Performance Readiness Solutions

Sustainable Change

Mal Poulin — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:19:24 +0000

Sustainable change—it sounds like an oxymoron, but the phrase is creeping into our vocabulary more and more. It starts with the premise that change is constant. Once we admit that, it does not mean that we should just surrender. On the contrary, we should identify strategies and actions that are also constant to help roll with the changes and enable workforce adoption. Effective models to support changes to organizations, business processes, markets, the workplace, or even our compensation rely heavily on our leaders to facilitate the changes and employee adoption. However, our leadership ranks are just as vulnerable to attrition (voluntary or involuntary) as any other members of our workforce. Therefore, our strategies to sustain an environment with constant changes are more important than ever. The “leaders” of the day must embrace these strategies and make them work for their teams.

Obviously, our leaders are important, but what must persist in our businesses and work environments is a solid, effective strategy to recognize the need to change, help the workforce enable their own performance changes, and measure the outcome. The phrase “sustainable change” now takes on the connotation of “sustainable change management strategies.” The most effective leadership development initiatives I have seen have included this concept rather than managing the current business environment only.

Is your organization ready for constant change? Are your leaders ready?

Don’t Forget! On September 19^th we will be adopting the GP Strategies name, logo and tagline. As a part of this transition, we will be migrating our blog with the GP Strategies blog, which means you’ll be able to get twice the thought leadership and industry insights in one place! Though we may look different, we’re still putting innovative learning strategies and transformative performance solutions into motion. Start following the GP Strategies blog today!

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New Acronym – PBCT – Performance-Based Compliance Training – What?

Sheri Winter, Director of Business Development — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:10:57 +0000

When you think about compliance training, do you think it’s about knowing something or doing something? Last week, and in previous opportunities to speak on the subject of taking compliance beyond read and agree, I introduced the concept of Performance-Based Compliance Training, or PBCT. This concept is about expecting the learner to go beyond just knowing something. It’s about expecting them to actually do something.

The concept of PBCT always brings a lot of questions, not so much about what it is, but more about how you do it. How do you create training that actually results in improved performance? So I challenged the group to do the following:

Pick a compliance topic (one that could be a performance improvement opportunity)
Determine terminal objective (what you want them to be able to do when they are finished)
Develop enabling objectives that have the side benefit of improving job or task performance
Think of one creative way to help the learner apply what they have learned (interactivity)

If you would like, you can review the recorded webinar by clicking here.

I’ll start you off with an example. Say you need to train someone on the topic of how to interact with vendors. You have specific policies and guidelines on this subject, but there can be many gray areas, so it’s just not good enough to tell them that whenever they have contact with a vendor who is related to them, they must report it. They may actually need to be placed in the situation so that they can make the best decisions. Notice how I use the term “best” decision. Not all decisions are completely right or completely wrong, but some are better than others. In the end (note: terminal objective), you want the learner to use his/her best judgment to comply with the policy, and that means you have to enable them (thus, enabling objective) to make that decision in a safe, virtual environment rather than when they are put on the spot in real life. It’s a perfect opportunity for a conversation-based scenario like the one seen here:

We can all benefit from sharing how we would turn a compliance training need into a performance improvement opportunity. Please feel free to post your responses here. Also, stay tuned for our follow-up, with lots more examples using simple tools, at the upcoming webinar Taking Compliance Beyond Read and Agree – Part Two. October 4, 2012 at 2 p.m. ET– Register here: https://gpstrategies.webex.com/gpstrategies/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=254255716

Please share and see you in a couple of weeks.

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Podcast: The War for Talent

Greg Long — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 17:08:12 +0000

Many companies are still fighting the leadership “War for Talent.” But they are fighting over too few people for too many positions. A better strategy would be to focus on building their leadership talent from within, starting with the solid performers already on the team. Press the play below to listen to the full podcast The War for Talent.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Continuous Improvement Goes Mobile – Here’s Why…

Mike Koper — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 20:32:00 +0000

Continuous improvement is mandatory to gain competitive advantage and cost savings. However, it is imperative for global companies to innovate in order to survive. So what’s the right mix with the right tools? Continuous Improvement Techniques (CITs) have gone mobile with apps. In manufacturing, such tools consist of one-point lessons, throughput reports, job aids, Gantt charts, process maps, standard operating procedures, clarity assessments, and work instructions.

Mobile apps are the continuous improvement training tool of tomorrow’s global leaders. CIT apps can be specific to the thought at the moment or set to the tasks at hand. Yes, apps are a learning tool and mobile apps are the delivery system of the future.

Here are seven tips in creating a uniquely identifiable impact with content for mobile apps that will keep your message remembered:

Ensure that action images are accompanied with an embedded message. This is the proven methodology behind the spectacular growth in the website Pinterest.
Offer a video link of the task being performed or the “best practices” captured from others’ experiences.
Insert standard work instructions supplemented with image links in order to manage initial file size.
Monitor the access of the information and obtain feedback for improvement ideas.
Disseminate tools, tips, and reminders through mobile apps in a time-based frequency manner.
Encourage the use of mobile devices as learning devices.
Enable ease of cross-enterprise communications via mobile pings – handoff (cross-enterprise) forms with check-the-box and comment sections. For manufacturing, process tools can streamline shift-to-shift communications, especially if a breakdown occurred and a remedy was made or if a potential throughput challenge has been identified.

CIT apps, when applied with the proper degree of implementation, can both stimulate continuous improvement methods and serve as an innovation pipeline. Each company needs to carefully balance an approach to the three prongs of innovation (efficiency, sustainability, and disruptive) with a systematic attack to the most crucial being first. Both continuous improvement and innovation go hand in hand, so let’s engage in both. Top-performing global teams engage themselves best based on their passion, knowledge, and expertise. The organizations that are quickest to realize the changing landscape are able to formulate a strategic plan, differentiating themselves through advancing workforce competitiveness, which may lie in their internal capacity to reconfigure, both person and machine, resources in real time.

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Building Communities of Practice One Village at a Time

John McNeil — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:16:24 +0000

Maintaining momentum after a program launch is often problematic. The core implementation team disbands and moves on. Energy flags. What is needed instead is the enduring support of communities of practice, populated not only with rising stars, but also with the normal mix of personalities. That means we will have to deal with a normal variability in commitments to the new direction and in the willingness to absorb change. In other words, the same divergent agendas are present that exist in any community. The sad reality is that most team efforts don’t live long beyond the spark and fire of the original burst of change. But some kinds of communities do thrive, and we can learn lessons from them that should guide our improvement efforts in the Implement and Control phases of a Lean Sigma initiative and beyond.

Universities are a loose coalition of teachers united by an interlinked curriculum, facilities, and infrastructure; the requirements of accreditation bodies; and the needs of a relatively uniform student body. Likewise in our project implementations, we can create an infrastructure of a guiding committee, a shared storage area, and an agreed communications format and schedule. We can implement a common set of guidelines for all project teams. And we can encourage a shared enthusiasm for our project teams by constant and consistent communication of our larger project goals; our preferred methods; and, most importantly, our positive and negative learning lessons from our projects.

Clubs thrive when co-located members interested in a topic of common interest gain mutual support from their activities and share the results of their labors. Likewise in our project implementations, we should encourage project participation from interested stakeholders, across the enterprise, who can gain professionally from successful implementations and follow through. In particular, team members who have participated in past projects that delivered measurable improvements, and were able to sustain them, are good ambassadors for success. If we cannot be co-located physically, we should

Online Special Interest Groups, or SIGS, and wikis build a knowledge base from shared solutions to common questions and problems. They often rely on moderators to guide thinking and blunt bad behavior, but even more critical is the ongoing participation and energy of the 20% of contributors who provide 80% or more of the content. Likewise in our project implementations, we should provide guidance to teams on our standard methods and reporting mechanisms and formats. We should be clear about the rules of appropriate team behavior and guide those who stray too far from their agreed courses. But our largest efforts should be focused on encouraging those who can contribute to do so—beyond the expected workload for the average team member and as broadly and deeply as each member is able. Team members at the appropriate moments may solve problems, explore opportunities, promote decision-making, overcome obstacles, judge options, avert team friction, turn ideas into actions, search out omissions, or provide knowledge. Each of these roles (which Meredith Belbin identified and described in the 1980s), should be encouraged and nurtured.

Scientists deploy experiments to support or refute hypotheses. Ideally, they will remain objective in their investigations and resist the temptation to look only for results that support their prior biases. Ideally, they will be as diligent in publishing results that disprove their hypotheses as those that support them. Likewise in our project implementations, we should encourage clear, quantified mandates for our teams, and then facilitate encourage and provide resources for rigorous, unambiguous experimentation. Often organizations confuse “trying something different” with the structured scientific method. We should set up tests, avoid undue influences, measure outcomes carefully, and compare outputs with and then again without changed inputs. It is possible to do this without statistical guidance, but not easily, not as likely to be rigorous, and not as readily communicated after the experiment has been concluded.

True teams share leadership roles as they see fit; establish and adopt mutual, collective accountability; create specific team objectives that they deliver themselves; deliver collective products and outcomes; encourage open-ended discussion and active problem-solving meetings; and measure performance directly by assessing collective products/outcomes. Likewise in our project implementations, we can de-emphasize our timid selves’ need for strong, clearly focused leaders; the usual hierarchical emphasis on individual accountability, waiting for imposed, mandated, or granted objectives (often just reflecting the broader organizational mission); the focus on individual products and outcomes; and running efficient (as opposed to effective) meetings. Our true teams should also take full advantage of the varying skills, knowledge, and experience, and the appropriate situational roles that each member can play.

Each of these organization types is a village in the sense that it comprises interlinked members with common interests and strong interdependencies. And each of them can falter and fail if those linked self-interests become overwhelmed by hierarchical or short-term priorities. So leaders should drive explicitly to establish ongoing communities of practice that are as rigorous as universities, as supportive as clubs, as engaging as wikis, as objective as scientists, and as organic as true teams. In a global, interlinked, hyperlinked world, we can think like villagers to practice better together as communities.

This blog post was originally published in our Performance Matters Newsletter.

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Personal Leadership

Tom Sterling — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:31:53 +0000

If You Are Not Leading Yourself, How Can You Lead Others?

Last month, we lost one of the most influential leadership authorities of our time. Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People sold over 25 million copies, placing it securely in the all-time top 100 in book sales. Through no accident, the Seven Habits are strongly steeped in the most important aspects of personal leadership. It is no accident because personal leadership is essential for leading others. There is no need to repeat Dr. Covey’s Seven Habits here. He wrote very effectively, and there are an abundance of summaries on the Web. One of the most succinct is the Wikipedia reference.

Personal leadership can be somewhat elusive and is likely one of the more difficult aspects of leadership development. If you look up personal leadership models to get “the equation,” you will see some very complex models. Developing personal leadership doesn’t have to be complex, but it is always hard work.

A good start toward developing your personal leadership is to develop truthful, thoughtful answers to the following four questions:

Who are you?

Aristotle said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Probably the biggest hurdle to knowing who you are is to be honest with yourself. Everyone is good at many things but not good at everything. We all work better and prefer to interact in different ways. It is important to understand your preferences and how other people experience you. There are many readily available tools to help. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument is a great place to start building an understanding of who you are. The best practice is to go beyond the results and dig much deeper to understand the advantages and implications of your type.

Where are you going?

We all get out of life what our actions and decisions deliver. The difference is more related to horizon. If focused on the long term, your actions and decisions support your personal vision and direction in life. If not future-focused, your actions support the moment and not a goal. As my favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else.” Developing a personal vision is difficult and is not likely to happen in one sitting.

Who are you leading?

Everyone has a surprisingly large group of constituents they can choose to lead. By not specifically defining who you are leading, you have made the default choice to not lead. Your constituent group should include people from all aspects of your life: career, family, community, friends, etc. On the flip side, it is also important to understand who is leading you. In some cases, as in a good interdependent relationship, it may be the same people you are leading. Knowing your mentors to being attuned to their guidance is important for your personal leadership development.

What do they want?

It is hard to lead people where they don’t want to go. That turns leadership into coercion. For effective personal leadership, we need to listen carefully and understand what our constituents want and where they want to go. That is not the same as caving in or compromising our goals. Leadership is a team sport.

A few final points:

Keep Learning – Everything from formal education to just listening and responding to those around you will help improve your personal leadership. Investing in ourselves improves our personal leadership and leadership effectiveness for others.
Care Deeply – Personal opinion, I don’t believe you can lead anyone you don’t care about. After all, leadership is not about the leader, but about those they lead.
Never Give Up – It should go without saying, long-term perseverance and focus are musts. Along the way, plans will change and require adjustment but will not change who you are or where you are going.

Oh, have a great trip and don’t forget to have some fun along the way!

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‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE POLITICALLY SAVVY: SIX TIPS FOR GLOBAL LEADERS

Mike Koper — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:10:19 +0000

I recently read a blog on performance that subtly illustrated the organizational strains that most every team is feeling from the effects of political talk. One of the writers then replied with their take on the issue, which led to the next reply (in opposition) and the next reply and so on. This is the information age, more so the Global Information Age, commonly referred to as G.I.A., where headlines have no boundaries. Off and running, 2012 has been one of the biggest election years, and the US Presidential campaign is in full swing, whew…yikes! Here comes political overload. Global leaders must maneuver their global teams through some treacherous waters now and in the future. To complicate circumstances further, plus exacerbate some delicate situations, is the fact that organizations are a very complex web of egos, alliances, and rivalries. People’s political views, attitudes, and ideas can and do sprinkle into the everyday business operations of the corporation, causing unnecessary strains on function and performance. Whether its finance, sales, engineering, or customer service department, each attempts to build their own sandbox and defend it from attack or influence from outsiders. A savvy global leader will accept this fact of human nature and precisely deal with remedies to clarify the company message and rally all of the team members on the importance of sustainment and operational momentum.

More easily stated, here are six tips for global leaders to keep teams doing what they do best in spite of the political season:

Understand the mission and goals of each department and how it must execute in order to perform to its optimal capabilities. More simply put, broadcast the message with crystal-clear clarity. Make sure the message answers the question, “What is the overall objective of each department, team project, etc., its advantages, and its opportunities?” Global leaders must take the opportunity to restate messages regularly while pointing out why everyone must have execution “know-how” of the shared vision to attain operational performance.
Proliferation of the right information can stimulate team action when the global leader becomes a source of useful information. When leveraged, information yields exponential returns if it can be applied to the daily tasks of top-line performers. Allow the performers to contribute to process improvement ideas on a “best practices” bulletin board. For example, Dell Computer instituted an innovation site called Ideastorm; this site resulted in over 17,000 new ideas for improvement with Dell adopting over 500 ideas for new product design. Feedback sites can supply process improvement concepts that may extend to other departments. Allow feedback to be made by email, text, video, or with a feedback form structure. Being a leader also means being a trust agent of information both internally and externally to the company.
Avoid the rumor mill. Land mines and pitfalls are everywhere. Being politically savvy, global leaders must recognize that more wrong turns, traps, and dead ends are in greater abundance that right turns. Simple due diligence and verification can upend a growing rumor.
Be cognitive of those with strong egos, both from performers and customers. Political sensitivity is an art for every leader; it’s composed of being able to read people, predict probable reactions, and guide the direction of the conversation. The leadership magic and the complexity of life is summed up as recognizing that people are different, some situations require special conditions, and steadfast level treatment is a must in order to be fair.
Do webcast/videocast, announcing new employee events, company programs, corporate involvement in community events, and new business won; or highlight performance operational statistics, including plant productivity, reduced downtime, or drops in customer complaints. Most team members are inspired when they actually see their senior leaders being human while delivering a personal message on the status of the company.
Minimize political conflicts and read the non-verbal cues. Leaders must remain flexible and open-minded to resolve conflict. Political discussions can be heated, and the workplace is not the forum to elevate one’s philosophies. Leaders need to step back from the chatter and assess the posturing, innuendos, and the like. Each non-verbal action can raise tensions and make collaborative work a challenge. Make the business of the company FIRST and foremost.

Even though many global leaders must intently focus their efforts on the operation and growth of the business, many global leaders in supply chain management are confronted by external counterparts that customarily impose strong attitudes and egos by driven individuals. Because of the growing diverse global-culture marketplace, such encounters can be both a part of doing business or a culturally accepted practice amongst international customers and suppliers that each leader must endure.

Are you politically savvy to manage through it and attain better team performance or momentum? Would you say your leadership skills demonstrate a resolution to political overload? How?

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Podcast: Engaging Your Learners

Sydney Smith — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:58:49 +0000

There is a lot of discussion these days around making learning interactive and using interactivity to engage learners. The tactics to accomplish that vary depending on how “engage” is defined and, even more importantly, on the performance-based objectives. Press play below to listen to the full podcast Engaging Your Learners.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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The Mobile Worker

Mal Poulin — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:21:14 +0000

Employees used to come in all shapes and sizes. Now they also come in all locations. In the past 10 years, there has been much discussion about telecommuting. In the federal sector, reviews are rampant about whether employees should be “allowed” to work from home. The reality is that our workforce is always working and always on. Even if we are office workers but have very long commutes on planes, trains, and automobiles, we can still participate in conference calls, prepare client presentations, or analyze current business reports. Of course, not while driving!

Sometimes this work is enabled by mobile devices that are issued by our employer and sometimes by our own devices that we have brought/applied to our work (BYOD). In either case, the applications that enable our performance must be installed and connected in order for us to be effective. Sometimes these apps are available to everyone in the market via an online store. Sometimes they are developed specifically for us and our business need.

Many employees, such as bus drivers, sales executives, airline pilots, utility workers, and home inspectors, have always been mobile. Now they can actually perform their jobs more efficiently without having to come to HQ to check in, synchronize data, receive schedules, or update routing. They can do what they need to do where they need to do it.

However, if they have not adopted their new mobile device, applications, or processes, there can be more time wasted than before. Acceptance and adoption come first. Proficiency and compliance come next. The strategy to enable initial learning, ongoing performance support, and collaboration continues to be a winner. Winning in this scenario comes in many forms—financial, employee satisfaction, and (the ever important) customer satisfaction.

What is the value to setting your workers free/mobile?

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Podcast: Mobility – User Adoption is Everything

Mal Poulin — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:05:42 +0000

With 35% of the global workforce using mobile technologies on the job by 2013, they must adopt their new platforms and new ways of conducting business in order to be effective. In order to set the workforce free, we have to support them where they are and enable their performance when they need it. Click here to listen to the full podcast.

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