Business Learning Blog

Defining the agile enterprise and building agility through people

2012-05-02T11:52:11-04:00

Note: The following was written by Pam Devine, customized learning solutions manager for the Business Learning Institute:

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We have a saying here at the Business Learning Institute: L > C. That is, your L (learning) must be greater than or equal to your C (the rate of change).

In keeping with that philosophy, I had the privilege recently of attending the Bersin Impact 2012 Conference. The conference was attended by CLOs and high-level corporate learning professionals from the world’s largest global companies. The theme of this year’s conference was "Building Agility Through People," and the opening keynote given by Josh Bersin, president and CEO of Bersin and Associates, was inspiring.

Bersin & Associates is the premier global provider of world-class research, tools, and advisory services in talent management, corporate learning, leadership development, talent acquisition, and human resources.

In his opening remarks, Josh Bersin spoke about the "agile enterprise" and how the old way of doing things and old models will no longer work.

Wikipedia defines business agility as "the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently in response to changes in the business environment. Business agility can be maintained by maintaining and adapting goods and services to meet customer demands, adjusting to the changes in a business environment and taking advantage of human resources."

People need to be considered an appreciating asset.
Customers are now in charge.

In today’s fast-moving environment, all businesses must focus on speed, agility and customer focus. There will be a new model of management. The agile enterprise will consist of:

Highly connected, virtual teams.
Collaboration to meet customer needs rapidly.
Using data to make rapid customer focused decisions.

According to Pat Crull, CLO of Time Warner Cable and former CLO of MacDonalds, "In prior economic recoveries we have always rebuilt our organizations the way that we did before. This time is different. We are not going back. We are going to be leaner, quicker, and have to do more with less forever onward."

According to The Economist, CEOs define an agile organization as having these four components:

Rapid decision making.
A high performance culture.
Flexible management of teams.
Transparent availability of information.

We at The Business Learning Institute fit within these parameters. Does your organization? Are you training and treating people as an appreciating asset? Is your L > C? Are you customer focused? If not, how can you make changes to get there?

The secret to success in the "new economy"?

2012-04-18T05:49:46-04:00

The two Ls.

As the Great Recession of 2008 begins to recede, organizations are beginning to ask, “What’s next? How do we succeed in this ’new normal?’”

A tsunami of changes has swept over us, changing the business environment, workforce, and workplace in what many are saying are permanent and fundamental ways. Smart organizations are planning how they will survive and thrive in this “new normal.”

Questions like these are on the top of every executive’s mind:

• Is our organization prepared for the pending recovery?

• Is our organization positioned to thrive in the “new normal?”

• How do we prepare our organization to survive in constantly changing conditions?

• Do we have the bench strength to navigate the increasingly competitive environment?

Answer:

The two Ls -- learning and leadership -- will be the keys to future success in an increasingly complex world. Leading organizations have adopted new strategies for dealing with this rapidly changing world. They are strategically and systematically focusing on learning and leadership development to get and keep their competitive advantage.

The starting point is always your business strategy, then it is about prioritizing the competencies you need to execute that strategy.

BLI can help you with both, strategic planning and curriculum design. We have developed full competency models for CPA Firms and global finance teams. These competency models are structured into a career ladder and can be tracked in a customized LMS (Learning Management System) or imported into an existing one.

Top three issues facing HR & Talent Development

2012-03-16T07:45:03-04:00

The top three issues facing human resources & talent development are:

A shortage of creative, agile leaders.
Inability to rapidly develop workforce skills and capabilities.
Ineffective collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Source: 2010 IBM Global Chief Human Resource Officer study

L > C

In an era of rapid change and increasing complexity, the winners will be those people and organizations who can learn faster than the rate of change and faster than their competition.

How is training and learning changing in this "new normal"?

What are the new skills needed to keep up with this rapidly changing world?

How will you equip your people to do more with less? To make decisions amid ambiguity?

At BLI, we work on these questions with you to design and develop curriculum and programs that truly make a difference for your people and your organization.

Listen to interviews with some of our "top gun" instructors from a recent thought leader symposium we held.

Listen to Bill Sheridan's interview with IBM about their study in this podcast, CPA Spotlight interviews IBM about this study.

Work that matters

BLI has recently been involved in some exciting projects that really showcase what we are about.

We designed and lead the Leadership Academy for the AICPA (now in our 4th year) and custom Leadership Academies for UACPA, MACPA, and LCPA.

We designed and led the Future Forums for the AICPA's CPA Horizons 2025 Project, facilitating conversations about the future of the CPA Profession with over 1,000 CPAs in thirty forums (See video interviews here and the Top Trends to Watch here).

We worked with the Top 100 CPAs firms and the AICPA to facilitate a strategic plan for the Major Firms Group and work with many corporations and firms on strategic planning.

For more examples of our "top gun" instructors, check out our clips here.

We are the largest provider of custom on-site training to CPA firms and corporations in the CPA / Finance market. Our clients include the Top CPA Firms across the US and many of the Finance teams of the Fortune 1000. We work with government agencies and non-profits to bring high impact "success skills" to their organizations.

We can design a full curriculum and offer training customized to your organization. Our training can be delivered on-site, webcast, on-demand e-learning, and full blended learning options for maximum impact.

Let us help you keep your L > C.

If you want training and learning that makes a difference, check out our catalog and contact us at pam@bizlearning.net (Pam Devine)

Here is our 2012 catalog Download BLI Course Catalog 2012-2013

The P Link - Positivity & resilience in the face of chaos

2012-03-07T07:50:07-05:00

In the face of the chaotic world we find ourselves in, how do we bend without breaking? How do we face all of the challenges of work and life and thrive?

The answer is to take back control of our life. or as Gretchen says, fill your bucket up with plinks.

Gretchen Pisano, BLI Thought leader offers some hope and inspiration in her BLI Live talk, the P.link - Positivity and Resilience in the face of Chaos.

She shows how you can use the PERMA equation (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationship with others, Meaning & Purpose, and Achievement -slide 23) to increase your well-being and flourish. Drawing on the latest evidence-based research out of Positive Psychology from UPENN, Harvard and others, Gretchen shows us how to take back our life and well-being.

Check out this short video and view her presentation here

What would happen if we could spread access to this type of thinking? What if your entire team was able to become more resilient and positive, able to thrive personally and professionally? What would that mean to your organization's performance.

If you want rocket fuel for your organization, you need to fill your team up with plinks. We can help.

This is a key component in our Leadership Academy or as a stand alone program in blended learning formats - live, public seminars, on-site, webcast, and on-demand. Look for our entire bundle of P.link programs coming soon.

For more information send us an e-mail at info@bizlearning.net

More Resources: Energy Rich-Leadership

Do you have a sustainable strategy?

Your formula for success and happiness in the new year

High Performance Time Management by Slaying the Energy Vampires

2012-02-15T11:10:11-05:00

I know you heard about all of the excitement from our first annual BLI Thought Leader Summit. We are excited to bring you the "best of" clips from some of the best instructors in the business.

BLI "Top Gun" Greg Conderacci has taught hundreds of people about leadership, energy management, high performance management and yet he says that the conversation invariably comes back to vampires. That's right vampires, energy vampires, the kind that can "suck the life out of you".

Check out Greg's tips on slaying your energy vampires in this short but powerful BLI Live clip.

View Greg in a 2 hour upcoming webcast on February 23, 2012 at 2:00pm (EST) register here

and his popular Ethic program will be webcast on March 22, 2012 at 11:00 am (EST) register here

Here are more of Greg's courses available for your firm or company on-site:

Performance, Productivity & Profit: Creating the Higher Energy Organization

High Performance Time Management: Boosting Your Personal Energy

Caesar's Wife: Tipping the Delicate Balance of Leadership and Ethics

At the Helm in the Storm: Seven Survival Strategies for Leaders inTurbulent Times

Read more in Greg's blog post, Spotting energy vampires FAST!

The absolute best leadership style

2012-02-02T07:21:00-05:00

We asked this of our strategic partner, friend, and author, Emmanuel Gobillot after a major keynote at a national conference.

His answer?

"Anything, as long as it's you at your best,” said Gobillot, a BLI provider and author ofLeadershift: Reinventing Leadership for the Age of Mass Collaboration. “Rob Goffee (a professor of Organizational Behavior at the London Business School) described it best when he said the aim of any leadership development is for you to be yourself – just better, with skill. (Pictured is Tom Hood - CEO of BLI with Emmanuel Gobillot in Pasadena, CA).

"I don't want to preclude it by saying, 'This is the type of leader we need.' As long as you are being the best you can be, just being yourself, with self awareness, self control, the ability to understand, then I think any style of leadership will do in terms of how it is expressed, as long as it is expressed naturally and authentically. It falls apart when you try to be someone you have never been."

In other words, as long as you stick to your values and inspire greatness and loyalty in others, Gobillot says any leadership style will do.

Which leads us to the really important stuff:

According to Gobillot, today’s leaders have roughly 14,600 days left on this planet – give or take a few hundred days here and there.

Let that sink in, then consider a recent survey that asked older Americans what they would do differently with their lives, given a second chance. Their responses: Ask bigger questions, take more risks and live life with purpose.

Gobillot's question to us is, "Why wait?" The only difference between today and tomorrow is that tomorrow's number will be 14,599. The countdown begins from there.

What will you have to show when that number reaches zero?

More on Leadership from Emmanuel Gobillot:

Is Leadership Changing?

Reflections on leadership from the beach (Beach Retreat that is)

Leadership resources from BLI:

Leadership Academy - availabe for your firm or organization

is your training, life changing?

Leadership Training - customized and delivered to your company or firm (contact Pam Devine Pam@bizlearning.net for a catalog or quote)

"Top Guns" featured at BLI Live in Towson, Maryland

2012-01-30T07:44:38-05:00

If your training or CPE is not life changing, maybe you should be thinking about BLI?

That was just one of the tweets from our "top gun" session last Friday.

Fifteen of the "best of the best" instructors came together with the MACPA BLI team. These are our "top gun" instructors who have together made us one of the largest providers of customized training in the CPA Profession and the business community.

Why BLI?

Several unique attributes differentiate training from BLI from the others - passionate instructors and staff, practical experience, and true professionalism. These were evident as each instructor led a six minute BLI Live Talk at our symposium this past Friday at the CPA Center in Towson, Maryland.

The second major differentiator is our customers. They say you can tell a lot about a company (or person) by the company they keep. BLI has been around since 1999 and has worked with Fortune 500 finance teams to the largest CPA firms in the world. We have worked with small to regional CPA Firms and individual CPAs in over 21 states. These customers keep us sharp.

Last year we taught over 600 programs on "success skills" all across the US at CPA firms, companies, and other organizations. Customized, on-site training by the industry's best instructors and facilitators.

BLI also has developed the successful Leadership Academy (now in three states and the AICPA), The CPA Horizons 2025 Future Forum sessions, and Strategic Plannning to help you keep your L > C2.

One of our "top guns" tweeted this...

"Hey fellow speaker people, Let's make 2012 a pivotal year. if were out in front, run like heck!"

Just like Kenny Loggins said in the hit song, Danger Zone

"You'll never say hello to you
Until you get it on the red line overload
You'll never know what you can do
Until you get it up as high as you can go"

Buckle up!

Check out our customized training catalog here to bring one of these "top guns" to your organization.

Here is the story told through Storify.

Here is the twitter stream from the session via TweetDoc

You'll never work alone (again)!

2012-01-23T05:44:55-05:00

"In the age of collaboration, change can roll over your professional life like a tsunami if you’re not proactive. It’s one thing to keep an eye on trends such as mobile learning, talent management, and the latest insights on leadership development, but it’s quite another to recalibrate your skills, your job, your thinking, and your professional relationships to keep pace." - Pat Galagan - "You'll Never Work Alone"

I ran across this feature article in ASTD's T&D magazine and found it very relevant to what we have been seeing as a major theme and skill set for the "new normal", collaboration.

Pat outlines six emerging themes facing HR & L&D (Learning & Development):

From Hero Leadership to Collective Leadership
From Intellectual property to agile co-creativity
From Employment value proposition to personal value proposition
From Sameness to segmentation
From Fatigue to sustainability
From Persuasion to education

And the HR and Learning & Development functions will have to align the business strategy wit the leanring and development functions to stay relevant in a rapidly changing and more complex world.

Read the full article here.

“Determining what to measure will be a collaborative effort involving not only the stakeholders in managing talent across the organization, but their CEOs,” says Tony Bingham, president and CEO of ASTD. "Time and again, CEOs have told me that they know learning and development is working when they see progress toward key strategic goals,” says Bingham. “Making that link clearer will be an essential component of any new metrics for the learning profession.”

The experience curve just can't keep up anymore - from CPA Success

That is why, here at BLI, we have developed several offerings that teach collaborative skills or use collaboration in planning:

Contact Pam Devine pam@bizlearning.net for more information.

The collaboration curve is here - Adapt or Die!

Are you at a crossroads?

2012-01-10T07:12:47-05:00

Are you at a crossroads?

New CEO?

Merger?

Major changes in your business environment?

Facing a major new business opportunity or threat?

Is your team worn out from working through the Great Recession of 2008 (2009, 2010, 2011)?

How will you get everyone aligned to your organization's strategic intent?

Time for an i2a: Strategic Planning Session.

i2a (Insights to Action) is designed to engage your team in strategic thinking around a five step process that includes:

1. Sight - what do we know about how the world is changing? It involves looking back at what made us successful and how we got here. Looking inside to understand our SCOT - Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities & Threats, and looking forward to identify and prioritize the major future trends that are likely to have the biggest impact on your organization.

2. Insight - This is the "so what does this mean to us" phase. Each exercise under the "sight" step involves probing questions about what these trends and issues mean to your organization's future. It helps get everyone on the same page before we go to the future.

3. Create - This is where we take you and your group to the future to identify a Bold Vision of the future and then work to identify how to get there. Then we "make it real" by pulling the top five steps to achieve our Bold Vision from your team. The group has created a shared vision of the future and the major strategic priorities to get there. Further work can be done to drive down to action plans with specific time-lines and team assignments.

4. Communicate - This is often what is missing from a good strategic planning process, thinking about who needs to understand the strategic plan and how to communicate it in a way they can easily grasp. Here is an example of a "one page" plan that we created for the CPA Profession in the Vision 2011 Project and the updated CPA Horizons 2025 Project. Another example is the one-page plan of the Maryland Association of CPAs (our parent company).

5. Inspire to Action - Too many strategic plans end up in binders on shelves. Not our i2a strategic plans. They are simple, visual, and easy to share stories from. We work with you to design an engagement process to expose the strategic plan and mobilize consent to move forward with the plan. Inspiration is what will give you the discretionary effort needed to move your organization forward.

Check out this video to see what the process looks like.

Here is what participants say about our strategic planning sessions

a "wordle" from a recent i2a: strategic planning session

if you are standing at the crossroads, call us to schedule an i2a: Strategic Planning Session and let us help you find the right direction and get moving toward your bold future faster.

How to find your competitive edge?

2011-12-13T08:12:00-05:00

Will the competitive environment get easier in 2012?

What about the pace of change, will it slow down?

Will the rate of complexity start to reverse itself?

Our research says no. A recent CEO study by IBM shows that over half of CEOs believe their organizations are ready for the next decade. That is why we exist, to help you prepare and equip your organizations for sustained innovation and performance.

We think we are in it for the long haul, a marathon, not a sprint. And if you are in it to win it, you need to prepare your team for the trip. Build their endurance and make sure they have the skills for competing for the long haul.

Your edge lies in the smarts, heart and ingenuity of your team. Tap that, train it, mobilize it and focus it.

We spend a lot of time talking about strategy, systems, and product launches like they are human, when the reality is that the real competitive edge is in our people and their ability to run the marathon with us. The way we will win in the future is with the energy, talents, and strengths of your team.

That is what BLI is all about. We are rocket fuel for your team.

Let us help you design a curriculum for the future based on your strategy and the needs of your team.

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Need a strategy? Let us help you with a collaborative i2a strategic planning session.

Need to get your team "future ready"? Let us facilitate a future forum that exposes your team to the future trends research and then identifies the top trends to watch and the implications to your organization with our i2a future forum sessions.

Need to prepare your next generation of leaders? Let us design a custom leadership academy that teaches your leaders how to be future-minded, flexible leaders capable of leading in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing environment with our proven i2a leadership academy.

Check out our catalog of programs available for your organization here.

What is your biggest opportunity for 2012 and is your team ready for it?