by Brian Clark | coaching, e-learning, Performance, performance management, strategy
In our business we have the pleasure of working with some very successful organisations and each has a culture that oozes high performance when you walk in their offices. You can see clues in the way people interact; looking at each other in the eyes, greeting people with their names, and well organised work spaces with personal touches. I am sure there are many factors that contribute to a performance culture but here are three factors that have been mentioned most often in my conversations.
1. Follow up and follow through. Sounds simple enough but one of the biggest killers of a performance culture is lack of follow up with other people. When leaders do not follow up it show a lack of care. As a leader people know you are busy but that does not forgive your lack of follow up. The lack of follow through is just as damaging. When a leader commits to something and it gets dropped or fades away the damage is serious. You lose trust when you do not follow through. Both lack of follow up and follow through are like a disease, when leaders exhibit these behaviours it creeps into an entire culture. Performance appraisals are one critical area that must never compromised by lack of follow up and follow through.
2. Person to person engagement. Managers need to meet with their teams as individuals and groups regularly. It is priority one and it needs to be scheduled and committed to. If a leader consistently cancels these meetings it sends the signal, ‘you are not important.’ A performance culture has a meeting rhythm and this flows to information sharing, communication, collaboration and often innovation. Some managers and leaders do not really know how to run effective meetings and these people need some coaching. In one client the change identified as being the biggest contributor to their culture is daily team meetings with a set agenda.
3. Learning is readily available and encouraged. Learning can be in many forms and it need not be expensive. For example, one client has brown bag learning sessions that are facilitated by fellow employees. Online learning is great and you can use your own content as well as find online courseware that can be delivered from your own LMS or via an online portal. Blended learning in a manager to employee coaching framework is one program that one of our clients has used to increase productivity and align activity with strategy more effectively. This program involves short online learning content, forms for applying learning and fortnightly coaching sessions with a direct or other manager.
These 3 factors were the top three mentioned in discussions with some of our clients. I am interested in learning about others that have been applied to create and sustain a performance culture.
by Brian Clark | crm, customer relationship management, DOTS LMS, internet marketing, Marketing, Performance, social marketing, social media, strategy
Based on a quick survey including some of our clients and other RTOs, the biggest issues facing these businesses are:
- Attracting and retaining high value clients.
- Managing AVETMISS and other compliance requirements.
- Managing staff and contractors.
These businesses use enormous resources to support administrative functions to manage and execute key business processes. Many are also facing enormous competitive pressures due to commoditisation of their products and services. Commoditisation is making it harder for many RTOs to differentiate themselves to prospective clients and increase their sales revenue.
Here is a short list of some solutions that we have implemented for clients and were found to be effective.
- Get very clear on your target market[s] and your ideal client profiles.
- Adjust your ‘messaging’ and communications to fit your market and ideal clients. One size does not fit all.
- Get some help with your internet marketing. Unless you have some spare time or a resource available to do this critical work. Internet marketing includes your website, social media, search engine and content marketing.
- Automate as many processes as possible. Our clients use DOTS LMS as a multi-faceted business management tool for compliance, client and staff management. You may already have the tools to do this effectively but have not leveraged them effectively.
- Use technology to personalise the client and learner experience. Our clients have the option of creating unique learning management environments for their corporate and government clients. You may not have the resources for a comprehensive LMS but you can still set up online resources for your clients that cost little or nothing depending upon your objectives.
- Start having regular meetings with staff and contractors on a team and individual level. Create an agenda and use these meetings to make sure you are touch with every element of your business. Regular one on one meetings with staff that review goals, performance and roadblock issues are much easier than one big performance appraisal every 6 – 12 months.
- Use technology to support your sales process from prospect to client stages. If you have a system use it well and if you do not have a system look for one that is easy to use and includes reports. This type of software does not need to be super expensive.
If you have any questions about these points or you are interested in exploring some ways to make your RTO more successful in 2014, you are welcome to get in touch using the contact details on this website.
by Brian Clark | capability, Innovation, Knowledge Management, learning and development, performance management, social media, strategy
In the spirit of the New Year and all the hoped for changes we have planned in our personal and working lives I thought about how some of our clients might be thinking of transforming their professional endeavours to a whole new level.
If 2013 went by quickly for you then there is little chance 2014 will be any different. We are living and working in environments that are changing so quickly that often we may not recognise change until it has already occurred. Organisations are facing challenges dealing with change both within their workforce and outside in the macro environment in which they compete.
I had a discussion with a CEO of a state based Association. He was lamenting the fall-off in memberships and the struggles they are having finding new ones. He indicated they are certainly not alone in facing these challenges. When you begin to analyse the issue you can see some of the reasons they are facing this predicament.
- The demographics of their membership are changing fast. The older members are retiring and the younger ones have not ‘grown up’ with a concept of what associations are or what they do. Similarly in organisations there may not be the loyalty or sense of deep commitment to an organisation ‘out of the box’ with younger workers.
- The associations are competing against so many other choices for spending time. It is harder and harder to get a person to come to a face to face sit down meeting after a hard day of work. Do workers want to take out a half or a full day to sit in a room for training? If the training is aligned with a personal interest or identified real benefit yes, if it is intangible or unidentified then no.
- People still want learning and development but they want it delivered more flexibly and not necessarily involving travel away from home. Most associations offer learning and development as a core service to their members but when was the last time they asked the members what they wanted? What they are interested in? Are there some courses of interest that have nothing to do with the association but are still of interest? The same goes in any organisation. The courses that fit in the budget are those that are typically aligned with a strategy or initiative or compliance requirement. Few companies consider other dimensions of their employees’ lives when considering interesting content to offer.
There are a few of these issues that could have at least some part of a resolution using technology.
What does this have to do with Learning and Development? Everything. The same challenges confronting my friend in his association faces business leaders across the board. How do you engage effectively with other people in a process of learning, development, collaboration and performance improvement? I believe this challenge is one that the Learning and Development Professional is ideally suited to address with the right resources.
Whether it is an association seeking members or an organisation seeking to attract and retain great people, these are some ideas I have about transforming L & D from a department to a catalyst for change.
It is one thing to have an LMS, it is altogether another to use the LMS platform to enable personal learning journeys. You need not cease the compliance management but you can add so much more to enable people to chart their own course to development. I believe feedback using surveys and personal assessment tools enable greater insight into how people are working together and making decisions.
Collaboration and knowledge sharing platforms can be so powerful to communication vision, ideas and best practices. Some of the systems I have seen are obviously imbued with fear as they have less than optimum levels of participation and even less honesty. There is plenty of ‘vanilla communication’ but nothing approaching open and frank sharing of ideas and concerns regardless of title and status.
The catalyst for change can include inviting other persons to contribute and participate from outside your organisation. The best examples I have seen of this include a focused approach that invites persons who have expertise or experience in topics of interest. Of course if your collaboration/communication system is healthy you can measure interest in certain topics.
There are business people, entrepreneurs, academics, physical and mental health professionals, and so many others that are out there right now contributing in the ‘social media universe.’ You can provide some amazing learning and networking opportunities for your people by inviting thought leaders into your organisation. I have seen this work with short webinars, PowerPoint presentations converted to e-learning content, informal and formal coaching and engaging via the normal platforms such as Google + and LinkedIn.
These are just some ideas I felt I had to write down after conversing with my friend. I meet so many learning and development professionals who demonstrate thought leadership, proactivity and innovation all the time. It is the wise CEO and executive team who encourage and promote learning as both a means of attaining competitive advantage and encouraging people to become the best they can be.
by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, Performance, performance management, strategy
As more and more organisations adopt technology solutions to support performance management there are also an increasing range of options available in how to structure your performance management processes.
There is one area that I find to be incredibly useful in aligning learning and development to performance. I would go further and say that this alignment will extend to the strategic level if you design it to do so. The majority of performance management processes I come across are still using Key Result Areas and Key Performance Indicators as the primary means of measuring a person’s performance. I also find a splash of behavioural indicators that are usually linked to a mission, vision and values document somewhere.
If you are not including competencies (skills) as a factor in measuring performance you are missing a vital piece to sustaining a learning organisation and one that has a broader scope in developing its people as opposed to simply measuring performance. It is input vs. output.
The measurement of a person’s development in your organisation is a measure of a valuable input. The measurement of key performance indicators is a measure of an output. You cannot ignore either one. In an era when we hear approximately 70% of workers in the United States Gallupare not engaged in their work, we may like to find ways to develop frameworks to encourage greater engagement and the benefits that accrue from it.
Start at the beginning. Each job title in your organisation has a purpose and to meet or exceed that purpose the person must have the competencies to undertake the work. Therefore we start at building competency frameworks at the Job Title level. People who join the organisation to assume a job title may not necessarily have all the needed competencies at the start. Having the framework in place provides a path to achieving them.
In the performance area, the competencies achieved that are directly part of the Job Title framework are usually considered essential. If there are gaps in achieving these essential competencies then these need to be picked up and addressed in a performance appraisal. With an LMS or talent solution this is made much easier with data capture and automated notifications.
If you take this further and permit people to explore other learning and development opportunities then you are creating the scenario whereby a person makes themselves more valuable to your organisation and this should be linked to performance appraisals. I like to include a large section of the Performance Appraisal that is capturing the learning undertaken by the individual [competencies achieved] and weight these results at least on par with other measures. You can increase or decrease weightings as needed to encourage learning outcomes.
The Performance Appraisal now has a forward looking perspective. We are acknowledging learning and development and hopefully gaining some insight from the person on how they applied their learning in their work. A manager should also be seeking feedback on learning activities and resources during the appraisal and ensure this information is captured. A new Development Plan can now be discussed and in most cases I encourage the employee to create their development plan first and then have it reviewed by their manager as necessary. This ensures individual stewardship and responsibility for their career development.
If you would like to see how this can be set and structured in the DOTS LMS you are welcome to make contact with me [Brian Clark] by calling our Brisbane office or submitting a form on this website.
by Brian Clark | Business Process, learning management systems, LMS, performance management, strategy
First of all I guess you might wonder why I used the term ‘high performance’ in the headline. What does that mean? I see a few characteristics that distinguish a high performance sales team from others and capability frameworks contribute to the development and sustenance of high performance in any team.
One attribute of high performance is measurement. Each sales person should be measuring themselves against key performance targets and the team is measured collectively. These measurements flow up to management and are linked to the business strategy. High performance sales people strive to nail targets and prefer this to floating in an undefined operating environment.
Collaboration is sometimes a neglected capability in the highly competitive sales profession. However one thing I took away from attending Dreamforce ’12 last year was this is no longer negotiable. Collaboration is imperative both within the business as well as outward to prospects and clients. The range of technology platforms and collaboration tools is staggering. The sales professional must not only understand how to use the technology, she must also be able to leverage its power in a competitive sales cycle.
Collaboration also extends to the capture and sharing of best practices in the sales team. Knowledge capture and sharing somewhat mitigates risks of ‘brain drain’ when high performance sales people move on. This knowledge also facilitates more rapid on-boarding of new hires.
Clear strategy is based on a cascade of goals and objectives from the c-suite to the sales professional. The sale professional must have the capability to translate the business strategy to their operating strategy. The operating strategy is often defined at sales team level but not always in the case of persons managing large territories or working with a small number of clients in high value enterprise sales. The capability framework must include translating strategy to tactics and these tactics incorporated in an operational plan.
Tactical execution is one that capability that is easily identified in our behavioural assessment tools. The best strategy and tactics are worthless without execution and sadly this is one capability that is rare in the world of sales professionals. There are plenty of people out there who work ‘ad-hoc’ and seem to make some sales but these people are not high performance and they tend to be more difficult to manage and measure.
The capabilities around information management usually become obvious when we have a look at a business’s CRM. Information is often old, inaccurate or insufficient. The power that can be leveraged from a well -managed CRM is too great to compromise. The capabilities that support this include personal management and work flow practices.
Each of these attributes and possibly others must be included in the capability framework. The capability framework will greatly enhance recruitment and on-boarding of new sales team members. I use a tool to provides a behavioural analysis against each capability. When a shortlist is determined, each person is assessed against the defined capability framework. This has reciprocal benefits for the candidates and the company. The candidate is clear on the expectations of the position and is provided a scientific assessment of their behavioural match to the framework. The company reduces the risk of bad hires and the huge cost and cultural impacts these have.
When it comes to developing a capability framework it is a huge advantage to have a technology solution to support it. A learning management system is the most compelling platform but others include some performance management systems and some HRIS software. Regardless of what you use to create the capability framework, you need to consider the following;
- Link the framework to job titles.
- Ensure there are learning and development opportunities to support and enhance the capabilities.
- Development plans should have at least some focus on the capability framework if not be totally focused on it.
- The performance management process must be integrated with the capability framework.
Get in touch if you would like to explore developing a capability framework for your sales team or any other part of your organisation.
