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	<title>Kevin Dwyer is the founder of Change Factory. Change Factory helps organisations who do do not like their business outcomes to get better outcomes by changing people's behaviour. Businesses we help have greater clarity of purpose and ability to achieve their desired business outcomes. To learn more or see more articles visit the website below or email kevin.dwyer @ changefactory.com.au</title>
	<link>http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/author/index/599/Kevin-Dwyer.php</link>
	<description>Kevin Dwyer is the founder of Change Factory. Change Factory helps organisations who do do not like their business outcomes to get better outcomes by changing people's behaviour. Businesses we help have greater clarity of purpose and ability to achieve their desired business outcomes. To learn more or see more articles visit the website below or email kevin.dwyer @ changefactory.com.au - Latest business
news &amp; management advice on how best to build your own business -
Free, independent business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change
Management &amp; much, much more.</description>
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	<pubDate>Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:22:53 +0000</pubDate>
	<managingEditor>admin@buildyourownbusiness.biz</managingEditor>
	<webMaster>admin@buildyourownbusiness.biz</webMaster>    
	<item>
      <title><strong>Seven Deadly Sins of Managing Change</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[1.	Haziness

A poorly defined goal leads to a difficult to control change. 

Organisations become stuck in transition from the period of shock and denial to the period of acceptance of change; letting go of the past. They do so because people have different views on what is the goal. Different views of the goal create actions which are not congruent. 

Power groups form based around the different views of the goal. Tension is created and Actual change is slow. 

2.	Rigidity

Change evolves. The mere announcement of a change programme alters the dynamic of an organisation. People react differently to the need for change, the goal of change and the plan for change. 

A long term plan for change must take into account the forming, disbanding and reforming of cliques of people around opinions, rumours and the occasional fact. People’s emotions and stamina are put to the test in any serious change programme. 

A change management plan must be flexible and sensitive enough to sense and support the requirements people committed to change.

3.	Secrecy

Waiting until the organisation is absolutely sure of all elements of their change programme before communicating it inevitably leads to the destruction of trust.

It leads to a greater element of shock and denial. It takes longer for people to reach the level of acceptance required for them to move on. The change is unlikely to be truly supported. A substantial group of employees will remain disenfranchised, looking for any opportunity to criticise the change years later.

There is a mantra that works in communicating change; “Tell them early, tell them often”.

4.	Sloganeering

Enveloping change in slogans such as “best practice”, “transformation”, or “revitalisation” may give a sense of urgency, but it risks employees losing sight of what the change program is about. 

For example, change programs are rarely about best practice. It is very difficult to actually do. If a change p ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Training Methods: Drilling versus Skilling</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Too many departments within organisations attempt to skill their employees when they need to drill their employees.

Drilling, or making people practise a skill or assimilate knowledge until it becomes second nature, is used when people are new to a task or need to correct errors in the way they execute a task. It is also used when an automatic response to stimuli is required.

Skilling, or giving people the rationale and the knowledge to adopt certain behaviours, is used when people are fully competent at tasks. It is also used when we want people to be able to interpolate and extrapolate from their current experience.

Drilling involves low levels of cognitive thought processes. It helps embed items held in sensory memory into short term memory and then to long term memory.

For example learning the “Ten Top Attributes of Leadership” from a list created from research by means of reciting the list, keeps the list in short term memory.

Repeating the same list and being tested on the list daily codifies the list into your long term memory.

Associating the codifying of the list into long term memory with a sound, a smell, a sight a touch or an emotion helps in retrieval of the list later from long term memory.

Skilling involves high levels of cognitive thought accessing information from long term memory. It requires analysis and decision making capacity. It is suitable to make people grow and to meet the higher needs of Maslow’s hierarchy.

For example, running a course where classroom interaction is encouraged on the topic “What is a leader?” with participants sharing their experiences on good and bad leadership traits. A high level of cognitive thought is required to develop a list of leadership attributes.

Skilling and drilling require different instructional design.

Drilling requires participants to practise, practise and practise until they get it right. For example, learning that 1 + 1 = 2 as I was taught in grade one. 

Skil ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Leader's Emotions</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[“It’s tough at the top”, or so they say. 

It is not only tough. It’s invigorating, infuriating, exhilarating, frustrating, defining and lonely all at the same time.

The range of emotions a leader feels spans the whole range of basic emotions; love, joy, surprise, anger and sadness.

When a leader is setting the goal, clearing the path and providing the resources to get there, the leader shows determination to succeed despite the barriers put in front of them, rather than fail because of the barriers. Emotionally they appear composed, and optimistic.

When those plans, despite the barriers encountered, show signs of success, the emotional state may change to pride, satisfaction, surprise or simply, relief.

When a leader sees results delivered by their subordinates exhibiting capacity that the subordinates thought was beyond them, the emotions may turn to exhilaration and jubilation. The feeling is beyond a sense of pride and more akin to self actualisation on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Leaders have defining moments. These moments are like an “ah-ha” moment magnified many times over. It is a moment when against their previous practice and the advice of others they take a personal risk because they are doing what they believe is right. When, in twenty-twenty hindsight others see it as right their character becomes defined.

Defining moments create conviction. Conviction creates an emotional stability, an aura of assuredness and hope.

Leaders who have conviction also often show an unbridled passion for what they do.

There are times however, when things to do not go well. The emotions tend towards anger, irritation and frustration. For example, when a budget submission for a tactic considered critical to implementing the strategy does not get approved. Or when the sales pitch that would transform the organisation’s business fell at the last hurdle.

Other times, the emotions may belong more to the sadness family of emotions. Pe ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Sources of Power</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Too many people rely on the legitimacy of position or regulations as their source of power. They ignore the other sources of power built on good ideas, communicated clearly with passion and humility. I was brought to this observation from two disconnected events; Al Gore’s sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize and facilitating a role play of some mines’ inspectors this week. 

In the two part negotiation role play, I had separated experienced mines’ inspectors and made them play the role of a quarry owner. The inexperienced inspectors played the role of the inspectors. 

The scenario in the first part appeared to lay the power at the feet of the quarry owners. However, there was room for the inspectors to access power and use it. As the role play unfolded the quarry owners utilised their source of power well and the results of the negotiation was lopsided.

The second part of the role play added some new information whilst moving the time scale ahead six months. The new information lay all the power at the feet of the inspectors in terms of regulation breaches which could cause jail time for the quarry owners. In preparation for the role play the quarry owners were preparing for one shot and then roll over.

What I observed unfold was the primacy of the power of mastery of the topic over the power of legitimacy. The experienced inspectors playing the quarry owners used their knowledge and experience to bamboozle the less experienced inspectors. The observation was not about the role play anymore but real life exercise of power.

Power for many of us, appears to come from position and authority or legitimacy. But it is not the be all and end all of power. We each have sources of power which we do not tap. Or we have sources of power which we neglect to develop.

Take Al Gore as an example. When he was vice president he held the power of legitimacy. The power he held existed because of his position. Whilst he held other sources of power such as the abilit ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Internet Impact on Retail Customer’s Buying Process</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The internet has changed the face of retail selling. Customers are able to search for information and evaluate alternatives on-line. In store retail sales processes have, in many organisations failed to adapt to the increased power consumers have now.

All retail sales people at some time will be taught a sales process. 

The sales process and the goal of each step will look something like:

Step One: Planning and Preparation. - Ensure you have all and understand the information to make a sale
 
Step Two: Opening the Sale. - Establish a person-person relationship and breakdown resistance
  
Step Three: Probing. - Determine what and why and establish trust
 
Step Four: Demonstration. - Establish the value of the merchandise and create desire
 
Step Five: Trial Close. - Cement the sale on the primary item and identify what else the customer needs to make a purchase
 
Step Six: Handling Objections. - To determine real reason for the customer not buying, identify ways to add more value and build trust

Step Seven: Closing the Sale. - Increase closing ratio and overall productivity

Step Eight: Follow-up. - Establish a relationship with customer – create positive ‘word of mouth’

Creating an environment where sales people can learn and practise the sales process with immediate feedback on parts of the process they do well and parts which they do not do well has a positive impact on most sales teams.

However, to reach our potential sales, having a well practised sales process today is not enough.

The customer’s buying process has changed. Or more accurately, the channels through which customers execute the elements of their buying process have changed.

Retail customers buying process follows this form:

Step One: Need recognition or problem awareness. For example, I’m renovating my kitchen and need to look at what is around in the way of ovens, stoves and cook-tops

Step Two: Information Search. For example, I’m not too sure  ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/55/2178/Internet-Impact-on-Retail-Customers-Buying-Process.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/55/2178/Internet-Impact-on-Retail-Customers-Buying-Process.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Customer Service: Little Things Matter</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Imagine the scene. I have decided to take a weekend off and head up to the hinterland for a weekend away from the rat race. Two whole days of luxury with the person I love. Having made the decision to spend the money pampering myself, the sense of anticipation is electric. Good vibes flood my body.

I book on-line. It all seems pretty easy. I even got a discount for a late booking. The confirmation e-mail came through. I am set. What a great weekend this is going to be!

I drive up to the resort. My first glimpse is of a breathtaking property. I know I have made the right decision. There is some kind of construction work going on at the gates that I hardly even notice as I feast my eyes on what will be my home for two glorious days.

I park the car. A little confused by the signage at first, I eventually find my way, collecting my overnight bag, heading up to reception.

Checking in is a breeze after I draw the staff attention away from a problem they seem to be having with a computer or printer or such thing. A pleasant man escorts us to our room which looks exactly as I had expected. And wow, someone was thoughtful enough to put a bowl of fruit in the room. My dream weekend has commenced.

I flop down on the beautiful, huge bed to read about the facilities here. The food at the restaurant looks divine. I flick on the TV to see what channels they have and what movies are showing, making a mental note to watch a movie I have missed seeing before, in the comfort of my bed after dinner. 

Now to explore; We decide to take one of the walks mentioned in the room compendium. It is no quite clear from the compendium where to go, but the nice people in reception give me directions, once I get their attention.

The walk is beautiful, if a bit longer than I thought, because the signs were a bit hard to follow. But that’s probably just me. Signs and directions were never my strength.

The shower after coming back from my walk was great. Nice and hot. The wat ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Service</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Detachment

Customers need to feel that you are concerned for them. Demonstrating indifference by not asking questions about them or their business is a major turn-off for customers. Going into solution mode before properly understanding a customer’s problem is a sure sign of disinterest.

Inhospitality

Customers must feel welcome in their dealings with you. Unwelcoming foyers and offices turn customers off. What is welcoming is different from segment to segment. A receptionist with multi-coloured hair and visible body piercing creates an inhospitable environment in a business hotel. It may create a welcoming environment in a tattoo parlour.

Rudeness

Just saying the words, “Have a nice day” is not enough. Body language, tone and pace of voice all have an impact above and beyond the words spoken. Acknowledging people with eye contact and a cheery “Good morning” creates a feeling of civility. Even in your most frequent of customers.

Attitude

The mood of your customer has the greatest impact on their perception of service. Their mood is created by a myriad of previous interactions. Their perception of your service lifts or plunges depending on your attitude. Having a positive attitude lifts people’s moods. Having a scowl on your face plunges their mood further down. 

Ignorance

Being ignorant of your customer’s needs and which of those needs is the most pressing problem, simultaneously creates under and over servicing. In the first case, it creates low satisfaction; in the second, unnecessary costs.

Inaccessibility

“Thank you for waiting, your call is important to us”, played on a loop intertwined with music depresses a customer’s mood. At a time of all-pervading communication technology, we communicate more poorly than ever before. Be available when the customer needs you. Help the customer buy. Make self service easy. Do the foregoing things and you will solve a customer problem that plagues almost all customers. 

 ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Behavioural Event Interviews</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Behavioural Event Interview Questions

A behavioural event interview asks applicants for specific examples of past behaviours that relate to the competencies required to execute a job well. The principle being that the best predictor of future performance is past performance in similar circumstances. 

A good behavioural event interview feels more like a conversation rather than an interview trying to find out facts. It finds out facts through “back door” questions rather than “front door questions”.

Responses to behavioural event interview questions are much more difficult to exaggerate or distort than any other the other types of questions. If one is skilled in the art of reading body language one can tell if people are recalling information or making it up. Generally speaking, liars go left, the righteous go right.

However, interviewers with even rudimentary body language skills can tell when a person is genuinely confident about their response to the question. Good behavioural event questions make it hard to not tell the truth. 

The validity of applicant’s responses may also be checked by asking applicants for the names and contact details of individuals who can verify the events.

Completing a competency analysis, even in the form of a simple competency rubric, before the event takes place allows recruiters to rate interviewees answers against the desired competency.

A competency rubric comprises a table of rows of competency headings and three columns of outcome focused descriptions which correspond to defined differentiated performance levels; for example, “Developing”, “Accomplished” and “Exemplary”.

Behavioural event interviews consist of a lead question followed by a series of probing questions. The purpose of the questions is to elicit responses containing detailed information on the behaviour of the interviewee from past job-related or personal experiences that led to an outcome. 

Lead questions can be groupe ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/2099/Behavioural-Event-Interviews.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/2099/Behavioural-Event-Interviews.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Passiveness

Leaders cannot be passive. Direction must be given. The needs, wants, thoughts of the leader must be known and asserted. Leaders need not be aggressive. They must, however, have the full range of assertive skills, ranging from basic assertion of their needs through to consequence assertion when their needs are not being met.

Unaccountability

Leaders take accountability for their actions and the actions of those they lead. People who influence groups to take group decisions and hide behind the group decision are politicians, not leaders. So are leaders who delegate responsibility for making a decision and do not take accountability for the ability of the person so delegated to make the decision. Leaders acknowledge their mistakes freely, safe in the knowledge of what they have learnt.

Thoughtlessness

Leaders think. They acknowledge they are making assumptions when they make them and that they are considering opinion rather than dress it up as a fact. They do not apply business models from other industries or businesses without considering whether their external operating environment, strengths and weaknesses are or can be made to be similar. They do not use buzzwords without knowing what they mean. They do not use buzzwords without how implementing them will affect their operation, in detail.

Affectation

Leaders are genuine. They do not assume a persona from the dust cover of the latest business guru book. They do not copy other’s traits and habits in vain hope that looking like a leader will make them a leader. They are happy with who they are, warts and all. They are not, and do not have to be, a copy of Jack Welch.

Greed

Leaders share. Leaders share the glory of success. They see equity, not as a democratic ideal, but as part of what it means to be fair. They recognise that people need to feel valued to be motivated. They also share the workload and authority, understanding that independence and achievement is a strong rewa ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Internet Impact on Customer's Buying Process</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The internet has changed the face of retail selling. Customers are able to search for information and evaluate alternatives on-line. In store retail sales processes have, in many organisations failed to adapt to the increased power consumers have now.

All retail sales people at some time will be taught a sales process. 

The sales process and the goal of each step will look something like: 

Step One: Planning and Preparation. - Ensure you have all and understand the information to make a sale 
Step Two: Opening the Sale. - Establish a person-person relationship and breakdown resistance 
Step Three: Probing. - Determine what and why and establish trust 
Step Four: Demonstration. - Establish the value of the merchandise and create desire 
Step Five: Trial Close. - Cement the sale on the primary item and identify what else the customer needs to make a purchase 
Step Six: Handling Objections. - To determine real reason for the customer not buying, identify ways to add more value and build trust 
Step Seven: Closing the Sale. - Increase closing ratio and overall productivity 
Step Eight: Follow-up. - Establish a relationship with customer - create positive 'word of mouth' 
Creating an environment where sales people can learn and practise the sales process with immediate feedback on parts of the process they do well and parts which they do not do well has a positive impact on most sales teams. 

However, to reach our potential sales, having a well practised sales process today is not enough. 

The customer's buying process has changed. Or more accurately, the channels through which customers execute the elements of their buying process have changed. 

Retail customers buying process follows this form: 

Step One: Need recognition or problem awareness. For example, I'm renovating my kitchen and need to look at what is around in the way of ovens, stoves and cook-tops 
Step Two: Information Search. For example, I'm not too sure what I really want. I' ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/55/2093/Internet-Impact-on-Customers-Buying-Process.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/55/2093/Internet-Impact-on-Customers-Buying-Process.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Great Teams; Three Building Blocks</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Google team building. On the day of writing this article I got the response, &amp;quot;302,000,000 for team building. (0.08 seconds)&amp;quot;. Over 300 million web pages and articles devoted to team building.

My observation is that the more pages Google gives you, the more complex is a topic. Many more people have different ideas and hence they publish them. 

Is it really that complex? I have no doubt that the execution of building a team is complex as it involves the gamut of human emotions. What I do not see as complex though are the building blocks. 

My observation is that there are only three major building blocks. 

Common Goal:

Teams develop around a common goal. They do not grow because we want them to. We cannot instruct a team to form and expect it to be so. Groups of people, who individually pursue their own agendas whilst paying lip service to the declared goal, do not form teams. 

If the goal is prescribed for a group of people and they neither were part of its development, nor understand their part in delivering it, they will not form a team. The forcefulness of their leader may still deliver the goal but less efficiently and less effectively than if the group of people believed it was their goal. 

Respect for Difference:

Teams develop as people get to know one another and develop respect for their differences. The best way to develop the respect for differences is to experience a journey together. The obvious journey to use is the one required to reach a challenging goal.

However, at times, it is necessary to short cut the journey to build a team early in the timeline to reach the goal. Team building activities such as outward-bound programmes, hiking the Kokoda trail, week-long mental and physical team challenges can and do work in helping to build a team. Properly constructed, they not only discover the differences between people but also the value that the different characteristics bring. 

What also works in short circuiting th ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Time Management; Are Your People Assertive Enough?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Most time management programmes miss a critical element. The element is our own degree of assertiveness. 

Time management programmes usually encompass the following elements:

- Goal setting 
- &amp;quot;To do&amp;quot; list 
- Prioritisation of the activities on the &amp;quot;to do&amp;quot; list 

Many people use time management programmes to great effect. Many people successfully self teach managing their time using the same tools and principles taught in time management programmes. 

A good, if not the best, example of a time management programme is Stephen Covey's programme described in his very successful book, &amp;quot;First Things First&amp;quot;. 

Covey describes four generations of time management: 

1. First generation: - Reminders and to-do lists. We regularly create lists to remind us of what is in front of us. We regularly fail to complete the list, generating a new one. We may fall into the trap of getting more joy out of creating the list than completing the tasks on the list. 

2. Second Generation: - Scheduling future events. We identify deadlines to get things done; scheduling our time to complete the tasks we have on our to-do list. We fall into the trap of overestimating our productivity and allow external forces to interrupt our schedule. 

3. Third generation: - Setting long term, medium term and short term objectives to reach an ultimate goal. We manage our time to deliver the objectives we have set to reach our ultimate goal. We can set aside tasks which do not contribute to the objectives we have set. 

4. Fourth generation: - Committing to the important. We set objectives to reach our goal and divide the tasks we have in front of us into a matrix of urgency and importance. We evaluate our tasks against our goal and objectives using the matrix, with the obvious conclusion that the non-urgent and unimportant are not done at all. 

It is a great tool that has helped a large number of people manage their time better. And yet, many people, pos ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Call Centres: Customer or Internal Metric Focus?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[“Your call is important to us. We will attend to you as soon as we can”. One wonders sometimes what is more important to call centres, the call or the customer. In most call centres, customers wait for a few minutes at the end of a telephone line for an answer from an individual who is governed by a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that has more to do with the efficiency of the call centre than satisfying the needs of the customer.

Call centres which fall into the trap of providing a cost focus on single calls tend to be driven by an operational focus over the strategic role in the business of the organisation. They tend to become a law unto themselves with few people in the leadership team taking an active and detailed interest in their role.

Call centres are put in place to improve customer experience and thereby develop increased repeat business for the organisation for which they are providing that service. Using technology to deliver better services at about one tenth the cost of delivering the same services across a counter means the case for developing a call centre in an organisation with a high level of transactions is usually very compelling.

Call centres therefore should have a strong strategic focus. Their focus should, in a commercial environment, be about customers, not calls. They should concern themselves with the retention, annual value, life time value, total numbers and profitability of customers.

In taking a customer view, organisations then would concern themselves in an operational sense with customer access, customer identification, customer issue identification, customer routing, consultant skills, data availability and escalation policy to ensure that customer's issues are resolved first time.

The operational requirements of the number of calls, the average time for calls, consultant attendance, consultant turnover for example, need to be considered as part of the budgeting and reporting mechanism, not as the drive ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Performance Management: Handling Difficult Employees</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The most common denominator I see in poorly performing organisation is the tolerance of poor performance and poor behaviour.

The impact of tolerating poor performance and poor behaviour goes well beyond the employee in question.

In Jack Welch's book, &amp;quot;Winning&amp;quot;, he describes the 20:70:10 rule. Twenty percent of employees will be high performers and should be rewarded. Ten percent of employees will be poor performers and should be asked to move on. The remaining seventy percent will be good performers and should be given every encouragement to become high performers.

Tolerating poor performance and poor behaviour blurs the distinction between, poor, good and high performance. The subjective norm becomes, &amp;quot;Performance does not matter&amp;quot;. It becomes impossible to move a significant number of people out of good and into high performance. The tranche of poor performers grows beyond ten percent.

Difficult employees who deliver poor performance or have poor behaviour are diverse. We can classify them and the appropriate actions to take.

The new kid on the block: 

Description: A new employee who does not know what is expected. They do not have the skills or knowledge to execute the job well.

Action: Teach them the standards, demonstrate the skills to them and allow them to practise. Give them feedback to reinforce what they do right and correct what they do wrong.

Moody blues:

Description: They are inconsistent from day-to-day; brilliant one day, hopeless the next. They bring their baggage from their personal life to work mirroring their performance with their mood. They will be late several times a year.

Action: This is a behavioural problem. Explain that our customers are deserving of good service no matter how we are feeling. Explain that they do excellent work some of the time and that they need to be more consistent.

Ask of them what can be done to help them. Try a few different things to help them. Persevere; their goo ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/2069/Performance-Management-Handling-Difficult-Employees.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/2069/Performance-Management-Handling-Difficult-Employees.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Customer Service; Little Things Matter</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Imagine the scene. I have decided to take a weekend off and head up to the hinterland for a weekend away from the rat race. Two whole days of luxury with the person I love. Having made the decision to spend the money pampering myself, the sense of anticipation is electric. Good vibes flood my body.

I book on-line. It all seems pretty easy. I even got a discount for a late booking. The confirmation e-mail came through. I am set. What a great weekend this is going to be!

I drive up to the resort. My first glimpse is of a breathtaking property. I know I have made the right decision. There is some kind of construction work going on at the gates that I hardly even notice as I feast my eyes on what will be my home for two glorious days.

I park the car. A little confused by the signage at first, I eventually find my way, collecting my overnight bag, heading up to reception.

Checking in is a breeze after I draw the staff attention away from a problem they seem to be having with a computer or printer or such thing. A pleasant man escorts us to our room which looks exactly as I had expected. And wow, someone was thoughtful enough to put a bowl of fruit in the room. My dream weekend has commenced.

I flop down on the beautiful, huge bed to read about the facilities here. The food at the restaurant looks divine. I flick on the TV to see what channels they have and what movies are showing, making a mental note to watch a movie I have missed seeing before, in the comfort of my bed after dinner.

Now to explore; We decide to take one of the walks mentioned in the room compendium. It is no quite clear from the compendium where to go, but the nice people in reception give me directions, once I get their attention.

The walk is beautiful, if a bit longer than I thought, because the signs were a bit hard to follow. But that's probably just me. Signs and directions were never my strength.

The shower after coming back from my walk was great. Nice and hot. The water  ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/34/2062/Customer-Service-Little-Things-Matter.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/34/2062/Customer-Service-Little-Things-Matter.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Since When Did I Become a Grumpy Old Man?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Something insidious seems to have happened as I have got older. The world as seen through the prism of popular culture continues to be dumbed down. Stupid seems to have become mainstream. This appears to have occurred both in general and business society.

Now, it may well be that I am just becoming one of the grumpy old men from The Muppet Show. I offer the following for you to judge.

CEOs and their executive teams who preside over share prices which fall, are involved in scandals, or are sold on to private equity firms because the executive team cannot get sufficient value out of the assets are given bonuses on top of extremely high salaries.

Politicians not only get away with plausible deniability, but seem to believe that it is a legitimate tactic in executing their responsibility to spend our individual money to build a collective future society for our children, better than the one we were born into. Promises become core promises and non-core promises. The truth becomes what people believe is the truth, not necessarily what is the truth.

People who would be lucky to have a serious following of friends at their local pub, gain national and international notoriety based on actions within a voyeur's house that would have had them arrested or ostracised from a society with reasonable morals.

Buzz words dominate business. &amp;quot;Going forward&amp;quot; is used as a phrase relating to time used instead of next month or next year, a minimum of ten times in a morning television business news report. If they can do the opposite of going forward in time, then I'd really be listening. Phrases which confuse rather than inform become the norm, for example, &amp;quot;People&amp;quot; becomes &amp;quot;Human capital&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Employees&amp;quot; becomes &amp;quot;Associates&amp;quot; and organisations &amp;quot;Push the envelope&amp;quot;.

Athletes who can perform their particular skill at a higher level than most others and are paid astronomical salaries to do so, become a protected species ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/49/2055/Since-When-Did-I-Become-a-Grumpy-Old-Man.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/49/2055/Since-When-Did-I-Become-a-Grumpy-Old-Man.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Using Cultural Models to Change Organisational Culture</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Corporate culture is a label often used to describe the &amp;quot;what&amp;quot; about &amp;quot;why&amp;quot; something cannot be done. Peter Drucker is often quoted as follows; &amp;quot;Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.&amp;quot; One could be forgiven for believing that corporate culture cannot be changed.

My experience is that it can. Changing corporate culture undoubtedly requires leadership. It is useful, however, for leaders to be able to build a picture of the change required using a model of the culture.

Models of a corporate culture tend to be of two types.

The first type depicts culture as a geometric shape such as a polygon. The length of the spokes from the centre of the polygon reflects a numerical value of a specific element or typology of &amp;quot;corporate culture&amp;quot;. The elements tend to have labels such as &amp;quot;Avoidance&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Achievement&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Reactionary&amp;quot;.

The second type tends to build a textual description of each corporate culture element. The model tries to describe, using plain words, the elements of the culture.

Both types may be used in analysing corporate culture. However, in my experience, the former is more useful than the latter in implementing a change in corporate culture.

My experience is the typology type requires the least thinking by the leadership team and the descriptive type the most.

The first type is very useful in getting a picture of an organisation's culture. Also, using the tools can create a successful cultural change. Several organisations make a very good business out of marketing and selling the tools. So, on one level, they are successful.

My observation, however, is that people tend to remember the picture and or the labels given to the typology. They do not however, understand the detail behind the picture. To bring about cultural change, it is the detail that needs to be thought through and changed.

Because  ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/2054/Using-Cultural-Models-to-Change-Organisational-Culture.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/2054/Using-Cultural-Models-to-Change-Organisational-Culture.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Change Management; Training is Not Enough</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[It is difficult to find organisations that would say, &amp;quot;We find that training has little impact on our bottom line year on year&amp;quot;.

Is this because organisations know exactly what return they get from training? The answer to that question is a clear no. The American Society for Training and Development reported that only 3% of organisations measure what happens to their bottom line as a result of training.

Or is it that it is politically incorrect to say in an organisation that has a high investment in training, &amp;quot;We waste our money on training&amp;quot;. My observation is that this is somewhere near the truth.

Designing training that allows adults to learn is no simple feat in itself. A designer (once the objectives of the training are understood) has to design training with four major elements in mind.

Participants must recognise the need for information and rapport with the trainer must be established early, otherwise the trainer's efforts will be in vain. The opening of any training effort must provide a believable and appropriately challenging answer to the question, &amp;quot;Why am I here?&amp;quot; and must lead to an early engagement between the participants and the trainer.

The design must also be able to reinforce positive behaviour. In doing so, the design must not ignore negative or undesirable behaviour. The design needs to include negative reinforcements to eliminate the undesired behaviour as much as it includes positive reinforcement for desired behaviour.

Retention is a key aspect of training design that is often ignored, in that very few entities undertaking a training programme test for retention. Participants must also have adequate opportunities to practice what they learn to increase levels of retention.

The fourth critical element of training design is transference. Participants must be able to transfer what they have learnt in to a new setting away from the classroom. For example, the workplace!

Participants are more l ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/2042/Change-Management-Training-is-Not-Enough.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/2042/Change-Management-Training-is-Not-Enough.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Measuring the Right Indicator to Drive Behaviour</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Organisations measure what they value: volume, profit, safety, errors, customer or employee satisfaction.They measure what they hope to influence.

Problems arise for organisations when they substitute proxy measures for what they value that are not actually directly related to what they value.

A personal example of this was when I was a production manager in charge of a lubricating oil plant in Sydney, Australia.

What the organisation I worked for valued was profit before tax, which was duly measured. Other measures which received air time were customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and safety.

At an operational level we had a fixation on costs and as a driver of costs, labour productivity. We fought for a long while to get productivity accepted by the unions as a legitimate measure that influenced their take home pay.

The performance of our plant at which I was a supervisor at the time was illustrated by continual stock outs, long back orders, high levels of obsolete stock, despatch areas congested with returned stock, poor customer satisfaction and overall productivity one quarter of the national average.

We were, as a supervisory group, considered by our senior managers, marketing colleagues and distributors to be incompetent.

We finally succeeded in negotiating a wage case including productivity as a yardstick of performance. We went about setting productivity targets for blending oil expressed in litres blended per man hour, filling oil expressed in packages per man hour for every package size and warehousing expressed in litres per man hour moved in and out of the warehouse.

We expected that by concentrating on productivity in this manner, productivity would rise, costs would drop and our ability to supply the market would increase dramatically. We told our marketing colleagues and distributors to expect better times.

Initially, productivity rose, costs declined and customer service levels improved slightly. However, the improv ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/52/2041/Measuring-the-Right-Indicator-to-Drive-Behaviour.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/52/2041/Measuring-the-Right-Indicator-to-Drive-Behaviour.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Performance Indicators for Coaching Retail Staff to Improve Performance</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Most retail stores would agree that they can improve their sales performance. What I observe though, is that store mangers and sales managers often do not know how to get better performance from their staff.

To coach people to improve their performance, a standard is required against which they may be compared. The standards are usually ascribed by a performance indicator. An indicator may be in the form of an observable behaviour, or it may be a numeric or literal indicator. 

Coaching retail sales people requires all three types. In my experience, a combination of the following performance indicators generates enough data to coach sales people.

Behavioural indicators may include:

Adherence to a Code of Conduct
Adherence to the organisation's business values as encapsulated in a documented code of conduct. The code of conduct should require adherence to policies and procedures and describe the appropriate interaction between sales people, customers and one another. 

Behaviours which go against the code of conduct on the shop floor have a deleterious impact on customer perceptions and on staff morale. They should not be tolerated.

Personal Development
Personal Development is comprised of two indicators: 
Attendance at Training Courses 
- The percentage of training courses attended by a Sales Consultant of the training courses recommended for the same Sales Consultant over a certain period. 
Progress Towards Coaching Targets
- The sales person’s progress in achieving their coaching targets (for numerical targets) and/or changed behaviour (for behavioural targets).  

Store managers may also be coached against leadership indicators.

Leadership
Leadership comprises four elements: 
- Completion of coaching sessions with sales people
- Completion of customer service calls (follow-ups and telesales)
- Sales people's adherence to the code of conduct
- Sales people's attendance at training; the percentage of courses attended during a perio ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/55/2000/Performance-Indicators-for-Coaching-Retail-Staff-to-Improve-Performance.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/55/2000/Performance-Indicators-for-Coaching-Retail-Staff-to-Improve-Performance.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Managing People; Succeed Despite, Don't Fail Because</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[If only &amp;quot;they&amp;quot; had given it to me on time. I asked &amp;quot;them&amp;quot; and they did not reply. I sent an email to &amp;quot;them&amp;quot; but have not yet had a response. We don't have the budget we need. We don't have the resources we need. Our organisational structure does not allow us to perform they way we need to.

Are you tired of this? Tired of the lame excuses for non performance, missing targets, missing deadlines? A large minority, or indeed majority, of middle management and too many times the senior management, of organisations seem to pride themselves on &amp;quot;failing because&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;succeeding despite&amp;quot;. In my own experience, I was held accountable for results only on rare occasions, mostly in an operational role. I was usually held accountable for style over results.

Life in a business or a public organisation can be tough. In business, competitors can seem unreasonable, irrational in their actions in the market. In public institutions, the rules and regulations can seem designed to choke all innovation and speed out of the organisation. In both cases, budgets never seem to be enough.

Too many people in situations like these use the business environment as a crutch for failure rather than a challenge to utilise their innate and acquired skills to succeed despite the adversity they experience. The solution lies obviously within the attitude of the individual, but more times than not, within the attitude of the supervisor.

For individuals, a positive attitude where problems are seen as opportunities is needed. Whilst some a born with this view of the world, it can be learnt. Many of us practise a positive attitude in a social or sporting or family environment and yet display a glass half empty attitude at work. It is our responsibility as individuals to change that by understanding what environments generate that positive attitude outside work and change the environment inside work to match. Sometimes that may mean choosin ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/49/1996/Managing-People-Succeed-Despite-Dont-Fail-Because.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/49/1996/Managing-People-Succeed-Despite-Dont-Fail-Because.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Poor Business Management; When Words Become Labels</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Words in any language are meant to communicate meaning. Communication, in itself, is full of processes which can derail the intended communication. Words which are spoken or written by one person become distorted and filtered by the receiver. The filters the communication receiver uses are based on elements such as their upbringing, their mood and the sender's body language.

However, when the words that the sender uses have become so overused in the vernacular that they assume the role of a label or a brand, the problems in communication multiply ten fold or more.

A brand is in the eye of the beholder. Proof of this is in the following short test. Ask a person what is in a box labelled with three letters from the alphabet, for example, &amp;quot;XYZ&amp;quot;. There is general confusion as the only answers are something related to size. Ask the same person what is in a box with three other letters, this time &amp;quot;IBM&amp;quot; and the answers are much more specific. Ninety percent of people will have a specific view.

Ask a group of people individually whether the product is good quality or good value and there will be a range of answers. The answers will depend on their interaction with IBM's advertising and corporate presence and experience of IBM products and services. Some will rate the product highly and some lowly.

The more abstract the word, the more it is likely to become a label.

Objects are usually safe. A chair, a table, a TV, a car, all to a reasonable degree, carry an obvious meaning without too much explanation unless the people communicating are speaking of a specific type of object within a class of objects.

Events are less safe. A concert, a seminar, a party, can have distinctly different meanings. For example a child's birthday party, a Christmas party, a retirement party.

Collections of objects are even less safe. Educators, bosses, employees can be used to describe very different people. Educators could be kindergarten teachers or univer ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/42/1995/Poor-Business-Management-When-Words-Become-Labels.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/42/1995/Poor-Business-Management-When-Words-Become-Labels.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Building Critical Mass in a Change Management Programme</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[A change management programme succeeds only when the change in processes and outcomes become embedded in day-to-day business. For a change programme to be embedded into day-to-day business, a critical mass of employees and managers must be emotionally tied to the change in business outcomes and the change in processes which deliver the change in outcomes.

What does it mean to be emotionally tied? 

The old metaphor of the chicken and the pig demonstrating the difference between commitment (emotional attachment) and involvement suffices to explain. 

The metaphor goes, “What’s the difference between commitment and involvement?”

“Ask whether the contribution of a pig and a chicken to a breakfast of bacon and eggs is commitment or involvement.”  The answer is, “The chicken is involved, the pig is committed.”

When a critical mass of people shows the commitment of the pig, a change management programme will be embedded into day-to-day life. 

When too many people are, at best, demonstrating the involvement of the chicken, a change management programme is doomed to stop as soon as the driving force behind it is removed.

What ties people emotionally to a change programme? “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM), is the answer. Whilst a few people may be altruistic about change, the major motivator is WIIFM.

Whilst the elements of a change programme that provides sufficient incentive for people to become committed rather than just involved is different from person to person, the elements tend to be the same, programme to programme.

Career advancement/remuneration:

Career advancement is a strong incentive to most people. It appears as the first or second item in the list of work motivators in most studies. When it is second, the prime element is usually money. Career advancement, usually a driver of future income, is therefore either the first element, or a strong driver of the first element, in most surveys.

Personal pride in a job w ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1994/Building-Critical-Mass-in-a-Change-Management-Programme.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1994/Building-Critical-Mass-in-a-Change-Management-Programme.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Time Management - Common Meeting Failures</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[&amp;quot;Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything&amp;quot; says John Galbraith. I admit in my career in Shell that I avoided meetings like the plague. Especially those times when I was in a head office and increasingly as I fulfilled more senior positions in the company.

Why is it that in the world of corporations and government that meetings, more times than not, do not work? What characterises the behaviour of individuals and the teams who meet that destroys the ability of any meeting to actually be of value? I remember the characters and situations well. There have been....

I'm too important to listen: The one who has a side bar conversation with whoever is next to them during a presentation and later cannot remember being told about an issue which was a central theme to the presentation.

Let's talk about my favourite topic: The one who goes down every rabbit hole possible, losing focus and often preventing others from regaining focus of the meeting.

This meeting is not for making decisions: My favourite. Calling together a wide range of people at a very high opportunity cost to attend a meeting at which all the necessary data is available, but making a decision that plainly needs to be made is put off. The next meeting is usually in a month!

I sent an email about last month's action item but nobody responded: Translated; I forgot we had a meeting, did not read the minutes until five minutes ago and this lame excuse is the best I can come up with.

About that font size; do you think it is appropriate?: The person whose main contribution to the debate on the merits of arguments put forward in a presentation worries about the size, colour of the font or the font itself rather than the content.

The hand grenade, sometimes called the dead fish: In the middle of a meeting make a statement about an individual or the team or the organisation that derails everyone by the nature of what is not said directly after the statement. The state ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Grow Your Subordinate’s Competence by Being Less Tolerant</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[When does your consideration for a subordinate’s or colleague’s feelings, as a trade-off for being honest about their poor performance or behaviour become counter productive? 

When does tolerance for small performance shortfalls as a trade-off against a positive attitude, become a liability?

The simple answer to these questions is, ‘Most of the time”, if not, “Always”.

The useful answer is more complex.

Most people take some comfort from having known work boundaries. People appreciate knowing what constitutes “good” performance and behaviour.

Work boundaries are set one of two ways. 

One is by means of written standards, the “what” of the boundary. The standards are sometimes accompanied by a work instruction, the “how” of the boundary. 

The other is by means of formal or informal on-the-job training and some additional “policy” documents, “values” statements and checklists. 

When supervisors set the boundaries of performance and behaviour but do not enforce them they set off a number of unintended consequences. These consequences make life more difficult for individuals and less productive for the organisation.

 A significant assumption is made when supervisors trade-off their consideration for people’s feelings over the breaching of performance or behaviour boundaries. Supervisors assume they know how people will feel about bringing the crossing of a boundary to their attention. 

Consequently, supervisors choose to deal with what they think will happen rather than what has happened. Their behaviour smacks of ignorance and arrogance at the same time. Ignorant because they do not know what may have happened. Arrogant because they assume the individual will not be professional in their response.

Further, the individual will be led to believe that the boundary is not really important. They will continue to breach it until the supervisor advises them differently, perhaps in exasperation. The individual  ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/1981/Grow-Your-Subordinates-Competence-by-Being-Less-Tolerant.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/1981/Grow-Your-Subordinates-Competence-by-Being-Less-Tolerant.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Managing Change; Training is Not enough</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[It is difficult to find organisations that would say, &amp;quot;We find that training has little impact on our bottom line year on year&amp;quot;.

Is this because organisations know exactly what return they get from training? The answer to that question is a clear no. The American Society for Training and Development reported that only 3% of organisations measure what happens to their bottom line as a result of training.

Or is it that it is politically incorrect to say in an organisation that has a high investment in training, &amp;quot;We waste our money on training&amp;quot;. My observation is that this is somewhere near the truth.

Designing training that allows adults to learn is no simple feat in itself. A designer (once the objectives of the training are understood) has to design training with four major elements in mind.

Participants must recognise the need for information and rapport with the trainer must be established early, otherwise the trainer's efforts will be in vain. The opening of any training effort must provide a believable and appropriately challenging answer to the question, &amp;quot;Why am I here?&amp;quot; and must lead to an early engagement between the participants and the trainer.

The design must also be able to reinforce positive behaviour. In doing so, the design must not ignore negative or undesirable behaviour. The design needs to include negative reinforcements to eliminate the undesired behaviour as much as it includes positive reinforcement for desired behaviour.

Retention is a key aspect of training design that is often ignored, in that very few entities undertaking a training programme test for retention. Participants must also have adequate opportunities to practice what they learn to increase levels of retention.

The fourth critical element of training design is transference. Participants must be able to transfer what they have learnt in to a new setting away from the classroom. For example, the workplace!

Participants are more l ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1978/Managing-Change-Training-is-Not-enough.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1978/Managing-Change-Training-is-Not-enough.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Managing People; Be Insistent, Persistent and Consistent</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Managing the performance of people is not as difficult as many people think. I find so many people do it poorly not because it is difficult, but because they do not have the right attitude.

People performance management takes technique and attitude.

The technique side of people performance management is well written about, but I repeat it here for completion.

The first technique is to set standards of performance. These are the standards below which each individual in similar roles will not fall. These standards are the bottom boundary below which no one will be allowed to consistently fall without counselling.

Standards of performance will include such things as personal and team safety, financial probity and work attendance. Standards of performance must include measures which can be related directly to both the individual's work role and the organisation's goal.

A minimum standard of performance must be set for parameters such as project completion, level of sales, costs or level of quality. To not set standards for these kinds of parameters is to suggest that people do not have any responsibility other than to turn up to work and not hurt themselves or others or steal money.

The second technique is related. It is to set targets for individuals. Targets are agreed for the same set or a subset of the parameters for which standards have been set.

Targets are set based on the actual or expected competence of the individual. For example, a sales trainee would not be expected to achieve the same level of sales as an experienced sales person. However, they will be expected to sell. If they can't they should consider another profession.

The third technique is giving feedback and coaching people to improve performance. There are many &amp;quot;models&amp;quot; for giving feedback and coaching that one can review on the internet, however, they have common themes.

Feedback must be as immediate to the time when standards were breached or targets not reach ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/1977/Managing-People-Be-Insistent-Persistent-and-Consistent.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/44/1977/Managing-People-Be-Insistent-Persistent-and-Consistent.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Managing a Safe Workplace Requires Leadership</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Occupational Health and Safety is a serious subject. The degree of seriousness in which it is held by organisations is demonstrated by how they are lead, not by their bald statistics, their processes and policies or their insurance bill.

To embed a positive attitude to occupational health and safety in an organisation requires attention to three areas.

The first and foremost is leadership. The leader of the organisation must be seen to be leading on safety. A leader that demonstrates that they care about their employees health and well being including their own will generate a much higher degree of compliance with health and safety policies and processes than a leader who demonstrates a good knowledge of the legislation.

A leader that sets a standard of intolerance to unsafe acts and unsafe conditions will prevent more lost time injures than a leader who asks for safety to be at the start of every agenda for the effect rather than the substance.

In all cases I have observed, this means at one time or another putting safety ahead of a short term goal like a sale, or completion of a project on time and within budget. Two examples from my personal experience come to mind.

One was a senior executive visiting Fiji taking a tour of a service station who spotted a bald tyre on a delivery truck. He personally stopped the delivery, personally called our fitting hop and instructed the fitters to come to the service station and replace the tyre. We lost sales that day due to delays in delivery, but the clear point of where safety fitted in the petroleum business was made.

The second was when we closed down a chemical solvents filling plant after a serious incident with no actual consequences on the day due only to good luck. We did so because we could not find a way of preventing the incident possibly occurring again.

The second area that requires attention is the processes of an organisation. All processes should be analysed for risk. Not just the formal  ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/49/1976/Managing-a-Safe-Workplace-Requires-Leadership.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/49/1976/Managing-a-Safe-Workplace-Requires-Leadership.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Vision Statements That Confuse and Bemuse</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Since the 1970's vision statements have adorned the walls of most organisations, being used to communicate the direction in which an organisation is heading. Most are poor vehicles for that communication and serve mainly to confuse or bemuse the employees they are supposed to guide.

The majority of vision statements are poor. At best these poor vision statements are not challenging enough to develop the creative tension between the present and the future to energise the organisation. Many however are not even understood by the people in the organisation whose task it is to strive to reach the vision.

Vision statements which do not provide a succinct unequivocal view of the direction an organisation is heading in are counterproductive to the aims of most organisations. They are only paid lip service by employees and do not positively influence the behaviour of employees other than providing opportunities to behave in a cynical manner.

Vision statements tend to fall into three categories. First is the short and useful which is a rare occurrence. Second is the long tedious and confusing statement, developed by a group of senior managers sitting in a closed room for two days with an erstwhile consulting cramming every stakeholder and every objective in one extraordinarily long sentence. Third is the statement which short relative to the second and seems to have been created by a word generator.

Many vision statements fall into the third category. They follow a pattern such as: &amp;quot;To be the (leading/best) (provider/supplier) of (customer focused/market driven (solutions/products/service)&amp;quot;. 


As a vision it serves little purpose. It could have been thought of by a group of high school students as a homework exercise in strategy for their economics subject. It is not what we would expect from experienced senior leaders of an organisation. The statements of the third type are generally indistinguishable from one organisation to another in different i ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Poor Leadership; Poor Results</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[A malaise exists in many organisations which limits their ability to achieve even modest goals. It is not specific to any industry or any country. It is not specific to public or private enterprise. It is specific to leaders who do not want to, or are incapable of, leading.

The malaise is a tendency amongst leaders to identify a weakness in their organisation or across their industry and to do very little about it. The usual expectation is that someone else will fix it. That someone else is often government or government sponsored or controlled bodies. Sometimes, however, the solutions are left to that invisible duo, “them” and “they”.

Leaders of organisations who find a weakness affecting their ability to reach their goals must practise self help. If they are insightful enough to determine the problem, then surely they can go to the next step and devise solutions without the need of government intervention.

It is fine for organisations to seek help from government or other parties. But when that help is not forthcoming because of a lack of resources or other priorities, the treatment for the diagnosed ailment can only be found in the hands of the “physician” doing the diagnosis.

Examples of this malaise are all too frequently apparent.

For example, associations that decry the lack of specific competencies in their industry as a whole, push the problem to government to “improve” the education system. This is a natural reaction and probably one of several worthy options to explore.

However, if the curriculum changes required are too expensive, too elitist or just plain inappropriate for the majority of school leavers, then the government may well not accede to the request fully. The answer is not to berate the government for a decade for taking no action, but to take action within the industry.

When I completed university with a science degree, the clearest piece of knowledge I had was that I had just learnt to learn and that my g ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Communicating Change; Don't Let Them Hear it on the Grapevine</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[When do you tell employees about bad news? When do you tell them about good news?

Many organisations have difficulty determining the answers to the former question and do not enough thinking about the latter question and few ask the question, &amp;quot;What do our employees consider to be bad or good news and what news are they interested in hearing?&amp;quot; at all.

Further still, not enough thought is given to how the communication of news can shape the culture of an organisation.

Bad news or even extremely good news is difficult to keep completely secret. Good or bad, pending major news announcements generally require discussions between senior executives, the human resources function, the finance function and significant groups of line management. Sometimes it requires the pulling together of a project team.

Employees are not stupid. They notice when HR, finance and line management are having long meetings locked away in a room. They notice when people are pulled off their normal jobs to conduct a study. They notice when people they regard as friends stop talking about what they are doing.

At some time, even though the most draconian confidentiality clauses have been signed, a snippet of information will leak out. Even if it is that, &amp;quot;I have signed a confidentiality agreement about this and therefore I can't talk to you about the project&amp;quot;.

The recipient of this information knows three things from this sentence; the impact of the &amp;quot;project&amp;quot; is BIG, the initiative being worked on is complex enough to make it into a project, and whatever line of business their friend is in is involved.

What they don't know is what areas of the organisation will be impacted. Will it be people? Will it be the financial status of the organisation? Will it be marketing or sales or operations? Will it involve an expansion or contraction of activities?

Rest assured that the individuals who do not know will speculate, piecing together what they do know  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Project Management; An Undervalued Skill</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Many skills are admired and sought by individuals who want to progress in an organization. But one which would make them more effective in an organization is usually treated indifferently, by the individual and the organization.

People studying for their MBA and aspiring executives concentrate their learning on marketing, strategy, finance, e-commerce and organisational behaviour but rarely show an interest in project management.

Yet the skills of a good project manager, if practised, will improve an individual's capability in almost all other disciplines and are every bit as valuable as those of a good CEO.

The basic skills a project manager must master include estimation, stakeholder management, sequential and parallel planning, contract management, scope management and risk management.

A good project manager is a good estimator. He/she is good at estimating time, cost and effort. They understand the level of error involved in any estimation. They understand the relevance of inherent errors from different data sources in making their estimations.

Project managers can sort fact from opinion. They can handle ambiguity and work through their project undaunted by the uncertainty of project elements as long as the degree of uncertainty is known.

Closely allied to being able to work within ambiguous circumstances is a finely honed understanding of risk. Good project managers plan contingencies based on their experience, their project team's experience and other available data to ameliorate risk. The nature of the contingencies is dependent on the probability and impact of the risk.

Stakeholder management is a desired ability in a senior executive. The ability to talk with a wide variety of people from tradesmen to board level is seen as a valuable skill.

Project managers must be good stakeholder managers. Conversing at board level to report on milestones, issue management and risk must be as natural as talking to tradesmen about getting the job d ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Managing People; Living the Values</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[There has been an unedifying politicised debate in Australia about Australian values. It is a debate about who has them, who does not and seeks to ostracise those who are considered not to have them.

It is a debate where the majority of the participants have demonstrated the values of ignorance, intolerance, opportunism and political wilfulness whilst claiming to support values of fairness, mateship and egalitarianism.

That's the problem with values. They are demonstrated by what we do, not by what we say.

No matter which community we belong to, whether it is our family, our school, our club or our employing organisation, we cannot escape demonstrating our values each day.

Our values come from our beliefs which form generally at an early age dependent on our experiences and upbringing and it is difficult to impose them upon us.

My school had a statement about values incorporated into a Latin phrase under the crest of the school. We were not taught Latin, so that made it difficult for any of us even in our formative years to be influenced by the school statement about values.

Our school made an attempt at defining the school's values and made a poor job of it by writing it in a language none of us understood. However, the errors of my school are nothing compared with errors being perpetrated in the name of values by organisations in both the public and private sector.

The majority of organisations now have mission, vision and values statements. The aim of these statements is to cascade from what we are here for, to what do we want to achieve, to what personal values should we hold as an organisation and how we behave as individuals.

The purpose of such cascading statements is to free organisations from controls and empower them to work for a common goal with a common purpose and a common set of behaviours.

Introducing values should be about leading the organisation through values rather than controls. Value statements, therefore, should be  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Managing Change; Baulking at the Leadership Challenge</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Leaders, it is said, have the responsibility to &amp;quot;do the right things&amp;quot; and managers have the responsibility to &amp;quot;do things right&amp;quot;. In doing the right things leaders make decisions. My observation is that too many people in leadership positions are baulking at the challenge of making tough decisions.

When contemplating decisions to be made, good leaders will, with an understanding of the urgency of a decision, ensure that they have the relevant facts to make a decision.

The aspect of time is important in decision making. When confronted with what appears to be a crazed gunman about to shoot in his direction, a police officer will be well advised to shoot first and ask questions later. When an organisation is contemplating a change in strategy and tactics from a leading market position because they want to &amp;quot;future proof&amp;quot; themselves, getting all the facts before making a decision is good advice.

What I describe as baulking at the leadership decision is when leaders are slow to recognise, or unwilling to recognise, the urgency of their situation, or when they do, making unsound tactical choices which delay decision making. The granddaddy of them all though is when the situation is urgent, the facts are known and yet still the leader baulks at the decision.

There are many reasons, both good and bad for this observed behaviour.

One reason which often raises its head is emotion. Bringing emotion into decision making muddies the water for all taking part as stakeholders in discussing options and makes it difficult to be rational about making decisions.

It is not that leaders should not feel things. They should and certainly must when communicating their decisions. But they must not think with their emotions.

For example, a business which needs to slash fixed costs to survive will not be well served by nice, emotional managers whose version of doing the right thing is to always &amp;quot;look after&amp;quot; everybody. A decision may  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>In My Own Image</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[People of all ages in business make the mistake of seeing the whole of their world in a mirror image of their own reflection. In all cases this level of ego has more disadvantages than it has advantages. They disrupt teams or prevent teams from forming. A brief description of my top five observations of people exhibiting this characteristic are:


1. The Sales Gun

This is the sales person in retail or commercial sales who has a successful method that works for them. They regularly win sales awards. They regularly exceed target. They are great rapport builders and/or great closers of a sale. Their methods at times may sail close to the limit of what the organisation wants to represent their values. However, they get the sale.

They don't know too much about the organisation's products. They have been tried as a sales manager but it was not for them. They have tried to coach junior sales people but only those people who think like them seem to be able to learn from them.

The sales gun as described above has a narrow focus around what has always worked for them. New ideas are to be treated in a satirical fashion or ignored.

Their inability to assimilate new ideas may be acceptable if life is not changing. They resist change. In any organisation undergoing significant change, the sales gun described as above is usually a casualty. That is because they are afraid to move out of their comfort zone.


2. The Autocratic Manager

What they say goes. To the point of what they say but not necessarily what they do. If it is a marketing campaign we are testing the only opinion that counts is their opinion. It does not matter that they are not typical of the target market. They will determine what advertising will work.

If they are an operational manager, only their experiences of people count. Only their experience of technology counts, even if it is outdated. Only their experiences of distributor characteristics and behaviour count. Only their experiences  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Leadership and Thinking</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[ am reading a book which depicts the years preceding and following the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. The book tells the story of the girl's family, who were Jewish, as their living environment changed dramatically around them.

It is not a remarkable book, but one thing did stick with me. The family are taught, cajoled, convinced, encouraged to think. Almost as if thinking in itself is a solution to problems.

The reason that it resonates loudly with me, of course, is that I happen to agree with the sentiment. That is not to say that I am any great thinker just that I feel more relaxed, more rational and more in control when I think something through. Thinking makes me feel good.

Thinking requires data and information. Obtaining and evaluating data leads me to then think about where the data comes from. Is the &amp;quot;data&amp;quot; fact or opinion? Does it matter if it is fact or opinion? What is the purpose for which I am going to use the data and what risk is attached to the potential decisions I might make dependent on the data?

If it is highly probable that a decision I make based on poor data has a negative consequence or if the consequence itself is significant, I will think about finding better sources of data, or at least corroborating data. If I can't, I may still make a decision but before going through with it, think about how I can recover from the significant consequences should they actually occur.

In thinking through contingencies, I begin to think about what leading indicators might exist to alert me that the consequences are beginning to occur. Getting the indicators right allows me to implement my contingency plan before the consequences get so entrenched to make it difficult to recover.

After thinking all of that through I think about communicating all of this to my colleagues and subordinates so that they may know what I am thinking and what we should do. This starts me thinking that maybe they might have better ideas and ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Time Management: Common Meeting Failures</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[&amp;quot;Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything&amp;quot; says John Galbraith. I admit in my career in Shell that I avoided meetings like the plague. Especially those times when I was in a head office and increasingly as I fulfilled more senior positions in the company.

Why is it that in the world of corporations and government that meetings, more times than not, do not work? What characterises the behaviour of individuals and the teams who meet that destroys the ability of any meeting to actually be of value? I remember the characters and situations well. There have been....

I'm too important to listen: The one who has a side bar conversation with whoever is next to them during a presentation and later cannot remember being told about an issue which was a central theme to the presentation.

Let's talk about my favourite topic: The one who goes down every rabbit hole possible, losing focus and often preventing others from regaining focus of the meeting.

This meeting is not for making decisions: My favourite. Calling together a wide range of people at a very high opportunity cost to attend a meeting at which all the necessary data is available, but making a decision that plainly needs to be made is put off. The next meeting is usually in a month!

I sent an email about last month's action item but nobody responded: Translated; I forgot we had a meeting, did not read the minutes until five minutes ago and this lame excuse is the best I can come up with.

About that font size; do you think it is appropriate?: The person whose main contribution to the debate on the merits of arguments put forward in a presentation worries about the size, colour of the font or the font itself rather than the content.

The hand grenade, sometimes called the dead fish: In the middle of a meeting make a statement about an individual or the team or the organisation that derails everyone by the nature of what is not said directly after the statement. The state ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Succession Planning: Who are the Leaders in your Neighbourhood?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[With apologies to Sesame Street, how do we spot a leader in our midst? What ingredients make for a certain individual to have the style and substance to be a leader of people?

Spotting a phoney leader is not too difficult. Phoney leaders intimidate or manipulate people, leading forcefully but without real confidence in themselves or a belief in a cause. They are actors on a stage, following a script and protecting their image.

They stopped learning many years ago, believing they &amp;quot;know it all&amp;quot;. They fail to inspire people through the mastery of their craft, seeking more often to do it through their position and persona. They use rhetorical language rather than simple and direct language which speaks of problems or opportunities in a manner which directly connects to the people they seek to lead.

It is obviously important for organisations to pick true leaders for development and not phoney leaders. To do so, it is important to appreciate what to look for in a real leader at an early stage of their development. The qualities to look for are not about style.

Leaders can have many different styles and different organisations require different leadership styles dependent on the environment in which they find themselves. An organisation in crisis may well appreciate a command and control style leader over a coach or a team captain type. If there is fire in the building I want one person giving orders and everyone else concentrating on making sure they are carried out!

Leadership will present itself early on in a person's career in one or more of the following ways.

They will have already displayed leadership. They will have taken control of a situation to get a job done. It may appear as if they have even acted out of character in that it was the environment that caused them to step up and take a lead. Alternatively, they may have been a leader in a role outside of their work environment such as a social club or a church group or sports group. ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Change Management: When Less is More</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Organisations which fail to prioritise their projects and activities in alignment with their goals risk getting lost in a mire of directionless activity instead of taking a clear set of actions to reach a goal or goals.

Most organisations build an inventory of projects and activities over time, which are not visible to the leadership team. Organisations need to periodically stop, take stock and prioritise the projects and activities they are undertaking against the goals of the organisation.

Symptoms, including incomplete projects, project cost overruns, operating cost blow outs, low customer satisfaction, low productivity and low morale are typical of organisations which are unable to prioritise their inventory of projects and activities.

In one organisation I worked with, the competitive environment was tightening dramatically. The goals, which were set for the following twelve to eighteen months, related to managing the portfolio of products, services and customers to achieve a drastic cost reduction.

They had an inventory of over two hundred discretionary projects and activities. That is, projects and activities outside of both the day to day business and those projects required to comply with internal or external regulations. Reviewing that inventory revealed less than forty percent of the projects and activities were aligned to the goals. Further, less than fifty percent of the projects and activities were deliverable within the desired timeframe.

Effectively, less than twenty percent of the discretionary projects and activities were aligned to their goals and timeframe. As a result, several projects were stopped completely, and many were postponed.

Key projects and activities, which delivered against the goals in the time frame required, were given additional resources and a shorter timeline for delivery.

The first, most difficult and most important task in a prioritisation review is to understand clearly what the organisation's goals are ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Trust and Productivity</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[When two people trust each other, their relationship is productive. When two organisations have trusting relationships and interactions their relationship is productive. When trust is violated, relationships are unproductive and organisations and individuals suffer. 

The definition of trust does not include any element of good or bad. Two criminals may trust each other. It does not have any element of right or wrong. Two people with diametrically opposing views believing each is wrong may trust each other.

Trust is a personal issue. It indicates a willingness to become vulnerable to another person or organisation based on positive expectations of their conduct. 

In their article posted on beyondintractibility.org, Lewicki and Tomlinson describe two types of trust; Calculus-Based Trust (CBT) and Identification-Based Trust (IBT). 

The former is the style of trust which builds early in a relationship. CBT is the trust calculated as a result of the impact of incentives to stay in or leave the relationship. 

IBT is the trust developed later in a relationship. IBT is the trust developed when individuals have a deeper understanding of each other through repeated interactions. 

When Identification-based trust is developed, goals and values become shared. Meetings are required less frequently. Audits of processes become a shared and welcome responsibility. Developing and adhering to specifications becomes a less time consuming task. Differences in opinion created by low levels of understanding of corporate philosophy and culture are reduced substantially.

Procurement practises in the better managed auto-manufacturers is an example of building trust and improving productivity. 

Calculus-based trust developed between manufacturers and suppliers as manufacturers shared their plans with suppliers and asked suppliers to open their books and accept a declared return on investment or percentage margin in return.

Many suppliers were unwilling to open their ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Cross-sell to Provide Service in the Hospitality Industry</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Guests of hotels and resorts at the top end of the hospitality range of properties are being under-serviced. The impact is felt directly on the top line of sales and potentially indirectly through return visits.

The under-servicing is manifested at the organisation level through low levels of up-selling and cross-selling. Most hospitality staff do not see the value in cross-selling and up-selling for themselves or for their guests.

However, research by The Forum Corporation of North America confirmed that 88% of customers value being advised on products and services that better meet their needs. Further, 73% are interested in hearing about new products and services and 42 percent buy &amp;quot;sometimes&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;frequently&amp;quot;

The hospitality industry more than any other, has segments which desire to have their wants satisfied as well as their needs and appreciate an appropriate cross-sell or up-sell.

Guests using four star and five star resorts and hotels consist of three basic segments:

 - Leisure (tourist) guests 
 - Conference guests and 
 - Business guests
 
The needs and wants of the guests in each case go beyond the provision of somewhere to sleep, somewhere to eat and somewhere to conduct meetings. 

Guests of hotels and resorts at the top end of the hospitality range of properties are being under-serviced. The impact is felt directly on the top line of sales and potentially indirectly through return visits.

The under-servicing is manifested at the organisation level through low levels of up-selling and cross-selling. Most hospitality staff do not see the value in cross-selling and up-selling for themselves or for their guests.

However, research by The Forum Corporation of North America confirmed that 88% of customers value being advised on products and services that better meet their needs. Further, 73% are interested in hearing about new products and services and 42 percent buy “sometimes” or “frequently”

The hospi ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Seven Steps for Motivating People at Work</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[1. Ask

Ask people questions. There are two goals of asking questions. To find out what people are passionate about and to make sure that they know you care about what they think.

If you are at a loss as to what motivates people, their passions are a great start. Do not fall into the error of asking, &amp;quot;What are you passionate about&amp;quot; and taking what they say at face value. Look for body language signs that reinforce their stated passion. In an era of self help by means of television, radio and new age music, almost everyone is convinced they need to be passionate about something and quite often make it up, even to themselves.

It is better to have a conversation, asking how things could be done better around here. Respond with further questions to explore. The phrase, &amp;quot;Tell me more&amp;quot; works well to open up the conversation further. Have several conversations like this and as trust develops you will find out what motivates people without having to ask.

Having a conversation with people where you are genuinely interested in their responses builds self esteem for the person to whom the questions are directed.


2. Involve

For major and minor changes, go further than asking for advice and opinions; involve people in analysis and design of solutions. It is not necessary to set up quality circles as part of a complete quality management system. Involve people in the definition of the problem and they will own it. Involve them in the analysis to create solutions and they will own the solution alternatives. Involve them in the design of the implementation and they will own the outcome.


3. Communicate

When you are anticipating change, let people know what your intentions are. Tell them the goal. Tell them the rationale. Tell them the consequences and timing of what you intend to do. Tell them the consequences and timing of doing nothing. Tell them the process by which things will happen. Tell them how to find out more information. Tell ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>What is Superior Service?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[&amp;quot;Waiter, there is a fly in my soup!&amp;quot;

&amp;quot;I am so sorry sir; let me replace that for you&amp;quot;

&amp;quot;I am so sorry sir; let me replace that for you and your entrée will be free of charge&amp;quot;

&amp;quot;I am so sorry sir, let me replace that for you and have a free bottle of champagne on the house.&amp;quot;

&amp;quot;I am so sorry sir, let me replace that for you and as a mark of how much we value your custom, your meal will be free tonight&amp;quot;

Are any of these responses superior service?

No, they are not.

No application of corrective action can retrieve a situation where such a basic need as hygiene and cleanliness has been breached in a restaurant.

The requirements of customers for service follow a fairly simple hierarchy. At the basic level, customers need to have an environment in which they feel safe and secure and comfortable.

Whether they are shopping on the internet, or by phone, or through a bricks and mortar experience, they must have the same feeling of security to which they have become accustomed in their day-to-day shopping experiences. Take them too far out of their comfort zone and they will not buy because they do not trust.

They need the telephone or face to face experience to meet their level of expectation for friendliness and helpfulness or knowledge. They need the cleanliness of a bricks and mortar operation to meet their definition of cleanliness and order. They need the appearance, the grooming, the tone and pace of voice to meet their expectations. Take any of these basic needs outside of their comfort zone and customers will either not buy or will do so reluctantly, thinking that they have not had good service.

However, if the basic needs are met, the best a seller can hope for is a feeling that the service was &amp;quot;OK&amp;quot;.

Having a fly in the soup destroys any feeling of comfort and trust and that cannot be regained by offering apologies and free services. Not offering an apology and some recompens ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Managing Reality; Learning to Love our Mistakes</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Too often I see and hear the impact of leaders not managing what lies in front of them. Rather, they manage what they would like to see or imagine is there. The consequence is usually underperformance. Characteristics accompanying it include crisis management, poor and late decision making.

When leaders manage what they would like to see, they filter and interpret data to support conclusions already made in their own mind. The Iraq war is an obvious case. People from a wide variety of leadership roles, filtered and interpreted data to give the predisposed conclusion required to take their favoured action.  

In business, non-profit organisations and government, we do this every day. We begin a project with a view to what we want to achieve. We analyse the data available and search for new data to help support the project. It is rare that a project is aborted during the analysis phase.

Marketers interpret focus groups and quantitative research in its best light to support their pet product introduction, refresh or campaign. 

Research groups interpret data favourably to give support to their theory, especially if it is linked to a commercial outcome.

Public policy is often formed under a directive based on an ideal. The interpretation of data collected is made to fit conclusions fitting the ideal. 

Sales figures are interpreted in the best light to support the notion that sales are on target. Head office need not worry, and by the way, can leave us alone. 

Costs are interpreted within the narrow confines of a sub-cost centre or the overall costs of the organisation, depending on which looks better.

The impact of missing a deadline on a critical path for project delivery timelines are smoothed over. Not because a plan has been developed to get the project back on time, but so as not to give bad news.

Managers take a liking to a particular management theory and interpret all around them within the confines of the theory. The fact that the theor ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Not, not; Not Responsible</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Implicitly and explicitly I hear every week people tell me what they are not responsible for and have no control over.

Bluntly, they are usually wrong.

The most common protestations of being a victim of circumstance are:

I dont have the time:

Most people manage time badly. They do not value it and fritter it away on low value activities and procrastination. They worry about an activity in the future whilst they are completing a current activity with the resultant loss in productivity. They do not plan their time to complete the active important tasks in blocks of uninterrupted time. 

They do not prioritise between important and unimportant, urgent and not urgent, active and reactive.

They do not plan in blocks of time to do the reactive tasks where they may not know exactly what they are going to do, just that there will be a lot of it e.g. emails, phone messages. Some jobs are almost completely reactive, e.g. barman, customer service operator and the time for active important tasks must be cut out of a routine reactive day. 

They give reasons, excuses and justifications for not managing their time, but they rarely hold up to scrutiny. They allow people to interrupt there schedule taking up valuable time which could be used to complete an important task, rather than planning a time when people can see them and communicating that time to the people who might like to see them. 

They complain about having insufficient resources, but do not put forward a cogent business case to get the resources, rather leaving it as an item on a shopping list of items that they would like. They do not monitor their time usage on occasions to see how time utilisation might be improved e.g. meetings they do not need to attend, activities that they can delegate.

Instead they complain, I dont have the time. 

That is a good idea but we cant because:

When this refrain comes from a manager, the set of three lights I have in my head that represents a managers w ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Don't Sell; Help Customers Buy</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Retail selling is one of the toughest jobs amongst white collar workers. To be effective, sales staff must be able to develop a relationship with strangers who distrust them in the first twenty seconds of meeting them. Unfortunately, most often this is not the case.

An insight for managers and sales staff which is often missing from the standard approach to sales is that their role is to help customers through their buying process rather than to push potential customers through a sales process.

Surveys show that the inherent distrust that retail sales people are held in is driven by the experience of customers with sales men and women who operate at the slick or smooth end of the range of sales processes one can observe.

At one end of the spectrum lie used car salesmen, real estate agents and funeral parlour operators. Before I offend some friends in those professions, that is to say the impression people have of the professions mentioned is of a slick, pushy, process which people feel, leaves them worse off than they could have been.

At the other end of the scale are no particular groups, just experiences where individual companies or people have provided customers and potential customers with a buying experience that causes them to want to come back again and more importantly, as the old statistic goes, to tell ten of their friends.

For customers wanting to purchase a non trivial item, a buying process can be clearly identified. For trivial items, the process happens without thinking and is harder to observe.

The buying process begins with customers understanding that they have a need and their search for a supplier. The stimulation for that need may have come from the obsolescence of an existing item through to envy for a significant one off, high value, purchase. At this stage, two groups are responsible for directing the potential customer to a particular retail store. The marketers and the people involved in the previous sale, delivery, insta ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Rewards and Recognition; Recognizing a Turkey of a Reward</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[In the United States, the cost of supplementary benefits to employees in industry has risen to over forty percent by 2004 according to a study by the United States Chamber of Commerce.

There is a lot of money paid out to cover what, in terms of motivational theory, are work satisfiers, not motivators. To explain, let me tell what I have been told is a true story.

The story begins in the factory of the Hughes Aircraft Company when it was quite small; a few hundred employees.

Howard Hughes owned the company outright. One Christmas he gave every employee a Christmas Turkey. It was a big surprise, the employees were delighted. They all said nice things about Mr Hughes and his company.

When the next Christmas approached, what do you think the employees began to wonder and think about? &amp;quot;Are we going to get a turkey again?&amp;quot; The grapevine carried the word that the turkey would be forthcoming and Hughes did not want to disappoint them. So they got a turkey.

The next Christmas it was a foregone conclusion. The cry went up, &amp;quot;Where's my turkey?&amp;quot; So they got a turkey that Christmas and every Christmas thereafter.

The company some twenty years later had grown to 20,000 employees. The logistics with the turkeys was already becoming a problem. The turkeys were stacked in a hopper in the factory parking area. People came by in their lunch period, picked up a turkey and then returned to their work stations.

Were the employees any more satisfied? Satisfied that they had a turkey? Yes. More motivated, more loyal or more grateful? No. Did they remain satisfied? No.

Because the turkey packer printed the weight of the turkey on the boxes in which they came, the employees began comparing weights. If their turkey weighed two hundred grams less than another one, then suddenly they had a grievance and were dissatisfied.

By now, the turkey was included in the labour agreements and was subject to collective bargaining. Soon there was a choice betwe ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Negotiating Skills; What's My Interest?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[I read earlier this year that the Palestinian Prime Minister had received support from militants to give up their weapons in exchange for government jobs. On face value it struck me as a stark example of the difference between a person's interest and position. The position of the &amp;quot;militants&amp;quot; is well publicised, their interests however, appear to be more personal. Job security providing an income to support their families is closer to their interest.

In negotiations, we often concentrate on positions rather than interests and we get a negotiation result which does not extract the greatest possible value out of the negotiation and may damage relationships.

In &amp;quot;Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In&amp;quot;, a classic text about negotiating, Roger Fisher and William Ury, explain: &amp;quot;Your position is something you have decided upon. Your interests are what caused you to so decide.&amp;quot; In most negotiations, defining differences in terms of positions means that at least one party will &amp;quot;lose&amp;quot; the negotiation. When a difference is defined in terms of the parties' underlying interests it is often possible to find a solution which satisfies both parties' interests.

In a negotiation, the two parties usually have two concerns. One is about the substance of the negotiation and one is about the nature of the relationship between the negotiating parties.

When a high degree of concern is expressed for the substance of the negotiation and a low degree of concern is expressed for the relationship of the parties, a &amp;quot;Defeat&amp;quot; behaviour pattern is produced. This pattern is characterised by win-lose competition, pressure, intimidation, adversarial relationships and the negotiator attempting to get as much as possible for him/her. Defeat the other party at any cost becomes the negotiator's goal

Interestingly, research shows that males favour the &amp;quot;Defeat&amp;quot; approach more than females. A testosterone induced negoti ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Changing Organisational Culture Requires a Change in Leadership</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Changing culture or the way we do things around here need not be as difficult as it first seems. We often make it more difficult for ourselves because the first and most important change often needs to come from us as leaders.

We can make it doubly difficult if we build a project around a focus of changing culture. It can appear that we are changing culture for changing sake. We can also get lost in the forest of consultant jargon, models and methods and miss the trees of the objective we are attempting to reach.

To adequately discuss what changing culture is, we need to start with a definition of what organisational culture is. A useful tool for this amongst the plethora of tools available is the Cultural Web developed by Johnson and Scholes.

In the Cultural Web, culture is described as the mix of routines and rituals, stories, symbols, control systems, power structures and organisational structure that form the paradigm of the organisation.

The routines are the ways that members of the organisation behave towards each other and that link different parts of the organisation. These are the way we do things around here. There are also rituals of organisational life, such as training programmes, promotion and assessment which point to what is most important in the organisation.

The stories told by members of the organisation embed the present in its organisational history and flag important events and personalities. Other symbolic aspects of organisations such as logos, offices, cars and titles or the type of language and terminology commonly used become a short-hand representation of the nature of the organisation.

The control systems, measurements and reward systems emphasise what is important in the organisation focusing attention and activity.

Power structures, the most powerful managerial groupings in the organisation, are the ones most associated with core assumptions and beliefs about what is important. The formal organisational structure,  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>What is Customer?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Customer service is not customer satisfaction as reported by customer satisfaction surveys. Customer service, like a brand, is what the customer perceives and remembers of the service they received.

What a customer perceives is the service they receive is not necessarily the service they actually receive.

Several published studies reveal that the mood of the customer has a significant impact on the perception of the service received.

For example, if a customer has been waiting for a long time in a check-in queue, the perception of the friendliness of the person at the check-in desk deteriorates. Conversely, studies have shown that people waiting a long time for elevators due to the slow speed of the elevator have a better perception of the experience of waiting if there is some distraction such as a mirror in the elevator lobby.

Golfers who have had a bad day on the course are likely to have a worse perception of the service at the clubhouse than those who have had a good day.

What a customer remembers about a service is not just dependent on the usual suspects of first and last impressions. It is dependent on the &amp;quot;moments of truth&amp;quot;, a phrase coined by Jan Carlson from Scandinavian Airlines.

For an organisation in the service industry, there may be twenty or thirty moments of truth in its provision of service. A moment of truth is when an interaction occurs between a customer and the service provider that can leave a lasting positive or negative impression on a customer.

Moments of truth in the hospitality industry, for example, will undoubtedly include, but not be limited to, booking the room, check-in, check-out, dinner reservations, dinner ordering, dinner presentation, eating (quality and quantity of food) and laundry receipt.

Understanding the moments of truth that are important to an organisation's customers by segment is the key to understanding what is good customer service.

Completing customer satisfaction surveys is not ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Great Teamwork Begins With an &quot;R&quot;</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Teams form around a single common purpose. Teamwork occurs within a team only when there is respect. Great teams evolve around self respect and respect for each other.

In retrospect, all great teams reflect on the journey they have made as individuals and how they have learnt to appreciate the skills, knowledge and behaviour of their respective team-mates.

To create a great team when they are being built rather than in retrospect, individual team members must firstly have self respect.

Self esteem is not enough. Self esteem requires a positive evaluation of us against some standard, often another person. Self respect requires no such comparison. It merely requires that we like ourselves for what we are, good and bad.

When we have self respect we do not care whether we are good or not at any chosen pastime like sport or singing or painting or gardening, just that we enjoy it. When we have self esteem we judge our pastime exploits against those of other people as being good.

When we have self respect we have little need to win as an individual in a team and are more likely to play our role to the best of our ability, with humility and with good humour.

When we have self respect, we have a vastly improved capability to respect others. Not having to be better than someone else, but having due respect of our abilities, enables us to maintain and improve relationships even through conflict.

It allows us to welcome differences of opinion as a means of getting the best solution rather than avoiding them as a precursor to unpleasant conflict.

Team members who have self respect and respect others can operate with clarity by being honest without the expectation of an emotional response.

Self respect and respect for others is learnable. It is not learnt or encouraged by putting a group of values on a wall plaque or on a sheet of paper. It is learnt and encouraged by the team getting to know each other and themselves well. Self respect is also encourag ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Managing People; Setting Boundaries</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Boundary setting is something one expects to find in a parenting book or a psychologists journal. However, it applies to adult to adult relationships at work as much as it does to adult to child relationships.

In almost any workplace, for any given behaviour, people can be split into three groups.

One group is those that are both willing and able to perform and behave in a manner which contributes positively to the desired goal of the organisation.

Another group is those who are unwilling to contribute to the desired goal of the organisation even if they are able.

The third group is in the middle; those who sometimes are willing and sometimes are able to contribute to the desired goal of the organisation.

When boundaries are not set and people are allowed to behave in whatever fashion suits them, the unwilling group generally outnumbers the group which is willing and able. 

People tend to seek the personal benefits of the freedom to do as they please over the benefits of the group.

When boundaries are set, with consequences for breaching the boundaries, the group which is willing and able tends to outnumber the group which is unwilling. 

Further, when boundaries are set, with consequences for breaching them, the group in the middle tends to want to become more willing or more able to avoid the consequences. 

The need for boundary setting applies in several areas of business.

Financial transactions are an obvious area. If boundaries are not set with regard to authority levels for expenditure and expenses, then financial performance is usually impaired and financial irregularities become common.

If boundaries are not set with regard to starting jobs without a hazard analysis or policies on known, typical, industry-wide unsafe acts and unsafe conditions, then physical injury, asset loss and reputation loss are inevitable consequences.

When boundaries are not set with regard to customer greeting, sales approach and follow up, poor, or ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Help, I've been promoted to a manager's role</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Supervising people is the toughest of all leadership roles.

Supervisors in many organisations walk a tightrope between management demands for higher productivity, a safer workplace and improved customer satisfaction and the demands of workers for higher pay, better conditions and a say in how the work is designed and executed.

Supervisors have to plan, instruct, coach, counsel, report, negotiate and prioritise, often with little authority.

Good supervisors should make good managers without much help. The skills they have stand them in good stead for management. Right?  

Except for a few financial skills and strategic skills which they will pick up on the job and with some judicious use of the training budget, they are ready made to move to management. Surely?

Wrong. 

The transition from supervisor to manager is hard. Supervisors transitioning to management roles have a steep learning curve in soft and hard skills.

 Most supervisory positions have targets set by their manager in consultation with the supervisor, but set by the manager. Supervisors have the vision, mission and values of the organisation set by others. Supervisors have the policies, and in most cases, a large majority of the processes designed by others.

Supervisors operate within a set of boundaries given to them by others. 

Supervisors tend to have a bond with the people that work for them. They see each other every day spending hours in each others company, building rapport and respect if the supervisor is a good one worthy of promotion.

When a supervisor becomes a manger of teams of people rather than a team, they become accountable for many of the elements of management for which they were previously only responsible.

They have to design processes for planning the next years marketing, sales or operating budget. In some cases, they do all three. They have to make decisions on which of several good ideas will make the cut in the budget process. 

They have to make ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Making Change Happen</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Seventy percent of all change management projects are considered to be failures.

The critical factors for change management success or failure are fairly simple. 

The first factor is to have a group of people at leadership level believe that change is required. More than that, they must believe that change management is required. If these factors are not evident then failure is assured. 

Understanding that major change is required is not enough. Developing a project plan which includes changes to processes, policies and infrastructure that does not include a plan to manage the change at a people level is not enough.

The second requirement is that the people undergoing change must have a reason to believe the change is necessary. They need the big picture painted for them to understand what benefits the organisation will gain from what many people will consider as the shared pain of change.

The big picture must be compelling, giving as many people in the organisation the desire to embrace the change even if it is difficult. Organisational change for organisational changes sake is likely to fail to deliver change. 

The third requirement is that individuals must know how the change will affect them as individuals. Never forget the greatest motivational tool is to be able to respond to the question, Whats in it for ME? 

For most individuals in most organisations, motivation is about achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement and personal growth. So be sure that the change message addresses as best it can the motivational opportunities for people.

The fourth requirement is to tell them early, tell them often. Do not be surprised how many times the message needs to be repeated to the same people. Human beings filter information based on their emotional state, their previous experiences and their thinking styles. In a time of significant change people are often in emotional turmoil and will filter severely whatever they a ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>In Search of the Silver Bullet</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Too many organisations search for a silver bullet to fix their human resource problems. They search for a singular, narrow approach to improve performance when a broad holistic approach is required. The result of focusing on a narrow approach to improve performance is unintended consequences delivering reduced performance instead.

For the human resources of an organisation to perform well, the organisation needs to have four synchronised building blocks. The building blocks are goal setting and strategy development, performance management, process management and the organisation culture.

Goal setting and strategy development are important in providing individuals and teams with their reason for turning up to work each day. Strategic planning not only delivers to teams and individuals their key result areas, but also the broad measures by which the organisation considers itself successful.

A performance management system delivers to individuals and teams their key result areas and their specific measures to know that they have been successful. It also provides a means to receive feedback on their performance and the competency development programme to ensure that they are competent to undertake their roles. 

Process management ensures that the processes being executed are suitable to achieve the goals set by the organisation. It also ensures that the policies which dictate some processes are appropriate to the stated goals of the organisation.

Organisational culture provides the paradigm in which the organisation operates. It provides the unwritten rules, the informal measures, the stories and myths and the power structures that determine how we do things around here.

Organisations which require urgent, immediate change can afford, in the short term, to concentrate on only one or two of the building blocks. For instance, an organisation with no semblance of vision, strategy or goals will get an immediate benefit from developing a strategy to deliver ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Leading Change: Four Priniciples for Staying in Control</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[When leading a change programme, the bare minimum requirement of a leader is to be seen to be in control.

The people you are leading will have a range of anxieties about the change which different individuals will feel to a different depth. The nature of the anxiety and the depth of the anxiety will change over time, sometimes precipitously. 

The leader, however, must be seen to be in control. More than that, except for the odd private lapse of confidence which bedevils the best leaders, the leader of change must be in control.

My observations from being affected by and leading change are that there are a few guiding principles for maintaining control.

Principle One: Focus on the goal

Day-to-day, leaders will receive good news and bad about the activities which make up the programme of change. Some activities will be ahead of where you thought they should be, some will be falling behind, or under seemingly impossible challenge to actually be completed. 

Getting excited about activities which are ahead of progress and getting despondent or activating a reactionary process about activities which are not going well is sure way of communicating a lack of control. 

Celebrating progress in a change programme is an important part of a change programme communication strategy. However, the celebration should be for progress towards the goal. The progress should always be measured as a balance of good and poor progress against the goal, where we have come from and the challenges which lie ahead of us.

Keeping a calm focus on the goal whilst encouraging overall progress and providing specific resources and guidance to fix problematic activities will give the team involved in the change increased courage and determination. 

Reacting positively to good news and negatively to bad news only increases anxiety.

Of course, this principle assumes that the goal is clear and well understood. If it is not, take urgent action to clarify the goal of the change ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Performance Begins With an S</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Performance and behaviour in many organisations are not managed well. The common missing ingredient in managing performance and behaviour is the absence of enforced standards.

We are confronted almost daily with stories of IT project overruns and outright failures, public service procedural errors with dire consequences to individuals or quality and service errors resulting in unhappy customers. We are also confronted with examples of poor behaviour from sports people struggling with fame to senior executives defrauding their staff or their shareholders.

The consequence to an organisation of poor performance of employees, at any level, is low productivity, high rework rates, higher risk and consequently, higher costs to achieve the outcomes required from any given role.

The consequence of poorly behaving employees is increased risk with significant negative potential for an organisations brand and its health safety, security and environment performance.

Most of the poor performance and poor behaviour occurs simply because it is tolerated.

From my observations, the tolerance comes about for the core reason that there are no enforced standards. 

In the absence of formal enforced standards, people apply their own standards using their best efforts to complete a role. The standards used are formed from previous experience in the role or, a similar role, or if they are new to a role, from their personal values. These personal values are generated from their upbringing at home, their school, sporting teams and other social interactions. 

The values are also generated from interactions with opinions from the media. 

Those interactions with the media are now likely to be with sources constructed to be popular rather than a well thought out editorial or journalistic piece. For example, tabloid newspapers, popular magazines, TV shows increasingly of the contrived reality type and web based interactions such as forums and blogs. 
 
The impact of perso ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Hire and Retain Baby-Boomers to Improve Productivity</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[In the US, it is anticipated that 76 million baby boomers will retire in the next ten years. However, there will be fewer than 50 million workers to replace them. Many organisations will be forced to retain an older workforce. Those organisations which develop deliberate strategies to retain older workers will do more than go with the inevitable flow of labour supply and demand. They will improve productivity.

Older workers were brought up in an era of company loyalty. Their need to move on every two years was never as strong as todays younger workers. If they have been successful in their careers, they also have probably had enough of moving on.

By staying in a job longer, older workers provide a living knowledge management system, increasing corporate memory.

Older workers are less likely to admit what they do not know. They have little left to prove and are more receptive to actually learning from training rather than just attending training. They ask more questions, are slower at completing exercises and in doing so retain more knowledge from training.

Older workers understand the meaning of accountability. They have less need to shift responsibility for their actions as they are less likely to feel the need to compete. Equally, they are less likely to lose confidence over mistakes made, wanting more to correct errors than to wallow in introspection. 

Creativity is seen as the purview of younger workers. Older workers have seen what works in a companys culture, what is realistic and what is not. Creativity is not necessarily about the number of ideas but more about the number of effective ideas.

As a corollary to creativity, older workers are more likely to want to see a project through from idea to implementation. They gain more pleasure out of seeing something completed than the thrill of the presentation or the business case being accepted.

Organisations not only need to retain older workers but attract them. Developing strategies to attr ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>What is a Goal?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[A goal is not a vision of how things might be. It is not a mission which describes our purpose in life. 

A goal is tangible. It is measurable both in terms of quality and quantity. It is time based. It is achievable. It is a stretch from where we are now. Above all, it is singular.

Multiple goals are difficult to achieve. A Chinese proverb illustrates it well; If you chase two rabbits, both will escape. The meaning being that if you put your efforts and energy into trying to fulfil two goals at the same time, you won't succeed in either one.

Singular goals create a purpose which does not get distracted. Setting a single goal over a time period takes both discipline and thinking. It is sometimes difficult to sort out what we really want to achieve. 

We have to be self aware of what we will compromise and what, ultimately we will not compromise. That which we will not compromise is most likely to be our goal. The other goals are important objectives, but not our goal. 

Goals are not tactics or strategies. A goal should state the end result and nothing about the how. 

A goal written in the form, We will double productivity by 2008 by reducing error rates by 50%, overtly indicates that reducing error rates by 50% is a goal in itself rather than the means by which doubling productivity will be achieved. 

People presented with this form of goal will be confused between the goal and the tactic. There may be well more than one tactic which aids the doubling of productivity. Putting the tactic in the goal risks the tactic being seen as the goal, limiting peoples imagination in achieving the real goal.

Writing a goal clearly helps people to understand the goal. Understanding a goal significantly increases the chance of it being realised.

A good way to write a goal is as follows:

[Verb (active)]  [noun]  to  [standard]  by [a time] 

The verb must be active rather than passive. The noun is the object of the sentence, the un-stated subject of ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/42/1647/What-is-a-Goal.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/42/1647/What-is-a-Goal.php</link>
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      <title><strong>Training is Not Enough</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[It is difficult to find organisations that would say, We find that training has little impact on our bottom line year on year. 

Is this because organisations know exactly what return they get from training? The answer to that question is a clear no. The American Society for Training and Development reported that only 3% of organisations measure what happens to their bottom line as a result of training.

Or is it that it is politically incorrect to say in an organisation that has a high investment in training, We waste our money on training. My observation is that this is somewhere near the truth.

Designing training that allows adults to learn is no simple feat in itself. A designer (once the objectives of the training are understood) has to design training with four major elements in mind. 

Participants must recognise the need for information and rapport with the trainer must be established early, otherwise the trainers efforts will be in vain. The opening of any training effort must provide a believable and appropriately challenging answer to the question, Why am I here? and must lead to an early engagement between the participants and the trainer.

The design must also be able to reinforce positive behaviour. In doing so, the design must not ignore negative or undesirable behaviour. The design needs to include negative reinforcements to eliminate the undesired behaviour as much as it includes positive reinforcement for desired behaviour.

Retention is a key aspect of training design that is often ignored, in that very few entities undertaking a training programme test for retention. Participants must also have adequate opportunities to practice what they learn to increase levels of retention.

The fourth critical element of training design is transference. Participants must be able to transfer what they have learnt in to a new setting away from the classroom. For example, the workplace!

Participants are more likely to transfer their learning to ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Managing Change; The Simple Approach</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Change management is treated by many as an ethereal topic; a mystical process overlayed with a lot of magic happens here. Or a process described by one of eight major models of change which by their very nature remains high level.

In my experience, there are four main parameters to be considered to make change happen.

Revolution or Evolution

Firstly, and most importantly, the question, Is this really change or just business-as-usual? Organisations that do not change as part of their business-as-usual have always died since the industrial revolution. The only thing that has changed is the speed at which they die.

Change status is bestowed when the change is revolutionary, not evolutionary. Projects which are elevated to a Transformation project or Change project are usually given a team to manage the implementation of the Change.

Elevating a programme of work to Change status is a double edged sword. Doing so lends gravity to the programme and gives focus, attracting resources as a consequence. The other edge is that in doing so, it draws valuable resources from business-as-usual and adds considerable risk to the current business. 

Keeping a change programme as business-as-usual, with a decent business case for each element of change, has advantages over a revolutionary change programme. 

People are less likely to be afraid at the beginning. 

Components of the change programme can be modified as circumstances change and learning is gained from previously completed components without appearing to backtrack.

With shorter implementation time line components, scarce project management, programme office and change management skills are required less.

Both approaches can be right in the same environment. The work required and supporting framework is different and the risks are different. It is a judgement call which way to go, however, revolutionary change is not the only way.

Build the rationale.

In either case, the rationale for change ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Leading Change; Four Principles for Staying in Control</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[When leading a change programme, the bare minimum requirement of a leader is to be seen to be in control.

The people you are leading will have a range of anxieties about the change which different individuals will feel to a different depth. The nature of the anxiety and the depth of the anxiety will change over time, sometimes precipitously. 

The leader, however, must be seen to be in control. More than that, except for the odd private lapse of confidence which bedevils the best leaders, the leader of change must be in control.

My observations from being affected by and leading change are that there are a few guiding principles for maintaining control.

Principle One: Focus on the goal

Day-to-day, leaders will receive good news and bad about the activities which make up the programme of change. Some activities will be ahead of where you thought they should be, some will be falling behind, or under seemingly impossible challenge to actually be completed. 

Getting excited about activities which are ahead of progress and getting despondent or activating a reactionary process about activities which are not going well is sure way of communicating a lack of control. 

Celebrating progress in a change programme is an important part of a change programme communication strategy. However, the celebration should be for progress towards the goal. The progress should always be measured as a balance of good and poor progress against the goal, where we have come from and the challenges which lie ahead of us.

Keeping a calm focus on the goal whilst encouraging overall progress and providing specific resources and guidance to fix problematic activities will give the team involved in the change increased courage and determination. 

Reacting positively to good news and negatively to bad news only increases anxiety.

Of course, this principle assumes that the goal is clear and well understood. If it is not, take urgent action to clarify the goal of the change ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1566/Leading-Change-Four-Principles-for-Staying-in-Control.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1566/Leading-Change-Four-Principles-for-Staying-in-Control.php</link>
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      <title><strong>What is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is neither a Goal, nor a Key Result Area (KRA), nor a Target, nor a Result nor a Critical Success Factor. And yet these terms are often used interchangeably with a KPI.

A KPI defines itself, to a large extent, by its name; it is a performance indicator, i.e. the performance of the process it is measuring should be clearly indicated by the KPI. 

This should clarify that the purpose of a KPI is not, for example, to measure the risk of a process, nor its age, nor its length, but its performance. 

Further, a KPI should be key, not just any casual measure of a process (or a business as a whole); this can be taken as the KPI being closely correlated with the objectives of the process being measured.

An important and often overlooked aspect of a KPI not contained within its name is that it measures a continuous or discrete but repeated process. 

Typical continuous processes include manufacture (toothpaste production, widget manufacture) and service where the dimensions are large (credit management for large public utilities, help desk for large IT installations). 

Sometimes services which look to be custom when considered at an individual level (your neighbours knee surgery operation) can also be considered as almost continuous when considered at a coarse enough level of granularity (knee surgery in Australia in the 90s).

Typical discrete, repetitive processes include service (PC installation, car sales and hotel check-in). 

All of this ought to be self-evident, but it is common to see. For example, Target Completion Dates or Product Specifications (or both) labelled as KPIs.

Where the intention is to measure once-off performance of a project, or as part of a business plan, a specification or target date (or both) will suffice; labelling it a KPI is both unnecessary and confusing. 


Moreover, developing only one off measures as a proxy for real KPIs puts a business at risk.

The implication of using one of ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Think Clearly, Act Decisively</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Breaks like Christmas/New Year, Diwali, Chinese New Year and other communally observed holiday periods are a great time for reflection. It is a good time to reflect, not only on our approach to work, but our approach to our life.

To make the reflection period useful, follow five principles.

Brutal Honesty:

For reflection to be worthwhile, be brutally honest. Do not allow excuses, rationalisation and passing the buck to others to cloud thoughts. Be accountable for wherever we find ourselves compared with where we want to be.

Powerful Questions:

Ask powerful questions of ourselves. Questions which challenge our abilities and commitment to achieve what we want. Questions which will challenge whether the goal we have set is demanding enough.

A good question is, If I could start again with a clean sheet of paper, what would I do? 

A good follow up question is, What is stopping me from doing what I would do with a clean sheet of paper? 

Often the answer to the second question is Me. This answer should beget a series of searching questions that unravels the personal and external factors which limit our achievement of what is possible over what is reasonable.

A more powerful question if we are willing to be honest with ourselves is, What would I do if I was not afraid? 

The follow-up question is What is it that I am afraid of? This question will challenge our thoughts about our leadership.

The answers to powerful questions like these provide us not only with insights on what we need to do to achieve our goals, but also insights into our mindset. It is surprising how far we deviate in the hurly-burly of day-to-day activities from what is needed to achieve our goal.

Drive deeply:

Take the opportunity to drive deeply into what limits us from setting and achieving tough goals. Use a technique like the Five Whys to drill down to the real problems we face rather than the symptoms. 

Use a technique like decision trees to delve down on the  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Work Life Balance; Its Our Choice</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Millions of dollars are spent each year in organisations seeking advice on achieving work life balance for its employees. Some of the courses run and the projects commissioned and implemented are very good. Some leaders without the need for advice from third parties have been exceptional at restoring work life balance for employees. 

However, it would appear from what I have seen and heard in interacting with colleagues, family, clients and acquaintances, most organisations must be wasting their money and most leaders are not getting it.

Life, it seems, is a series of ever increasing stresses as people try to make daily decisions about completing work activities, meeting family responsibilities and taking part in family activities as well as participating in social activities and in some cases, just finding time to think on ones own. 

The approaches taken by individuals and organisations to combat a perceived imbalance between work and life are quite varied. 

The most improbable solution is the edict. The edict comes from a management team or a committee of some kind that work life balance is important. Improving work life balance will improve morale and thereby productivity and staff retention. Every manager and supervisor is instructed that work life balance must be a consideration of every new project. 

Some managers exhort their subordinates to drive work life balance. They even worry about individuals who perceive that long hours equal a good reputation and career progression. Many times of course, the exhortation comes via email at ten oclock at night whilst the manager works at home for a few hours in the evening to catch up. Sometimes, posters are put up in lunch rooms telling people to have better work life balance. 

The edict always fails. It fails for one simple reason. Nothing has really changed about the nature of the work, the culture of the organisation, the skills of the employees and it is done pretty much as do as I say, not do as ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Seven Steps to Motivating People at Work</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[1.	Ask

Ask people questions. There are two goals of asking questions. To find out what people are passionate about and to make sure that they know you care about what they think. 

If you are at a loss as to what motivates people, their passions are a great start. Do not fall into the error of asking, What are you passionate about and taking what they say at face value. Look for body language signs that reinforce their stated passion. In an era of self help by means of television, radio and new age music, almost everyone is convinced they need to be passionate about something and quite often make it up, even to themselves. 

It is better to have a conversation, asking how things could be done better around here. Respond with further questions to explore. The phrase, Tell me more works well to open up the conversation further. Have several conversations like this and as trust develops you will find out what motivates people without having to ask.

Having a conversation with people where you are genuinely interested in their responses builds self esteem for the person to whom the questions are directed. 

2.	Involve

For major and minor changes, go further than asking for advice and opinions; involve people in analysis and design of solutions. It is not necessary to set up quality circles as part of a complete quality management system. Involve people in the definition of the problem and they will own it. Involve them in the analysis to create solutions and they will own the solution alternatives. Involve them in the design of the implementation and they will own the outcome.


3.	Communicate

When you are anticipating change, let people know what your intentions are. Tell them the goal. Tell them the rationale. Tell them the consequences and timing of what you intend to do. Tell them the consequences and timing of doing nothing. Tell them the process by which things will happen. Tell them how to find out more information. Tell them how to make sure  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Making Decisions Difficult</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Decisions, it seems, are getting more difficult.  It is getting harder to know what to make a decision about and it seems to be getting harder to make the right decision. It follows that leadership and management are becoming harder competencies to master.

Even twenty years ago, life in an organization, or at home, or in the church, or social club was simpler.

One might have thought that with the easy availability of data these days on the internet and increasing global education levels, that decisions would be easier.

I can research a topic on the internet within twenty four hours and sound like I have a reasonable amount of expertise. I can provide enough data to understand the trends of an issue within a few hours. I can find the pros and cons of decisions to be made with regard to that issue, in 0.04 seconds on Google. Not only that, I can find 1,520,000,000 references.

Once upon a time, an MBA was a degree to be held in awe. Few people had them. Only the best thinkers with the best work ethics survived the high intensity training and introspection of our own values and world trends in values. Now I can take an online MBA from my choice of 79,800,000 references on Google.

So, surely decision making should be easier? 

The plethora of data available today over an increasingly wide range of media is part of the problem. Whilst there is an astronomical level of choice, it is difficult to sort out from the wide range of views, what is based on opinion and what is based on fact. 

Add to that the pop culture nature of business tools and processes and even data which we know to be correct is analysed poorly. 

As an illustration, I have seen SWOT analysis routinely completed without the so what analysis. The SWOT sits in a report as a pretty slide of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, but no strategies, e.g. to use the strengths to take up the opportunities or remove the weaknesses to reduce the threats.

If and when some strategi ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Customer Focus Strategy</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[For more than twenty years the mantra in private enterprise and public enterprise has been &amp;quot;customer focus&amp;quot;. The phrase appears on mission statements, vision statement and &amp;quot;our values&amp;quot; statements adorning private and public enterprise walls alike.

The phrase has been embedded in part by an exponential growth in management processes and systems based processes. The advent of systems based methods such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management have hard coded customer needs into organisations.

Quality methods such as Six Sigma and Total Quality Management have often been used to focus attention on delivering upon customer's needs. The full list of methods which in one way or another beseech the user to have a customer focus would easily fill up this entire column.

There is, however, a simple problem.

Most organisations have difficulty in defining who their customer is. Additionally, they have great difficulty in defining what it means, specifically, for their organisation to focus on the yet to be defined customer.

The implications of the problem remaining unresolved are significant. Organisations that are truly focused on customers will build their operations around the customer. To build operations around a customer has implications for the organisational leadership, performance management and processes management/technology enablement.

Organisational leadership includes strategic goals, organisational design, roles and responsibilities, supporting management processes such as corporate governance and risk management and identification and management of stakeholders.

Performance management includes resource allocation and alignment, target behaviours, performance measurement, performance appraisal and reward, training and development and physical asset management.

Process management/technology enablement includes process design, process KPIs, process accountability and responsibility, common data ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/34/1116/Customer-Focus-Strategy.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/34/1116/Customer-Focus-Strategy.php</link>
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      <title><strong>What is a Team?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Teams are not of group of people brought together to manage a project. Teams are not a group of people who are members of the same function in an organisation. Teams are not a group of people who receive emails from their team leader with the salutation, &amp;quot;Dear Team&amp;quot;. Teams are not a group of people playing sport for the same organisation, amateur or professional.

Teams are people working together to achieve a common, singular goal.

The goal around which teams form, is not always the goal which is set. I would go so far as to say that teams rarely form around a goal which has been set for them. Teams tend to form around goals which become apparent rather than imposed.

Circumstances change the nature of the goal around which teams form. The nature changes in line with Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the circumstance becomes more acute.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that unless our base physiological needs such as food, water and shelter are met, then provision of higher levels of needs such as security, social inclusiveness, esteem or self-actualisation will have little effect on our behaviour.

When circumstances change for the worse, people who are motivated by the need for self esteem may tumble down Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the most base of needs, those of food, water and shelter.

In 1972 a group of rugby players, their friends and families left on a flight for Chile from Uruguay. The plane crashed into the snow-covered mountainside, killing 13 of the 45 passengers onboard the aircraft. The outside world thought that all 45 people on board had disappeared.

Without any provisions, some of those left alive resorted to devouring the dead. Those who refused to eat the human flesh died of starvation. After 70 days in the mountains, 16 survivors were rescued and taken home.

In the most gruesome manner, a group of people banded together as a team with a singular goal of survival.

In a less gruesome environment, management,  ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Strategic Planning; a Must for all Organisations</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Strategic planning, the what and the why of planning, is often overlooked by organisations who concentrate on tactical planning, the how of planning. The resultant business plan is overwhelmed by tactical initiatives and pet projects. Alignment with a strategy to attain the organisation's goals is achieved by accident.

Strategic planning is often seen as unnecessary or at times, not even contemplated in an environment benign to the organisation, e.g. high levels of market growth or monopoly situations. In my experience, a strategic plan based on basic critical thinking is a precursor to developing a competitive advantage where often none has previously been seen.

The dotcom boom and bust during the last decade is the clearest example of the adage, &amp;quot;failing to plan is planning to fail&amp;quot;. A Boston consulting study in 2000 revealed that the key problems resulting in failure of companies were 59% poor revenue cost and profit model, 55% no competitive advantage and 34% lack of consumer benefit. It is clear from the study that many fewer dotcoms would have started and many fewer would have failed with some strategic planning.

In the arena of public organisations the discussion of the last few years in Brazil, California, Queensland and Fiji over the adequacy of planning for electricity requirements leads one to consider what level of strategic planning occurred in those organisations over the previous five to ten years. The problem of capacity is not of current management's making, but of management five or more years ago.

Strategic planning is a fairly simple process. Unfortunately it has been made to appear difficult by many of my current profession. Consultants desire to use tools to explain strategic concepts in a graphical sense, combined with their use of acronyms or two and three word descriptions of their pet methodology has shrouded strategic planning in an unnecessary mystery.

Who can or wants to remember what Porter's five forces analysi ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/57/1114/Strategic-Planning-a-Must-for-all-Organisations.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/57/1114/Strategic-Planning-a-Must-for-all-Organisations.php</link>
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      <title><strong>What is Wrong With (Being) You?</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[One of the great frustrations of my working life is the continuing interactions I have with people who will not be themselves. They somehow feel that it is better to be something or someone they are not.

Their reticence at being who they really are and saying what they really think stems, I have no doubt, from something to do with their psychological make up. Perhaps a lack of confidence, a fear of failure or a level of overemphasised respect for the individuals they interact with.

In corporate life, I find them in all kinds of situations.

A classic is in the interview for a job. A question I like to ask in an interview is &amp;quot;What are you passionate about?&amp;quot; Fifty percent of the time I either get a droll exposition about something to do with the job function or some or I get an treatise on leadership or people management delivered with all the passion of a cardboard cut out.

The reason I ask the question is twofold. The first is to find out what the person does actually get passionate about. Passion is a necessary behaviour to be successful in working and personal life. Also, the answers as they roll enthusiastically off the tongue say a lot about what people value.

The second reason is that those who give the pet, researched answer without passion gets marked off my list. Passion is easy to read. It's in the body language and the pace and tone of voice. When it is faked, the next question in my mind is, of course, what else have they faked? So why do people try to fake it in an interview?

Completing analysis and writing up a report about the conclusions is one example that hurts many organisations. Many consulting firms I have worked with have, as a first step in their analysis, a roughing out of the report. The theory is that this will make people think clearly about what needs to be considered. What I found though is that it became a means to find the data to support the conclusion we have come to before we even started.

Whilst consult ..]]></description>
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      <title><strong>Leading Change: Four Principles for Staying in Control</strong></title>
      <description><![CDATA[When leading a change programme, the bare minimum requirement of a leader is to be seen to be in control.

The people you are leading will have a range of anxieties about the change which different individuals will feel to a different depth. The nature of the anxiety and the depth of the anxiety will change over time, sometimes precipitously.

The leader, however, must be seen to be in control. More than that, except for the odd private lapse of confidence which bedevils the best leaders, the leader of change must be in control.

My observations from being affected by and leading change are that there are a few guiding principles for maintaining control.

Principle One: Focus on the goal

Day-to-day, leaders will receive good news and bad about the activities which make up the programme of change. Some activities will be ahead of where you thought they should be, some will be falling behind, or under seemingly impossible challenge to actually be completed.

Getting excited about activities which are ahead of progress and getting despondent or activating a reactionary process about activities which are not going well is sure way of communicating a lack of control.

Celebrating progress in a change programme is an important part of a change programme communication strategy. However, the celebration should be for progress towards the goal. The progress should always be measured as a balance of good and poor progress against the goal, where we have come from and the challenges which lie ahead of us.

Keeping a calm focus on the goal whilst encouraging overall progress and providing specific resources and guidance to fix problematic activities will give the team involved in the change increased courage and determination.

Reacting positively to good news and negatively to bad news only increases anxiety.

Of course, this principle assumes that the goal is clear and well understood. If it is not, take urgent action to clarify the goal of the change, it ..]]></description>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1112/Leading-Change-Four-Principles-for-Staying-in-Control.php">http://www.buildyourownbusiness.biz/post/index/32/1112/Leading-Change-Four-Principles-for-Staying-in-Control.php</link>
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