by Brian Clark | culture
It is possible to transform the paradigm that all meetings are wasting valuable time and contribute little to the organisation and its people You can reinvent your meetings to boost creativity and engagement. It just takes a bit of innovation.
When people think of meeting they typically think of people around a table engaging in conversation around an agenda. According to a report by Atlassian, a person may spend up to 31 hours in unproductive meetings per month. Adding to this scenario, 91% of people daydreamed and 73% did other work during meetings.
Meetings can boost creativity.
There is plenty of other evidence available that points to meetings having negative impacts on productivity in the workplace. However, there are some ways you can innovate to make your meetings more engaging and constructive for those attending.
An article by Sara Coene on InnovationManagement.se, identifies some new meeting formats that will help boost creativity and engagement in meetings. I recommend you check out the article and I have summarised the ideas here.
Inspiration Tours are visits to inspiring companies, organisations or other venues. Sara points out examples in Silicon Valley, Antwerp and Brussels. There are plenty of great organisations that will welcome an opportunity to host a tour and presentation that showcases their talents.
Start-up Events are excellent to get people discussing ideas and capturing insights into new ways of innovating. There are start- up incubators in most cities and these events are usually publicised.
Pecha Kucha means ‘small talk’ in Japanese. These structured events allow participants to present 20 pictures in a slide deck in 6 minutes and 40 seconds; each picture shown for 20 seconds. The article points to a 80% success rate for these presentations with thorough presenter preparation the most probably success factor.
Notes Day engages people in small groups starting first with their own team and move to other departments. The focus is on the most relevant issues facing the organisation as put forward by the participants.
World Café is often used in workshops and training events. However, the World Café format is an effective way to achieve high levels of dialogue and collaboration. Participants discuss a topic around a table hosted by person who remains at the table while others circulate to other tables. This format is excellent for ensuring ideas are captured.
There are other meeting formats described in the article and I encourage you to have a look. You can innovate to make your meeting more effective, fun and engaging.
by Brian Clark | change, culture, development, Employee Engagement, Performance
According to a recent study published by SHRM, 9 out of 10 line managers report that they do not like preparing for and delivering the annual performance review. 9 out 10 HR Managers report that they cannot rely on the data in the annual performance reviews. And most employees will agree that they would rather go to the dentist than go through a performance review!
What’s the point? Many people complain they see no outcomes from performance reviews. If there are no next actions then why are they conducted in the first place?
Clearly the system is broken!
It does not have to be this way. Give your managers the learning they need to deliver effective performance reviews that will build a performance culture and improve employee engagement. Performance Reviews can be a positive experience for both managers and their people.
Introducing the Performance Management and Development Toolkit for Managers. This set of e-learning courseware will solve some of the most common performance management, performance review and development headaches. Turn the one time per year discussions into on-going discussions. Create valuable annual reviews driving development resulting in more motivated employees.
Get in touch and we can let you have a look at this suite of e-learning modules.
by Brian Clark | culture, leadership
Leading remote employees is now a fact of life. Over 80% of teams and 90% of projects have at least one member not physically located with the rest of the group. In addition, a recent study from GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com showed that the number of employees who telecommute more than one day per week increased over 79% from 2005 to 2014.
While the principles of effective leadership and team management haven’t changed, maintaining peak performance and keeping employees engaged when separated by miles, time zones and culture is a tall task for any manager or organization.
Let’s be honest—leadership of others is already hard enough when they are down the hall or on the shop floor. When you add in the challenges of them being remote, it gets harder—and more stressful.
- How do we communicate successfully?
- How can we make meetings (that are already painful in person), work using technology?
- How do we build the relationships and trust with the team—and help them do that between each other?
- How do we present ideas, change and more at a distance?
- How do we coach and give feedback successfully?
- How do we deal with the unknowns? After all, we can’t see what they are doing, how they are doing it and if they are ever working?
If have ever struggled with even one of these questions, you know what we mean. Leadership is hard…doing it remotely is even harder. We have partnered with the Remote Leadership team to create bite sized e-learning courses that build the skills needed to successfully lead and manage a virtual team. With 18 courses, covering six topic areas, remote leaders now have the tools they need to be successful leaders, no matter where their employees work in the world.
To get a copy of our latest e-learning catalogue email us.
by Brian Clark | capability, culture, Employee Engagement, engagement, learning and development
When you were taught how to swim did you experience the shock and awe of being forced to enter the water while consumed in fear? Or were you first coached on the pool deck and acclimated psychologically and physically for the inevitable entry into the unknown environment of a large body of water?
If you have been in the workforce for some years, chances are you have experienced the shock and awe and/or the coaching method of training and development. If you have been around as long as I have you have probably experienced both to differing degrees.
Training and development is not an optional tactic – it is a critical component to your engagement strategy. It demands its own structured strategy and measurements to ensure it is delivering results for your organization. The training and development starts on day one [or before] with an effective on-boarding program and continues thereafter in a roadmap of personal and professional development that enhances a person’s ability to contribute to the organization and grow as a human being. Lofty? You bet.
Here are a few prime elements that I have found contribute to a solid and effective training and development tactical component to your engagement strategy.
- There is a linkage between a person’s position or job title to at least one of their learning pathways. This is often compliance based.
- The learning and development has a mix of modalities and these do not need to be concurrent – they can occur at different times and for different purposes. For example:
- Quality online self paced learning programs.
- Webinars, seminars and discussion groups.
- Targeted coaching programs with agendas and feedback.
- Mentoring programs – particularly effective for succession planning.
- The business owners and/or leaders are engaged and committed to the learning and development activities in the organization.
- There is alignment between the organisation’s strategy and the learning and development programs down to the individual level.
- Learning activities of employees are visible to managers.
- Learning and development is included in the performance management strategy.
- Learning for personal development and interests is included in the offerings for all employees. [I cannot count how many clients initiate an LMS implementation with compliance and corporate learning the only pathways].
I realize I could go on and on with this list. Give me a call or email me and we can share some more ideas. If you are seeking some ideas or help in developing or implementing an engagement strategy, I can help you out.
by Brian Clark | culture, Employee Engagement, Innovation, on-boarding, Performance, succession planning, Uncategorized
Welcome Aboard. Sink or Swim With On-boarding.
Imagine you are marooned on an island inhabited by a tribe of friendly people but culturally vastly different to what you are used to. All of the norms of this tribe are not threatening but far outside your patterns of behaviours. You can imagine how difficult and intimidating this would be. Why do you think it is any different when people join organisations as new hires?
The experience a new recruit has joining a new organisation has an enormous impact on how soon a person ramps up to effectiveness and how quickly they become engaged with the organisation and its culture. You can refer to the previous blog for a great definition of employee engagement.
If you have ever experienced a bad hire and either had to take action to remove a new hire or they leave quickly on their own accord, the impact goes way beyond the cost, pain and frustration of having to start a recruitment process again or settle for your second or third choice. The ripple impacts of a bad hire hit your culture widely and deeply. You can reduce or eliminate these risks by developing a solid on-boarding strategy.
Here are some ideas that I have seen work well in some of my clients’ organisations. Some of these ideas work better for some organisations and less so for others depending upon a number of factors such as industry, location, resources and culture. You should also consider the type of position you are inducting.
You may have a different style of on-boarding processes in your sales team as opposed to your finance team. These differences take into account the type of individual[s] you are inducting and the culture of the team they are joining.
Here are some ideas:
- Start the induction early using your LMS or other web based platform. Start the process before they arrive for day one by offering some online videos, courses and information they can review in their own time. Make this fun, interesting and collaborative.
- Include a social gathering either prior to day one or shortly after. You can make it a dinner with their new manager or a small gathering of their manager and team members.
- Make the induction a ‘high touch’ experience. I am always surprised how often a new hire is sitting alone in their office or workstation going through induction. This is sending all the wrong messages to the new hire. Include different people to interact, support and coach the new person. Do this even if you are inducting a number of people at once and use workshops to deliver induction training.
- Include some online learning and collaboration to deliver a ‘blended’ approach. You do not need to use costly learning content. You can use some home-grown videos, presentations and links to other resources.
- Add sense of achievement when a person completes their induction. You can have a small team social gathering over coffee, deliver a certificate of completion or another gift or token signifying the completion of the induction. Using a certificate or token item makes a great cultural ‘tradition’ and you can award them retro-actively if you want to.
- Include some interface between the inductee[s] and senior management. Choose the highest senior level leader you can but choose wisely. Do not make the mistake of choosing a senior leader who does not have the commitment to successful inductions and culture required or is not reliable to stick to appointments. This tactic can backfire if you choose a leader who considers this a nuisance and cancels appointments or lacks the EQ to conduct a meeting with new hires effectively.
- After the induction process is completed include a meeting schedule for a month or two after. I suggest a coffee or informal meeting of about 10 to 15 minutes duration and conducted by human resources or another manager; not their direct manager. The purpose of these meetings are to get some feedback, check for any barriers to work objectives and be alert for some innovation. It is surprising how a newly hired person will identify areas for business improvement and innovation. They are not yet fully immersed in the role and the ‘third party’ perspective is priceless.
A great induction process takes work and attention. The induction process needs to designed and documented. The process needs to be aligned with the organisation’s strategy and supported at all levels including specifically the CEO and other ‘c’ level executives.
If you are considering developing a new induction strategy or re-developing an existing one, we can have a discussion and share some ideas. You can keep your focus on your objectives and we can help you develop, implement and execute an effective on-boarding/induction strategy.
