Those Weird Customers

It's hard to care about your customers when you think they're a bunch of oddballs, or when their interests or needs--including your company's offerings--are foreign to you. As companies consider how to encourage employee engagement in the desires of buyers or clients, the strategy should focus on how you assembled that collection of workers in the first place. What if you hire individuals who not only are able to do their assigned tasks, whether IT program design or marketing, but who have something in common with those you serve?  Is this obvious solution to the problem of workers not caring about the needs of customers too hard to implement, or have you just not thought of it yet?

If you're a camping supplies company, does it make sense to hire sales managers whose idea of roughing it is shopping at Sears instead of Saks?  Or if you're an ice cream manufacturer, would you ever consider hiring a fabulous marketing guru who happens--no big deal--to have untreatable lactose intolerance? Before you answer with a ringing "of course not!" consider that these scenarios aren't unrealistic. I bet they happen more than you'd guess. The hiring philosophy appears to be centered on skills competency much more than on passion of the job candidate. The thought is a good sales manager is a good sales manager, no matter the personal interests. Or a talented Website designer will do splendid work even if she loathes everything you sell. Do you think she actually wants your phosphorescent fishing rods?

We talk a lot about how to engage employees in their job roles and the company, but what about how to engage them in your customers?  My hunch is if they don't come to your company with a genuine enthusiasm for what you sell or offer, you're out of luck. Can you manufacture enthusiasm for a hobby, specialty interest, or business need? 

Consider adding a new conversation to your hiring process about the offerings of your company. And, more than that, train managers to look for subtle cues the applicant isn't actually interested in what you do. Naturally if you ask them how much they love oversize turtle ceramics, and that's what you manufacture and sell, they'll profess great love for obese clay terrapins. Instead, teach them to listen for intelligent, or knowing questions, not just about their possible future job role, but about the merchandise or services you offer. If it's collectible turtles, for instance, it might be nice to hear a question or two about an upcoming edition, or why a particular offering was priced the way it was. Mostly, though, it comes down to intuition--whether the applicant seems simpatico with your customers.

Some of you do personality assessments prior to hiring. Now it's time for some clever interest assessments. Any ideas on how to do that?  If you don't, products your customers love will be lacking, and few will understand the benefits of multi-colored imitation turtle shells.

How does your company hire genuinely enthusiastic workers?  Does it matter if they really care? And can  you teach them to be interested if they truly aren't?

I Need an Answer Quick--Help!

By Mona Piontkowski, SeminarInformation.com

We certainly live in a fast-paced world. It used to be days, even weeks before most of the nation learned who won the Presidental election. Now, everytime one of the candidates attends a rally, gives a speech or makes a misstep we hear about it immediately. And we all know that the minute we walk out of a store with the latest techno-gadget somewhere someone is developing one that will do more...faster and easier. How can we possibly keep up with it all?

In an age where daily newspapers are often outdated before they even go to press it is difficult for professionals to stay on top of their professions, i.e. be state-of-the-art. Of course you could look for a book in the bookstore - but by the time it is available the information will, most likely, be outdated. The Internet could be a good starting point for help - but then the information on many of those Internet sites is only as good as the person who posted it.

One industry, the training industry, has always tried to address problems as they develop. Seminars are developed overnight and are usually presented within days or weeks of a new technology, new problem or new idea. Seminar providers have jumped in to help indivduals and organizations solve problems as they crop up.  As we are headed towards recession and the numbers of foreclosures increase Lorman Education has come up with a presentation,  "Foreclosure and Repossession" (http://www.seminarinformation.com/qqbpun/foreclosure-and-repossession) and Sterling Education Services has "Foreclosure Procedures" (http://www.seminarinformation.com/qqbufw/foreclosure-procedures). Both of these seminars are directed towards attorneys and real estate professionals who must face this ever growing problem.

It has always been difficult for those in the health care profession to stay on top of it all. Cross Country Education and Therapy Network Seminars present a whole slew of programs directed towards health care professionals. "Autism Spectrum Disorders: Guiding Families through Acceptance, Understanding and Progress" (http://www.seminarinformation.com/qqbugb/autism-spectrum-disorders-guiding-families-through) from Cross Country Education assists health care providers in dealing with the current increase in autism cases in the US. Lorman Education presents " Individuals With Asperger Syndrome Or High Functioning Autism: Understanding Their Community And Educational Strengths And Needs" directed towards special education teachers, classroom teachers and parents.

It has always easy to find a seminar that explains the latest version of  software as well as any new software that is developed. Seminars are probably the best way to stay on top of  the latest release from Microsoft and others without having to try to work it all out for yourself. Some seminar companies who present these type of seminar include Learning Tree International, CompuMaster, Hands of  Technology Transfer and Global Knowledge. You can find a quick one-day overview seminar or a week long in-depth coverage.

Seminars have always been there in the past - right after the horror of September 11th seminars were developed on disaster recovery for those firms who feared that they too might have to recover after a major impact on their business. Learning Tree International's "Disaster Recovery Planning: Ensuring Business Continuity" (http://www.seminarinformation.com/qqbtkc/disaster-recovery-planning-ensuring-business-continuity) teaches businesses how to continue to function after a disaster either man-made or natural effects their business. CareerTrack Seminars developed "Emergency Planning and Disaster Management for Your Organization" (http://www.seminarinformation.com/qqbsqx/emergency-planning-and-disaster-management-for-your) that also addresses dealing with earthquakes, floods, fires, and computer issues such as hackers.

You can always find seminars that address common problems like stress and time management or help you brush up on skills like finance and accounting but now, more than ever, seminar providers are addressing issues as quickly as they develop. So next time you need a quick answer look for a seminar provider on the Internet or check out the local community college and you may find help is not very far away.

Put It In Writing

Whether you choose to believe the irritating employee in marketing who insists on brining her cat Fluffy to the office for Bring Your Child To Work Day will change her ways this year is entirely up to you. She's done so for the last 10 years despite being told it would be better to bring one of her four children, but it's possible this might be the year Fluffy stays home. It's also possible the IT executive who has believed for the last four years the work day begins at 10 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m. also will see the light.

Intra-office faith can be a great comfort in the workplace, but for more skeptical workforce managers, putting expected behavior codes in writing the day a new employee arrives, and asking veteran workers also to sign onto to the list of requested behaviors, could offer more substantive help. The problem is the contract, a recent suggestion sent to us here at Training, may have no greater chance of working than verbal promises. I'm guessing it won't, for instance, have the traction of an apartment lease or signed affidavit. They know they won't lose thousands of dollars, or be sent to jail, as a penalty for not holding up their end of the deal--although you could try the next time one of them comes to a meeting popping his or her bubblegum and text messaging.

Better than signed contracts is the expressed disapproval of co-workers, or peer pressure, as it's called in the world of teenagers. Instead of drawing up complex agreements, consider the usefulness of training workers in the art of constructive complaining. Teach them to be picky, but in a strategic way that enhances the culture. In other words, teach them to have behavioral standards they, themselves, are irritated at seeing broken. For some of us, noting variances in proper behavior is a gift simply because we're easily annoyed. For the happier and more well-adjusted among us, it'll take a little work to note the deviances in office behavior that cut into productivity.

To begin, ask each department or work group to hold a brief yearly meeting on which behaviors are acceptable--the ideal time to get to and leave the office; distracting behaviors (such as gossiping about lackluster performance rather than confronting the offending co-worker directly; and managerial behaviors that hurt (such as assigning unrealistic deadlines at the last minute and not communicating effectively). Then ask that they keep tabs on one another, supporting each other in their improvements. Since they'll probably be too uncomfortable to point out in the open when a colleague has slipped up, develop a mechanism, such as a specialized Web page with a box for comments in which anonymity is protected, where the irritated can vent. Do a demonstration online to show weary workers it's truly anonymous, so they know it's a forum for honest behavioral feedback. Most don't relish getting a co-worker in trouble, so be sure to let them know no punishment of any kind--not even a formal, documented warning--will be dealt to those complained about. The incentive to change will be the discomfort of being told to their face by the boss that a colleague was annoyed by a particular behavior. Being told directly that you're cutting into another person's happiness is pretty awful, so I'm guessing it'll work. To avoid unnecessary humiliation, ask managers to tell offenders in private that they've been the source of a co-worker's irritation.

It's a little uptight to keep a running log of workplace annoyance but the alternative are workers who could finish their assignments hours earlier if the co-worker they were depending on arrived on time more often, or the cubicle neighbor, who enjoys singing Top 40 hits (the whole list, unfortunately) as he responds to e-mail, would be quiet.

Expressing discomfort with the behaviors of others is difficult, so don't be fooled by grinning silence. You thought they were just unproductive; turns out they're unproductive and quietly seething.

What does your office do to encourage direct communication about dysfunctional workplace behavior?  Do employees have a safe, constructive place to express themselves?

Productivity Police

Since being one person in the workforce isn't acceptable anymore--all of us expected to do the work of multiple people these days--productivity has been elevated to a virtue. The productive are talked about like their own subset of potential entrants to heaven in the afterlife.

The thing is, with so much pressure to be productive, it's much harder to get anything done. It's that old problem of having so many tasks to finish, who knows which to finish first?  Even if your managers are savvy enough to help employees prioritize their workload, the sheer volume of incoming calls, e-mail, and assignments that rack up when you have a dozen responsibilities, is a productivity killer. Employees wading through such massive material become like the 1970s boat cars your grandmother or great-grandmother drove rather than the compact, sleek, aerodynamic racers you'd hoped for.

Worse yet, as vaunted as productivity is, the workplace doesn't treat it that way. In case you haven't noticed--as it happens I've noticed for you many times over--manners in the office are on the decline. "We're in a multitasking culture anyway, so why try to limit noise and other distractions?" popular logic goes. So, in-office radios and televisions, and those who insist on singing, humming, whistling, snapping fingers, whoo-hooing, and smacking lips when eating in the cubicle next door, is on the rise. Do companies even bother with the office etiquette talk anymore during new hire orientation?  None of us work in a mausoleum (even if it feels that way during layoff season), but there's no real work-related reason for noise extraneous to talking and conversational laughter, is there?

When you think about productivity, it's time to get counterintuitive. Don't think about getting it all done; think about getting any of it done in a high-quality, timely manner. Think of the possibility none of it is getting delivered in the shape and condition, and within the time frame, your bosses requested because with such scaled down staffs and training budgets, it isn't possible. Sometimes, when it comes to productivity, less is more.

Piles of garbage marketing plans, new product designs, sales strategies, and customer service is impressive if your managers have been conditioned not to inspect it too closely, but you, and the bosses who task you to train their workforce, know it's still garbage. So, your employees are overworked and productive in the sense they're turning something--anything--into their supervisors to meet those deadlines.

Does it matter if they have to fish this "productivity" out of the trash, and dust it off, before presenting it to customers?  Maybe no one will notice.

How do you measure productivity at your company?  What metrics make output that's not only timely, but high-quality, more likely?  And is there anything trainers can do to help?

How Will You Fill the Talent Gap as Boomers Retire?

Mass Exodus?
Well, this is it—2008—the year that the first of the baby boomers are eligible to retire. Much has been written about the impending talent crisis—the leadership gaps, the sudden exodus of years of experience and knowledge.

   

Are you seeing that yet in your organization? Are you ready for it? Do you have a plan?

Sadly, more than 2/3 of companies do not have a succession plan.

So, what can you do?

Here’s a three-step process we use to identify potential and develop talent for upcoming leaders:

1. Predict—Assess your talent pool to predict high potential and job fit for critical positions
2. Plan—Create a plan for talent placement, development, and succession
3. Perform—Align the right people with the right responsibilities at the right time to allow people to perform at their highest level

Moving past the pithy three Ps, let’s see how this works:

1. First, use a validated assessment-based approach to provide objective data for identifying high-potential talent.
Selecting talent based on past performance, reputation, and familiarity may seem like a solid approach, but in fact it's fairly subjective and may be misleading. Using valid assessments instead provides an objective underpinning to your search for talent.

To start, key stakeholders (people who fully understand the requirements of the job being assessed) complete a 20-minute Skills Importance Survey to help them:

• Prioritize the importance of various skills within a job
• Specify a benchmark of high-performing individuals in similar situations with which to compare candidates
• Establish a job profile to objectively measure candidates

Then potential candidates take the LH-STEP™ assessment, which combines select measures of background, personality, skills, cognitive ability, and attitudes to provide a whole-person assessment. Backed by 40 years of research and over 90 validation studies, this assessment has been found to be more valid than personality tests, more reliable than opinion surveys, more relevant than performance evaluations, and more flexible and faster than competency mapping. It takes candidates about 2 hours to complete this online assessment.

Finally, candidates’ supervisors complete a Performance Rating Survey.

2. Next, analyze the candidates against the benchmarks.
The surveys and the assessment form the basis for a 9-box promotability matrix that allows you to:

• Evaluate potential and skill fit across the candidate pool for a given job profile
• Objectively measure your bench strength
• Determine who your “ready now” candidates are
• Compare any candidates against any job profile

This data should give you a fairly clear, and more importantly objective, picture of who your high-potential candidates are.

3. Now, what will it take to get those candidates ready for leadership roles? 
A critical output of the process, Individual Development Plans (IDPs), allow you to see existing skill gaps both at a group and individual level, with specific suggestions for ways to develop the necessary skills. The result is a solid action plan for performance management.

The prospect of filling all those soon-to-be vacant slots can seem daunting, but if you have a plan, you’ll be ready. And if you use objective data, your planning becomes more predictable, valuable, and easy.

Want to learn more?
On March 18, Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates will be addressing this topic in more detail at a half-day workshop in Chicago, entitled:
Uncovering Potential Through Strategic Assessment: Talent Management that Drives Business Results

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Claudia Escribano is a Senior Instructional Designer for Vangent, Inc. a human capital management firm that helps organizations create a high-performing workforce through customized blended, instructor-led, and e-learning solutions

Training Overload

It reminds me of the old days when the TV wasn't working so you just banged on the side of it until the picture came back into focus. That was the solution to all household appliance issues, come to think of it--hit the sputtering device until it started working again. It wasn't what you'd call a refined, tactical strategy, but there were times it had me up and running fast enough not to miss the whole re-run of "Bewitched."

Unfortunately, you don't have anything as fun as "Bewitched" to offer in exchange for your services working well, but the way organizations (maybe even yours) react to challenges is too similar to the old hitting-the-TV strategy. Directives for more training are sent out, but not in a targeted or precise manner. In many cases you don't even know what's wrong, so you just start training like crazy hoping something will do the trick. Not to make you feel horribly imprecise, but it's the exact same thought process that goes into blindly hitting a household appliance whose inner workings you don't understand, and so can't deal with in a more delicate, efficient manner.

While, for most of us, taking the TV or blender apart to figure out what's wrong would make things much worse, for trainers there are a few good alternatives. One of them might be conducting a training needs assessment. What do you think of that?  Before blanketing failing departments with training, do an assessment to figure out what skills and job roles in particular need targeting. How many of you do that as a basic part of your protocol?  In a time of tight budgets, when proving ROI is a big part of making your case to the C-Suite, I would think having the results of a needs assessment in hand would boost your argument, and send needed dollars your way. Right? What they call a "skills gap analysis" also may do the trick. At least then you know the holes in your employees' brains that need filling.

Another, far more pedestrian, option is listening to your learners. You have all kinds of meetings with their managers, who tell you their take on deficiencies requiring more training, but what about the workers groaning about how they have to go to another seminar or workshop covering skills they either feel they'll never have to use, or believe--based on positive feedback from bosses and customers--they've already mastered?  Usually employee whining is ignored as readily as children whining from the back seat of the family car, but maybe that's not the best idea. If they don't want to attend your classes, maybe there's a good reason, no matter what their managers tell you. At the very least, how receptive will they be to learning if they don't feel it's what they need?

Training is an effective tool for success when it's deployed the right way. When your approach to implementing a learning strategy resembles the kind of temper tantrum you used to throw when the TV went out, you've got problems. Sadly, kicking and hitting your organization has an even worse failure rate than banging the tube. No "Bewitched" for you. All you'll get are re-runs of poor performance.

Throttling your company again with training?  How good are you at delivering targeted, precise learning programs?