Building Sustainable Success

This weekend Manchester United claimed the Premiership title for the tenth time under Sir Alex Ferguson’s twenty one year career as Team Manager. It was a huge success, with a little excitement, waiting until the final day of the campaign to secure the title, but not one that came as a big surprise to anyone who follows English football.

Manchester United do have pots of cash, but other teams have deeper pockets. They have a formidable youth set up, but others do better in bringing young talent on to Premiership standard.

What Sir Alex has had that so few other managers in English football enjoy is a fair run at the job. The average length of tenure for a Premiership Manager is a little under 1.7 years. Championship Managers fare far worse.

Constant upheaval, including changes of manager can destabilise a team and in football, like many businesses, a manager can be viewed as the only determining factor. Some mangers are considered failures when they have very little in the way of performing employees to work with and no resources to seek others. Some managers suffer from constant interference from above, damaging long range planning and destroying credibility with the team.

These are not just football or even sporting problems, the same thing happens to managers in organisations across the UK, and whilst they may not be publicly fired, they are often quietly sidelined without given an opportunity to succeed or a chance to learn and improve.

Had Manchester United taken the same approach there were plenty of opportunities to sack the Manager for a lack of success - it took him five years to win anything and, with a player budget that managers from Arsène Wenger to Liam Daish could only dream of, the club failed to win anything in four more of his years in charge. Despite this on each occasion he was given the time, space and resources needed to rebuild a better, stronger team.

Sir Alex Ferguson is not the only reason for Manchester United’s success, the players are outstanding, the cashflow is incredible and the facilities world class, but without a senior management team with a long term vision and the confidence to ride out some short term pain for future glory, he could be one of the hundreds of football managers who never make it past their fourth job.

If you’d like to talk about how you can improve the performance of your managers please contact us.

Where Are Your Bags Going On Holiday?

Heathrow Terminal Five seems to have settled down a little and long haul flights are easing their way in. Passengers however are still nervous and planes are full of extra hand baggage ‘just in case’ bags are lost or make their way to an altogether nicer destination than their owners.

Much has been made of the installation of a new luggage handling system and whether enough checks were made by BA or BAA as to whether the technology worked. New technology is a risk for any business but the issue is rarely whether the technology works, it’s whether the people can work with the technology.

Careful to ensure that the launch of any new technology project goes well, organisations often test, retest, stress test and emergency test the hardware and software. What they can sometimes skimp on is briefing, training and validating the competencies of the employees who will be working with the new technology.

An assumption of ‘how hard can it be’ is often a recipe for disaster, underestimating the knowledge and skills required to work a new system. Assuming that no other processes will be affected is easy if you take a helicopter view and don’t ensure that someone has checked the people aspects of a new way of working.

Heathrow Terminal Five didn’t crawl to a standstill because the belts didn’t work, it failed to launch because employees couldn’t make their way to their workstations, people didn’t know who to report to or who their colleagues would be, or what to do if there was a problem.

There are many lessons to be learned, and in some ways the fiasco may help many smaller, less high profile failures, as long as project managers make sure they have designed a robust plan to communicate with employees, engage with them, build their knowledge skills and confidence and ensure their commitment.

To find out more about how Predaptive can help your organisation manage change projects effectively, please contact us.

Leading In A Bigger World

Globalisation can enter the public consciousness when international conferences are met with protests, or the price of basic food and energy supplies rises for reasons that are anything but local. Yet for many people globalisation is a key part of their daily routine.

Working with people from other countries and cultures can be a challenge. Working for corporations which have a different culture and different way of doing business can prove baffling. From simple decisions such as how to greet a colleague through to the best way to present your proposal to gain agreement, the subtleties of different cultures can be key to success.

Understanding how and why people behave differently can unlock doors to increased co-operation and success. Predaptive work with a range of international organisations to help leaders get to grips with the multi-faceted challenges of a globalised workplace. To find out more about how Predaptive can help your organisation, please contact us.

The Management Value Add

How much do your managers add-value as managers and how much do they try to add value by doing work that others should be doing?

Recently this question was asked unrhetorically in a customer organisation and the answers were very revealing:

• Many managers were spending between 20% and 30% of their time checking, chasing, covering or actually doing the work of team members.
• Fewer than 5% were spending less than 5% doing what they shouldn’t be doing.

Guess who were the most productive, with the highest team satisfaction ratings? The managers who were doing just that - managing by adding value through coaching, team building, creating, performance managing, recruiting, resource planning etc, etc. Not manically chasing the job by doing the work of others.

Structured Training’s management development programmes really do focus on what managers should be doing: getting results through other people and building scalable, sustainable levels of performance that are aligned to the needs of the business.

To learn more about our management development capabilities please click here.

For more information about how Structured Training can help to develop your management cadre, please contact us.

Natural Born Leaders

Are leaders born or made? This is a really boring question, like the nature/nurture debate.
Boring, because it’s obviously both, in both cases. The much more interesting question around Leadership is why isn’t more attention given to it as part of organisations’ people development strategies?

If leadership means anything it means taking responsibility for changing (improving) something. Whether on a personal or corporate basis we can all change (everybody has that potential), it's whether they have the motivation to convert the thought into the deed. Interestingly, we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions, others judging us by actions. People showing leadership attributes tend to have a smaller reality gap, focusing not on what they should do but on what they actually implement.

Structured Training build on this idea of leadership with its 4SLeadership™ framework showing how a person’s behaviour linked to heightened self awareness can make them a more effective leader. This applies regardless of whether that’s someone who is managing a call centre team, running a project, or in charge of a large PLC. The scale might be different, but on a relative basis the challenges are the same and the opportunity for a leadership response significant.

Please click here to go to Structured Training’s leadership pages. We’d love to talk to you about how we can help build your organisation’s leadership capabilities - contact us.

"Nothing Happens Until Somebody Sells Something"

“Nothing happens until somebody sells something”, is one of the great sales managers’ rah rah clichés. But that doesn’t make it invalid.

Its obviousness contains a critical truth that a business won’t survive for long if it relies on the other version of the saying, “nothing happens until somebody buys something”.

Selling is something under your control, waiting for customers to buy isn’t. It’s that pro-activity which makes selling potentially the most dynamic function in your business, the one that deserves the most attention, resources and development focus. Unfortunately, for many organisations selling is still viewed as an amateur rather than professional calling. How many other functions would get away with a board report that is written as a highly justified wish fulfilment list covered with caveats and provisos?

At Structured Training we believe selling can be professionalised, from forecasting new business through to retaining your best customers. Our expertise and experience shows us that when salespeople work at being consciously competent within a structured process, staying (slightly) ahead of their customers learning whilst demonstrating a high service belief wrapped in a ‘go for it’ approach, they do brilliantly; and all of these components can be analysed and improved on through training and good sales force design.

Please click here to go to the sales pages on our web site. You could be selling a lot more very soon!

For further information contact us.

How Good Is Your Front Of House?

One of the most interesting parts of a consultant’s job when visiting different organisations is seeing how strongly the way they organise their reception and switchboard, revealing how customer centric the wider business actually is.

Firstly a generalisation, that unfortunately contains a real truth. Outsourced reception facilities do not perform as well as wholly owned ones. Even when the first line of contact is a security desk in perhaps a shard facility with a ‘proper’ reception behind it, the experience is still mostly debilitating. We won’t even bother commenting about the impression that unmanned receptions create.

It sounds obvious, but the receptionist is the most important component of the reception experience. Good eye contact, a proper greeting, efficient visitor administration, and the offer of drink, take your coat, a seat, and directions to the loos should all be delivered in a friendly and professional way.

It’s when you sit down and wait you can observe what’s going on and really learn about the organisation. It’s amazing how many receptionists who, when they’ve ‘dealt’ with you, assume you are not there any more. They conduct private conversations on mobiles, moan to passing colleagues, and ignore ringing phones. The best ones realise they are still ‘on stage’, keep you informed, even chat if they have the time, or if they see you would like too.

The quality of a receptionist and their service delivery is a leading indicator as to the quality of the organisation’s more general offering.

If there is a TV on it should be broadcasting an appropriate channel, local radio phone-ins are not really appropriate (we’ve heard them). An internet terminal should be working and showing the organisations home page and an invitation to use.

On the broader environment, how current are the magazines? How early does today’s newspaper appear, we know one organisation where it doesn’t get put out until 11.00am after the post has been circulated. Internal people put before early arriving customers.

Why does it say DO NOT REMOVE FROM RECEPTION on company literature? Customers aren’t going to take it (shouldn’t they be encouraged?), so it must be staff. Why can’t staff be informed in ways other than showing customers staff can’t be trusted.

This brings us to a key ‘atmosphere’ builder in receptions; Signage. There should be as little (none?) negative signage on view to customers. The stickers on brochures previously mentioned is a great example of negative signage. Positive signage creates a very different ‘atmosphere’. It makes people feel they are allowed. No smoking, do not use mobiles, no admittance without a pass, type signs all send a compliant but negative message. The same feeling can be experienced when you enter a hotel bedroom and see all the little signs on the table and in the bathroom telling you what you can’t do.

Why not audit your reception?

Your front of house is where you reveal much about how you really view customers.

We leave you with a final thought. In one South African company’s reception we visited we saw the following 'Guns must be handed in at reception'. The ultimate in negative signage, or a customer centric business reassuring its visitors?!

How Value Chains Mature – The Dangers of Creeping Commoditisation

Many organisations are dealing with the issue where parts (all?) of their market-place are commoditising, i.e. where the customer perceives the product/service they are purchasing is sufficiently understood by them so that the decision as to which one, independent of any technical or expert help where key benefit attributes like quality, reliability and availability can be taken as given, can be made on price.

What many organisations don’t realise is their own unconscious role in accelerating their own journey into ‘commodity hell’. One of the major faults organisations make is not understanding how value chains mature, so not employing the appropriate strategies at the right time.

What is your market place(s) at present?

Key Questions

1. After establishing the current stage of maturity, what competitive strategies are you going to deploy?
   
2. If the market is normalised and mature, commoditisation traits will be evident. To combat this, how can you create new forms of competitive advantage? Is lowest cost producer status available to pursue? How do you build different value propositions that increase the customers need for your expert advice and help?
   
3. If your value chain is more immature you have the opportunity to slow its maturity through constant innovation focused around beneficial customer centric change.

Taking a strategic approach to how you compete in your market-place, and pro-actively choosing how you propose to compete in the future is critical if you are going to avoid being pulled into selling commodities.

One of SalesPathways core capabilities is around helping organisations build competitive advantage. For more information contact us.

Are Your Salespeople IT Literate? *

We are all users of technology, however many salespeople have huge gaps in their IT literacy, having developed ‘coping strategies’ to get by. The most obvious coping strategy is getting someone else to do it for you, the most damaging impediment to developing personal IT skills. What has evolved is the idea that everybody has ‘enough skills’; people can send email, put a Word letter together, produce a couple of slides and run a spreadsheet for their expenses or commissions. This is pretty thin stuff when it comes to using the potential of these applications.

SalesPathways were involved with a project to increase a sales team’s productivity and within scope was their use of PC technology. Rather than develop an academic view of IT literacy the salespeople were interested in a practical expression of what IT literacy could deliver for them, so we looked at what high performing, very productive salespeople were doing with technology to see whether there was any correlation between IT literacy and high performance. We found that there was**. We then tried to establish if there was a single piece of functional usage connected to each of the major packages that we could use as a proxy for general IT effectiveness.

As a result we developed the following thresholds for IT literacy:

• Using Mail Merge in word to support small marketing campaigns
• Pivoting Excel spreadsheets to reveal more useful data sets
• Animating PowerPoint presentations appropriately
• Using Rules Criteria in Outlook to help manage inbox volumes.

If you are capable of doing these things you are capable of using technology in value adding ways.

The other interesting connection we found was where this level of IT literacy was being demonstrated the salesperson’s contribution to inputting and extracting data from their organisation’s CRM was more significant. They were power users. Also, these salespeople were more effective internet users in using search engines for research purposes. IT literacy has ‘leaky benefits’, it creates a virtuous circle of productivity, affecting all aspects of a users IT engagement.

Why not look at how your salespeople are (not) using IT, there could be a significant performance benefit to be gained in developing their IT literacy.

* Assuming Microsoft Office as the Application Platform – All trademarks acknowledged.

** The one exception to this correlation was where somebody had full access to somebody who ‘did’ IT for them. They were as productive as the IT literate (not more productive) but were carrying the cost of this assistant’s help.

The ‘I’ In Team

We often hear that “There’s no ‘I’ in team”, a nice idea, but the reality is that teams are made up of individuals and individuals need to feel a sense of personal achievement as well as a sense of belonging. Team success is sometimes made up of a series of individual successes.

Britain’s most successful sporting team at the moment is a collection of individuals who compete for themselves, in small teams and for the wider team. British Cycling cleaned up at the recent World Track Championships, winning nine gold medals, three times as many as their nearest rival.

This wasn’t done without huge individual effort and determination, yet nor was it possible without a huge team effort. British Cycling have focused their efforts on pulling together a team of outstanding individuals, not just the ones in Lycra. They have sought out technical leaders to redesign the bikes, nutritionists and personal trainers and even a psychologist who has his days at Rampton as a highlight on his CV. Each of these people makes a contribution which is publicly applauded by the people on the podium.

Real team development isn’t about crushing individual ambition and success for the sake of the team, but about balancing that talent against the needs of the whole. If you’d like to talk about how you can balance your team dynamics contact us.

What We’re Reading: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is so well known that the names of the characters are regularly used as verbal shorthand for a certain personality style. The novella doesn’t take long to read and the writing style keeps the reader gripped, even though the mystery is somewhat lost as most readers know the outcome.

Unfortunately too many people who read the book identify the characters easily in their workplace – it’s their manager in action.

Managers are under pressure to perform and just as much pressure to be helpful and supportive of their teams and colleagues. The two demands often cause conflict, and rather than balancing the two in a consistent and predictable management style, managers find themselves lurching between their Jekyll and Hyde styles with little in between.

Working with managers to help them take a more leadership based stance, encouraging ownership and earning time for strategic thinking, Predaptive has helped organisations to build both consistency and excellence in the management of their businesses, to talk about how we can help you to tame Mr Hyde contact us.

Recession Proofing Yourself

With concern about the ‘credit crunch’, the ‘housing market slump’ and the ‘looming recession’, people find themselves considering how well positioned they are to weather a potential storm.

This can cause people to behave strangely, which may not always be beneficial to the organisation or themselves.

The people who tend to not only survive tough economic times, but thrive on them, are those that feel confident and secure in their employability, if not their current employment. One of the key problems for organisations when a downturn is predicted can be that employees become so concerned with holding on to their current positions that they stop making positive contributions and taking calculated risks.

If you’re in a job and you plan to stay there for at least the next year you may feel that you needn’t worry about your CV at the moment, but if your CV is looking tired and out of date, the odds are that your career might be starting to stagnate too, along with your ambition.

People who view themselves and their skills as an asset to be leveraged throughout their career keep their CV’s up to date and regularly look to add new features and benefits to them. This gives them a strong sense of employability, knowing that they have lots to offer an employer, whether that’s the organisation they’re currently working for, a new organisation, or themselves if they want to strike out alone.

Management Competence

Background

Over the past decade, there have been widespread changes in the political, social, economic and psychological forces affecting organisations and their people.

These changes have significantly affected both the nature of management and the strengths and skills needed from an effective manager in the present and in future.

Current research suggests that the following nine areas are likely to continue to become increasingly important in managerial behaviour in the 21st Century:

Ambiguity and Change Agent
Managers who are able to respond positively when confronted with the need to change; demonstrating adaptability and flexibility and responding quickly to changes in processes, systems and structures. Modern managers are people who implement and support new initiatives in the face of uncertainty.

Example behaviours:

• Making suggestions to change processes that are not working well
• Varying approach or style to match each situation
• Adapting priorities and workload to take on board changing circumstances
• Identifying and communicating the benefits of change and the rationale behind it to the team
• Involving the team in the planning and implementation of change
• Challenging individuals who express negative approaches to change

Coaching
Managers who devote time and commitment to individual and team learning, identifying strengths and areas for development. Effective managers recognise the importance of feedback and are able to both provide constructive feedback and respond to feedback received.

Example behaviours:

• Expressing positive expectations of others
• Accepting and acting upon feedback
• Maintaining an up to date personal development plan
• Giving appropriate, constructive feedback to others when asked
• Setting clear, consistent expectations and goals
• Assisting individuals in identifying their development needs, encouraging individuals to take on new challenges and responsibility
• Delegating tasks, authority and responsibility appropriately
• Providing motivational praise and recognition for desired behaviours

Thinking
Managers who make conceptual connections and challenge assumptions. Thinking managers are able to apply learning to both new and unrelated situations and understand the variables impacting ideas.

Example behaviours:

• Identifying simple connections in apparently unrelated information or situations
• Acting upon trends in information
• Separating the facts from conjecture in any situation
• Maintaining an overview of complex situations rather than focusing purely on detail
• Using both practical and theoretic models when formulating ideas and solutions
• Presenting ideas that stand up to informed challenge

Creative Innovation
Managers who are able to originate new or radical alternatives to traditional work processes. They question existing practices and support a culture of creativity and innovation.

Example behaviours:

• Making improvement in own work area by adopting new approaches
• Supporting the implementation of new ideas and ways of working
• Gathering ideas from different sources that may be utilised in own work area
• Encouraging colleagues to try new ways of working
• Creating an environment of constant challenge to the status quo
• Taking calculated risks in implementing untried solutions

Decision Making
Problems are becoming increasingly complex and numerous. It is therefore becoming an even more crucial management skill to be able to anticipate problems and to solve them quickly and effectively by taking an unbiased, rational approach to decision making.

Example behaviours:

• Reflecting on the consequences of straightforward options before making a decision
• Taking decisions within appropriate timeframes
• Escalating decision making to manager when appropriate
• Articulating the assumptions behind decisions
• Making decisions that have an impact outside own area of responsibility, having given due consideration to the likely consequences
• Appling a range of decision making techniques
• Involving colleagues appropriately

Planning
Effective managers are able to identify and prioritise required processes and actions to achieve agreed objectives; taking into account quality, timescales, process reviews and contingencies; in other words maximising the use of resources.

Example behaviours:

• Planning own time effectively
• Planning for predictable variations in work flow
• Utilising resources cost effectively
• Identifying priorities appropriately and focuses activities accordingly
• Setting milestones, reviewing progress and taking appropriate corrective action
• Adapting plans when faced with changed priorities or resources

Performance Focused
Effective managers clarify performance expectations through agreed standards, objectives goals and accountability. Performance is clearly measured and constructive feedback given. If performance falls below expectations, action is taken.

Example behaviours:

• Being clear on own goals and performance indicators
• Acting upon feedback to improve personal performance
• Accepting responsibility for own successes and failures
• Agreeing specific and measurable goals, objectives and performance standards
• Explaining how individuals’ objectives link to the organisational strategy
• Discriminating between poor and acceptable, good and great performance and behaviour
• Holding regular, documented performance reviews

Influencing
Effective managers are aware of, and able to use personal impact to establish credibility and sustain the respect and support of others. They are able to persuade others to accept or agree to a point of view after initial resistance.

Example behaviours:

• Presenting ideas in a constructive way
• Listening to other’s views and responds appropriately
• Asking questions to understand objections and offer appropriate counter proposals
• Presenting the benefits rather than solely the features of a proposal
• Proposing and seeking win/win solutions
• Anticipating likely resistance and preparing appropriate responses

Leadership
Managers who develop their role more broadly than simply functional delivery; they see their main purpose as to change and transform wherever required.

Example behaviours:

• Demonstrating a point of view about relevant issues and sharing it, leading discussions appropriately
• Behaving proactively and taking responsibility when necessary
• Speaking of their role in terms of what they can contribute rather than as just the position they occupy
• Pushing the boundaries of their role without sacrificing effectiveness
• Actively extending their circle of influence beyond their circle of control
• Demonstrating effective emotional control when under excessive pressure or stress
• Demonstrating respect for the personal values of others but challenging any behaviour that is reflective of values that contradict the organisation’s values or company policy

The Fundamentals of Management open programme addresses the range of competencies required by a 21st century manager at the advanced level. These give the manager a clear view of the responsibilities and requirements of a management role as well as a sound understanding of how behaviour sets the tone and pace for their team.

For more information or to book, please contact us.

Strategic Development… For Sales Leaders Who Want To Up The Pace

The purpose of the organisation defines many aspects of its performance. People become energised and motivated not simply by a set of financial targets but for reasons that connect with their own aspirations and needs. These reasons come from an understanding of the organisation's purpose.

Purpose equals vision. Vision is the motive force that drives organisations forward. The vision can be used to inform strategy. Strategy is not vision. Strategy is the means by which the vision is brought closer (vision is not usually achievable, but aspirational).

Vision with strategy combines the aspirational with practical. The 'why' with the 'how'.

Strategic Thinking Comes Before Strategic Planning

One of the biggest impediments to strategic planning is the lack of Strategic Thinking. Strategy is not a reductive process to fill out a set of models or methods. A Strategic Planning Framework is a very useful aid but without any Strategic Thinking the outputs will not be anything to do with strategy.

One way of seeing this problem is when management confuse strategy with making things work better. Strategy is not 'improving quality by 10% or just increasing market share by x%'. Strategy is about defining tomorrow, then defining today, and finally making a plan to connect the two.

As a sales director or sales manager who is responsible for the future of their sales organisations, our High Performance Sales Management course will encourage you to differentiate between an operational and strategic sales mind set. The course will be of particular benefit to sales professionals who are familiar with the ‘classic fundamentals’ of sales management and are looking to build on that learning in a modern context.

For more information or to book, please contact us.

S3: Structured Solution Selling™

The cost of selling activities has increased significantly, and is likely to continue doing so. From purely a financial point of view, it makes good sense to invest in sales activity to achieve not just one sale with a customer, but further sales also and ideally on an ongoing basis.

The purchasing company, meanwhile, is faced with the challenge of deciding which company to select from what, at times, can be a bewildering range of potential suppliers!

For the Professional Salesperson, this offers an opportunity: by understanding the challenges facing the customer, sometimes perhaps to an even greater extent than the customer themselves, they can achieve the position of trusted supplier and can almost be considered as a consultant to the business. Good news for the purchasing company, since they will have the opportunity to work with a supplier who understands well how they can best help. And good news for the selling company too, since such a relationship confers competitive advantage - which means more sales!

Structured Training has developed a process based on what we know works!
It has several benefits to the salesperson:

Consistency
Work to a guaranteed process while maintaining an individual style. Be “you” but have the knowledge and confidence that you are working in a structured and thorough manner.

Predictability
Improve forecasting and identify any potential problems. Because you are working to a consistent standard of professionalism, variation is reduced. Thus any problems in closing business can be more easily predicted or identified and remedial action taken.

Measurability
Evaluate your performance against a standard and seek help with any challenges. If the desired results are not being achieved, the specific area for improvement can be identified and support given.

Accountability
Justify your activities and outcomes to a line manager if challenged. The process enables you to provide a rationale for what you are doing, why you are doing it, what result you can expect and when.

It is a process which enables truly consultative selling…and that’s why it’s referred to as Structured Solution Selling™ or S3™.

Selling…The Essentials For Success is designed for all newly appointed sales staff in their first six months or sales people, with no formal sales training and is structured around our S3™ process. This enables the salesperson to have a competitive advantage and add value to the customers business and create solutions that make a real difference.

For more information or to book, please contact us.

The Current Market Conditions – Opportunity Or Problem?

Does the current economic turbulence create problems or opportunities? Both depend on your circumstances and your point of view. How can you affect both to your advantage?

Circumstance Management
The key here is to have flexibility and options, being able to act on an opportunity when you see one. That means businesses that have as much available cash and the least amount of debt as possible are positioned very well. Also, review your current investment plans, they were right for a market at a particular time, are they still right for this or future markets? Change them accordingly.

Developing A Point Of View
Businesses that haven’t thought about ‘what ifs’ and new approaches to the market, struggle to apply good judgement when an opportunity arises. This means they often get is completely wrong when quick decisions are required. Businesses that are constantly thinking about what they could do and what might happen are much more likely to spot an opening and exploit it effectively. This thinking about the market creates what we call a point of view, a particular perspective that takes a stance on what the change drivers and customer pain points are, and how developing new value propositions could answer those (as yet) unarticulated needs.

Taken together, Circumstance Management and Developing A Point Of View are the two criteria that distinguish management teams that seize opportunities rather than become victims of a difficult market-place. And these ways of thinking should be embedded in your management practice as a normal mode of behaving, rather than just dusted off when a recession looms.

If you would like to learn more about how SalesPathways works with organisations to develop this kind of thinking please call us on 01789 734400.

Are You In The Zone?

We are all familiar with being in our Comfort Zone, but what about the other performance/behaviour zones that can help you focus on being more effective and understand why you feel like you do when performing at certain levels.

Working from the bottom up:

• If you are below the black line you are in the boredom zone, having too little to think about is just as big an issue as having to much. The V signifies Value. Here you are creating less value than you are capable of.
• In your comfort zone you are treading water.
• In the stretch zone you are creating additional value; working and behaving in ways that require new thinking and possibly new skills.
• The highest is the panic zone where you feel you can’t cope; you are at the limits of what you are capable of.

The key is not to stay in the stretch or panic zones too long, but to ‘visit’ them for short periods of time where you test yourself. The wave form shows this happening over time. As you can see your capacity for sustaining working at higher levels increases, the straight red lie showing how your natural resting point increases.

By focusing on your capacity for learning in this way you can increase your potential, making it both easier to cope with increasing work demands and making yourself more employable.

A Look Into The Current Workplace – How First Impressions Still Count For Older Workers

Last month we looked at how younger people can get it right or wrong in the workplace through their appearance and (non) verbal dexterity. This month we swing the tractor beam onto the older worker. I guess we should define our terms first. We’re classifying the older worker as anybody over the age of 50, older only in the literal sense of having had more birthdays than people in their 20s. And that’s the point, the cliché holds true as all good ones do, that age is a state of mind, not a classification index of qualities or abilities. The problem is older people are there own worst enemy.

With hair the die is usually cast, with people living with hair decisions made years previously. Women usually do dye their hair these days which is not even noticed, and those that don’t are seen as OK too. Men have to be more careful with their hair strategy. Comb-overs are seen as a joke, but a hard core still persist and dyeing is seen as dodgy at best. Usually the less hair, the shorter the better and wigs shouldn’t even be mentioned.

Clothes choices should fit the purpose, older people can get away with more idiosyncratic styles in the name of individuality, but the reality is often the opposite, with the majority going for more a regulation ‘conservative’ look.

Women should avoid anything that shows off ‘beach flesh’; men avoiding anything that draws attention to any bulges, weight related or otherwise.

Women should not increase the amount of make-up in proportion to their years and men should never wear a bow tie unless involved in end of the pier shows, neck ties always reaching the top of the trousers otherwise they look like Laurel or Hardy

Older people have the advantage over younger people through the ability of being able to speak properly; they mustn’t waste this asset though by drawing attention to their age by constantly referring to it, or using the dreadful phrase ‘I’m having a senior moment’. Only use ‘in my day’ examples in a self deprecating way, never in a ‘good old days’ way.

Talk shouldn’t be about how much experience they have, but about how they can make a positive, relevant contribution today. Experience is only valuable if it can be effectively applied.

In summary, older people who dress and behave as themselves and don’t wear the label of being ‘older’ have got it right, making their workplace credibility higher in the process.

Building Teams With Spirit

Last weekend presented plenty of opportunities to study team dynamics with both positive and negative outcomes. The FA Cup quarter finals provided a string of shock results with underdogs claiming wins in three out of the four games.

Sports teams do allow us to see real team dynamics in action in a concentrated and public format which isn’t so easy to observe in the workplace. For a football team to succeed each player must be individually talented and both Manchester United and Chelsea fielded some of the most talented players in the world, with some individual players earning more than the whole opposing team. Yet there’s more to team success than individual talent.

Caring about the outcome has a major impact on the individual inputs from each team member, and whilst “There’s no ‘I’ in team”, you can’t spell team without “M E”. Each team member needs to be very clear about their role and take personal ownership for their performance, whilst trusting their colleagues to do the same. The manager needs to provide clear direction, along with a goal that all team members share. Having a captain on the field that can reinforce that goal and keep the whole team focussed on it increases the chance of success.

Predaptive has worked with organisations across functions, industries and national borders to create highly effective, cohesive, performing teams that make a real difference. To talk about how your organisation can develop its team effectiveness contact us.

What We’re Reading – Aesop’s Fables

Business books come and go with favourites such as Drucker, Peters and Blanchard all having had a big following only to be replaced by some new author with a new approach for a modern age.

With attention spans shortening books like Fish! and Who Moved My Cheese became popular as their simple points could be quickly translated into posters and soft toys to publicise their message in office environments.

These books owe more than a little to the early business writing of Aesop. Hardly a media friendly character in life, Aesop’s Fables were ‘published’ 250 years after his execution for sacrilege. There’s plenty of good learning material in there still, and though people may know quite a few of the fables by heart, some of the less popular ones ring true for managers today.

Here’s one for over-promoted, bullying managers:

Standing securely on a high rock, a kid (that’s a young goat, not a child!) noticed a wolf passing below and began to taunt him and shower him with abuse. The wolf merely stopped to reply, “Coward! Don’t think that you can annoy me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not you who’s taunting me, but the place on which you’re standing”

Making Learning Work

Organisations spend a lot of money on learning and development, most of it going on training and the purchase learning resources. Often the investment is a good one in that well designed, practical and effective learning interventions are chosen. However at Predaptive we’re increasingly talking to organisations that find themselves with more learning resources than they know what to do with, and a workforce that’s struggling to find the learning resources they need.

Great programmes languish in binders, e-learning packages remain un-accessed, internal experts carry vital insights around in their heads, best practice templates are used only in small pockets of the business.

Managers, L&D Specialists and individual learners each have differing perspectives on the learning inputs needed, or whether any are needed at all. This can lead to learning initiatives simply not happening, or good programmes quickly atrophying as learning is not reinforced in the workplace.

Through our work on Learning Academies Predaptive have helped organisations to make the most of tensions within the business to provide effective learning, which is quickly absorbed and applied throughout the business.

Predaptive build on existing learning, training and best practice collateral, applying our principles of Technology Enabling People Engagement™ to ensure the right learning is it available to people just-in-time, in the way they want to access it increasing effectiveness and employee satisfaction.

To find out how Predaptive can help your organisation to make learning work for you contact us.