Competency and Performance Solutions

We live in a global economy where a single ability distinguishes the people who will always have well-paid secure work, from those who will not.

This is the ability to think well.*

Can we create world-class thinkers in the schools of the United States, at a time when nations who are our economic competitors are pouring their resources into achieving the same objective? Continue reading »

You’re dealing with a client, co-worker, outsource project team member or supplier, and need to guess more about his/her thought style to work more effectively together.

You can guess a client’s or remote colleague’s generation from their writing, and give them appropriate service or packaged data.

Mature/Traditional: No emoticons. The writer thinks smiley faces are unprofessional and signs of lazy writing. You’ll tend to see longer, more complex sentences, and spelling is really good. Paragraphing is usually excellent, with careful punctuation. Continue reading »

1    What your customers say.
2    What your employees say.
3    The Generation Y / Millennial guarantee.
4    County funds for CPS services

1.     What your customers say:

Generation Y is a worldwide phenomenon. In the USA, our 80 million Millennials are a daily challenge to how we strategize, manage, and market.

Open a business publication.  Organizations are constantly criticized for poor service that is specifically blamed on disengaged GenYs. I tested this today: the St Pete’s Times listed AOL, Comcast, Sprint, Abercrombie & Fitch, Qwest, Capital One, Bank of America, Time Warner Cable, HSBC Finance, and Cox Communications as examples: http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/article749365.ece

There are well-researched solutions to these issues. There are specific management skill-sets and behaviors that prevent or cure the problem. Continue reading »

It is very easy to spend months, or $$$$$ on a competency-based program, and end up with very little to show for it.

Three tips:

Tip One: You are likely to run into a very specific problem, unless you are working with a fully-qualified competency expert. (Look for an international qualification, specifically in competencies, like City and Guilds.)

Here is the problem: as you discuss competencies, you become very familiar with the information. You therefore take the material to higher and higher levels of abstraction. You also start to clump the competencies together, so you end up with about 12 broad abstract statements, covering a whole position. These are no use at all. Continue reading »

1            Putting a dollar value on writing skills
2            A real-life example of how writing skills can be improved quickly

1 Your junior-level staff member writes a couple of emails more quickly. Saving: about $600 in a 282-day year.

If his/her emails become better communications, the cost benefits multiply. Effective writing helps create productive processes, happier customers and better teamwork.

If a senior manager writes a couple of emails more quickly each day, the payoff moves up to about $3,000 each year.  It is impossible to put a price on the benefits of senior managers writing clear, persuasive, effective communications, as these are so valuable in an economy where customers, suppliers and knowledge workers communicate by writing.
Continue reading »

It’s common to hear complaints about GenYs, but the Millennial Generation has its own frustrations. There are far too many to list here, but a common one is that they are full of innovative ideas which are ignored. Every cohort has new ideas, but this one thinks in a dramatically different way from the generations before them, even when compared with GenX. And they often have the “Mouth” to say so.

But your Millennials are finding out a great truth about business - that risk takers and innovators are a good thing in theory, but in practice they usually receive a very cool reception. Continue reading »

We all know that the US economy (as valued by Wall Street) has grown a couple of trillion dollars since 1994, and that this has not been industrial growth. You don’t see new oil refineries and steel mills popping up all over the landscape.

But it has been real growth, real wealth, not only share issuance.  It has come largely from knowledge-based activity. We have created hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization - in real growth - as we shift gradually from an industrial age, to what has been called the Information Age, the Digital Age or the Age of Knowledge.
Continue reading »

1 How does your organization tell its story (brand) in an age of web transparency?
2 How does your learning and development team tell the story of your services and/or products?
3 Does your organization buy stories over quality?
4 Do you know (and monitor) your personal brand?

1 How does your organization tell its story (brand itself) in an age of web transparency?

We’ve always added value to goods and services with stories. A good story, with its associated emotions and images, can make bottled water worth seven times the price of gasoline. A tatty old rug with a history is a valuable antique… a shrimp cooked by a famous chef can cost twenty times more than one from a chain restaurant.

I’m sure that your strategic people get together regularly to review the “sizzle” which adds value to your services and products.

Questions to ask include: are you telling your story in a different way from the way you told it five years ago? Hot buttons are changing, and even a subtle shift will show on your bottom line. Continue reading »

1 Everyone needs to maintain or increase organizational profit in a time of economic slowdown
2 One proven route to profitability: build the financial and business intelligence in all your employees

In a time of economic weakness, it’s especially important to make sure that all your key people are financially intelligent.

And not only key people - all your people. Back in the Age of Industry, only managers were expected to understand revenue and expenditure. Now everyone needs to ask:

1) How can we increase the numbers above the line?

You can simplify this into four starting points:

a) How can we sell more of our existing products or services to our existing customers?
b) How can we sell more of our existing products and services to new clients?
c) How can we sell new products or services to existing customers?
d) How can we sell new products or services to new customers?

… and what can I, personally, and my team, do about it?
Continue reading »