It’s All About the People
Recently I came across this in Material Handling Wholesaler. It is well worth reading and talks to elements of the management job that we feel are critical for successful businesses.
7 Steps to Turn Employee Potential into Performance
Imagine on Monday, you discover that your meticulous, rule-following accountant and creative, eccentric marketing person have switched positions. How’s this likely to work out? In truth, some variation of this misalignment is common in most organizations.
The Waybeloe Potential Corporation was operating at the break-even point for the past five years. The CEO, Harvey Waybeloe was frustrated. Another CEO told him about an employee-alignment process that was delivering amazing results for other companies. Out of desperation he decided to try it. Within two years, profits increased from break-even to $3.2 mm! The fix? Putting the right people in the right seats!
Most business leaders say that 80% of the work is done by only 20% of the workforce. This 20% are the top performers. They usually produce 3-4 times more than the others. The main reason is due to job alignment rather than attitude or drive. Here’s evidence: It’s common for top performers to be moved or promoted and then become poor performers. Likewise, many poor performers become top performers when moved to appropriate roles. Bottom line: everyone can be a top or poor performer depending on how well the work aligns with their innate characteristics.
How do you deliberately create an organization where people’s work is aligned with their innate characteristics (abilities)? Here’s an overview of a proven process that was used above.
1. Shift your mindset from focusing on skills, experience, and education to innate characteristics first
It’s common for people who are “great on paper” to get hired and become poor performers. In that same vein, many top performers started off lacking in the “required” skills experience and education. When people’s work aligns with their innate characteristics, they can utilize their natural abilities and unleash their passion for their work. Also, the best training and management will not turn poorly aligned employees into top performers.
2. Select the right assessment tool
Many organizations use personality assessments in the hope of gaining more objective information about people to set them up for success. However, the results are usually disappointing due to four inherent pitfalls:
• What you think of as personality is mostly surface-level, observable behaviors; not what’s underneath, driving these behaviors. The drivers of behavior are more accurate, predictive, and stable.
• Assessment-takers usually provide different answers based on which of the following they consider: how they actually see themselves, how they believe others see them, and how they want to see themselves.
• Assessment-takers use a specific context or situation to answer the questions. For example, answers to questions related to “extroversion” (sociability and talkativeness) may vary depending on context differences: small vs. large groups, familiar vs. unfamiliar people, level of interest in the topic of conversation, etc.
• If an assessment is used for a job application, the applicant often has an opinion on what traits the employer is looking for and skews the answers accordingly.
• What’s a better option? Select an assessment that delves beneath the personality into what is more core or innate with people. This eliminates the biases of personality assessments and provides more valid and reliable data.
3. Establish trust with the employees
Inform the employees about the company’s commitment to align their work with their natural gifts. Don’t hide things or surprise people. People want to do work they’re good at and enjoy.
4. Develop an understanding of the innate characteristics being measured
Before you can align people’s innate characteristics with their work, it’s essential to understand what these characteristics mean. In other words, how each one impacts the way people think and behave. Now you have the basis to identify which characteristics are needed for different types of positions within your organization
5. Develop clarity on the job duty break-down
It’s important to know what people will do on a day to day basis in each job. The hiring team (direct manager and others with a major stake in position success) meets to gain clarity on the percentage of time spent performing each job responsibility. Group together duties that are very similar in nature (family of duties). Estimate the percentage of time spent working on each job duty family.
6. Determine which innate characteristics are critical and where they need to measure
The hiring team determines which innate characteristic is critical for each job duty family. They also agree on the desired range for each characteristic. For example, on a 1-10 scale the range for creative thinking should be between 7-9. Now you can develop an optimal range for each critical characteristic.
7. Administer assessment & align employees with job functions
Assess both current employees and potential new hires and compare to the desired ranges. Take the appropriate action based on how strong the level of alignment is. Top performers almost always fit into desired ranges for each critical innate characteristic. If this is not the case, you need to adjust your desired ranges based on the data. Here’s more information on aligning employees:
• When current employees don’t align with their jobs evaluate other positions within the company that do align well.
• Openly discuss available options with employees who are misaligned. Develop a plan to shift roles or tweak job descriptions when this is feasible. Frequently, there are other employees who’d be thrilled to trade positions or some duties that better match with their own innate characteristics.
• For applicants applying to open positions, only interview the people who align well with the desired innate characteristics. When you interview people who don’t align, you may be tempted to discount the assessment results. This rarely ends well.
In the end, the most important job of management is to maximize the ROI of its workforce. Peter Drucker said “The task of a manager is to make people’s strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. The most important thing you can ever do as a leader is to put people in a position to excel rather than get by or fail. How are you doing in your most important task?
About the Author:
Brad Wolff specializes in workforce and personal optimization. He’s a speaker and author of, People Problems? How to Create People Solutions for a Competitive Advantage. As the managing partner for Atlanta-based PeopleMax, Brad specializes in helping companies maximize the potential and results of their people to make more money with less stress. His passion is empowering people to create the business success they desire, in a deep and lasting way. For more information on Brad Wolff, please visit:
www.PeopleMaximizers.com.
The time is now.
The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek
The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek
Branch Operations.
In most dealerships the senior management structures are similar. There is a President, perhaps a CEO, in larger dealers a COO, followed by the Departmental Executives. There are numerous customer facing functions, and support facing functions.
The “Executives” focus on goals and objectives and market share. That is important, performance matters. Everything looks at goals and objectives: financial performance, sales, gross profit, expense control. All are very important. What about the Customer Experience? Who is responsible for ensuring that the Customer is at the forefront of everything that we do?
Who is the person that creates the “vision” for the dealership? Who is it that inspires every employee to be driven to get better at what they do – at “delighting” the customer?
This is an area that Simon Sinek points at in his recent book “The Infinite Game.”
He posits that we are all too concentrated on winning and avoiding losses. We are focused on the short term with no real attention paid to the future. But he isn’t talking about next year or the year beyond. He is talking in terms in decades. How can we make our businesses sustainable over time?
This caused me some interesting reflection time. Most of you know I swam when I was a young person. Swimming is all about improving your own performance and less about “beating” the other swimmers in your race. I think that gave me a focus that was somewhat different than my peers. I was always about making everything better. There was no such thing as “best.” That is a “point in time.” Think about GE under Jack Welsh, arguable one of their best leaders to date. He was always about the short term. His comment was “Isn’t long term just a series of short terms?” Well to be honest it isn’t. As a result, GE since he left has had serious performance failures. Jim Collins, author of “Built to Last” among others, famously compared two companies in the same Industry and pointed at similar things. Most of our businesses focus on the short term. A study by McKinsey reported that the average life span of a S&P company has dropped since the 1950’s, over a span of fifty years, from sixty-one years to eighteen years today. Harvard Business Review, and many others, report that 70% – 90% of acquisitions fail. A rather serious statement on the ability of business to merge two businesses together.
Sinek contends that is because of our focus on the short term at the expense of the long term. In his book “Start With Why,” on of the most watched TED Talks ever he says; “Most people know What They Do, some can even tell you How they do it, but very few people can tell you Why they do it. It isn’t about making money.
“The Infinite Game” uses the United States as an example of a “Business.” It started with the War of Independence. The Declaration of Independence was not a statement of getting rid of the control of the country by Great Britain. It was about “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” That made the effort worthwhile. They then got to work on writing the Constitution which set out a series of enduring principles to protect and advance their big, bold, and idealistic vision of the future. That is a future that we still strive to achieve and will constantly be aiming at that vision. It is not an end game it is a journey.
In order to stay in the game long term, to stay in business, long term we must be good operationally at all of those win/lose games we play; market share, gross margin and expense control, asset management, etc.. That this is critical, is something on which we can all agree. But in order to have long term sustainable success it is also about the culture of the company. What makes each employee strive to be better at what they do in order to satisfy their customers.
I highly recommend that you read “The Infinite Game” by Simon Sinek. It might provoke you to reevaluate your view on how your business operates.
The Time is Now.
Focusing on the Job – the PSP Program
Focusing on the Job – the PSP program.
Continuing to define and describe what we do at Learning Without Scars takes us to our position of providing a pathway for employee development at their individual job functions.
Most Industry and Wholesaler Learning Programs are focused on parts product training and department management. At the AED where for twenty-five years we conducted all of the Parts and Service training the focus was on management. We operated classroom programs lasting two days. The Executives and Managers who attended these classes learned the ins and outs of Parts Management or Service Management and we took them through a three-year development structure starting with “What it Looks Like When it is Right” and moving to “Performance Excellence” and finishing with “Reaching Market Potential.” They were all good programs and we did this training from 1994 through 2015.
However, as was pointed out to me by a very successful executive in our Industry, “you need to create job function training not management training.”
That resonated with me and as a result we have created specific job function training programs. That is what we call Planned Specific Programs – PSP’s. Our PSP’s are aimed at the specific job functions within the Parts and Service businesses. Instore Selling, which covers the telephone and counter job functions, Parts Office and Warehousing, Inventory Management for the Parts business. Foremen/Lead-hand, Service Writer, Inspector, and Service Office for the Service business. And more.
The film you are about to see will give you an explanation of the PSP Program. I hope you enjoy it.
The Time is Now.
Building Blocks – the LOD program
Building Blocks – the LOD program.
Last week we gave you an update on “Where Are We Now” with Learning Without Scars. This week we show you our Learning On Demand product – LOD. This is our learning structure which uses “building blocks.”
Learning On Demand is a subject specific class, there are currently 81 subject specific classes. This class requires the student to make an investment of about two hours, of their time, to continue their path of learning and getting better at what they do professionally.
The film you are about to see will give you an explanation of the LOD. Program. Enjoy.
The Time is Now.
A Guest Blog from Ed Gordon
“Ignoring America’s Talent Desert Won’t Solve the Problem!”
Reports of talent shortages continue to proliferate:
William Dunkelberg, NFIB Chief Economist warned, “If the widely discussed showdown occurs, a significant contributor will be the unavailability of labor — hard to call that a ‘recession’ when job openings still exceeds job searchers.” This quote is based on official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports: the 5.9 million Americans classified as unemployed (11/1/19) and the 7 million job openings reported in the Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey issued on November 5. The BLS also reported that the number of U.S. vacant jobs has exceeded the number of unemployed for the past 17 months (August 2019).
The official BLS estimate of unemployment (3.6% in the 11/1/19 report) is based on an extremely narrow definition: only those who actively sought a jobs in the past month are classified as being unemployed. We believe that this measure of unemployment is very misleading. The BLS also currently estimates that about 95.2 million Americans over the age of 16 are “not in the workforce.” This is an remarkably high number that has persisted since the 2008 recession.
Our analysis of the probably characteristics of this group of 95.2 million Americans is:
Including the 5.9 million Americans who the BLS officially reports as unemployed, these 27 million Americans could potentially help fill the 10.5 million jobs we currently estimate are vacant across the United States provided that they receive training from employers to update their skills. Based on these figures, the actual unemployment rate is over 16 percent!
A September Rand Research Report warned that the education-to-employment pipeline has changed little from previous decades despite technological advances, globalization, and demographic shifts. This has resulted in major shortfalls of workers due to: (a) inadequate general elementary and high school education, (b) limited enrollment in and completion of post-secondary education programs, and (c) lack of access to lifelong learning and training supported by employers. We believe that a staged transformation into a suitable 21st-century education system should occur at the regional level involving the leadership of major community sectors. These programs are already underway in many communities. We have coined the term Regional Talent Innovation Network (RETAIN) for such undertakings. They, however, have not gained enough traction to have an impact on the overall unemployment situation.
In 1970 the United States had the world’s best educated and trained workforce. Today America is a spreading talent desert with too many poorly educated workers who do not have the knowledge and skills to fill the new jobs of the 4th Industrial Revolution.
We are now on an unsustainable labor economic course. A Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute 2018 Skills Gap study projected that 2.4 million manufacturing jobs would not be filled between 2018 and 2028 due to skills shortages with a potential loss of $2.5 trillion in economic output over that time period. We believe that other sectors of the U.S. economy will also experience significant economic losses because of the encroaching talent desert.
The time as arrived for regional public-private collaboration rather than empty political and business rhetoric. It is better to rebuild quality workforces at local levels rather than passively accepting continued skills declines and government programs that are ineffective or underfunded due to political divisiveness at the federal and state levels.
Edward E. Gordon is president and founder of Imperial Consulting Corporation
Where Are We Today?
What Is Your Why?
What Is Your Why?
Why do we do what we do?
This is a question that is often asked of classroom teachers. I disagree with the motivation behind what we do being something we deliberately overlook. In every career, it is important to understand YOUR why.
We can all say what we do, we can teach someone how we do it. But the why is always unique. Yes, we all want to make a living, so of course that is a “why” behind what we do. That only scratches the surface of who we are to our companies and who we are to our customers and who we are to our coworkers. What is your why?
This is a question I can’t answer for you. I can only answer what my own why is. It’s a pretty simple answer, really. YOU are my why. Even though our format is one of online learning now, my days of classroom teaching still drive what we do here at Learning Without Scars. Contributing to someone’s improvement and understanding is the reason I do what I do. Every student, every manager, every individual who comes through our virtual doors is a student. Helping students to succeed is the best why of all.
I encourage you to take a look around today as you are at work. Pay attention to your interactions and your processes throughout the day. I challenge you to answer the question: what is YOUR why?
The time is now.
The More Things Change…
The More Things Change…
Do you remember the first day of your career? That first day? Perhaps you can even remember the interview that got you the job. How about when you walked in the door, was there excitement and anxiety that first time? Then things changed a bit. Do remember what you thought about the work and your coworkers after you had been on the job for a few months? The question that came up a lot “Why do we do things that way?”
Now I would ask you to transfer yourself into the minds of the first day employee today. Are they any different than we were? Are they any less anxious or excited? And what do they think of how things are done after a couple of months?
But we aren’t happy with this new generation. “The millennials.”
They don’t want to work as hard as we did. Remember the truth of our memories. You have no idea how good I was back then. Rose colored glasses.
Can you imagine accepting, deeply accepting, that this new generation is better than we were? Not really. However, they are so much better than we were in almost every aspect of knowledge today.
They are lazy. They are not patient and they don’t do what they are told very well. They want to get paid too well for what they do. They want a fast track to the top. Don’t forget that the world has changed.
Then there is the talk by Simon Sinek, that I have referenced in previous blogs, that highlights that the millennials have been innocent victims of a series of unfortunate things.
They get participation ribbons and trophies, winning at anything has been debased. It isn’t as important as trying. Working hard to succeed is frowned upon in some quarters.
They have been told that they can accomplish anything. They can do anything. They are so good at everything. Then they get a job and find out that those comments were lies, or at the least exaggerations.
Now my generation, the baby boomers, is closing in on retirement. Most of my generation has already retired. Now we are dependent on the millennials in our retirement. They pay into social security so that we can take out of social security.
I believe that my generation has become brittle. We are change resistant. We have become obstacles to fresh thinking. The kind of thinking that the millennials bring to us and our workplace. Paul Daugherty, the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, at Accenture says:
“Learn, Teach, and Live. Learn every day: challenge yourself to learn more – a new area, a new fact, a new technique – every day, and continuously curate your list of learning sources. Teach others; share your knowledge with colleagues, teams, others – teaching is the path to leading. Live means that you should focus on balance, values, and purpose. That’s the only way you can be your ‘best self’ daily and over the course of a career (and smile and have fun along the way).”
Yet today many companies are promoting what has become named “the hustle” society. It is no longer “rise and shine” it is now “rise and grind.” This is not a good thing is it? We are always on duty today. Cell phones, texts and emails happen 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Apparently, these transitions and this work hustle has been a feature of society ever since the Industrial Revolution and the “mercantilism” of the 16th century.
So how would you respond to this? How should these fresh employees respond to this? They are going to be working for the next fifty years. Think about that. That is a long time. How are they going to stay relevant on the job? How long will their education serve them until it needs to be refreshed and made current? The rates of change over the past fifty years are been eclipsed by the rate of change going on today. Can you imagine the changes coming over the next fifty years?
The workplace seems to be the same as many other aspects of our society today. It is segmented, some would say fractured. It has become more tribal in nature. There are more “Us and Them” moments. How did this happen? For some time now we have heard about “Silo’s” in the workplace. Departmental differences and jealousies. How did this happen?
Well I suspect that WE are to blame. WE let this happen and we are the only ones who can fix it. Unless we step up to make changes in how we operate and think – it will only get worse.
YOU need to embrace all coworkers irrespective of what “tribe” they come from. When they walk in the front door and every day that they continue to walk through that door, they are part of US. We are all on the SAME TEAM we are all in the SAME TRIBE.
Don’t you believe it is much easier to accomplish things if we all work together? We have common goals and objectives, as a team. Working together it much easier than trying to do it all ourselves.
The TIME is NOW.
The Biggest Challenge You Face
The last post we made was on December 25th, 2018. I hope each of you had a joyous holiday season and I wish you, and yours, all the best for 2019.
The Biggest Challenge you Face
I was struck recently at the population growth rates across various age demographics.
I found that data to be quite surprising. I understand what has been happening as a direct result of my situation. My grandfather who emigrated to Canada in the 1920’s was physically finished, his body was spent, in his 50s. My father was spent in his 60s. By extension then, barring disease, my body should be spent in my 70s. But the type of work we have done over these three generations has changed. It started as quite physical and has morphed gradually to be more sedentary. Rather than that decreasing our life expectancy it has increased it. I am now in my 70s and see no reason to believe that I should not be spent until at least my 80s and perhaps even my 90s.
In an article published in Scientific American in 2011 the authors Rachel Caspari and Sang-Hee Lee, noted in the “evolution of our grandparents” that mankind marked for the first time in human history that three generations might have coexisted.
This is an extremely significant change.
People are living way beyond their typical retirement age of 65 years of age. This change is putting extreme pressure on retirement incomes and medical program costs. It is also putting pressure on the leadership of organizations. At the same time the “education sector” is no longer delivering “work ready employees” as they have in the past.
The major challenge, in my view, for at least the past ten years, has been “find and retain” talented employees. I further believe that this problem is going to get much more significant.
As a result of these truths we need to look at the workforce in different ways. Let me put forward three things that I believe should be discussed, debated and addressed in the coming five years.
1. We need to engage potential workers at a much younger age, when they are in high school. We need to offer part time work that can be done after school and on Saturdays. This will perform two valuable functions. The Employers can evaluate the potential employees and the Employees can evaluate the Employers.
2. We need to become much more serious about continually upgrading the knowledge of the current workforce. Different societies and different countries have taken differing approaches over the years. I suggest for soft skill work that two weeks of learning is required each year. For work involving technology that time should increase to four weeks. For leadership there are organizations in South America that require a one-year sabbatical every five years for the executive and senior management team.
3. We need to recognize that the “older” workers need to be retained for a longer period of time. The retirement age of 65 should be changed. It should be dependent on the decisions of the Company and the Employee. As an example, I am still working today.
4. We need to explore offering part time work for differing circumstances. Europe provides a very different approach to parental leave. Both parents, father and mother have, in some cases, six months leave with their job protected upon their return. There are many job functions that could be performed for two or three days each week, or even two or four hours each day, by older workers. This work can even be done from the employee’s home.
We are all aware of our own personal biases and societal impressions of differing generations: from baby boomers to millennials. We need to stop making these generalizations and look at each of the people as individuals. We are all the same with the same needs and wants. What I see with the “younger worker” is someone who is much better educated than I was and much more technologically savvy than I was. My granddaughter, and her friends, are a good example of another item. She text communicates much more than she telephone communicates. Don’t judge whether that is right or wrong, that is a fact. That is different than my generation. My generation looks askance at that fact. WE have to get over it. She is what she is and that is how she operates. We have to adapt. There are many other similar examples.
So, I truly believe this will be your biggest change over most of your remaining life. Finding and Retaining talented people. Think it over and make some decisions. If you don’t adapt and adjust you will be left on the side of the road.
The TIME is NOW.
It’s All About the People
It’s All About the People
Recently I came across this in Material Handling Wholesaler. It is well worth reading and talks to elements of the management job that we feel are critical for successful businesses.
7 Steps to Turn Employee Potential into Performance
Imagine on Monday, you discover that your meticulous, rule-following accountant and creative, eccentric marketing person have switched positions. How’s this likely to work out? In truth, some variation of this misalignment is common in most organizations.
The Waybeloe Potential Corporation was operating at the break-even point for the past five years. The CEO, Harvey Waybeloe was frustrated. Another CEO told him about an employee-alignment process that was delivering amazing results for other companies. Out of desperation he decided to try it. Within two years, profits increased from break-even to $3.2 mm! The fix? Putting the right people in the right seats!
Most business leaders say that 80% of the work is done by only 20% of the workforce. This 20% are the top performers. They usually produce 3-4 times more than the others. The main reason is due to job alignment rather than attitude or drive. Here’s evidence: It’s common for top performers to be moved or promoted and then become poor performers. Likewise, many poor performers become top performers when moved to appropriate roles. Bottom line: everyone can be a top or poor performer depending on how well the work aligns with their innate characteristics.
How do you deliberately create an organization where people’s work is aligned with their innate characteristics (abilities)? Here’s an overview of a proven process that was used above.
1. Shift your mindset from focusing on skills, experience, and education to innate characteristics first
It’s common for people who are “great on paper” to get hired and become poor performers. In that same vein, many top performers started off lacking in the “required” skills experience and education. When people’s work aligns with their innate characteristics, they can utilize their natural abilities and unleash their passion for their work. Also, the best training and management will not turn poorly aligned employees into top performers.
2. Select the right assessment tool
Many organizations use personality assessments in the hope of gaining more objective information about people to set them up for success. However, the results are usually disappointing due to four inherent pitfalls:
• What you think of as personality is mostly surface-level, observable behaviors; not what’s underneath, driving these behaviors. The drivers of behavior are more accurate, predictive, and stable.
• Assessment-takers usually provide different answers based on which of the following they consider: how they actually see themselves, how they believe others see them, and how they want to see themselves.
• Assessment-takers use a specific context or situation to answer the questions. For example, answers to questions related to “extroversion” (sociability and talkativeness) may vary depending on context differences: small vs. large groups, familiar vs. unfamiliar people, level of interest in the topic of conversation, etc.
• If an assessment is used for a job application, the applicant often has an opinion on what traits the employer is looking for and skews the answers accordingly.
• What’s a better option? Select an assessment that delves beneath the personality into what is more core or innate with people. This eliminates the biases of personality assessments and provides more valid and reliable data.
3. Establish trust with the employees
Inform the employees about the company’s commitment to align their work with their natural gifts. Don’t hide things or surprise people. People want to do work they’re good at and enjoy.
4. Develop an understanding of the innate characteristics being measured
Before you can align people’s innate characteristics with their work, it’s essential to understand what these characteristics mean. In other words, how each one impacts the way people think and behave. Now you have the basis to identify which characteristics are needed for different types of positions within your organization
5. Develop clarity on the job duty break-down
It’s important to know what people will do on a day to day basis in each job. The hiring team (direct manager and others with a major stake in position success) meets to gain clarity on the percentage of time spent performing each job responsibility. Group together duties that are very similar in nature (family of duties). Estimate the percentage of time spent working on each job duty family.
6. Determine which innate characteristics are critical and where they need to measure
The hiring team determines which innate characteristic is critical for each job duty family. They also agree on the desired range for each characteristic. For example, on a 1-10 scale the range for creative thinking should be between 7-9. Now you can develop an optimal range for each critical characteristic.
7. Administer assessment & align employees with job functions
Assess both current employees and potential new hires and compare to the desired ranges. Take the appropriate action based on how strong the level of alignment is. Top performers almost always fit into desired ranges for each critical innate characteristic. If this is not the case, you need to adjust your desired ranges based on the data. Here’s more information on aligning employees:
• When current employees don’t align with their jobs evaluate other positions within the company that do align well.
• Openly discuss available options with employees who are misaligned. Develop a plan to shift roles or tweak job descriptions when this is feasible. Frequently, there are other employees who’d be thrilled to trade positions or some duties that better match with their own innate characteristics.
• For applicants applying to open positions, only interview the people who align well with the desired innate characteristics. When you interview people who don’t align, you may be tempted to discount the assessment results. This rarely ends well.
In the end, the most important job of management is to maximize the ROI of its workforce. Peter Drucker said “The task of a manager is to make people’s strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. The most important thing you can ever do as a leader is to put people in a position to excel rather than get by or fail. How are you doing in your most important task?
About the Author:
Brad Wolff specializes in workforce and personal optimization. He’s a speaker and author of, People Problems? How to Create People Solutions for a Competitive Advantage. As the managing partner for Atlanta-based PeopleMax, Brad specializes in helping companies maximize the potential and results of their people to make more money with less stress. His passion is empowering people to create the business success they desire, in a deep and lasting way. For more information on Brad Wolff, please visit:
www.PeopleMaximizers.com.
The time is now.
So, What Are We Doing?
So, what are we doing?
When we looked at our mission in the internet-based learning business we had to face a series of questions:
To whom will we be providing our learning products?
How will we be able to reach the student base?
How will we measure our ability to provide learning to the student base?
What will be the learning objectives for each of our programs?
How important will our learning business become to the employers?
These questions, and many more, caused us some serious reflection time.
We had come from a classroom setting with Quest, Learning Centers. We offered traditional training in two, and three day, programs. We were focused on the management and supervision at equipment dealerships. We had started providing this training in the early 1990’s when most of the OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) stopped providing their dealers with their own management training classes. They stopped providing this training due to costs. We decided we enter this market and satisfy what was still an important need; training managers and supervisors in parts and service to improve their performance for them personally and for their dealerships.
We created a lot of content. Each of our classes covered 15 hours in the classroom and we provided a “text” book each of which were approximately 250 pages. We had nine such text books and offered nine different classes. In the more than twenty years that we did the classroom training we covered North America, Europe, Asia, South America, Russia and the Middle East. We had several thousand people taking classes.
Then dealer needs for training evolved. There were different vehicles that management wanted to try to reduce the costs of training. Along came the webinar. As a teacher I wasn’t very excited about teaching online via a power point with me talking to a group of people who were looking at my screen and hearing my voice. I had no idea if they were “getting it” or perhaps they were doing other things at the same time. However, one of the things it did do is that if forced us to develop products that had a shorter duration. We developed webinars that were designed for 45 to 60 minutes in length.
At last we arrive at the place where we were confronting what the future of learning was going to look like. I wasn’t that interested in travelling all over the world to teach in classrooms and webinars didn’t strike as a good vehicle from which to teach people.
• We chose the internet as the delivery system.
• We chose slide shows, audio tracks and film clips as the vehicle.
• We chose pre-tests, final assessments, and opinion surveys as measurement.
• We chose “badges” as our “certification measurement tool.”
The goal was to keep the cost down and employee learning time investment at the lowest level possible. Then, based on customer input, we determined that the learning programs should be job function related not management and supervision related.
We have plans to be offering 117 two-hour Learning On Demand (LOD) classes, then there are 25 job function programs we call Planning Specific Program (PSP) classes. Each of these programs covers four two-hour classes, and we also have leadership classes we call Planned Learning Programs (PLP). Each of these programs covers ten two-hour classes. We will introduce our Virtual Classroom (VCR) programs in 2019. These classes are for fast track employees and consist of five classes requiring ten hours of learning.
We are redesigning the LOD’s to break the two-hour class into three sections, each section will be about 30 minutes ending with an essay question. We are introducing this in 2019 with our third-year programs, The Final Staging, within the PLP’s then we will redo each of the programs for the Building Blocks and finally The Framework.
We have also changed our reporting to the clients. Each month we send out a progress report to each dealer showing each student and four or five steps or progress. Program Progress, Pretest Results, Final Assessments, Surveys, and Certificates. This allows the students and their employer to track the progress of the individual learning path. We are sincerely interested in providing each student with an employee development program.
We are finalizing our badge structure which we will introduce to you in a later blog.
The Time is Now.