The program was sponsored by the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) and organized through the joint efforts of Panasonic Regional Training Center – Singapore (PRTC) and PMPC.

Root Cause Analysis is a technique for identifying the underlying causes of why an incident occurred so that the most effective solutions can be identified and implemented. The aim is to prevent the occurrence of the problem in the future. For example, if your organization has a problem that keeps coming back despite your efforts to fix it, then perhaps you have not yet identified the root cause of the problem. The fixe4s you have implemented might be addressing only the symptoms of the problem and not yet the root cause. Root Cause Analysis is a structured approach to dig through the many reasons why a problem might occur and help you identify the root cause and prevent is a recurrence in the future.

It is typically used when something goes wrong, but it can also be used when something goes well. While Root Cause Analysis has been used by engineers in Manufacturing and Design for many years, non-engineering staff have also benefitted from learning how to apply this technique.

Mr. Rafael M. Pefianco MPM FAAP has successfully conducted this workshop for several clients who are in sales, logistics and distribution businesses.

If you put a good performer up against a bad system, the system will win every time! – Geary Rummler, founding partner of the Performance Design Lab.

Most people come to work intending to do a good job. However, the more employees bang their heads against organizational and process barriers, the more the desire to excel recedes, and the less energy there is to fight the good fight day after day. The resulting ebb in productivity or performance leads the boss to step in to fix problems by coaching employees on how to do a better job.

Research suggests that some 75 percent of the issues that impact individual performance in the workplace are system issues rather than personal issues.

The system is different in every organization and for every job role, and includes organizational and process design, how information and resources are made available and how performance is recognized. A talent manager or coach needs to understand the organizational context and system to appropriately coach employees to higher levels of performance. For instance, an organization or a process design may make accessing information or resources needed to do a job so challenging the performer starts taking shortcuts or avoids doing what is needed, especially if there are no immediate consequences.

Take the hypothetical example of the refinery night watchman who carries a detector that records “sniffs” of toxic gas leaks as he makes his rounds. Whenever the detector buzzes, he is instructed to take the detector across the refinery to the safety office where it is “read” by a machine that records the amount and location of the leak. Since this takes extra time and effort and sets his nightly schedule back, instead he puts the detector in his back pocket and holds his breath when checking a valve site that he knows leaks. This behavior is improper; in this case, the system won since it put a major barrier in the watchman’s way by making it unnecessarily difficult to comply.

This emphasizes the importance of approaching a coaching opportunity with a nonjudgmental mindset to ensure a situation is properly diagnosed. A great coach engages direct reports by changing/reframing the coaching conversation from perceived cause and solution to a solution-neutral, inquiry-based conversational model.

The performance improvement community is coming to understand what many people have known all their lives – that most of what people learn, they learn informally on the job. However, left to chance, informal learning can be counterproductive.

In his book Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin repeatedly found that world-class performance was not due to innate talent. He found that high performers identified the areas where they needed to improve and practiced those areas with clear immediate feedback on performance. The emphasis is on practicing the right things.

Coaching models often don’t cover what the right things are, and coaching skills or competencies don’t address them either. Instead, they focus on the way coaching is done rather than what is coached.

Business results come from people producing the right outputs in their jobs. These outputs of value or accomplishments are what employees leave behind when they go home for the day. When properly defined, they filter out the noise in a job – all the things there are to know and do. What’s left are the true value-adding accomplishments the coach wants his or her player to produce.

Defining these outputs is key to developing an effective, performance-based coaching program. Through observations and interviews, the outputs created by the best in any organization can be identified and described.

Once the outputs are defined, the tasks and steps to complete them can be captured and the criteria used to assess the outputs documented. This performance profile, or role excellence profile (REP), becomes the backbone for learning curriculum and the coaching relationship.

Imagine a scenario where a pharmaceutical company, like most companies in that industry, has its field managers do ride-alongs with field sales reps to assess their performance using a field coaching form. Most managers thought this was a report card exercise, as did the sale reps. Consequently, it did not provide the true coaching opportunities that it might have. By revising the sales training curriculum around the REP for the best sales people, the outputs of value and measurement criteria could be built into the field coaching form. The impact would be seen in the feedback from the field. Managers and sales reps would now view the ride-along as a development opportunity and the coaching form as a development tool, changing how both managers and sales reps view the ride-along and coaching relationship.

Typically, when a learning program is over, practitioners rely on the learners’ good intentions and their manager to facilitate new skill application on the job. Back at work, however, there is little time to devote to new behaviors, and too often, new skills atrophy quickly from lack of use.

Think of the learning environment as a furnace and learners as metal ingots. At the end of the learning experience, the ingots are in a molten state. However, the mold they will be poured into is the environment in their workplace. If this environment is not structured to form them into the new shape, they harden in unpredictable ways. The manager/coach is responsible for setting and maintaining this new mold to ensure the learner can and does set in the new form.

There are several steps learning practitioners can take to ensure that small, frequent practice exercises occur with the appropriate feedback. First, set the process in place and then enable it with persuasive technology.The process has the following components:

There are several steps learning practitioners can take to ensure that small, frequent practice exercises occur with the appropriate feedback. First, set the process in place and then enable it with persuasive technology.The process has the following components:

1. Learners write down the tasks they plan to do to apply what they have learned and the time frame for execution. The act of writing it down creates a sense of empowerment and suppresses resistance to change.
2. A coach facilitates periodic conference calls or meetings every few weeks so learners can share the tasks they have created for themselves.
3. Learners write down what they learn as a consequence of executing their tasks.
4. In review sessions takeaways are discussed, ideas are shared and new tasks are developed that leverage the takeaways.
5. This collaboration fuels interest and passion to raise each person’s level of performance so the group travels the road to greatness together.

This is where persuasive technology fills the need. Companies such as Cerebyte have developed a software that captures, tracks and reports all of the aforementioned activity. Learners enter their learning tasks as part of the classroom experience whether it’s face-to-face or remote. The software then reminds them what tasks are due and when. Management reports keep managers apprised of task completion and lessons learned. As learners become performers, they enter what they have learned from executing their tasks so others can read it and reflect on how it may enhance their own performance.

The power in this approach is in its predictability. The discipline and structure persuasive technology can provide ensure that neuroscience can do its thing, and new behavior is cemented through practice and feedback from peers and coaches.

Effective coaching has impact that trumps almost anything that can be accomplished in the classroom, whether it’s face-to-face or virtual. It behooves all of us to focus more attention on strengthening coaching capabilities to facilitate changes in the way work is done and ensure these changes last. Learning leaders should ensure their coaching models incorporate the three pillars of performance-based coaching: the systems view, coaching to accomplishments and making it stick. Doing so creates an environment that can react quickly with predictable results and become a machine of continuous improvement.

Rick Contel is the director of strategic consulting for GP Strategies.

The first formal or supported mentoring programs emerged in the U.S. 30 years ago. Rapidly adopted and radically changed by European organizations, mentoring split into two schools, or models.

Sponsorship mentoring was adopted by U.S. corporations. This model largely focuses on one-way learning relationships, in which the authority and influence of the mentor plays an important role and where the junior partner is referred to as a protege.

Developmental mentoring is the European approach focusing on the quality of the mentee’s thinking and on stimulating self-reliance and mutual learning.

In recent years, as supported mentoring has spread across the globe, numerous hybrids of these two mentoring models have emerged. For example, Malaysian oil company Petronas provides designated employees with two mentors, one in the same area of business who tends to take on more of a sponsorship mentoring role, and a mentor from elsewhere in the business. Mentees often find the latter more useful long-term. These hybrids took the moniker ”second wave mentoring” and address many of the shortcomings of traditional programs, such as inadequate training and support for participants and too little or too much bureaucracy.

One of the drivers behind this mix of approaches has been organizations’ desire to learn from their own and other people’s experiences. At a July virtual round table by Career Innovation, a U.K.-based consultancy specializing in career and leadership development research, more than two-thirds of HR professionals responsible for mentoring programs indicated they were, to a greater or lesser extent, dissatisfied with either the management of their mentoring program or the outcomes from it. They felt the programs should be delivering more, with greater consistency and sustainability. Some of the other drivers behind mentoring transformation include:

1. Reach:

Making mentoring available to a wider audience is challenging when lowering costs without sacrificing quality. However, many attempts to do mentoring inexpensively – especially by using canned, online options – fail to deliver the quality required. In particular, they tend to push mentoring toward shallow, transactional skills and knowledge transfer, rather than longer-term deep, personal change.

2. Alignment:

There is a need to link mentoring more closely with talent management and succession planning strategies.

3. Measurement:

Enterprise leaders increasingly require data about mentoring outcomes for participants and for the organization.

4. Consistency:

Mentors in one approach, such as developmental mentoring, may lapse into sponsoring behaviors, causing frustration with mentees.

5. Push-back:

Some groups and communities are averse to traditional programs as they are currently practiced. Over-bureaucratic programs tend to produce less mutual learning and are less sustainable than informal ones. But overly informal programs tend to produce fewer benefits. Balance is key. Also, some minority groups object to being targeted for programs where they have had no influence on the design.

6. Program success:

There is a disparity between programs in terms of failure rates, leading to re-examination of matching and rematching processes.

7. Standards:

The International Standards for Mentoring Programmes in Employment (ISMPE),for example, has begun to set expectations for what a good practice mentoring program looks like, requiring more flexibility in program components. The standards cover clarity of purpose for the program, which is associated with relationship quality, continuing support and measurement. For example, an effective program would have a policy and process to ensure potential mentors who attend training but do not have the capability to be non-directive receive counseling.

8. Expectations:

There is a need to bridge the gap between expectations from new graduates to use mentoring as a shortcut to getting a job and a program focus on supporting a reflective approach to understand possibilities and look at competencies in a broader perspective.

Joining the second wave requires HR to commit to create and market a comprehensive mentoring strategy based on evidence of what works and on a systemic perspective of how people learn and grow. Talent managers can help by ensuring that mentoring initiatives are based on sound business cases with clear benefits for the organization and participants. They also can play a role in facilitating the quality of training and subsequent mentoring support as well as identifying and engaging with top management champions.

In contrast to the significant sums many organizations invested in the first wave, second wave mentoring is relatively inexpensive because professionals in the field now have a much better understanding of whichhot buttons produce the greatest impact on both individuals and the organization. The cost varies from organization to organization, but a good estimate would be less than half the cost for twice the impact in terms of learning outcomes and talent retention.

While the structure of second wave mentoring programs varies from organization to organization, some key characteristics are common to most programs. Those characteristics include:

1. Program management:

Most programs have a designated mentoring program manager. Increasingly, these individuals receive specialized training for the role. They tend to be responsible for promoting and supporting mentoring in general, rather than just managing a single initiative.

2. Management engagement:

There tends to be a high level of engagement among top management in these programs.

3. Training:

Most programs ensure mentors and mentees are trained initially and that both are supported over the life of the supported relationship.

4. Continuous development:

Programs support continuous development and improvement as well as supervisory oversight.

5. Multimedia approaches:

Programs value the role of IT platforms to support both face-to-face and distance mentoring.

6. Robust processes:

Matching and measurement play a key role in these programs.

7. Variety:

Organizations increasingly offer an array of programs and opportunities to take part in, such as reverse mentoring.

Many second wave employers are taking a hard look at their mentoring offerings and aligning them with global good practices. For example, in 2010 gaming company The Rank Group wanted to support participants as part of the group talent program, providing opportunities for professional and personal development and encouraging networking across the group. It was critical to Rank that its mentoring program follow best practices, be measurable, be built on internal capability and deliver high-impact training for the executive committee as well as be a special feature of one-to-one training for the senior team.

Second wave companies also typically monitor progress toward a mentoring culture. Some seek accreditation under the ISMPE, both as a recognition of quality and as a means to benchmark against evolving good practices. Rank validated its mentoring program success by being assessed by the ISMPE. The company was awarded the Gold Standard in recognition of its program’s high quality in 2011.
Secondwave mentoring offers more than individual or organizational benefits, however. Mentoring programs are now creating opportunities for women and closing gaps in social justice in Morocco. AFEM, a Moroccan association for women in business and management, set up a mentoring program to support new initiatives by women.

The program was developed in cooperation with two Danish organizations: Kvinfo, a research and development organization, and Danish Trade Union, a union for professional employees. These organizations give support and inspiration to women as they establish themselves in the business world and deal with associated issues regarding family and social prejudice.

The introduction and training for the mentors and mentees was done through sessions in Denmark and Morocco. These included awareness of both the possibilities and challenges of participating in a mentoring program.

“The outcome of the project so far is first of all a much bigger awareness of what mentoring asks from both mentor and mentee,” said Else Iversen, from the Danish Trade Union. “But the biggest achievements lie in the fast-growing self-awareness among the mentors and the mentees that the program has managed to give the participants.”

Second wave mentoring will continue to evolve in a number of ways, including:

1. Greater integration between different mentoring programs in the same organizations.

For example,cascade mentoring takes the perspective that people who receive mentoring also should become mentors. An organization could pilot a program in which graduate recruits are mentored by junior and middle managers, and in return, they mentor disadvantaged people from the wider community. One of the benefits of this approach is that it links employee development and corporate social responsibility agendas.

2. Clarity amongst the different interpretations of mentoring within the same organization.

For example, IBM has identified four types of mentoring, each aimed at different audiences for different purposes. Centralized resources support all of these types of mentoring for big-picture clarity, but interpretation and program management are customized.

3. Cultural considerations such as differences in expectations for mentoring across diverse cultures.

It is important to make these different expectations overt and to enable mentors and mentees to address them in the individual relationship.

4. Social media holds the potential to radically change how mentoring is delivered.

Multinationals, such as communications company Telus, regularly conduct both one-to-oneand group mentoring through social media. However, a key issue now emerging for such companies is the extent to which employees – and particularly talented employees – can be supported in developing dynamic mentor networks. In these networks, there may be one or two close mentoring relationships focused on medium- to long-term career development, several medium-term relationships focused on development of specific competencies such as leadership, and ad hoc short-term relationships focused on knowledge or skills transfer. In these mentor
networks the traditional senior to junior hierarchy of relationships is often irrelevant; it is the learning exchange that is important, and
peer and reverse mentoring will play an increased role.

The bottom line of all these changing perceptions of mentoring is that second wave mentoring both offers and demands more flexibility from organizations and participants. At the same time, it creates the potential for organizations and participants to gain more from their investments in this form of co-learning.

About the Author:

David Clutterbuck is co-founder of The European Mentoring and Coaching Council and visiting professor at both Sheffield Hallam University and Oxford Brookes University in the U.K.

Workforce attrition is a concern of every organization, especially among customer service organizations where voluntary turnover frequently averages 30 percent or more annually and can sometimes exceed 100 percent, according to Saddletree Research in its 2011 End User Survey. Maintaining a pipeline of qualified candidates can be daunting.

Many of these positions require that the new hires successfully complete several weeks of training before they are put before a customer for the first time. Overall productivity, quality of service and customer satisfaction for the entire organization often suffer as a result. It is therefore critical to predict when new employees are needed and find ways to streamline the hiring process to keep this unproductive window to a minimum.

Implementing technology to reduce time to hire is one tactic many companies are using to help minimize the impact of voluntary turnover in their organizations. Here are some steps to get started.

1. Forecast the need before you need it.

Many companies are accustomed to forecasting anticipated workload to schedule the right number of the right kind of employees to achieve the desired results. This practice is essentially the economic equation of balancing supply to demand. Too few employees scheduled means customers are left waiting and service suffers, but labor costs are minimized. Conversely, too many employees means that while customer service is excellent, it comes at the price of higher than necessary labor costs. Many organizations have been performing this balancing act with varying degrees of success for many years.

One common and relatively effective way to forecast attrition is to look to the past to plan for the future. By collecting and analyzing turnover data as far back in history as possible, attrition patterns will emerge that help identify future labor needs. This works better for positions that span many employees; executive and mid-level management positions would probably not benefit from this approach given the relatively small number of new employees who need to be hired on a regular basis. But positions with relatively large numbers of employees, especially those with lengthy training or ramp-up programs, would.

2. Factor time-to-fill and training lead times.

Forecasting the hiring need is only half the battle. Working backward from the anticipated need date, one must factor in the usual time-to-fill interval, which can be lengthy for many positions, as well as the normal training interval. For instance, if the training interval is six weeks and the average time to fill is two weeks, positions need to be advertised and active recruiting started two months or more in advance of the anticipated need. Many organizations are unable to plan that far in advance, if at all, resulting in a ”just-in-time” hiring approach by which new employees are recruited only when existing ones leave. This leaves a productivity and proficiency gap as these new employees struggle to come up to speed and often exacerbates the attrition situation.

3. Use hiring optimization strategies to make further improvements.

Technology can be an effective tool to help streamline the recruiting process, reduce the recruiting lead time, and minimize the impact on the organization and its customers. Using an online virtual interviewing technology in place of the customary recruiter-led, early-stage telephone interview can reduce the recruiting interval from a couple of weeks to only a couple of days. Using virtual interviewing also has the benefit of reaching more potential candidates than can be interviewed using traditional methods.

Using these interview results to collect individual candidate capabilities and proficiencies can also shorten the training lead time. For example, while every new employee might need indoctrination regarding an organization’s culture, values, tools and so on, those applicants who demonstrate proficiency in selling skills might not need extensive sales training and can bypass that part of the training program. The results are better-qualified candidates, hired faster, who are productive in a shorter period of time.

4. Forecasting and technology can help the hiring strategy.

Forecasting attrition helps the recruiting organization better serve its stakeholders by planning its hiring well in advance of the need and delivering skilled, well-qualified employees just when they are required. Organizations can build their bench strength and, over time, become adept at throttling their hiring up and down to meet anticipated needs. Coupled with technology to shorten the overall time-to-fill interval, this strategy means that companies can hire better candidates faster andpreserve their valuable customer relationships.

About the Author:

Kevin Hegebarth is vice president of marketing and product management for HireIQ Solutions Inc.

Being a learning and development practitioner is akin to being a sales professional. Before offering solutions, practitioners must be sure they have all the relevant information. This could involve taking a series of required steps before providing the client with the appropriate solution.

The comparison applies in other ways as well. For instance, there are four critical skills common to both: earning the right to advance with the client; listening, assuming one already knows what the client needs; and importantly, helping the client to think differently about a situation by providing new insights.

What They Want

Consider this scenario. The phone rings. It is an internal client who sounds rushed and stressed, calling to ask how he can identify training solutions to teach his sales team ways to improve their closing ratio. Initially the learning leader’s instincts indicate there might be more to this issue than just teaching sales people how to close new business. However, in situations like this pausing, suspending judgment, requesting more information and listening to the request are necessary.

After 30 minutes, the conversation ends, and it appears the closing ratio concern may be one part of a larger issue. It could be the business lacks a formal and well-articulated sales strategy. Without this critical component, training people on sales skills is only a short-term fix. Further, it is a potential waste of training dollars and time because it may not address the root cause of the performance gap.

There are essentially two views the learning and development professional should consider when engaging the internal client in a needs assessment dialogue – what the client wants and what the client needs.

What the client wants – results, performance change, a solution that is easy to access and use – can be relatively straightforward. What the client really needs – root cause analysis, organizational performance change and sustainability – takes more time, but can lead the way to the root cause of a performance issue.

Addressing root causes results in lasting change. When clients see their staff not performing to the levels it should, they assume the staff lacks the knowledge or skill to do so. The value add of the learning and development professional is to help clients understand there may be organizational processes, structures or other restraining forces that inhibit workers from doing their jobs correctly and efficiently.

For example, consider the following scenario. An internal client can’t understand why portfolio managers don’t ask clients for business. The internal client thinks a training program will solve this issue. After speaking to several portfolio managers, however, it became apparent the portfolio managers didn’t know they were expected to ask for the business. They thought they were expected to explain the features and benefits of the product, and the sales manager was expected to ask for the business. Clarifying roles and job responsibilities for both parties was the appropriate intervention, not a training program.

What They Need

The first step to build trust and rapport is to listen to the client to understand the initial problem. Learning practitioners should have an open mind and ask the internal client a series of open-ended questions -who, what, when, where, why and how. The responses will enable them to understand and frame the issue at hand. The relationship then can advance to develop the solution the client needs. By using the following four steps to engage the client in a collaborative problem-solving process, the learning professional can provide the client with what is wanted and needed.

1. Clarify what good performance looks like.

Preparing performance-based questions is an important part of the needs assessment process. According to Dana Gaines Robinson and James C. Robinson’s Performance Consulting: Moving Beyond Training, performance-based questions should focus on exemplary performers. For example, “Select your top salesperson. What does this person do when closing a sale that makes her successful?” This question will provide a set of specific behaviors from which a behavioral model can be constructed as part of the training content.

High-gain, performance-based questions to describe the current state include: What have you observed your sales representatives doing that has led you to conclude they would benefit from a training program? What are people doing that they shouldn’t be doing as it relates to closing a sale?

Finally, there are restraining and driving forces questions that will help to identify the organizational, process and other non-training-related issues that will impact the participants’ ability to apply the training. These question include: What factors will get in the way of participants applying what they learned in training? What factors will help participants apply what they learned?

2. Conduct the needs assessment.

Conducting a needs assessment to determine the training and the non-training-related issues takes the initial request beyond a specific area or business and elevates it to the organizational level. The needs assessment process provides a legitimate business reason to interact with the client team and research the true nature of the gap across the organization. Much like peeling away the layers of an onion, uncovering the organizational issues associated with the lack of effective sales performance is a gradual process.

At this point the learning practitioner must manage the client’s expectations about how long this process will take. It’s better to put the time in on the front end of the process to avoid costly and time-consuming fixes. At the same time, when conducting the needs assessment, the client’s original perspective is being validated while identifying additional performance barriers. In this way, the learning professional can objectively view the problem from different perspectives, which helps to develop recommendations the client might not initially see.

In Performance Consulting: Moving Beyond Training, the authors note that often the traditional training process confuses training activity with performance improvement. This is where the learning and development practitioner, taking a helicopter view, adds value to the diagnosis and solution design.

Further, the assessment process helps the learning professional build stronger relationships with internal clients, which leads to more benefits. For example, as Chris McCann, CEO of 1-800-Flowers, said during an episode of CBS’ “Undercover Boss,” “Build relationships first and do business later.”

For learning and development practitioners, building rapport is just as important as it is in sales roles. Starting with relationships builds trust and confidence so the client will listen more seriously to learning recommendations.

Once the training issues are identified and rapport is established, the learning professional is in a better position to provide clients with what they want, as well as deliver the additional solutions they need.

3. Involve the client along the way.

The next step is having the client become part of the decision-making process. This increases the client’s ownership of the problem and solution. Clients who own the solution assume accountability for it, and they will ensure it takes root in the business. They also will realize and be more open to the fact that what they initially wanted may not be everything they actually need because what started out as a simple training need has taken on broader importance and scope.

In The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, the authors discuss how current market conditions and economic realities have shifted the sales model from one based on relationships to one based on challenges. Clients and prospects alike want to work with sales professionals who can provide them with new information and insights that will challenge their current way of thinking and doing business. Clients want people to educate them and help them think through business problems and solutions. Learning and development professionals should work with internal clients in much the same way. Asking high-gain, performance-based questions enables the learning professional to enter into a dialogue with the client to determine the types of performance support needed.

4. Provide data and options for the client.

Facts and data to support the identified problem and recommendations will enable the client to make an informed choice about the appropriate solution to achieve the business goals. In going back to the original request for training on the topic of closing a sale, there are myriad solutions. However, clarifying the issues facing the business and the cause of those issues can facilitate efforts to provide the proper resolution.

With these four steps as guide, the learning and development professional’s role cannot be underestimated. Learning and development practitioners play an integral role in managing the process as they identify the performance-related issues and potential solutions. They enable the business stakeholders to make informed decisions about what the solution will look like and how much it will cost. While learning and development professionals do this, they are also building a level of trust with their stakeholders, earning the right to advance clients in selecting the best solution from a range of possibilities.

As a result, the client obtains what is needed – a sales strategy and a consistent sales methodology. Once the sales strategy and methodology is delineated and implemented, the client also secures what he or she originally wanted.

About the Authors:

Dave DeFilippo is chief learning officer, and John Rogener is vice president of learning and organizational development for BNY Mellon Asset Management.

Gossip is unavoidable, especially in the workplace. Regardless of a company’s culture, it will appear in one form or another.

The trick is to turn gossip into something productive, according to Beverly Flaxington, a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst, hypnotherapist and author of Understanding Other People. Talent Management spoke with Flaxington on the topic. The following are edited excerpts from the interview.

1. How do you define gossip?

Gossip is when you have people talking about something, and the truth of the matter is it’s either hurtful to the person that’s not there to hear it or it’s information that someone else really should have in order to act on it. So it’s like information that’s getting delivered to the wrong person.

2. How do you turn gossip into productive communication?

I am a firm believer when it comes to management that what you don’t know actually can hurt you, and that there is a lot to be said for trying to get your employees to share with you the things that they may be sharing with one another.

So as a manager, as a leader, if I’ve got people who are, for example, talking about a co-worker in a negative sense, and they may be getting to the point where they all dislike this person, they won’t work with this person, that’s going to hurt me. If I’ve got people complaining about something the company is doing or speculating these are all things that, if I don’t know about them, can hurt me.

So what I want to be able to do is bring these issues into the light. Of course, gossip lives because people like to do it behind closed doors – they don’t want to share these things and it feeds on itself. So it is incumbent on the manager or the leader or the boss to periodically hold sessions where they are giving a forum to employees to be able to actually bring up what I call obstacles to success … And you can have one-to-one conversations with people in advance to get them to elicit some of this. You can do it in a group setting. You can do it via some kind of suggestion box. But what you’re trying to get them to do is instead of sharing these issues with one another to actually start to share it with you.

3. Are there rules for when managers use this approach?

One I call the ground rule, which is: We absolutely are going to have issues with one another; we’re going to have frustrations with one another. But we have a culture whereby if you come in and you tell me about a problem you’re having with a co-worker, my next step then is to try to get that third party engaged to figure out how can we resolve this.

Instead of you coming to me, you talk to me about someone, I turn around, I talk to someone else about that person, and we get a whole story going about what’s happening with our colleague, I listen to you, but then my next step is to actually get that person engaged in our conversation.

You and I may take a little bit of time to problem solve, to brainstorm, to role play how you want to talk to that person. But you’re starting to set up a ground rule that instead of us being able to talk about people who aren’t there and can’t resolve anything for us, if they aren’t there we have a culture where we move to where we want to be able to work together effectively. So we’re a problem-solving kind of culture.

4. How can managers encourage employees to go to their leaders with gossip?

I do believe that the manager has to walk the walk. They’ve got to show that there is not a penalty to pay, that in fact they are open to hearing about these issues, but that what they want to do is work with their staff to fix it.

So I want to be clear that this is a fine line. This is not management saying: Give us all your troubles and we’ll take care of everything. This is management saying: Help us understand what’s in the way, and then let us help you. How do we all problem solve together? How do we come up with different ways to overcome these obstacles, or work together more effectively, or understand something about staff members?

5. How is time-wasting, negative gossip different from productive gossip?

We’ve got certain categories of obstacles. There are things we can control, there are things we can influence and there are things that are just simply out of our control. … We tend to spend an inordinate amount of time on those things we cannot control. We complain about the competitive environment and about the culture of the company, about certain people who are in leadership, etc. … What that’s doing is really stealing time from what we could be focusing on – something that we can control, that we can influence, where we can make a difference. So it’s trading off, it’s being willing to say: OK, let me categorize this. These are certain things that right now I can’t do anything about. Let me turn my attention to something that I can spend my energy on, that I can spend my time on. It’s subtle, but it’s really significant.

About the Author:

Frank Kalman is an associate editor of Talent Management magazine.

Want to be financially free?

What if all you had was a 9 to 5 job, working from paycheck to paycheck, and for some reason, you couldn’t go to work starting tomorrow, how long can you sustain your current lifestyle? A week? a month? a year?

What if you have saved a little, invested a little — is it enough to support your desired lifestyle for the years following your retirement?

Is it possible to be financially free?

I did it, and so can you!

Years ago, I was working from paycheck to paycheck, and had many bills to pay. I tried investing in the stock market and other business ventures. It didn’t work out and I lost my hard earned money!

I loved my 9 to 5 job, and I wanted to get wealthy at the same time…so how do I get from a 9 to 5 job to millionaire freedom? At that moment, I became the 9 to 5 Millionaire.

I started a journey of learning, countless books, seminars, mentoring, actual application, trial and error, and I developed

The 4 Cornerstones to Millionaire Freedom:

1. The 9 to 5 Millionaire Roadmap: To map where you are financially to where you want to be.
2. The 9 to 5 Millionaire Mindmap: To align your values, beliefs and action.
3. The 9 to 5 Millionaire Virtual Business Owner: Profit from leading companies thru stocks, bonds, funds and other paper assets.
4. The 9 to 5 Millionaire Weekend Property Investor: Weekend Investing in Real Estate to generate passive income.

After practicing these 4 Cornerstones, the day came when I didn’t need to work anymore. I graduated from a 9 to 5 job to financial freedom.

It was time to pay it forward: “Give a man fish, feed him for a day, Teach a man how to fish, he can feed himself for a lifetime.”

That’s why I created The 9 to 5 Millionaire Book and Workshop – to share my story so other people can learn how to do it, too.

P395 in Fully Booked nationwide

Book Reviews:

Ardy Roberto, CEO Salt & Light Ventures and bestselling author of 7 books, including Ang Pera na Hindi Bitin (Money That’s Never Short): “Leila Hernandez’ 9 to 5 Millionaire will surely be an eye-opener for those who think that financial freedom is beyond the reach of the employed. I am hoping and praying that this will start a mind-set revolution for the “cubicled.” Read this book and take the steps to heart. Share this book to others and they will love you!”

Kenneth Yang, President and CEO, McDonald’s Philippines “The 9 to 5 Millionaire contains great ideas. Like using a road map: its practical for people to follow — step by step. All of us want to get somewhere whether it is a real destination or a state of being. But we almost always only take the time to plan our trip or road map when we are travelling from one place to another. We don’t usually take the time to do so when we want to change our state of being like examples: from sad to happy, from sick to healthy, from poor to rich. This book is practical advice for everyone. I would like my kids to read it, too.

Heinz Bulos, Editor-in-Chief of MoneySense and President of Learning Curve “The 9 to 5 Millionaire has a powerful message: You don’t have to quit your job to achieve financial freedom! Unlike other authors on wealth-building who tell you that the only way to get rich is to resign from your job and become an entrepreneur or full-time investor, Leila Hernandez doesn’t apologize for being employed. Instead, she sets herself up as an example of using one’s job as a steady and growing source of capital for investment purposes. It gives employees (and even entrepreneurs) a proven template in turning active income through one’s job to passive income through paper assets and real estate investments.

I would recommend this book not just for employees–at all levels– who are struggling with their finances and living from paycheck to paycheck but also the self-employed and business owners who may not be stuck at a 9 to 5 job but are nevertheless stuck in a financial rut.”

To register for this free event, please visit http://mad.ly/408d23

Organizations are accustomed to creating formal learning programs, or closely defined interventions to achieve targeted learning outcomes, such as creating better leaders, better salespeople or managers. This training is often packaged in discrete elements and apportioned to individuals according to the needs of their role.

While these programs can be delivered in the classroom, they are increasingly being deployed socially, especially in large organizations. A simple way to view this brand of social learning is as ”the semi-formal layers of learning that surround the formal.” In other words, it’s not an alternative to formal learning, but a supplement to it with many layers, each one progressively less formal.

The Need for a Moderator

Informal learning, a message is defined by the learning organization, then pushed out to the group and followed by an assessment of their ability to retain and master it. With social learning, the learning is created by the group within a structure defined by the learning organization. The learning is neither predefined nor completely unstructured. It allows the group to develop conversations about a topic and, through moderation and support, to iterate those ideas and develop strategies for implementation.

The role of the moderator in social learning is important for two reasons. First, moderators help structure the debate and build a legacy from it. Second, as with any learning methodology, people need to explore and reflect upon the topic. But they also take practical steps based on the experience – to do things differently as a result of what they learn. The moderator helps support this.

Aspects to Consider Before Implementation

Technology and experience are two other key elements to consider in the approach to social learning. It’s all too easy to focus a lion’s share of time and money thinking about the technology, but when push comes to shove, it’s the experience that counts.

Technology facilitates experience, but it does not, by itself, deliver it. To have really great social learning experiences, people need to be engaged. This engagement will come through the learning design and an understanding of how and why people engage in these spaces.

Any organization will have to learn how social works for its specific situation. A perfect way is to identify a project suitable to try it out on. Social learning should be used for a specific purpose, not to replace the formal element of learning. In a session on leadership, for instance, the formal program would be retained, but groups would then engage in specific tasks, such as building definitions in the social discussion spaces.

Alternatively, social spaces are great for collaborative writing. Instead of building definitions, the group could jointly write an article on ”When Leadership Fails” or ”Key Skills for an Emerging Leader.”

It’s not the space that’s hard to generate; it’s the engagement. Asking individuals to collaborate allows them to display native behaviors of sharing knowledge and developing relationships. It’s easy to think people will want to show off or look good themselves, but research shows people often derive greater pride from supporting the achievements of others than they do in their own achievements.

There is a correlation with age at play, too. As people get older, they derive progressively more pride from the achievements of others. So any notion that social learning spaces are only attractive to the young should be reconsidered in light of this.

Challenging the Group Dynamic

The dynamic nature of social learning comes from the conversation and development of ideas. A key aspect of this is challenge, so it’s worth considering how to incorporate the challenging of ideas into the design.

Management development programs, for example, often focus on models – models for running meetings, managing conflict, coaching and so on. Considering that challenging and critically appraising new ideas are essential management skills, the program could include circulating case studies and asking the group to collaborate on providing critical feedback. Again, it’s the collaboration that is important. To take part in these conversations, people will need to use the new knowledge they have built in the formal parts of the learning experience.

When deployed correctly, social learning can transform organizational culture, creating a mindset of collaboration and sharing. But this won’t happen without making a few mistakes along the way. As organizations update their notions of control and ownership to reflect the new reality, it’s important to tread carefully to build the trust and understanding that underpins the social learning experience.

About the Author:

Julian Stodd is the e-learning director for GP Strategies, a global performance improvement firm based in the U.K.

Last 02 October 2012 Alliance Consulting successfully conducted the Lean and Six Sigma Overview at the Alpa Suites Hotel in Mandaue City, Cebu, Philippines. The participating companies came from the logistics, distribution, IT and BPO industries.

The seminar allowed the participants to explore both lean and six sigma methodologies so that they can decide which one might be most helpful to them in improving their performance. The overview included short lectures as well as hands-on exercises that demonstrated the power of both methods.

Why are these companies looking at ways to improve their performance? One reason is that with so many people investing in retail and food business, the competition is just keeps getting fiercer every day. These companies are now realizing that they need to greatly improve how they deliver their goods and services in order to survive. The main challenge is in how to maintain a healthy profit while at the same time offering attractive prices that will keep their customers loyal.

So, how do you do this? The answer lies in removing waste, in reducing the cost of distribution and in reducing inventory while still being able to maintain customer satisfaction.

Lean and Six Sigma have become the most popular process improvement strategies to answer this challenge. Lean focuses on gaining speed of delivery and removing all waste in an organization. Six Sigma, on the other hand, focuses on removing variation in order to increase quality. Implementing Lean and Six Sigma will give your organization a variety of tools and techniques that you can implement to measure and improve your company’s performance.

Alliance Consulting will be organizing another run of this seminar here in Cebu on November 2012. Please send us email at info@allianceconsulting.biz.

I began my workforce research more than a decade ago. My team and I sought to understand what people wanted from work. We asked ourselves: As certain skills and talent become more limited, what do companies need to do to attract and retain the workforce they need? Further, as the economy continues to shift toward jobs that depend on discretionary effort, how can companies engage and motivate their employees to dig deep and contribute their best efforts?

In our initial research, we divided our team into three sub-teams – each one assigned to conduct interviews with members of one of three major generations in the workforce: boomers, Generation Xers and Generation Y’s.

When we held our full team meeting, each sub-team was eager to report its findings. Each felt it had identified the critical practice that would drive attraction, retention and engagement. One after another, the sub-teams reported that the key for their assigned generation was flexibility.

Boomers, now in their 50s and early 60s, have been driven by the sheer size of their cohort to work hard to remain competitive at all times. For most, teenage ideals around making a difference have been on the back burner for the past 30 years. However, as those in this generation begin to imagine their next life phase, most are looking to shift their focus – to put more emphasis on activities that give back or make a difference. For some, these activities may be philanthropic; for others, entrepreneurial, artistic or social. Whatever elements they add to their life mosaic will almost certainly require more flexible forms of work.

Members of Generation X, in their 30s and 40s today, are juggling multiple commitments. For many, their formative experiences included working parents, a latchkey childhood and single-parent homes. Many hold strong personal convictions about the the type of parent they want to be – personal standards that often include the amount of time they want to spend or the types of activities they want to support. To juggle their complex lives, Xers need workplace flexibility.

Xers also want options for the way they shape their careers. Witnessing mass layoffs as teens and the changing social contract between employees and employers has left this generation committed to owning their careers and being self-reliant. They are drawn to companies that provide flexible career options.

Members of Generation Y were shaped during the early 2000s, when primary topics of adult conversation were terrorism and school violence. They adopted a world view in which random events could happen to anyone at any time. Not surprisingly, they are focused on the immediate reality, driven to live each day to the fullest. They look for work environments that enable them to pursue activities – at work and outside work – that they find meaningful and challenging.

Flexibility means something different for each generation. For boomers, the most important type of flexibility is the ability to fit other activities into a previously work-intensive life. The most popular form for many are cyclic arrangements: working full time for a period of time – say, several months – then being off for a similar period, able to focus on other activities. Other part-time arrangements and ways of down-scaling – taking on less responsibility – are also valuable to boomers.

For Gen Xers, flexibility has a day-to-day connotation – the ability to shift work commitments based on the unpredictable challenges posed by family or other demands. It also has a career path dimension. Xers don’t necessarily want to follow the same paths pursued by boomers. Most want to be able to create their own paths forward and choose from multiple options.

Flexibility for Y’s serves their desire to make each day meaningful and challenging. They like the flexibility to try new tasks, to move laterally and learn new skills. They also like the option of pursuing external opportunities as they arise – to travel, for example, or take on special projects.

Although flexibility takes different forms, it’s an essential element to attract, retain and engage employees of all ages in tomorrow’s workforce.

About the Author:

Tamara J. Erickson is founder and CEO of Tammy Erickson Associates, a business consulting firm, and author of four books, including What’s Next, Gen X?