Thursday, September 20, 2007

Be a feisty L&D Manager - even if it's not your job!

Whether you are responsible for company-wide L&D or just your own team, make sure that you can get the resources that you need and don't just accept that training gets cut. L&D and HR people worry that because they cannot show direct causal links between programmes and business results, they have no hard evidence of impact or value. In fact, no one in business ever has perfect 100% links between cause and effect, they just have reasonable estimates.

So when you are asked to justify your training budget, here are 6 points to keep in mind:

1. Give the big picture not the detail

The Board wants to hear how the organisation is delivering its goals and building future capacity. A marketing director will get up and talk about how marketing programmes have impacted market share, not about how many press releases were issued.

Make sure you focus on how your training impacts the bigger picture, not how many training days were delivered at what cost.

2. People make the difference

The value of most organisations is in their people, not the plant and equipment – and there is a lot of data available to support this.

Substantially improving people's performance through your training programmes is usually the single best way to raise the value of an organisation.

3. No-one is ever 100% accurate

No manager, not even a sales person, can ever say that one action or programme was 100% responsible for a particular outcome. For example, very few sales people realize the contribution that branding, product quality, distribution strategy etc make to a sales outcome.

You don't need to prove your training programme is 100% responsible for a change in performance. Focus on the key areas of impact and use the visible improvements in these areas to show the value of your training.

4. Productivity is a good measure

In general, the better people perform, the more revenue there is per employee. Profits per employee are one of the key factors in determining share price.

By training your people to be better and more productive workers, you can make a significant difference to this number.

5. Stand up for yourself (and for investing in people)

The training budget is usually the first to be cut, because senior managers think it won't make any difference to business performance. You KNOW this is wrong! But, you may not be able to show a causal link between a specific programme and a specific cost saving or revenue (although often you can in practice).

By linking your training programme outcomes to your organizational goals, you can indicate what the organisation RISKS by not training.

6. Challenge the sceptics

Often sceptics are basing their assumptions on opinion and prejudice, rather than fact.

When someone asks you to prove that a training programme made a difference, a good estimate with supporting hard data is all you need. If you are challenged, ask the sceptics to produce data supporting their theory that training makes no difference.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Managing High Risk Moments of Truth

Regular opportunities

Make sure your teams know what emotional moments are most likely to occur with your products or services

Eg: if you sell travel, which travel events are most likely to be special.

If you sell finance, what are the main reasons people are buying your products.

Develop questions that will highlight the positive ‘moments of truth' and how should your people respond. Create some scenarios that your teams can role play

The difficult moments

Research indicates that being supportive of customers at very difficult moments makes a substantial difference to their overall perception of you. Whether your customer teams handles crises on a daily or an occasional basis, it can be a stressful situation

• Role-play key scenarios in the environment that staff will actually handle the customer e.g. behind a desk, on the phone, privately or in an open reception area

When you have to give bad news

Customer service teams hate giving bad news. Whether it's that the engineer is going to be late or we can't lend you the money, many will avoid it. Giving bad news is often likely to cause an emotional moment of truth and anyone who deals with customers will face this sooner or later.

• Think about how you give bad news to customers and practice a few techniques (maximum of three) to help you handle the emotional moment of truth in a professional manner.

Investing in moments of truth can be immensely valuable


Ensuring your staff handle it professionally could be one of the best investments you make. It can determine the nature of your long term relationship with the customer, and most of us are in businesses where we know our clients could go elsewhere. We know that most people choose a supplier for emotional reasons, e.g. they like you, and then use logic to justify their choices.

It is rare for any business to win every buying decision based on logic – few of us have such perfect propositions. Build emotional capital with your clients, and more business will surely follow.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Essential Goals for Aligning Training

Aligning Training and HR activity to an organisation's strategic goals is much harder in practice than in theory! Cascading goals down through an organisation can sometimes end up like Chinese Whispers. However, aligning goals is a key aspect of both measuring and delivering a good ROI in training.

Steps for Aligning Training:

1. Start at the top: What are the financial goals of the organisation and how are they translated into strategic goals?This is a job for the Board, often aided by a good facilitator.

2. Value the goals: This can be a challenge: If the goal is to be Number One for Customer Service – what is that worth to the business? If the public sector organisation has a major delivery target, what proportions of reward/resources are at stake?

By valuing the goals, even if only roughly, it will become clear where the business needs to invest resources.

3. Ask each person to align their goals with their managers:

This is the acid test – each person needs to understand how their work enables their manager to deliver the results that are needed. Note that this is the exact opposite of daily management practice, where each manager ensures that they are supporting the team below them to deliver their individual goals.

However, for the business to really be aligned, each person should understand how what they do contributes to the whole.

In many organisations, the impact of this step – asking people to align themselves upwards – is that a gap appears between what the organisation strategically has committed itself to deliver and what each person is focused on doing. Sometimes major organizational goals are missed because the organizational goals are not fully converted to personal goals through the team.


Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Simple steps to training evaluation

Training is often part of a bigger picture, and is rarely a solution on its own. Training evaluation at its most simple is assessing the CONTRIBUTION that training makes to your organisation, rather than assuming a casual link between a piece of learning and a business impact.

Here are some tips for finding out the contribution your training has made:

1. ASK THE TRAINER

Prime the trainer beforehand to listen out for people saying ‘this will be really helpful with…' If you can follow up even a couple of these comments with phone calls, you will get additional evidence to show your training is having an impact.

2. RESPOND ONLINE

If your training has an online element, make the last section a quick ‘how will this help' question, preferably with a drop down list of options so that delegates can respond easily.

3. LISTEN TO ANECDOTES

Anecdotes are powerful evidence of training impact. Ring a couple of delegates a week or so after the programme and ask them how the programme is helping. Ask them to give you a specific example of what they found useful, or what they have done differently as a result.

4. ASK THE MANAGER

Contact a line manager and ask straightforward questions about the impact of the training.

5. SEE FOR YOURSELF

A lot of impact may be visible in the workplace. For example, go and sit on the floor of the contact center, ask if you can attend a management meeting, look to see if a person is better organized etc. You'll be surprised what you learn, and the delegates will be impressed that you are taking that much interest.

6. NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

If a training programme is poor, you will find out pretty quickly (probably while it's still running). If it's all good news – be pleased!

If the news is mixed, make a decision about the amount of time you want to spend on how the programme can be changed or improved to get the most out of your training.

7. HANDLING BAD NEWS

If there appears to be no impact from a training programme, treat it as a learning opportunity for yourself and the organisation.

Most poor results from training fall into one of the following categories:

• Poor match between programme and delegate/s

• Poor delivery and/or poor material

• Poor engagement/ follow up with the line manager

Identify the main source of the problem and review your processes accordingly.

By using these simple steps to assess the impact of your training, you can begin to justify your training budget spend and prove the benefits of the training to your organisation.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Evaluation can be inspiration

It still shocks me that organisations can spend millions of pounds on training programmes with only the vaguest anecdotal ideas of their impact. This doesn't just apply to training. Training is an example that we know well, but you could substitute any performance improvement programme in your function and much the same process would apply.

Evaluation of training programmes is not a back-covering exercise for those who have nothing better to do. At its best, it is a pro-active operation that starts BEFORE any training has happened and ends with well thought out reports that guide future training investments and decisions.

Evaluation is a PROCESS not a NUMBER
Many people ask: "What is the ROI on my training programme?" Our response is usually:

"whatever the number is, you get far more useful information from the PROCESS of finding the answer, than from the answer itself."

As with many things in life, the journey is as important as the destination. So what does a good journey look like?

A great training evaluation process

This is closely linked to the initial business case for a training programme. It:

* Estimates the impact of the programme BEFORE it occurs
* Identifies the metrics of measuring impact BEFORE the programme is designed, ensuring the design is closely aligned to outcomes rather than content
* Takes sample base line measures BEFORE a programme starts
* Takes sample measures DURING a programme where appropriate
* Takes sample impact measures at appropriate time intervals AFTER a programme is complete
* Enables senior management reporting on current and projected impact and value
* Enables training professionals to continuously improve the decision-making in their function, informing programme choice, design and delivery.

Use simple tools

Training evaluation can quickly be made very complicated – the main advice we offer to clients is to keep it straightforward and focus on the aspects of training evaluation that will add value to them. Use simple tools and concepts, and gradually build up a picture of the impact of your programme. If you try to do everything at once, you run a high risk of getting lost in all the data and systems you create.

What happens if the training evaluation is worrying?

If your training evaluation suggests that your programme is not delivering the results you want, try to treat this as good news. At least you know, and can do something about it. Of course, you may wish to be careful who you share this with.

Make sure YOU own your training evaluation system, not the finance function.
Training evaluation is about helping you improve, not finding excuses to cut budgets. Even when news is not so good, if it is presented well and with strong support, we can be inspired to go out and achieve more.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Effective E-mail Management

Every company needs a practical e-mail policy, and each individual needs a practical method to deal with incoming e-mails. If you cannot influence company policy, you can start with your team. Here are the basics:

* Use e-mail for sharing facts and information
* Use e-mail for setting meetings and sending agendas
* Use e-mail for minutes

If you are working on a shared document, aim to set up a central point to keep each copy of the document, rather than mailing it between you. This approach:
a) minimizes the risk of several people making different amendments on different versions of the document
b) reduces the number of versions available
c) reduces the number of e-mails
d) enables you to delete e-mails that simply request you check the shared document

Do not use e-mail to:
* Communicate bad news – do this in person if at all possible
* Give personal feedback - do this face to face
* Give advice – the person receiving the advice may not receive it in the way in which you intended

Use one e-mail for each subject and clearly label the subject line.

If you cannot keep the text to a single screen, use an attached document for the content. You can format the document so that it is relatively easy to read – long e-mails are often misread

Deleting e-mails

- The general rule is ‘be ruthless' . Unless there is real content, or a specific message (an approval of a project for example), bin it.

- Some companies have a policy of no deletions – but requests to join the team for a drink can usually be safely deleted the next day.

Filing e-mails

- Set up a system that works for you. Use the flagging tools if you need to find one e-mail in several contexts.

- File e-mails every day, or at least once a week.

- Aim never to have more than one screen worth of e-mail in your inbox.

- You can use flags to capture the ‘must do something about that' e-mails.

Reduce the incoming flow!

- Remove yourself from as many cc lists as possible

- Ask yourself how much of the incoming mail is useful to you, and ask others to stop sending you material that doesn't add value

- Ask your team to send you a one screen ‘highlights' e-mail rather than attach a detailed document that you don't really need to read

Categorise all e-mail

Ask your team to categorise e-mails along the following lines:

A: an ACTION for the receiver

B: feedback required for sender

C: Important Information

D: FYI

E: Personal

Put the letter at the start of the subject line – it helps everyone decide how/when to deal with your e-mail.

E-mail Management is Part of Time Management

Managing e-mail is about managing time! It's a question of making priorities and using a system to minimize time wasting. If you are struggling with time management, why not look at the special PHONE based TimePower Programme available exclusively from 3C.

Instead of spending a whole day on a course, you and your colleagues join a conference call. It lasts a couple of hours, and you get a fun and efficient run down of the best time management techniques, from managing the phone, email and interruptions to setting goals and balancing priorities. As one of our clients said – ‘ it has to be one of the best uses of time available' !

You also get the full colour workbook, usually reserved for delegates on the 1 day TimePower programme – it's packed with time management hints, prioritising tools and ideas to help you maintain a work-life balance that suits you.

So, take control of your inbox. Agree and share a system that works for you and your team.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Manage a round table discussion

Round table discussions are a great way of exchanging informal ideas and finding new approaches to old problems. But unless they are focussed, and are set up with clear outcome in mind, they can be seen as unproductive. What is the best way to...

Manage A Round Table Discussion?

The Key Challenge

Although a Round Table Discussion is designed to exchange ideas, it needs a host or leader who will take responsibility for setting up and managing the event. The leader should be prepared to set the subject for discussion, making clear the boundaries of the conversation, and the key points to be covered. The subject of the meeting should be made clear in invitations and any pre-meeting notes. The leader should also decide whether a formal agenda is appropriate. An agenda is useful if there are several ‘must discuss' topics, so that everyone can see what has to be covered.

Carry out thorough preparation

A Round Table will succeed if it has been prepared thoroughly. One of the leader's tasks should be to write down plenty of good questions (up to 20 for a 1-2 hour discussion) to trigger conversation and dialogue. The questions should ‘open', for example, ‘ How should we…., What do you think about…., Who could carry this out….' The leader should also try to find out the main areas of interest/ conflict beforehand, and work out in advance who is most likely to dominate/ remain silent/ lose focus.

On the Day

Introductions

Even if your Round Table delegates know each other, your discussion will start well if it is introduced formally. Keep the introductions short – ask each person for name/role/ company info, and then 1 or 2 sentences about their interest/ expectations in the discussion topic.

Ground rules

Set some ground rules for the conversation – for example: please feel free to contribute; ask questions whenever you wish; everyone is responsible for the success of the meeting; please maintain courteous to each other even if we disagree and we will finish at 2.00pm sharp.

Getting started

Prepare a short introduction to the subject, highlighting what you see as the main points for consideration by the group. Indicate if anyone has particular expertise to draw on with in the group. Acknowledge as many participants as possible during the introduction – it will encourage broad participation, and make each person feel their presence is valued. Have a good open question to get the conversation started once your introduction is finished – it can be an idea to address this question to a specific individual. Warn the individual before hand that you will ask them to speak first. And don't forget that your introduction should last no longer than three minutes.

Managing the group

There are several techniques you can use to keep the discussion flowing. If there is a pause, summarize your main impressions so far, and invite comment. Alternatively, you can invite another delegate to summarize. Ask an open question to an individual or the group, or move to a new subject .

Potential conflict

If there is a potential conflict between participants think carefully about how to manage this. Remember that if everyone agrees about everything there is nothing to discuss, and that in many cases it is fine to agree to disagree. It is important that everyone can make their contribution without interruption; all you need to do is affirm each point of view without necessarily agreeing with it. It is also important that you keep acknowledging each person and if one person is dominating, thank them for their contribution, and then directly invite other contributions.

If the discussion rambles and loses focus

Ask the group to return to the key issues. Return to your strong open questions to bring the group back on track. Be provocative – ask a question that will generate a clear and strong response.

Outcomes/ conclusions

Think carefully about outputs. Few people will read extensive notes of a meeting. One good approach is to put the key points in an email to delegates, but keep the points to a maximum of six for a 1 to 2 hour discussion. Your key points should include any actions agreed (though this is rare for a round table) and a promise of further information or updating to be kept (otherwise there is no point and no-value adding).

Closing


A prompt finish should match a prompt start. As leader you should thank everyone for their participation, agree a next session if appropriate and ask your delegates to spread the word if you want to encourage wider participation within your organization.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

What is ROI?

Most managers are now asked to justify the decisions they make in terms of a ‘return' to the business. For example, will the business get a better return from an advertising campaign or a PR campaign? So …

What is Return on Investment? (ROI)

ROI is a family of measures that look at what is received in return for an initial investment.

Why is ROI important

Resources are not infinite – so every business and manager has to make decisions about how to use resources available to them. Making the best use of the resources available is actually the key to success in any area, not just business.

Measuring ROI in financial terms is traditionally done in 3 ways. A measure of time, a measure of proportion, and a measure of cash.

1. Payback - Simply put, the time it takes to get back the amount of money originally invested. So if I spend £1000 on a sales promotion, how long does it take until there are enough sales to generate an extra £1000 of gross margin.

2. Rate of Return - This is a percentage figure. It measures how much more than the original amount I will get back, as a percentage of the original amount. For example, if I spend £1000 and get back £2000 the rate of return will be 100%. If I get back £1500, the rate of return will be 50%.

3. Net Present Value - This is a cash figure, and really allows for the fact that getting £1000 in 12 months time is worth less than £1000 now. How much less depends on inflation. There is a standard (if complex) way to calculate this figure. Example: if inflation were 10% per annum, you would need to have £1100 in 12 months time for it to be worth the same as £1000 now.

Companies may make their investment decisions based on any one of these methods, or a combination of all three.

What about non-financial measures?

How can we measure ROI in training, PR, recruitment etc? It still makes sense to talk about ROI, whatever we are investing in. Marketing departments can measure the cost of acquiring, serving and keeping customers. Operations can put a value on the importance of key suppliers.

Once a discussion about the value of a business activity is underway, it is always possible to find some proxy measures that will indicate how fast that activity is improving or declining. It is then possible to make a broad value judgement about the likely return from a specific investment.

Is measuring ROI in training difficult?

You can make it difficult for yourself, or you can get help. There is a great tool to measure ROI on technology projects already available - more in the next issue.

Presenting the ROI

If you are a sales person – you need to be able to present the business case for your offer – which includes the ROI. Someone else may calculate it for you – but you need to be able to have a credible conversation about the results.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Making time for Time Management

In our work, most of us have to make choices about how we use our time. We often find that we cannot achieve everything in the time we have to do it. So how can we

Make Time for Time Management

The underlying issue of time management is not about controlling time, because time ticks away regardless of whatever we do. Time Management is about personal decision making that will help us to manage what we do with our time more effectively.

Firefighting can be fun, but it isn't a good time management style unless you work for the fire service. When it happens, use these top tips to avoid being swept away:

Don't avoid the important things

Important things really are important. If you aren't doing the IMPORTANT things on your to-do list you probably

* are not sure HOW to do them
* are worried about FAILING at them
* are BORED by them (because they've been hanging around so long)
* don't really believe they are IMPORTANT

Find out HOW

If you aren't sure HOW to do something make it a priority to find out how to do it! This might mean that the first thing you actually have to do, is to go and talk to someone about what it involves.

Deal with WORRY

If you are worried about FAILING, you need to find a coach who can help you address the issues. If you are a habitual worrier, get coaching about how to deal with worry. If you don't normally worry, but this particular issue is causing you a problem, find a coach with the appropriate expertise who can help you mitigate any risks in the project.

Beat the BOREDOM

If you are BORED with something see if you can find someone else to delegate it to (who might be interested). Lacking that alternative, set yourself a time limit with the promise of a treat on completion.

Priorities

If you don't really believe it's IMPORTANT take it off your list. If you are responding to someone else's important agenda, discuss it with them and try to get it removed.

Strictly speaking, none of the above is time management and most time management programmes will not address these issues (except TIMEPOWER). But it is this kind of approach that actually helps you make the most of the time you have available.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Managing a Virtual Team - Telephone Sales Training

Many of us have to manage people we don't physically work with on a regular basis. Sales managers have long faced the challenge of managing people on the road – for others the challenge may be newer. So what can you do to help yourself


Be a better manager to a virtual team


First of all, clarify what kind of virtual team you are dealing with.

Are your team working on projects together, or do they work individually and are a team simply because they all report to you?

  • If the team are actually working together, though sitting apart, you will need to devote a lot of your people management time to making the joint process, telephone sales training as effective as possible. This may mean conference calls, regular get-togethers, and lots of cross team networking.
  • If the projects are mostly individual, then the team will need more one to one support from you, and ‘team time' can be focused on exchanging relevant information, building customer service skills and offering customer support.

Relationship Insight

The less time you are able to spend with someone who works for you, the more important it is to have a useful, reliable insight into their working style, their motivational needs and their core values. Understanding yourself and your management development training style will also help you adapt to each individual's needs.


Applying your Insight

Of course, it is no use understanding how to get the most from people if you don't apply your knowledge in practice. Language really matters when dealing with people on the phone. Use the wrong words, and you will not get the reaction you seek.

For example,

If you ask someone with a high activist learning style to ‘spend a couple of hours thinking about possible approaches to a problem' you are not likely to get very much in return.

Ask the same person to ‘identify 3 ways that we could deal with this problem, with a short action plan for each that you would be prepared to implement' and you may get just the quality of thinking you need.

Choose your communication methods carefully

Applying your insight into people to choosing appropriate communication methods will help you make the best use of all the options

  • Try to avoid using personal meetings for routine administration and information.
  • If the team is meeting altogether, spend time talking to each person beforehand to establish what they want from the group meeting, and to clear any routine items beforehand
  • Feedback by e-mail is always risky! Even if you have something positive to say, it can be taken in the wrong way (eg. You write ‘well done – a really good piece of work!' and they think ‘did she think I wasn't capable of doing a good job!').
  • If you need to use the phone to give feedback, and the impact of having a virtual team is that usually you will – choose your words very carefully. E.g. telling someone who is very goal

oriented that an action was ‘not helpful' will have minimal impact, since their aim is to deliver goals not be helpful. Suggesting that a different approach would make the achievement of the goal much more likely will have a greater chance of encouraging this person to change behaviour.

  • Remember that when you can't soften what you say through body language, criticism will sound much harsher than you perhaps mean.
  • If the person receiving feedback is completely on their own – perhaps working from home or on the road, you need to be especially careful not to leave the individual feeling massively de-motivated. Again, a good understanding of their personal motivations and values will guide you on a suitable approach.

TIME for preparation as well as meeting

  • When using the phone for meetings, allow a lot of time to prepare carefully.
  • If you want people to contribute to a phone meeting, discuss beforehand how you would like them to contribute and when.
  • Plan the meeting in key sections so that you can change the pace and vary the style. You might want to include a round the group update session, some brainstorming, an overview of a specific project or issue, a short skills piece and clear next actions.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

3 Skills of a Confident Senior Manager

To rise to the top of your organisation whether you are in HR, sales, marketing or operations you will need to be confident when talking to the board. Where does that confidence come from?

The 3 critical components of confident Senior Managers

1. Functional expertise

You may have a broad general experience, but you should expect to be highly competent in the function that you are leading. Competence means knowing your limits, knowing what you do and don't know and knowing where to find the specialist expertise you need to support you.

2. Financial Acumen

Every senior manager needs to be able to make sense of both the company internal management accounts and the published financial accounts. You need to know where your activity shows up in the accounts and what you can do that will influence the numbers. Financial acumen is as critical for public sector managers as it is for private sector. Indeed, for public sector where income may be fixed, understanding how you influence the outgoing numbers is even more important, no matter what your specialist expertise.

3. Business or Organisational Knowledge

You need to know your business or organisation very well, and how it relates to others in the same market or sector. All businesses are not the same, and understanding what it is that your business does to make money is critical. If you are in the public sector the same rules apply – Hospital A is not like Hospital B, and no amount of government intervention will give you the same catchment with the same workforce in the same environment.

One is not enough

You may well have been promoted or recruited to a senior role on the basis of just one of these components. The most common basis for appointment is functional expertise. Ironically in senior management this may be the least use on a daily basis. To be successful, and help your organisation succeed you need all three. So what can you do?

1. Functional expertise

* Keep up to date
* If you have moved into a new field, find the experts inside and outside quickly, get a crash course from them through conversations and recommended reading
* A high level conference or seminar will give you the main drivers
* ‘Introduction to training courses may not help – they are often very tactical and aimed at junior employees

2. Financial Acumen

* Aim for understanding not detailed execution
* Ask the Finance Director or senior financial controller to take you through the company and management accounts in detail
* Accountants measure intangible assets (the ones you can't touch) all the time – ask how to measure any intangible benefits you think your team brings
* Ask yourself how much financial value your team is contributing – ask the finance team how it could be measured
* Build a picture for yourself of how your organisation uses its money – reflect on how it could better use its money to meet its goals
* Introduction to Finance courses may be very useful

3. Organisational Knowledge

* If you have been brought in from outside, understanding what makes the organisation tick should be very high on your list
* Meet with your peer group managers on an individual and group basis often - don't let this get pushed out by your functional role
* Identify the informal influencers as quickly as you can and get to know them
* Think of the key things you need to know to be effective, and formulate your questions before you meet people
* If you are in a new sector, senior level seminars and conferences could give you a quick overview of the key sector drivers
* If you are an internal promotion, make sure you don't lose touch with the ‘grass roots' – you still have to get things done!

Can you value leadership training?

A major debate has been sparked by severe criticism in Personnel Today of the BBC's Leadership Training Programme. An external consultant has declared there is no measurable Return on Investment in training programme, and as such it is a waste of public funds. So …..

Can You Value Leadership Training?

In simple terms, as soon as you have agreed a budget for any training programme design, you have placed what you expect will be the minimum value of the programme to your organisation.

You have clearly made some value judgements, so a great place to start would be to examine those judgements in more detail. Ask yourself the following…

How did you select this programme over other programmes on offer?

What value did you place in relative terms between the style and content of this programme and others?

Did you define the content before choosing a programme?

How was the content defined – who declared a need or objective?

Did you define outcomes and then seek a provider to design content?

Who defined the outcomes, and how?

How did you select a provider – how has this provider won your confidence?

How have you decided who will take part in the programme?

Are participants under-performers, or high flyers being groomed for succession?

Is the programme part of planned career development, or intended to raise morale in the short term?

Are you seeking a powerful way to retain staff, or needing to raise the skills of an entire team to take on a new challenge?

As you start to answer these questions, you will be examining what it is that is being valued. It can be a challenging process. If your answers are along the lines of ‘because that's the way it's always been done' or simply ‘don't know' then it may well be that some training programmes have little or no value.

If you can start to get useful answers to these questions, you have the basis for turning the broad value decisions into financial values. Imperfectly maybe, but in a sufficiently practical way to add value to your decision making, and justification for training programmes.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Managing Your Boss

Your boss often has more impact on your life than your colleagues, your team or even your family. It's a cliché that people join a company - but leave a manager. If you have a good working relationship with your manager you will know how that can help make even a tough job enjoyable. If you and your boss don't get on so well – here are some tips for…

4 If your boss ‘dumps' on you

You and your boss may have a communication problem, or you may have a boss that does not know how to delegate effectively. A substantial proportion of senior managers in the UK have had little or no management development training! Ask your boss for time to set SMART goals for tasks or projects that have been ‘dumped' on you. This will help both of you understand the implications of what is expected of you.

5 If your boss is always interfering

This boss asks you to do something, and then won't leave you alone to get on with it. It can be very hard for managers to ‘let something go' that they are used to doing themselves. The best way to prevent this is once again to set some specific SMART goals relating to your work and agreeing report back times. It's then easier for you to gently push back on any interference by saying that everything is on schedule and you will report as agreed.

It is critical of course that you let this boss know if you need help in anyway. If you don't deliver on something, you will find your boss interfering even more in future.

6 You just don't get on

If you really don't get on, you both need to find a way to develop an acceptable working relationship. This will reduce stress for the two of you. One way of minimizing conflict is to accept that you have different working styles and then to develop an agreed routine. It may be helpful to use a facilitator to help to do this. Remember that bosses can be very touchy about such a process, seeing it as an implied criticism. Find an assertiveness programme or coach to help you get started.

Make Time For Planning

The new business year is already in full swing and there is a lot to achieve before summer comes. We all know that it’s all too easy to rush into every activity with a determination to get it done and then move onto the next one. However, take a pause for a moment and…

Make Time for Planning

Organisational life can make us very busy achieving not enough. We can’t work much faster, and it’s not always clear what working smarter means. Here are some quick tips to make sure all of your efforts actually pay off this year.

Allocate 10-20 minutes of planning time every day

Planning is an everyday job, not a twice yearly binge. This means thinking about the big picture every day. Ask these questions:
What are you aiming for?
Where are you getting results?
What is going on around you that might have a major impact (positive or negative)? And finally,What actions do you need to take and when?
Try not to spend more than 20 minutes on planning. If you do it every day this will be sufficient and you will continually move forward.

Every day do one thing to move you forward strategically. It might be a phone call or an e-mail. It may be a major conference or an important one to one meeting with one of your team. The point is not how long you spend on planning in any one day, but that every day you do something.

Plan your goals into your diary first

Part of your individual planning will produce action plans for how to deliver your goals, both personal and professional. Plan time as far ahead as possible in your diary to ensure that actions are completed.

Organisational planning can be done in this way too

Sometimes, you do have to get together with your team for marathon planning sessions. However, much organisational planning can be done in shorter daily, weekly or monthly bursts (perhaps via conference calls rather than through extended meetings). Keep most of your team and department planning processes as simple as possible. You will get better quality plans if they are put together transparently, so that everyone can see the big picture as early in the process as possible.

Keep plans in view

So many plans are made and then kept in a drawer or in an electronic file. If you want your team to follow the plan, have it on the wall and ask people to plot their progress. If you don’t want your personal plan on the wall for public view, set it to pop up on your screen every day.

Monday, March 19, 2007

How do you value Customer Service?

Ideas for creating clarity at work

As you face a New Year, it is probable that your organisation will be thinking about Customer Service in some way. Whatever your challenges with Customer Service Skills - launching, improving, changing, cost cutting, off-shoring – if you don't know what Customer Service Training is worth to the business, its near impossible to make the best response to the challenge. So…

How do you Value Customer Service?

As you may imagine, for a large service based organisation, valuing Customer Service Skills is a major challenge. If you are not financially minded, it can be a daunting prospect.

A practical approach to valuing Customer Service:

The first stage is to identify the importance of Customer Service to the business or business unit. It is usual to involve Marketing, Sales and Finance in this process, as well as the Customer Service team.

When estimating the importance of Customer Service there are 2 founding principles:

HATS Principle 1

Customer Service must have SOME value (i.e. it is not worth nothing). If Customer Service has no value, the organisation should not be providing it.

HATS Principle 2

It is unlikely that Customer Service represents the TOTAL value of the organisation. Every organisation has additional resource such as knowledge, process, or environment as part of its customer offer.

From these two principles, it is clear that Customer Service represents between 0 and 100% of the VALUE of the business.

These principles apply whether the organisation is public or private, large or small.

For many organisations, taking on board these two principles provides a major shift in thinking. So that if, for example, your contact centre is treated purely as a cost to the business, it is unlikely that the best investment decisions about its development will be made.

The next stage is to estimate, from the Customers Perspective , what is the VALUE of the Customer Service your organisation provides as a proportion of the total customer spend? Once again you will need to involve at least Sales and Marketing in the process as well as the Customer Service team. Remember that the VALUE of Customer Service may be unrelated to the COST.

At this point you will have to start segmenting your customer base. Some will value Customer Service much more than others. You may be able to segment your customer base by the products they buy, but where you offer a uniform product, for example, utilities or public sector services, you will need to use customer satisfaction surveys and market research to help you.

Is Management Development risky?

Developing your management team, from the front line through to the CEO is supposed to be essential for success. And indeed it is. I would find it hard to name a successful company employing more than 10 people where the leaders haven't had some kind of management training. And yet, such training can often go wrong. So .......

Reduce the risk of management development

Here are some of your key risks, all of which we have seen in the last 12 months in more than one organisation. Plus a few hints on how to mitigate the risk.

1. People receive management development but are not offered a management role

What happens - such people become de-motivated and possibly leave.

If people seek management roles and there aren't going to be any in the foreseeable future it is best to be honest. Management development is not an alternative to promotion, it is preparation for it. If someone seems unsuited for management, only the most sophisticated in depth programmes are likely to change that. If management is the only way to advance in your organisation, you may be losing your best people to roles they are ill suited for. This is a well known phenomenon in Sales, but actually happens in many functions.

TIP: Review development options, and aim to offer professional development where managerial options are not appropriate.

2. The management development programme is based on a completely different management style to the one currently operating in the organisation

What happens – the programme becomes discredited, and/or the trainees become discouraged and de- motivated when they cannot apply their new learning in practice.

If for example, your organisation runs on highly structured reporting lines, with closely defined areas of activity, a management programme that seeks to introduce cross functional working and networked structures will fail. To make such changes in management style is a major undertaking, where development programmes are just one piece of a much bigger programme.

TIP: Ensure that your management development programmes are aligned in style and structure to your organisational culture. It's not just the content. Ensure individuals delivering the programme take the time to really understand the context of the organisation.

3. Delegates attempts to introduce new ideas (for example SMART objectives) are interpreted by the workforce as a change to terms and conditions

What happens – in the worst case there has been industrial action.

All development happens in context. If the programme fails to acknowledge the culture and conditions of the workforce, there is a high risk that new learning could trigger problems. Flexible organisations aren't risk free either, there are always individuals who will resist the attempt of managers to introduce new ideas they perceive as less favourable .