 

• You can save a lot of your money when you have the DVD’s or video library archived in your Learning Management Systems (LMS). LMS can store all your training materials,presentations,job aids and others. LMS act as a Virtual class room or meeting centres where quick trainings can be provided to enhance productitity.

 

• LMS can manage enrolment, send invitations automatically and can generate reports pertaining to cost of training and attendance. It is required to have an efficient LMS.

 

• Training rooms and other logistics also play an important role in Delivery.

 

• Understand the cost of inefficient labor.
• Assess the costs associated with the project delays
• Invest in your managers and leaders.

 

• Process documentation: Ensure that all your processes are documented. Roles should be process oriented and not people oriented. Provide Job aids and instruction manuals wherever necessary. It is extremely important that skills required to perform a job are documented.

 

• Certify your workforce: Ensure that your workforce gets certified before getting into the new role. It is important that your organization develops a certification mechanism which tests the skills of employees during induction, after process trainings and each time when they get promoted to the next level.

 

• Content Management: Organizations need to build a database which consists of crucial presentations, ebooks, articles and other raw materials required to design a training material. This can be plugged into the LMS.

 

• Ensure that each employee has atleast 40 hours of time dedicated for development.

 

• To reduce cost, ensure that the fill rate is always above 85%. Do not encourage last minute cancellations, No shows and postponement of trainings.

 

•  Ensure that you have a succession plan in place and a sophisticated leadership development program to identify and groom the future leaders.

 

•  It is advisable to identify and groom trainers (Technical and non technical) internally. It is difficult for the Training institutes to sense the customer expectations and customize training as per the requirements of a project manager/business. One should always look at aligning training the organizational objectives by providing the right training to the right person at the right time.

 

There are other factors which are crucial and needs to be remembered as well. However the above serves as the strong foundation in building a successful training teams.

Training Needs Identification

A Training Needs Analysis (TNA) is used to assess an organization’s training needs. The root of the TNA is the gap analysis. This is an assessment of the gap between the knowledge, skills and attitudes that the people in the organization currently possess and the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they require to meet the organization’s objectives.

The training needs assessment is best conducted up front, before training solutions are budgeted, designed and delivered. The output of the needs analysis will be a document that specifies why, what, who, when, where and how. More specifically, the document will need to answer these questions:

• why do people need the training?
• what skills need imparting?
• who needs the training?
• when will they need the new skills?
• where may the training be conducted? and
• how may the new skills be imparted?

There are so many ways for conducting a Training Needs Analysis, depending on your situation. One size does not fit all. Is the purpose of the needs assessment to:

• lead in to a design of a specific purpose improvement initiative (e.g., customer complaint reduction)
• enable the design of the organization’s training calendar
• identify training and development needs of individual staff during the performance appraisal cycle

… and so on and so on.

In clarifying the purpose of the TNA, consider the scope of the TNA. Is it to determine training needs:

• at the organization level?
• at the project level for a specific project? or
• at the department level for specific employees?

Your answer to these questions will dictate:

• who will conduct the TNA
• how the TNA will be conducted, and
• what data sources will be used

Training Needs Analysis Method

Below are three scenarios in which you may find yourself wanting to conduct a Training Needs Analysis. This is not an exhaustive treatment, however, it will give you some tips on what to do.

Employee Performance Appraisal

In many organizations, each employee’s manager discusses training and development needs during the final part of the performance appraisal discussion. This method suits where training needs are highly varied amongst individual employees. Typically, the manager constructs an employee Performance Development Plan in collaboration with the employee being appraised. The Plan takes into consideration:

• the organization’s strategies and plans
• agreed employee goals and targets
• the employee’s performance results
• the employee’s role description
• feedback from internal/external customers and stakeholders, and
• the employee’s stated career aspirations

The employee’s completed Performance Development Plan should document the area that requires improvement, the actual development activity, resource requirements, expected outcomes and an agreed time frame in which the development outcome will be achieved.

You may find some commonality amongst individual training and development needs identified in the various performance appraisals. In this case, it may pay the organization to review and classify each of the needs and convert them into appropriate training courses (or other interventions). The next step is to prioritize their importance and aggregate the results so that you end up with a list of courses and participant numbers against each. Then negotiate a delivery schedule that fits in with managers/supervisors and employees whilst keeping an eye on your budget.

Improvement Project

Most, if not all, improvement projects have some employee training associated with them. Examples of improvement projects include planned and structured attempts to reduce the incidence of product defects, increase sales volume and decrease the number of customer complaints. Here, the Training Needs Analysis begins by clarifying the measurable organizational improvement targets and the employee behaviors required to meet these targets. For example, the organization might set a target of a 50 percent reduction in customer complaints by the end of the year. Employee behaviors required to achieve this target might be:

• empathetic listening to customer complaints
• regular follow up of complaint resolution

… and so on.

To get to this point, though, the cause of the underperformance needs to be determined through a series of structured questions. If there is no one else to perform this initial diagnosis, you as the training professional may be called upon to do this job. A performance consulting approach can help you here. With this approach, the person doing the diagnosis first asks managers to identify their problems in concrete terms. Next, possible causes and solutions are discussed and training solutions identified, where appropriate.

To do this successfully, the performance consultant needs to be well-versed in process improvement methods and employee motivation theory and practice. For small projects, you can use a simple employee performance flow chart in working with managers to help identify the cause of performance deficiencies.

Where training is identified as an appropriate solution or as part of the solution, we then recommend that you work through a training needs analysis questionnaire with the appropriate stakeholders. This will give you the information you need to move to the training program design phase.

An effective training needs analysis questionnaire worksheet will cover at least the following areas:

1.  TRAINING NEEDS ANALYSIS CONTEXT     Project Sponsor Reason for Request Participant Roles Organizational Objectives Training Program Objectives 2.  TARGET POPULATION     No. of Participants Location Department Education/Experience Background Current Job Experience Current Performance vs Expected Performance Language/Cultural Differences Anticipated Attitudes 3.  TASK DESCRIPTION     Task Description Frequency Proficiency Performance Criteria Conditions Underpinning Knowledge

The results from these structured interviews are then written up in a formal document, along with the answers to the other questions raised above. The results of the TNA are then fed into the next phase of the instructional systems design life cycle; the high-level design of the training program.

Following all of the above is of course more time consuming than getting a simple wish-list from managers and delivering a smorgasbord of training courses. However, by using a structured approach, you will avoid the 80 percent wastage of resources that many companies experience in delivering programs that don’t truly fit their needs.

Constructing a Training Calendar

When constructing an annual training calendar, be wary of simply asking managers what training they want delivered. Assessing training needs this way, you will most probably get a wish list with little connection to the real needs of the organization. When the time comes and they and their workers are pressed for time, you may find it difficult to fill seats. Training is expensive, and there is no better method for wasting your scare training dollars.

Why is this so? We find that many managers are not skilled in identifying which of their problems can be solved by training and which cannot. For a training calendar to be effective, it needs to be tailored for your specific organization’s real needs. Ask your managers what training they need. However, make sure you engage them in constructive dialog about what their real problems are and which of them can realistically be addressed through training. Training calendars are best suited to repeatable and regular demand, such as refresher skills training for infrequently performed technical tasks and for new recruits joining the organization. In these cases, review what training is required on a regular basis and look at what new recruits need to be proficient at soon after they join your organization. Generally speaking, consult with your management team by checking off which of the following areas require inclusion in your training calendar:

• management, leadership and supervision skills
• soft skills, such as communication and conflict resolution
• environment, health and safety
• human resource processes, such as performance management
• business skills, such as strategy, planning and process improvement
• technical line and staff skills such as telephone etiquette and inventory management

In constructing your training calendar, we suggest you also consider looking at one or more of the data sources listed in the next section. Once you have composed your list of courses, assess demand for each course and the required frequency, all the while, keeping an eye on your budget. With a limited budget, we suggest you get your management team to help you assess priorities.

Data Sources

In conducting your training needs analysis, you may have a variety of data sources available to you. Which data sources you use will depend on a number of factors. These factors include:

• the amount of time you have available
• the human resources you have available
• the level of accuracy you require
• the reliability of each data source
• the accessibility of each data source

The data sources that you have available may include:

• interviews/surveys with supervisors/managers
• interviews/surveys with employees
• employee performance appraisal documents
• organization’s strategic planning documents
• organization/department operational plans
• organization/department key performance indicators
• customer complaints
• critical incidents
• product/service quality data

For example, if you are considering providing training in project management to project managers, you may want to interview the prospective participants, the project managers, and their managers on what problems they are facing. It may also pay to review planning and procedural documents to ascertain what project management methodology and tools your organization is using, or is planning on using.

Data sources that may show light on where the training needs to focus the most are project performance data and post-implementation reviews. Which sources you will actually use and how much time and effort you expend on each will depend on your particular circumstances. Needless to say, there is no magic formula and you will need to exercise a fair amount of judgment in most cases.

Management Lessons from Jack Welch

) Lead
 
Managers muddle – leaders inspire. Leaders are people who inspire with clear vision of how things can be done better. “What we are looking for are leaders at every level who can energize, excite and inspire rather than enervate, depress, and control.”
 
• Create a vision and then ignite your organization to make this vision a reality. Get people so passionate about what they are doing that they cannot wait to execute this plan. Have great energy, competitive spirit and the ability to spark excitement and achieve results. Search for leaders who have the same qualities.
 
• Focus on strategic issues. Your job is to understand the strategic issues within each of your businesses where they are going around the Five Questions. Know the talent they need to win in those markets and the amount of capital they need. And make bets.
 
• Don’t micromanage. Your job is to see the big picture. Don’t manage every detail. Don’t get caught up in the minutiae or obsess over every detail, but instead inspire others to execute of your vision. Surround yourself with great people and trust them to do their job and contribute their best to the organization.
• Involve everyone and welcome great ideas from everywhere. Anyone can be a leader, just so long as they contribute, and the most meaningful way for anyone to contribute is to come up with a good idea. Business is all about getting the best ideas from everyone. New ideas are the lifeblood of the organization, the fuel that makes it run. “The hero is the person with a new idea.” There is simply nothing more important to an organization than expressing ideas and creating a vision.
• Lead by Example. To spark others to perform, you must lead by example. Jack Welch mastery of the 4 E’s of leadership – Energy, Energize, Edge, and Execution – was always in evidence. “He had great energy, sparked others, had incredible competitive spirit, and had a record of execution that was second to none. This is a key of the Welch phenomenon. Had he been lacking in any of the traits he espoused, he would not have commanded such acclaim.”
 
2) Manage Less
 
 ”We are constantly amazed by how much people will do when they are not told what to do by management.” In the new knowledge-based economy, people should make their own decision. Managing less is managing better. Close supervision, control and bureaucracy kill the competitive spirit of the company. “Weak managers are the killers of business; they are the job killers. You can’t   manage self-confidence into people.”
 
 
3) Articulate Your Vision
“Leaders inspire people with clear visions of how things can be done better.” The best leader do not provide a step-by-step instruction manual for workers. The best leaders are those who come up with new idea, and articulate a vision that inspires others to act.
 
 
4) Simplify
Keeping things simple is one of the keys to business. “Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.”
 
5) Get Less Formal
You must realize now how important it is to maintain the kind of corporate informality that encourages a training class to comfortably challenge the boss’s pet ideas.”
 
6)  Energize Others
Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.
 
7) Face Reality
 
Face reality, then act decisively. Most mistakes that leaders make arise from not being willing to face reality and then acting on it. Facing reality often means saying and doing things that are not popular, but only by coming to grips with reality would things get better.
 
 See Change as an Opportunity
Change is a big part of the reality in business. “Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while… Keeping an eye out for change is both exhilarating and fun.”1
 
9) Get Good Ideas from Everywhere
New ideas are the lifeblood of business. “The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action – fast.”10
 
10) Follow up
Follow up on everything. Follow-up is one key measure of success for a business. Your follow-up business strategy will pave the way for your success.
 
11) Get Rid of Bureaucracy
 
The way to harness the power of your people is “to turn them loose, and get the management layers off their backs, the bureaucratic shackles off their feet and the functional barriers out of their way.”
 
12) Eliminate Boundaries
In order to make sure that people are free to reach for the impossible, you must remove anything that gets in their way. “Boundarylessness” describes an open organization free of bureaucracy and anything else that prevents the free flow of ideas, people, decisions, etc. Informality, fun and speed are the qualities found in a boundaryless organization
 
13) Put Values First
 
Don’t focus too much on the numbers. “Numbers aren’t the vision; numbers are the products.”Focus more on the softer values of building a team, sharing ideas, exciting others.
 
14) Cultivate Leaders
 
Cultivate leaders who have the four E’s of leadership: Energy, Energize, Edge, and Execution;  leader who share values of your company and deliver on commitments.
 
 
15) Create a Learning Culture
Turn your company into a learning organization to spark free flow of communication and exchange of ideas. “The desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere – and to rapidly convert this learning into action – is its ultimate competitive advantage.”
 
16) Involve Everyone
Business is all about capturing intellect from every person. The way to engender enthusiasm it to allow employees far more freedom and far more responsibility.
 
17)  Make Everybody a Team Player
Managers should learn to become team players. Middle managers have to be team members and coaches. Take steps against those managers who wouldn’t learn to become team players.
 
18) Stretch
Stretch targets energize.  “We have found that by reaching for what appears to be the impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don’t quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done.”
 
 
19) Instill Confidence
 
Create a truly confident workforce. Confidence is a vital ingredient of any learning organization. The prescription for winning is speed, simplicity, and self-confidence. Self-confident people are open to good ideas regardless of their source and are willing to share them. “Just as surely as speed flows from simplicity, simplicity is grounded in self-confidence.”
 
20) Have Fun
 Fun must be a big element in your business strategy. No one should have a job they don’t enjoy. If you don’t wake up energized and excited about tackling a new set of challenges, then you might be in the wrong job…
 
21) Be Number 1 or Number 2
 
“When you’re number four or five in a market, when number one sneezes, you get pneumonia. When you’re number one, you control your destiny. The number fours keep merging; they have difficult times. That’s not the same if you’re number four, and that’s your only businesses. Then you have to find strategic ways to get stronger
 
 
22) Live Quality
“We want to change the competitive landscape by being not just better than our competitors, but by taking quality to a whole new level. We want to make our quality so special, so valuable to our customers, so important to their success that our products become the only real value choice.”7
 
23) Constantly Focus on Innovation
 
“You have just got to constantly focus on innovation. And more competitors. You’ve got to constantly produce more for less through intellectual capital. Shun the incremental, and look for the quantum leap.” Now the fundamentals have got to be more education. More information knowledge, faster speeds, more technology across the board.
 
24) Live Speed
“Speed is everything. It is the indispensable ingredient of competitiveness.” Speed, simplicity and self-confidence are closely intertwined. By simplifying the organization and instilling confidence, you create the foundation for an organization that incorporates speed into the fabric of the company.
 
25) Behave Like a Small Company
Small companies have huge competitive advantages. They “are uncluttered, simple, informal. They thrive on passion and ridicule bureaucracy. Small companies grow on good ideas – regardless of their source. They need everyone, involve everyone, and reward or remove people based on their contribution to winning. Small companies dream big dreams and set the bar high – increments and fractions don’t interest them.”

50 Tips for a better team work

1.    Act with integrity; this is one quality that will make a great team.
2.    Credibility as a team-leader is mostly as good as only it is perceived. So display credibility and act with credibility.
3.    Walk the talk; you get judged well only when you walk the talk. Example: if you are asking for quality work, it’s a given that you also would do the same. Doing the other way destroys credibility.
4.    be enthusiastic; encourage the team to be enthusiastic as well.
5.    Never hire in haste, which makes waste.
6.    Educate the team on who your customer is, who your competition is.
7.    Create a mechanism to know what is happening in competition.
8.    Let the team know that the customer is supreme, and he is your most important asset.
9.    Give no room for politics in your team. At the hint of it, stem it at the root; and exhibit the fact that politicking is a strict no-no.
10.    Communicate personally as often as possible; use the phone; only re-iterate in written communication.
11.    Smile and laugh in the team, work need not be serious as most of us would think it to be.
12.    Share the joy of any of your team-members.
13.    Share and partake in their sorrows. Give a helping hand, in whichever way you can when a need arises.
14.    Make the team workplace a fun place to be; again laugh and smile.
15.    Show the team member how happy you are to have him/her in the team.
16.    Celebrate each of your team-members birthdays, anniversary… pass on gifts voluntarily.
17.    Have a vision statement for the team; in line with the organization’s vision statement.
18.    Make the purpose of the team clear – it could be revenues, number of customers, turn around time, producing so many units… whatever.
19.    Let this purpose be written down and shared amongst all team members.
20.    Set individual goals clearly – leave no ambiguity in this – make it measurable for them as well as you.
21.    Clear state the expected quality of work, and quantity of work – on a day, for  a week, for the month, and for the year.
22.    Go out of your way to help a team member reach the stated goal.
23.    Make each of them feel that he/she can confide in you.
24.    Understand and talk to them of their job-goals and career goals.
25.    Make learning a team habit. Encourage learning in any form.
26.    Train the team in relevant and contemporary work skills.
27.    Build the team on the strength of his/her personal qualities.
28.    Don’t brood on their weaknesses. Or pass comments on them.
29.    Make them aware of the business opportunities and threats, and the way to remain in a position of advantage.
30.    Build a lot of fun around the goals..  make work interesting…..
31.    Celebrate small milestones, by any team member, and shower praises in public
32.    Celebrate and reward team ideas, which would bring in better results, fresh insights, and knowledge to all – and celebrate this each and every time.
33.    Discourage yes-men. If two people agreed on everything, then one of them is redundant.
34.    Show the team members a growth path – a path that would be intertwined with positive contribution.
35.    Reward excellence. Abhor mediocrity.
36.    Do not reprimand team members. Grown ups don’t need to be reprimanded; they only need to be counseled or advised.
37.    Allow people to make mistakes, which are the only way you get a learning team. Sans mistakes, no new things are going to happen.
38.    Make corrections well in time; not once in a blue moon. Once in a blue moon corrections upset the person, you and the team objectives.
39.    Evince interest in each individual; know them a little more than professionally – their family, their interests, passion, hobbies etc.
40.    Go for lunch once a week outside the office campus; this is by far the best way to bond.
41.    Get the families of teams together once a month. If the teams are cross location, make it at least once in a quarter.
42.    Be transparent and rational in all decision making.
43.    Be objective and not subjective in any of your deeds at work, and related to work.
44.    Make incentive plans objective, simple and clear. Complicated plans lead to a lack of uniform understanding across the team. This colors judgment, and defeats the team spirit.
45.    Take personal interest to ensure that all pay-out timelines are adhered to by the organization and the divisions.
46.    State clearly that a performer would have a soft corner, and would be rewarded.
47.    Reward performers often. And for the accomplishments.
48.    Keep team meetings brief, and with a stated objective and agenda.
49.    Do not meet formally without a written agenda circulated.
50.    Build in a surprise element in rewards for small wins – this could be internal or external to the organization – could be a new client acquired, a new proposal, a cost saving measure, a new idea, whatever…

What’s Training Good For Anyway?

There are good reasons to mandate training and development in your organization, and there are bad reasons for mandating training.  There are ALSO good reasons for NOT training, in some circumstances, and bad reasons to refuse.  Knowing what training can and cannot accomplish enables you to make the right decisions at the right time, ensuring that your limited training dollars are used effectively. 

The Chaotic Work World

If our work worlds were stable, and un-changing,  we might not need to worry too much about training.  We might still do it to provide employee development but it would be less critical to our organization’s success.

It ain’t so.  All you need to do is look around at your own organization, and what you are likely to see is significant changes that have occurred during the last year.  You may have lived through down-sizing, re-structuring, changed mandates, increased workloads, flattening of management structure, and a host of other changes.  It is not likely that these changes will cease in the future, and we may be looking at changed political imperatives that will result in movement towards Special Operating Agencies, and making government more entrepreneurial.

You know all this.  Change has accelerated to the point where some organizations are in chaos, and most are at least staggered.  What all this means is that as our work worlds change, new skills, knowledge and concepts are needed to achieve our corporate goals.  And, our personal goals.  Just to stay even, and just to keep our sanity.

Since change is occurring at such a rapid rate, while we may have taken our jobs at a time when we were fully qualified, we may now have gaps in our knowledge.  At a management level, the skills needed to manage a flat organization, a Total Quality Management organization, or a Special Operating Agency are different than those we have.  At an employee level, it is no different.  Technology changes, or changes in the way organizations are managed, or even increased workloads change the actual JOBS in an organization, and change them in such away that new skills and abilities are needed so that new expectations can be met. 
 

What Training Can Do

Training CAN accomplish many things.  It can help people learn the new skills that are required to meet new expectations, both formal and informal.  For example, a support staff person may have been hired originally for his/her ability to type, to answer the phone and file.  But now, with increased workloads, we want that person to be able to do much more…perhaps to solve client problems, to use desktop publishing processes, to handle more of the day-to-day issues, so we can use our time more effectively.  Training can help people accept the challenge of their evolving jobs.

Training can also help to:

. build a common understanding of the  organization’s purpose.

. show management’s commitment and loyalty to  employees

. develop people so they can increase their   responsibilities and contribute to the organization  in new ways. 
 

What Training Cannot Do

There are many things that training can’t do.  Training, on its own, cannot change ineffective employees into effective ones.  It is unlikely to address ALL the causes of poor performance.  Limited training also will not turn a poor supervisor or manager into an effective one, unless it is coupled with ongoing coaching from above.

Training will not erase problems that occur as a result of poor structuring of work, mismatching of work with the person, unclear authorities and responsibilities or other organizationally related issues. 
 

Training As A Tool

The best way of thinking about training is to think of it as a management tool, much like a carpenter’s tool.  Just like a carpenter picks the hammer and not a screwdriver to pound a nail, the manager should be choosing training because it is the RIGHT tool for the job.

Also, to continue the analogy, if the supporting structure (the wood) is rotted, only the foolish carpenter would attempt to pound the nail into the wood, and expect it to help.  It is the same with the manager.  If a manager expects things to improve as a result of training, he or she needs to ensure that the supports are there for the use of the tool, and that there are no other non-training related problems hanging about.

To conclude, training can be a valuable tool for the organization and the manager, provided it is the RIGHT tool to solve the problem or address the identified issues.  Even then, there must be supports in the organization so the training can be effective.  Other articles in this edition discuss some of these supports.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a management tool, period. As with any management
tool, it is used for one purpose only: to help an organization do a
better job – to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the
organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the
organization’s direction in response to a changing environment. In
short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental
decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what
it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. (Adapted from
Bryson’s Strategic Planning in Public and Nonprofit Organizations)

A word by word dissection of this definition provides the key elements
that underlie the meaning and success of a strategic planning process:
The process is strategic because it involves preparing the best way to
respond to the circumstances of the organization’s environment, whether
or not its circumstances are known in advance; nonprofits often must
respond to dynamic and even hostile environments. Being strategic, then,
means being clear about the organization’s objectives, being aware of
the organization’s resources, and incorporating both into being
consciously responsive to a dynamic environment.

The process is about planning because it involves intentionally setting
goals (i.e., choosing a desired future) and developing an approach to
achieving those goals.

The process is disciplined in that it calls for a certain order and
pattern to keep it focused and productive. The process raises a sequence
of questions that helps planners examine experience, test assumptions,
gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the
environment in which the organization will be working in the future.
Finally, the process is about fundamental decisions and actions because
choices must be made in order to answer the sequence of questions
mentioned above. The plan is ultimately no more, and no less, than a set
of decisions about what to do, why to do it, and how to do it. Because
it is impossible to do everything that needs to be done in this world,
strategic planning implies that some organizational decisions and
actions are more important than others – and that much of the strategy
lies in making the tough decisions about what is most important to
achieving organizational success.

The strategic planning can be complex, challenging, and even messy, but
it is always defined by the basic ideas outlined above – and you can
always return to these basics for insight into your own strategic
planning process.

Strategic Planning and Long-Range Planning

Although many use these terms interchangeably, strategic planning and
long-range planning differ in their emphasis on the “assumed”
environment. Long-range planning is generally considered to mean the
development of a plan for accomplishing a goal or set of goals over a
period of several years, with the assumption that current knowledge
about future conditions is sufficiently reliable to ensure the plan’s
reliability over the duration of its implementation. In the late fifties
and early sixties, for example, the US. economy was relatively stable
and somewhat predictable, and, therefore, long-range planning was both
fashionable and useful.

On the other hand, strategic planning assumes that an organization must
be responsive to a dynamic, changing environment (not the more stable
environment assumed for long-range planning). Certainly a common
assumption has emerged in the nonprofit sector that the environment is
indeed changeable, often in unpredictable ways. Strategic planning,
then, stresses the importance of making decisions that will ensure the
organization’s ability to successfully respond to changes in the
environment.

Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management

Strategic planning is only useful if it supports strategic thinking and
leads to strategic management – the basis for an effective organization.
Strategic thinking means asking, “Are we doing the right thing?”
Perhaps, more precisely, it means making that assessment using three key
requirements about strategic thinking: a definite purpose be in mind; an
understanding of the environment, particularly of the forces that affect
or impede the fulfillment of that purpose; and creativity in developing
effective responses to those forces.

It follows, then, that strategic management is the application of
strategic thinking to the job of leading an organization. Dr. Jagdish
Sheth, a respected authority on marketing and strategic planning,
provides the following framework for understanding strategic management:
continually asking the question, “Are we doing the right thing?” It
entails attention to the “big picture” and the willingness to adapt to
changing circumstances, and consists of the following three elements:

• formulation of the organization’s future mission in light of changing
  external factors such as regulation, competition, technology, and
  customers
• development of a competitive strategy to achieve the mission
• creation of an organizational structure which will deploy resources to
  successfully carry out its competitive strategy.

Strategic management is adaptive and keeps an organization relevant. In
these dynamic times it is more likely to succeed than the traditional
approach of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

What Strategic Planning Is Not

Everything said above to describe what strategic planning is can also
provide an understanding of what it is not. For example, it is about
fundamental decisions and actions, but it does not attempt to make
future decisions (Steiner, 1979). Strategic planning involves
anticipating the future environment, but the decisions are made in the
present. This means that over time, the organization must stay abreast
of changes in order to make the best decisions it can at any given point
- it must manage, as well as plan, strategically.

Strategic planning has also been described as a tool – but it is not a
substitute for the exercise of judgment by leadership. Ultimately, the
leaders of any enterprise need to sit back and ask, and answer, “What
are the most important issues to respond to?” and “How shall we
respond?” Just as the hammer does not create the bookshelf, so the data
analysis and decision-making tools of strategic planning do not make the
organization work – they can only support the intuition, reasoning
skills, and judgment that people bring to their organization.

Finally, strategic planning, though described as disciplined, does not
typically flow smoothly from one step to the next. It is a creative
process, and the fresh insight arrived at today might very well alter
the decision made yesterday. Inevitably the process moves forward and
back several times before arriving at the final set of decisions.
Therefore, no one should be surprised if the process feels less like a
comfortable trip on a commuter train, but rather like a ride on a roller
coaster. But even roller coaster cars arrive at their destination, as
long as they stay on track!

Balanced Scorecard Basics

The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals. It was originated by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton as a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial performance measures to traditional financial metrics to give managers and executives a more ‘balanced’ view of organizational performance.  While the phrase balanced scorecard was coined in the early 1990s, the roots of the this type of approach are deep, and include the pioneering work of General Electric on performance measurement reporting in the 1950’s and the work of French process engineers (who created the Tableau de Bord – literally, a “dashboard” of performance measures) in the early part of the 20th century.

The balanced scorecard has evolved from its early use as a simple performance measurement framework to a full strategic planning and management system. The “new” balanced scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the “marching orders” for the organization on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps planners identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies.

This new approach to strategic management was first detailed in a series of articles and books by Drs. Kaplan and Norton. Recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, the balanced scorecard approach provides a clear prescription as to what companies should measure in order to ‘balance’ the financial perspective. The balanced scorecard is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback around both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. When fully deployed, the balanced scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve center of an enterprise.

Kaplan and Norton describe the innovation of the balanced scorecard as follows:

1. “The balanced scorecard retains traditional financial measures. But financial measures tell the story of past events, an adequate story for industrial age companies for which investments in long-term capabilities and customer relationships were not critical for success. These financial measures are inadequate, however, for guiding and evaluating the journey that information age companies must make to create future value through investment in customers, suppliers, employees, processes, technology, and innovation.”  

Perspectives

The balanced scorecard suggests that we view the organization from four perspectives, and to develop metrics, collect data and analyze it relative to each of these perspectives:

The Learning & Growth Perspective
This perspective includes employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and corporate self-improvement. In a knowledge-worker organization, people — the only repository of knowledge — are the main resource. In the current climate of rapid technological change, it is becoming necessary for knowledge workers to be in a continuous learning mode. Metrics can be put into place to guide managers in focusing training funds where they can help the most. In any case, learning and growth constitute the essential foundation for success of any knowledge-worker organization.

Kaplan and Norton emphasize that ‘learning’ is more than ‘training’; it also includes things like mentors and tutors within the organization, as well as that ease of communication among workers that allows them to readily get help on a problem when it is needed. It also includes technological tools; what the Baldrige criteria call “high performance work systems.”

The Business Process Perspective
This perspective refers to internal business processes. Metrics based on this perspective allow the managers to know how well their business is running, and whether its products and services conform to customer requirements (the mission). These metrics have to be carefully designed by those who know these processes most intimately; with our unique missions these are not something that can be developed by outside consultants.

The Customer Perspective
Recent management philosophy has shown an increasing realization of the importance of customer focus and customer satisfaction in any business. These are leading indicators: if customers are not satisfied, they will eventually find other suppliers that will meet their needs. Poor performance from this perspective is thus a leading indicator of future decline, even though the current financial picture may look good.

In developing metrics for satisfaction, customers should be analyzed in terms of kinds of customers and the kinds of processes for which we are providing a product or service to those customer groups.

The Financial Perspective
Kaplan and Norton do not disregard the traditional need for financial data. Timely and accurate funding data will always be a priority, and managers will do whatever necessary to provide it. In fact, often there is more than enough handling and processing of financial data. With the implementation of a corporate database, it is hoped that more of the processing can be centralized and automated. But the point is that the current emphasis on financials leads to the “unbalanced” situation with regard to other perspectives.  There is perhaps a need to include additional financial-related data, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit data, in this category.