Competency and Performance Solutions

Organizations want training.  Research shows that training does much more than grow skills. Those who receive good training feel that their company has invested in them. Interactive training sparks innovation, engages people and makes it significantly more likely that they will stay with the company and bring their heads, as well as their bodies, to work.

The problem is how to invest in people, but achieve this with  short, affordable, effective training designs, that deliver a considerable amount of customized, sustainable learning and attitude change. Businesses need training interventions that provide

• powerfully interactive experiences: they need these to cost as little as possible,
• real lasting learning: they need these to take people off the job for the shortest time possible, and
• engaging training experiences that spark innovation and collaboration: they need these to be custom targeted on the specific needs of their organization so that people feel  “invested in”

It’s hard to blame them.  Organizations are “doing more with less,” and their alternatives are often minimal canned training, on-line non-collaborative training, or no training at all.

CPS began addressing this need by using accelerated learning techniques, such as jigsaw training designs, often mixed with plays and/or multiple intelligence work.  These most powerful, interactive learning methods work well for all generations. The collaborative nature of the work is ideal for innovation and cross-functional problem solving. 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 of London, such as CPS has.)

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 »

As GenY specialists, we have to comment on Mark Bauerlein’s new book, “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)”.

The Emory University Professor presents his figures showing a decline in US adult literacy (40% of high-school grads in 1992; only 31% in 2003) and the many areas where young Americans lack knowledge, such as geographic, historical and political cluelessness.

Bauerlein is even more annoyed because his Gen-Yers are unapologetic about their ignorance. They dismiss the idea that they should have more facts in their heads, and call it a pre-Google and pre-wiki anachronism.

CPS’s position is that Bauerlein has a good case, and is also completely wrong. Gen Y has massive skills gaps in some areas, but is the smartest generation ever in others. Continue reading »

At times, CPS staffers have crossed the line between business and education,  in efforts to reach the roots of business problems that lie in the education system.

Glynis writes the Hillsborough Public Schools’ program on developing higher order thinking skills for students (although this is under-used). She coaches teaching faculties (on a voluntary basis) on how thinking works, and how to develop the skills that their students will need to prosper in the economy they will enter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

CPS is willing to share these professional development modules with schools that are interested.

The modules have the following format:

• All can be delivered in an initial one-hour faculty-meeting time slot.
• All have a follow-up competency-based program and workbook, outlining a consolidation process.
• All follow a peer-mentored process that can be done by any two teachers, irrespective of experience.
• All use positive psychology (appreciative inquiry) and encouragement, not criticism, thus building faculty harmony and rapport. Continue reading »

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 »

We all know that the US economy (as valued by Wall Street) grew a couple of trillion dollars between 1994 and the recession. Some of this was illusionary,  but there was real growth too. You don’t see new oil refineries and steel mills popping up all over the landscape.

The real growth, and real wealth, has come largely from knowledge-based activity. We have created vast real 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. New innovation and thought-based entrepreneurship has created new industries and jobs few people dreamed existed, and this will continue to happen.
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 »

A Is our education system making you poorer, even if you are well-qualified, well paid, and don’t have children in school?
B Is there a small, inexpensive action that you, and your organization, can take to change this?

A How could our education system be making you poorer, even if you do not have children in school, and already have a good education yourself?

Forbes.com has plenty of data on the best place to locate a business or build a career. The South East is generally doing well, but Tampa-St Pete is now is 132nd place on educational attainment, compared to similar metros.

(And Florida ranks 48th out of 50 states on indicators like the national ACT college entrance test.)

Good education is the tide that lifts all ships.
Continue reading »