Glynis Ross-Munro, President of Competency and Performance Solutions, is a training and business consulting specialist. She has many years experience in analyzing training needs, designing learning interventions across a broad spectrum of business needs, and implementing business and managerial strategies.
Glynis has consulted for national and international companies, She has wide experience in customer service, call centers, team development and thinking skills training, and has developed dozens of programs for both operational and strategic management. She has worked with companies in a range of industries including Bridgestone/Firestone, Biostat, IBM, MTN, BMW, Ernst & Young, Deloittes, Alexander Forbes, Siemens, Volkswagen-Audi, Sasol, Iscor, Sappi HSBC, Guardbank, Liberty Life, the Poynter Institute, Catapult Learning and many others.
Glynis has three degrees in industrial psychology and educational psychology from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of South Africa. She is qualified in competency-based training assessment through City and Guilds of London and is based in Tampa, Florida.
Greg Ross-Munro, Vice-President of Competency and Performance Solutions, has a bachelors degree in Industrial Psychology, and an MBA (IT and Management) from USF. He also holds a Masters of Science in Entrepreneurship degree from USF. Greg’s expertise in technology is a asset to CPS’s consulting solutions, and he has also been a driving force behind CPS’s “Managing the Millenials”, and the specialization in Millennial training and understanding of multi-generational workforces.
Greg has a minor in Japanese, and worked in Japan for a year between his bachelors and masters degree programs. He was Business Manager of the Oracle (the USF self-financing newspaper) and also published a humorous student-written newspaper which was a significant success in the Millennial market in Tampa, before working with the St Petersburg Times as an innovation and business development resource. Greg is also currently a consulting project manager for Crosstree Capital, a bio-technology-oriented venture capital company in Tampa.
What do we do?
1: Millennial Solutions: CPS works with organizations and teams who are struggling to get the most our of their people, especially their younger employees – the under 30s.
Please view the presentation below if you are:
• Worried about the cost of turnover, and the impact this is having on your business
• Concerned that productivity and service are affected by miscommunication or misunderstanding between the generations.
• Aware that your competitors are benefiting from greater input, innovation and engagement from their younger workers than you are.
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2. Competency solutions: CPS works with organizations who need to build competency-based systems that deliver bottom-line results.
• These are usually chosen by best-practice companies to meet specific business needs in selection, on-boarding, training, performance management, appraisal, career-pathing, succession planning and retention.
CPS has international experience and qualifications in such systems. We can either manage or partner in implementing competency projects.
3. Thinking solutions: CPS works with educational professionals and businesses to build critical, creative and rigorous thinking, to create economic advantages in the Age of Knowledge.
• Our education partners want to prepare our students for well-paid careers and secure futures in the new economy. They believe that the 21st Century belongs to the communities and nations with the best minds, and the most innovative, creative, critical and rigorous thinking processes.
Higher order thinking skills also improve test results and graduation results, and decrease college drop-out rates.
• Educational Directors are often struggling for money, and they need affordable programs with funding. They like CPS’s ability to achieve measurable results for a dollar per teacher per program, and they appreciate our willingness to find funding for programs where necessary.
• Some are disappointed that past thinking-skills programs have not made a difference to how teachers actually teach for better thinking skills in the classroom. CPS’s innovative, competency-based peer-coached programs give them a simple, carefully-structured solution, with visible, long-term results.
Some CPS workshops at a glance:
Each workshop fits within a structured process. CPS’s affordable sequence includes assessment of the situation and business need, agreement on the results required, customization as required, and feedback.
A Working with Differentness
A.1 Managing Four Generation Teams
For participants who are: Middle to upper managers, who have multi-generational teams, customers, suppliers or outsource people.
Typically, these managers have concerns about the different generations they manage. There may be misunderstandings between the manager and his/her team members, based on generation. There may be miscommunication between different team members who come from different generations. The manager may be worried about how best to motivate, retain and engage skilled staff from different age groups and how to get the team to work well. The organization may be serving a generational customer base that is different from the team’s generation, or working with external resources from another generation. An example of this might be an older team working with, or resisting buying-in to technology that is being provided by, a younger team.
A.2 Training Four Generations
For participants who are: Training specialists, learning specialists, instructional designers or organizational development specialists.
Typically, these specialists are responsible for learning by a wide range of people, who come from different generations and have different learning styles. A common task here involves adapting both training style and existing learning material to suit the different learning needs of different generations, without “reinventing the wheel” or exceeding budgets. Another task involves using the laws of learning to ensure that three or four generations learn together, that all enjoy the process, and that the learning has sustainable, effective and long-lasting observable results.
A.3 Managing Millennials
For participants who are: Team leaders, operational managers or senior strategic managers who believe that their younger people can contribute more effectively, or who worry that their GenYs “do not have their heads in the game”.
Typically these managers are concerned about the costs of turnover and retention costs (such as wasted training or brain-drain) and are worried about low productivity, poor customer service, or other signs of lack of engagement. They may be frustrated with miscommunication between the generations. They may be concerned that other organizations benefit more from their Millennial generation’s creativity, technical skills and market insights.
CPS offers several different versions of Managing the Millennials (see presentation above)
A.4 Building inclusive cultures and cultural fluency
For participants who are: Managers or employees who are not happy about the degree of tolerance of diversity in the workplace, and/or who believe that a more inclusive organizational culture will generate higher productivity, more creativity, stronger retention and greater engagement.
This can be a single workshop or a culture-changing program. It must be stated that structured programs have much greater effectiveness in changing cultures than single workshops, but CPS’s single workshops also have a place in long-term plan to build inclusivity.
A.5 American business and social etiquette for cultural newcomers
For participants who are: Managers, employees or trainers who find American culture to be a stumbling block for those who are non-native born Americans.
Many people fail repeatedly in any new culture, and benefit from a supportive and informative discussion of the real “rules of the road” of living and working in America. Any nation is a very strange place to those who are not born to its culture, and this program is a great way to learn to enjoy the intricacies of the complex culture that is America.
This is an entertaining workshop, run by a native-born American and an immigrant-born American, that covers many of the common problem areas that trip up newcomers to US business culture.
B Management and Team Building
B.1 Management skills for the operational/tactical leader
For participants who are: Supervisors and managers, tasked with the daily responsibility of making things work at the operational level.
This three-day program gets to the practical skills that make a mid-level manager successful on a day-to-day basis.
Custom versions of this program have been used by many companies, from small non-profits to HSBC, with lasting excellent results. MBAs have called it “the best practical management workshop I have ever attended”.
B.2 Building synergistic teams
For participants who are: Team leaders and mid-level managers, and tasked with the responsibility of building teams that work.
This program focuses on the essential elements that make a team work: how to put a team together, grow and gel it, resolve conflict, and build group motivation, confidence, vision and results.
B.3 Thinking skills for successful business people
For participants who are: Managers, knowledge workers and specialists who want to review and tighten their thinking “toolbox” to compete in a complex world.
This program explores the processes and thinking tools that can be used simply and quickly to process information, assess, analyze and evaluate concepts rigorously, and think flexibly and logically.
It covers the processes of strategic thinking, planning, problem solving and working from a project-management orientation. It examines the reasons why wealth is now derived from cooperative thinking and learning, and how to contribute to group thinking processes.
The tools of team-based creativity and innovation are explored by actively engaging in creative exercises.
C Business Skills
C.1 Writing in 21st Century business
For participants who are: Managers, employees, knowledge workers, or any type of professionals (engineers, IT professionals etc) who must write clear, quick communications in their course of their work.
This program shows participants ways to write quick, clear and effective communications. This improves productivity, and gives people back hours of their day. Participants find that improved communication means better service, and the end of email politics and misunderstandings. This knowledge is a career boost in a world where customers, suppliers and knowledge workers communicate continuously in writing.
C.2 Business writing for second language English users
For participants who are: Managers, employees, knowledge workers, or any type of professionals (engineers, IT professionals etc) who must write clear, quick communications in their course of their work.
The majority of the business world does not speak English at home, but English is often the language of international business. This program was developed in a country with 11 official languages, and focuses on quick, effective, accurate communication for speakers of all languages.
Thousands of people have completed this program and discovered that they can write well, quickly and confidently in English, once they understand the strategies behind business writing.
C.3 Memorable presentations
For participants who are: Specialists, professionals, managers and others who give presentations or attend meetings where they must make a persuasive or informative case.
This course is the cure for anyone whose audiences doze, or who finds that audiences do not remember the content of their presentations. It is based on the neuro-psychology of learning, and the skills and strategies of successful presentations.
C.4 Communication for sales and customer service
For participants who are: Sales or customer service representatives
This program is extremely helpful for any sales or customer service personnel who are concerned that their relationships with customers are not leading to the types of outcomes that they need to achieve.
Whether communication is face-to-face, or by telephone, excellent communicators are the most successful sales and customer service reps. This course builds each sub-skill of communication into an overall whole, with structured practice. The scenarios are all built around sales and customer service situations.
C.5 Recruitment, selection, induction. Career-pathing for retention, and succession planning (Joint or separate courses).
For participants who are: Managers, Human Resources, Training or Organization Development professionals
This program is useful for any organization that needs to build a strong employment brand, and reduce selection errors. It helps businesses to make fully effective use of the first 180 days of each new hire’s employment, and to build commitment and engagement. It is especially useful for anyone who is concerned about “6 month disillusionment and apathy”. The course can be extended to include competency-based career-pathing, and succession planning.
CPS offers coaching on how to build a career-pathing structure, how to link it to development and succession planning, how to include on- and off-ramps, stretch-learning experiences, and other retention and profitability/performance metrics.
C.6 Competency-based performance management, performance development and performance assessment.
For participants who are: Managers, supervisors, human resources, training or organization development professionals
This program is suitable for managers or specialists who are concerned that their people’s contributions to the goals of the organization are not being managed effectively. It identifies how individual performance contributes to organizational success and profitability, and how this can best be measured, managed and improved.
This is also a solution for businesses whose performance appraisal process has limited effectiveness, or whose managers or staff are unhappy with their performance measurement process.
C.7 Call Center Skills: various
For participants who are: First and Second Tier, Supervisors and Managers: skills for the different roles in call center operations.
These programs were originally developed for IBM and Siemens, under Glynis Ross-Munro’s personal copyright. They were tested by a wide variety of companies in customized formats, and shown to have significant long-term effects on culture, service, business metrics and retention.
D Professional development for educators.
The modules available include:
D.1: Building Higher-Order Thinking Skills: Blooms Taxonomy as a key tool for building 21st Century thinking.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a highly effective and useful tool, by which teachers can structure information and grow student thinking. It is a direct route to better comprehension, retention, higher grades, and better thinkers. In a world where thinking skills are a nation’s primary competitive advantage, too many teachers regard Bloom’s as some theory they learned at college, instead of a simple daily tool that will get them to their goals in a very effective way.
This program shows how teachers can use Bloom’s to plan, deliver and assess successful learning, and specifies exactly what success with this looks like, for teachers who are new to working with the tool, somewhat experienced, or experienced.
The learning phase is followed by a peer-assisted coaching period, that supports teachers as they consolidate the steps to become comfortable with using scaffolded thinking. The guide uses the team-building, and confidence-building technique of appreciative inquiry. It gives clear, concrete descriptions of each level of competency, for use in peer coaching or self-assessment.
D.2: The Self-Aware Learner: Thinking about learning, and becoming more effective learners.
“It is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning.” Donald Norman.
This program covers how people learn, and how students learn more effectively when they understand their own learning processes. Analogies, narratives and games are included, that are suitable for students from a young age, up to senior high school.
The specific competencies for teachers are spelled out, together with a post-workshop coaching program. During the coaching period, teachers work with their peers to implement the skills, and to compare their results against the competency examples and exercises.
As with all CPS programs, this includes ways to measure the effectiveness of the techniques, to ensure that student learning results are improved, students understand and take more ownership of their learning, and the school faculty builds a greater sense of teamwork and mutual support during the process.
D.3: The Thinking-Skills Toolbox 1: Thinking skills for reading comprehension (understanding the structure and meaning of text).
This workshop covers three strategies to create purposeful, active readers, who control their own reading comprehension.
Each strategy uses the power of both individual critical thinking, and group collaborative thinking. As with the Bloom’s module, it has classroom tools, desk tents, etc on cd or in downloadable form.
The competencies for teachers are laid out in measurable detail, along with the coaching plan that is included in all CPS programs. Competencies are differentiated, so that there are goals for those who are new to each strategy, and more challenging objectives for more experienced users of each strategy.
The coaching guides emphasize the use of appreciative inquiry in the peer-coaching process, and show ways of measuring the effectiveness of the strategies.
D.4: The Thinking-Skills Toolbox 2: Raising grades while building knowledge workers.
The tools of good thinking are both the route to better grades, and the path to a competitive US economy. This program details concrete methods of building these tools into daily classroom activities, through the school years.
“We should be teaching students how to think. Instead, we are teaching them what to think.” Clement and Lochhead.
The activities, aids and criteria for success are detailed by student age and teacher experience, together with a peer-mentored coaching program to consolidate and measure participant progress.
D.5: Collaborative Thinking: Mobilizing minds to learn and think together.
Active and interactive group learning and thinking processes do two things. They enhance learning and thinking, and also prepare our students to live and work in an ever-more complex and networked world. This module defines key criteria for group thinking processes, and shows how to make sure that these translate into motivated students and higher grades.
This module chooses two collaborative thinking options (with the measurable criteria of competency, by student age and teacher experience) and then suggests other structures and options that will work to the same criteria.
The format is the same as other CPS modules: a learning session, detailed notes, a peer-mentored consolidation period and a competency-based assessment.
D.6: 21st Century Creative Thinkers: Creativity as a tool of learning.
Thomas Friedman, visionary economist and author of “The World is Flat” and “Hot, Flat and Crowded” looks at the US economy and says “Invent, baby, invent!”
Creativity brings together all the multiple intelligences, learning styles and levels of Blooms. This workshop shows how our teachers, as our most transformational and creative professionals, can use this intentionally to build learning, while also preparing our students for the needs of the new economy.
This program details how to use measurable, criterion-based learning products, with the flexibility of individual interest, level and style, in a context of understanding that all students have the ability to be creative beyond many expectations.
The format is the same as other CPS modules: a learning session, detailed notes, a peer-mentored consolidation period and a competency-based assessment.
E Custom solutions
CPS has created many other types of learning experiences, ranging from the details of educational journalism, to the skills used by field service operatives in small businesses such as electrical and other services, to safety and software-tech buy-in, to the hard skills of the ultra-precision machine industry.
We work with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) where necessary, and also provide our specialty - systems building and attitude change/buy-in.
CPS believes that there is more to changing business results than training knowledge or skills. It is also essential to repair any processes that support poor business results, and to realign attitudes. Part of this is the work of selling the choice to behave differently. Or, more succinctly… people gotta wanna, and we are very good at the work of “getting them to wanna.”
When people choose to buy in to a new way of behaving, they decide to commit to using it. For this reason, we like to work to business metrics, because systemic changes and learning must be visible, on the job, and must impact business results, long after an intervention is completed.
F Clients:
Together or separately, Glynis and Greg Ross-Munro have worked with many organizations, both large and small, for-profit and non-profit, in the private and public sector.
Some of these have included: Aeon, Audi, BMW, Biostat International, Coca-Cola, CrossTree Capital, IBM, Ernst & Young, Escom, Deloittes, Hillsborough County, Hillsborough Public Schools, HSBC, Iscor (SA steel giant), McDill Federal Credit Union, Mvula Trust, The Oracle, The Poynter Institute, The St Petersburg Times, Sappi, Sasol, SA Dept of Health, Siemens, Sterling, Volkswagen.
CPS (Competency and Performance Solutions) specializes in structured business, people and learning solutions, that achieve sustainable, measurable goals.
Key areas of skills and experience:
1.Generations: building multi-generational teams, helping leaders manage Generation Y and younger GenXers, strategic planning, and hands-on skills with Millennial employees, customers and suppliers.
2. Thinking skills: building higher-order thinking skills in business and education. The applications of excellent thinking - innovation, creativity, problem solving, and quick, clear, effective writing and communication.
3. Competencies: competency-based selection, training, performance and succession planning systems, with a special interest in buddy-based, competency-referenced onboarding programs.
CPS is a values-based certified woman-owned small business, with high-level skills in people issues, business analysis, solution design and sustainable learning.
Glynis has three degrees in Industrial and Educational Psychology, and is also a City and Guilds Training Assessor. Greg has an MBA and a Masters of Science in Entrepreneurship from USF.
Please contact us for advice or consultation: glynis[at]c-psolutions.com or greg[at]c-psolutions.com.
Together or separately, Glynis and Greg have worked with many organizations, both large and small, for-profit and non-profit, in the private and public sector. These organizations have been in the USA, South Africa and Japan. These have included: Audi, BMW, IBM, Escom, HSBC, Mvula Trust, The Poynter Institute, The St Petersburg Times, Siemens, Sappi, Sasol, SA Dept of Health, Volkswagen.
CPS specializes in structured people, business and learning solutions, that achieve sustainable measurable goals.
What we do best:
Work with leaders in multi-generation organizations, to achieve measurable
gains in productivity, innovation, engagement and retention.
What do we do?
A. Identify and solve business, people and performance problems, or under-used “people opportunities”.
B. Work with leaders who have younger Millennials employees and team members, to achieve profitable, innovative and synergistic organizations.
C. Develop competency systems, with measurable improvements in selection and recruitment, on-boarding, performance assessment and management, career-pathing, engagement and retention and succession planning.
E. Build thinking skills, including rigorous critical, creative, innovative and higher-order thinking in business and education…with measurable results.
Some ways that we can impact your bottom line:
- Solve performance and people problems
- Win, satisfy and keep customers
- Define, retain and develop competent employees
- Reduce costs and increase capacity
- Harness diversity and creativity
- Improve goal buy-in, communication and teamwork
Summary:
Culture and Generational Solutions
Workplace Learning, Thinking, Competency and Performance Experts
Organizational Development and Human Process Solutions