What does “back to work” really mean?

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What if returning to the office isn’t an option for you right now?  From family to personal needs what does it mean if you are the leader of a team returning to the office and you can’t join them?  In this video we look at the personal process to consider and the role you can lead with to redefine what work is creating the opportunity to build trust and create a culture that values the work being done more than the chair being sat in.  Going back to work is going to be different for every person and this video highlights how this can be a positive process.

Check out the video and see how we can begin this process by realizing that how and where we work is changing but our shared purpose will keep us aligned and allow us to remain productive independent of time and place. I would enjoy talking more with you about how we can partner on identifying ways to strategically develop your team so let’s Zoom or send me an email, let’s keep learning together!  Use the contact button above or visit our web site!

Organizational Ownership

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We talk about creating a learning culture and having employees take control of their learning and professional development and then we get so frustrated when workers attending these high-quality training courses are texting or checking their emails under the table.  Don’t they want to learn?

Before we point fingers at bored employee let us step back a moment and ask where the organization’s ownership of the learning culture is, have they defined what skills and competencies they want people to acquire and why?  Has the organization described the business proposition clearly and does the worker know the WIIFM, the What’s In It for Me?  In this short video I identify several key tactics every organization needs to put in place to define the jobs of tomorrow and identify how they can then prepare their workforce for these jobs with new training options, stretch roles, and educational collaborations. This collaboration and shared ownership provides the way to achieve success, and then the culture where learning is experienced will lead to growth and high performance.

Check out the video and see how we can begin this transformation by realizing that the purpose of learning is to support and grow the organization and that means all parties must come together to define and describe the future so everyone knows What’s In it for Me. I would enjoy talking more with you about how we can partner on identifying career paths that can develop your talent pipeline so let’s Zoom or send me an email, let’s keep learning together!  Use the contact button above or visit our web site!

Let’s create a community career path!

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Do your workers jump to another company when there is an opportunity for a higher salary and more responsibilities?  Is this drain a challenge for you to fill?  Or is this an opportunity to build a broader talent pipeline that can benefit you as well as others in your community.

In this short video, Let’s create a community career path!, I outline a method to connect organizations using a set of common role profiles with a focus on creating collaboration instead of competition for talent and leveraging the knowledge acquired by the person from each member business to strengthen their own talent pool.  This is based on a common agreement around key technical skills and behavioral competencies.  Build on the strength of the community and create ways to build on each other’s training and work practices to establish common values and accepted levels of defined proficiency.  This allows you to know that when a supervisor has mastered time management and staff scheduling at one place that they don’t have to be re-trained at another.  The key to this, based on the common agreement on role responsibilities, is to develop and use a shared microcredentialing model so everyone knows who can “do” the job in terms of performance capabilities.

Check out the video and see why this could help employers better qualify future employees and reduce recruiting time, employee turnover, and cost of retraining. I would enjoy talking more with you about how we can partner on identifying career paths that can develop your talent pipeline so let’s Zoom or send me an email, let’s keep learning together! Use the contact button above or visit our web site!

Planning for flexibility

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Sometimes contingency plans have a way of becoming permanent and while we have screen grabmade the transition to remote work and remote learning we need to start require instruction to be more accommodating for all involved. In this short video I share the need for a hybrid flexible, or HyFlex, model that supports location choice and time options while maintaining a consistent level of content, activities, and assessment strategies. The key attribute is being able to meet people’s changing need to access content and peers seamlessly from face-2-face to a blended online to a completely asynchronous interaction and support the seamless transition between these different delivery channels and experiences on a daily basis.

While I can’t be live in front of you now, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss and explore this topic in greater detail and how we can help you and your team perform and succeed.  Send me an email or call and let’s talk! Use the contact button above or visit visit our web site!

Remote Leadership

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We are in a lifespace now where work and home are blurred. Gone are the models of having defined space for work and family, time for tasks, and an ability to focus solely on work. Now childAnnotation 2020-03-23 142437ren are asking for help with schoolwork or may be just bored, our spouse has a web conference call the same time you do, and you’re wondering if anyone let the dog out. As a leader the rules have changed and now, more than ever before, the emphasis needs to be on managing the work and leading the people.

Let’s focus on what others are dealing with in their lifespace, how you react sets the tone for the team. Empathy, understanding, and trust will create a culture where people will align to the purpose so let’s forget about the 9-5 model and move towards a framework where the deliverable, the outcome, matters and allow people to flex the middle space so they can meet the need with the intended results.

Take a look at this short video, Leadership@Home, and let’s think about ways to create a compassionate, connected community that can work effectively, live joyfully, and is engaged with all the people in their lifespace. If you want to talk about working remotely and ways to engage with your team, let’s talk! Use the contact button above or visit our web site!

Behavioral skills are tomorrow’s success!

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There is a lot of talk about the challenges in hiring and recruiting skilled employees. To make it more concerning industry analysts are warning employers that college graduates that meet technical job-specific skills today will need to upskill and be trained for the same role in about 6 years.

Perhaps it’s time to examine the real needs of the organization today and in the next 24 to 36 months. New research on successful candidates reveal the need employers have is centered more on behavioral skills so while technical skills might get you the job it is the competencies, behavioral skills, around communication, adaptability, prioritization and time management, working on and with teams – these Higher Order Thinking Skills are needed for employees to be successful operating across functional, organizational, and time-defined boundaries.

Check out this video and let’s discuss how we can partner with you to define the real-world behavioral skills these roles need and create the path forward to bring people with purpose into a productive environment.

If you would like to learn how to implement and use workflow learning and develop thinking workers using learning as a strategic business tool send me an email or call me and let’s talk! Use the contact button above or visit our web site!

Better thinking brings better performance!

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Connecting context to content matters and I have discovered along the way that aligning people’s passions with purpose, through the use of learning, brought better results. Learning is not the focus, improving performance and solving the issue in the workflow is.

John Hagel’s Learning Pyramid brings a focus on thinking skills based on passion. Tapping into people’s hearts and focusing on the bigger picture results with responses that is more than simply retrieving facts, people use their critical thinking skills and apply these skills to think broadly through issues.

Check out this video and see how starting with the emotional connection, creating the WIIFM, and connecting to people’s capabilities and you will see a worker who finds solutions and keeps learning (even though they don’t really call it that!).

If you would like to learn how to implement and use workflow learning and develop thinking workers using learning as a strategic business tool send me an email or call me and let’s talk! Use the contact button above or visit our web site!

Coaching – it’s where leadership begins

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I had an amazing leader once, she later told me she enjoyed how I could make her ideas actually work but what I am forever grateful for is that she gave me a gift of feedback on Capturehow I came across – I’ll share with you my #1 strength is focus so when I am really listening to someone I am locked in and my problem solving skills kick in by listing all the barriers and challenges of the situation being discussed.

Instead of telling me directly that I came across as negative she began the process by asking me what I was thinking and then shared that she thought I was upset by my reaction. Then she suggested I ask a question or 3 to give myself some time to think thru the situation, and she also suggested I smile.  You see, if I can figure out the barriers then I can start the solution process but what she shared was that while she knew I would solve the problem getting there was painful.  She coached me on a life skill that helped me at home and at work!

It used to be that you got a coach when you weren’t performing, and coaches were only for senior leaders.  What we see now is that coaching is an integral component of leadership development.  Coaching can help people develop and hone their skills and abilities and move forward on a performance and career pathway by dealing with issues that could become problems if not identified early –like my list of barriers instead of listening and asking questions and smiling leading to solutions.

There are other advantages too and if you would like to learn how to design and implement coaching into your leadership development process check out this short video, Coaching – it’s where leadership begins.  If you would like to learn more about using learning as a strategic business tool send me an email or call and let’s talk!

It’s not the ROI, ROL matters more!

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I had a conversation recently with a learning leader at an organization who was being pushed to show their ROI – return on investment.  Granted in the last couple of years they have brought a new LMS online andCapture added designers to the team so management wanted to know if the expenses were paying off.   But our discussion started with how many clicks had been captured, the test scores of the online modules, and how many people had taken these modules and trying to divide these into the expenses… well you get the picture.  And that’s the point – that isn’t where you truly measure the ROI. You need to have a more strategic view of the organization to determine the ROL – the Return on Learning.

Measure what matters and focus on what matters to the organization.  Key business functions such as First call resolution, lower product defects, higher quality scores, upselling numbers – the point is what are you doing to impact the business?  To truly measure the ROI you need to focus on the ROL. Start by using my favorite 4 letter word to start with – PLAN: Prior (to) Learning, Assess Now.  Take ownership of the learning solution you are developing by first (prior to learning) gathering the current operational metrics (assess now) that you will be measuring against, so you can identify clearly to yourself and your client that the solution you put in place made a difference at the business level.

Want to learn how to measure the return on your learning efforts then check out this short video about Return on Learning!  If you would like to learn more about using learning as a strategic business tool let’s talk!