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  During
the course of this year, I will dedicate many of the regular
President’s Pen articles to the focus areas within ASTD’s
competency model (graphic and explanation found at http://www.astd.org/astd/Publications/competency_study.htm).
There are nine specialized knowledge/skill areas in which
individuals need to extend their organizational contribution.
This month we will focus on improving human performance in
organizations that are doing much more with much less.
Several years ago, we moved easily from one success to the
next. Now, achieving success is like trying to pass thread
through the eye of a needle. Making do is becoming business
as usual, and no one is happy about it.
As I listen to employees
in the workplace, I hear that most have not seen the bottom
of their inbox for months. 8-to-5
schedules have turned into 8-to-7, if not more. Employees have
too much to do with fewer resources, and stress levels are
rising. Recent studies indicate that nearly half of American
workers say their job is “very or extremely stressful” and
27 percent say their job is the greatest source of stress in
their lives.
The good news? In the last couple years, business productivity
in the U.S. has increased, marking the largest gain since 1950,
according to the Department of Labor. How can you find greater
success and increase your business productivity? Here are six
strategies you can start today:
1. Concentrate on Your Direction
If you are doing more with less, what are you doing more of?
Efficiency is key. Creating a clear vision and incorporating
that direction into your strategic plan is critical. Planning
is the single most effective way to get more performance
from your people. And when the plan is communicated internally,
your clear and deliberate direction will build credibility
and, in turn, win the trust and loyalty of your employees.
Also, be sure that there is no mismatch in thinking between
middle management and the CEO and/or senior leadership. If
there isn’t alignment, you will not mobilize your team
around your new plan of action.
2. Challenge
Your Superstars
Today’s economy presents companies with a unique opportunity to challenge
superstars. If you are unable to challenge your
strongest talent now, these individuals will start to make
up for lost time with your competition. To stave off the exodus
of your top talent, you have to do everything within your power
to motivate and utilize your superstars. When outstanding performers
are appreciated for their contributions, feel as though they
are on the fast track, and are given an opportunity to assume
new responsibilities, they are more likely to stay put. Find
out their individual motivations and needs, and simply try
to meet these needs. Promote them. Increase their responsibilities.
Build their skills level. Ensure money and other forms of compensation
are aligned. Watch out for work/life balance issues. These
tactics will ensure that your talent doesn’t walk out
the door at the first opportunity.
3. Commit to Your Current Workforce
Be sure to take care of those who are still with you. After
reductions in force or other cutbacks, employees may get
caught in the whining stage and have a difficult time mobilizing
around your new direction. Destructive emotions can freeze
employee performance. You must be able to shift a whining
attitude to a winning attitude. Give your people permission
to move on and provide a forum for people to get involved.
When the motivation or passion is gone, performance potential
goes with it. Emotional issues can be difficult, but try
to interrupt the negativity by shifting focus and energy
to accomplishing your strategic plan.
4. Cross-Train Your Staff
Rotating staff assignments can prevent burnout. By building
critical marketplace skills, employees are able to grow in
even a small-growth economy. For the employer, horizontal
loading of jobs or rotation will allow you to ensure that
workflow is completed and customer demands are met.
5. Communicate
Most of you know that employee communication is the lifeblood
of your organization. It enriches and empowers. However,
in challenging times, communication tends to spiral downward.
Unfortunately, this can have disastrous consequences. Worst
case, the rumor mill begins to fill in what employees are
not hearing from you. Employees imagine the worst. Even when
the news is bad, it is still better to communicate. This
will aid in building loyalty and a feeling of partnership
with your employees.
6. Consider Creative Methods
When money is flowing like Niagara Falls, it can dull creative
juices. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.
When you don’t have the means to whip out your checkbook
or the corporate American Express, you think at least twice
about what you are spending your time and money on. This
forces you to be more creative in your approaches and business
methods. For example, explore how your systems and processes
are supporting the productivity of your employees, especially
if workflow feels bogged down. You could also revisit how
technology can improve efficiency, or analyze the productivity
of meetings/administrative time.
No matter whether your organization is thriving or surviving,
it is critical to focus on finding solutions. Helping your
people accomplish more in less time will boost morale and establish
a loyal and battle-tested team that will be in a position to
grab hold of new opportunities in the future.
Krista F. Skidmore, JD, SPHR
Krista is president and founder of FlashPoint,
a consulting firm providing a range of leadership development,
human resources, and performance improvement solutions to clients
throughout the Midwest.
[Top]
August
24 Special Meeting: Thiagi Interactive
Strategies for Improving Performance
conducted by Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan
Choose to come to a morning or afternoon session or choose
to stay the whole day. Each session can stand alone.
Special Location: Holiday Inn North at the Pyramids
Part 1.
Designing Interactive Strategies
The best way to improve your training is to encourage participants
to interact with each other, with the content, and with you. In this
workshop, Thiagi reveal five secrets of effective interactive training
that is faster, cheaper, and better. You will begin by rapidly exploring
60 different training strategies. Later, you will master additional
details of several strategies:
- Structured sharing that helps practitioners exchange their expertise
with each other
- Interactive
lectures that enable you to retain control of the session while
participants interact with each other
- Textra games
that transform your dull, dry handouts come alive
- Simulation games
that use inexpensive materials and methods to reflect the realities
of the workplace
- Jolts that last
for a few minutes and provide powerful insights and concepts
With Thiagi's framegame
approach, you will learn how to load existing templates to create
your own games in a matter of
minutes. You
will also learn how to avoid irrelevant fluff and fun
and immerse your
participants in engaging activities. Part 2. Conducting Training Games and Activities
Are you excited about training games and activities but anxious about
losing control, wasting time, and being attacked by participants?
Based on 20 years of field experience and research, Thiagi shares
with you three important secrets of effective training facilitation:
- Identify seven critical dimensions of activities-based training (including
pace, intensity, competition, and playfulness). Learn how to select,
maintain, and balance appropriate intensities of these dimensions.
- Recognize
participants from hell and their disruptive behavior
patterns. Learn strategies for discouraging
such patterns and specific tactics
for handling each pattern.
- Identify
the importance of the debriefing process for linking
the training game or activity to the workplace
reality. Learn a powerful
six-phase
model for maximizing learning from experience.
Register
Now!
Friday,
August 24, 2007
9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Choose to come to a morning or afternoon
session or choose to stay the whole day. |
| Topic: |
Interactive
Strategies for Improving Performance |
| Speaker: |
Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan
|
| Agenda: |
9:00
- 12:00 p.m. - Morning Session
1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Afternoon Session |
SPECIAL
LOCATION:
|
Holiday
Inn North at the Pyramids
3850 DePauw Blvd
Indianapolis, IN 46268 |
| Cost: |
Members
$75 pre-registered (one session)
$85 at the door (one session)
OR
$125 pre-registered (both sessions)
$145 at the door (both sessions)
|
Non-Members
$85
pre-registered (one session)
$95 at the door (one session)
OR
$135 pre-registered (both sessions)
$150 at the door (both sessions)
|
|
|
  
Don't
forget to mark your calendar for 2007!
August
24th
Come Play With Us
Workshop (full day w/ half day option)
Dr. Thiagi
September
28th
Success Case Method Workshop
Dr. Brinkerhoff, Advantage Way
Register Now!
October
26th
Coaching with Emotional Intelligence
Scott Livingston, IntegratEI
DID YOU KNOW?? You can purchase program
tickets at a discount!
Attend each meeting for only $22.50…when you purchase in groups
of:
4 Tickets: $90.00
6 Tickets: $135.00
9 Tickets: $202.50
12 Tickets: $270.00
20 Tickets: $450.00
To order online,
click
here. You can also contact Mark Records at (317) 841-8202.
[Top]
| CPLP
Study Groups Now Forming! |
CIASTD wants to support your growth! If you are interested in pursuing
the CPLP designation and want more information, please contact Andrea
Moore, VP of Workplace Learning and Certification at amoore@FlashPointHR.com.
[Top]
 By:
Lynda Coulson
New
Member: Jeff
Garrison
Company: Hologic, Inc. Suros Surgical Division
Position: Director of Corporate Training
Employed Since: October 2002
In Training and Development Since: January 2006
Describe your position at your current employer.
My department is responsible for the general product and industry training
for all newly hired employees as well as product and advanced training
of our sales and clinical staff.
What I love doing most in my job is when I...
Have the opportunity to work individually with field representatives.
The thing I like most about working in training and development is...
Having the opportunity to be an "expert" in our product lines
and sharing that information with others.
The book
I read most recently for work is... Good To Great by Jim
Collins
The book I most recently read for pleasure is.... same
What I
did before I worked for my current employer was... I was
V.P. Sales for a medical software company. I have been in the medical/healthcare
industry for about 15 years.
Describe
your childhood and educational experiences. I was raised
in Western Kentucky. Most of my family still lives there and my children
love to visit. After high school, I moved to Evansville, Indiana and
went to school at the University of Evansville for a B.S. Business
Administration.
Describe
your family. I have 4 wonderful children (2 boys, 2 girls)
ranging from 5 to 11. They are very active and I feel very blessed
to be their dad.
One of the times I felt the most success in my life was...
Personally - the birth of my kids... professionally - the day our company
was sold to Hologic. I had the incredible opportunity to join Suros
when there were less than 20 employees and watched it grow to over
200.
If I could do something I have never done before it would be...
Take a full month off and travel.
If you really knew me you would know...
I am a very energetic and passionate person. I am curious and ask a ton of
questions when I meet new people. I enjoy learning new things and the best
way to learn is to ask others for input. I love what I do and most people
I meet will tell me they are jealous that I am still so enthusiastic about
what I do after 5 years with the same company.
w [Top]
| Making
the Business Case for Sales Training– Think Like An
Executive |
By
Bob Rickert - Aarthun Performance Group
During the past
10 years the sales training profession has weathered its fair share
of economic booms and busts, downsizing,
rightsizing
and re-sizing of the sales organization. We find ourselves at yet another
cross-road….how to sell the business case for sales training
during an uncertain economy, and as the number of competing, high priority
initiatives grow daily. Whether it’s deploying a new CRM technology,
hiring additional salespeople, investing in marketing campaigns or
introducing a new product line, the fact is that in every organization
there are too few budget dollars chasing too many important initiatives.
Today, decisions regarding training and developing the sales organization
are squarely focused on how a company’s overall profitability
will be impacted. This is why sales trainers must learn to position
their solutions in terms that executives will understand and act on.
For the sales training
group, there is usually one question asked that will impact whether
the sales training budget
will be funded or “temporarily
deferred”: Will this training investment help us deliver
immediate revenue and profitability? If the answer is anything less than a resounding
yes, then you can expect the next question to be: Can we achieve our
financial goals without it?
A strong business
case for training linked to financial success will be extremely difficult
for senior management to cut
from the
budget.
But you might ask, providing a sales skills program is difficult to
measure and even more difficult to tie to profitability. That has been
true in the past but it does not have to be true today. Providing solutions
that address executives’ highest priorities will earn you a seat
at the table when the key financial decisions are made.
What You Need To Know
Business and economic
cycles in the past were reasonably predictable, generally slow to
occur and easier to manage around.
In today’s
environment having a stronger knowledge of the business will prepare
you to respond quickly to new emerging challenges. What steps can you
take to understand your company’s key financial and business
strategies?
- Understand
your company’s business – what
is the business model and how is it changing?
- Know your
company’s
financial priorities – what are the
key financial objectives (growing the business; growing new products
or new markets; managing costs to improve profitability)
- Analyze your
company’s performance – what do the numbers
tell you? What are the trends and how is that impacting the business?
What is management saying? Publicly held companies often provide
quarterly analyst calls which can be very informative.
Think Like a Sales Executive
It will be important
to put yourself in the shoes of the VP of Sales to truly understand
his or her challenges. Sales
executives
tend to
view sales trainers as experts in learning and skill development. But
most do not view sales trainers as a resource for executing their go-to-market
sales strategy, but rather as a resource for enabling the skills. That
is certainly not wrong, nor is it a bad thing. But is does become limiting
when it comes time to address business needs. Speaking the language
of the sales executive…..gross margins; ROI; operating margins;
discounting and profitable business will cause the sales leadership
to view you as someone that understands their world, but more importantly,
their challenges.
New Realities
There are a new
set of economic rules driving business today and for everyone in
the organization, change will continue
unabated.
For sales
trainers, the challenges have never been greater. Business as usual
just won’t get it done in the coming years. There is a need to
understand how your company is performing and what impact external
and internal decisions have had, and will have on results. Knowing
your company’s financial situation and providing solutions that
address executive’s highest priorities will earn you a seat at
the table when the key financial decisions are made. This will require
analyzing the business and proposing training solutions that address
the behavioral and financial performance of the sales organization.
Aligning with the sales executive will earn you the right to sell your
services and fund your programs because they are viewed as mission
critical. Building a business case for success is the only way in the
current economic environment to win your share of a shrinking annual
budget.
Bob Rickert is Regional Sales Manager at Aarthun Performance Group,
a full-service firm specializing in global sales and management training
and consulting. Bob is one of ten contributing authors for Sales
Training Solutions, a book edited by Renie McClay and released by
Kaplan Publishing. The book outlines strategies for implementing
sales training effectively in a highly dynamic business climate.
w [Top]
Interested in speaking at a future
CIASTD meeting? Visit www.ciastd.org for more information.
Each
month we are highlighting a training tip. If you have one that
you would like to share, please submit to
info@ciastd.org by the second
week of the month.
[Top]
Wouldn’t you like to get published? The CIASTD Facilitator
could be just the vehicle you are looking for. We are on the lookout
for articles that further learning in the areas of training and
development. While we may not be able to publish every article we
receive, we believe that each issue of the Facilitator could be
enriched by the addition of a few articles. And it’s always
nice to be published! Submit articles by emailing them to lpmayer@comcast.net.
We prefer files in Microsoft Word format.
[Top]
In each issue
of The Facilitator, we will list members that have joined or
re-joined
CIASTD since the previous issue. Since the last issue of The
Facilitator, we have signed 9 new members. To see a list of
the new members,
click here.
Monica
Brown
Joleen Schwier-Walker
Carl Stafford
Jeff Warbinton
Melanie McCarter
Lisa Wethington
Gloria Martinson
Eric Fields
Terresa Bradburn
If you are a member of CIASTD, and would like access to the complete
membership list, it is available on our web site at www.ciastd.org.
[Top]
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