The Model Info Center

Succeeding in the modern business world depends on good people management skills. With a little effort you can learn and develop these techniques. Having a spontaneous affinity for getting along with people is an advantage, but there are a lot of skills you can learn to simplify the process.

Forging relationships: Addressing staff by name can be a good start. Speak to staff; get eye contact during a conversation. Show respect, in addition pay attention to the other person’s point of view, even if you disagree or have a different point of view. Paying attention to what employees have to say is one of the best people management skills in your arsenal. Be sure to welcome any contributions from your co-workers. Live up to your word: Keeping your word is really important. If your word is broken, it can damage trust, and nobody will offer you their best without trusting you. Each time you make a statement or make a promise, you are wasting your time unless you keep your promises. You will discover, if your people can’t depend on you, they won’t be available when it’s really important.

Feedback is essential: It’s a two-way street. People management skills mean being open to all feedback. Being accessible and receptive establishes that other people’s opinions are important to you, your thoughts will be valued in the same way. Encouraging conversation in addition boosts evolution of creative problem solving, ways of accomplishing the goals of the business, and develops the bonds of an excellent team. If team members have a voice, each member of staff takes ownership of the outcome of the project.

Communicating is the key: Good communication is fundamental to managing employees effectively. Keeping an open door policy, utilize good listening skills, keep an open mind, and give team members an equal voice. The team should be encouraged to communicate with one another as well as with you. The exchange of ideas is imperative in the creative process, and in speaking with each other, you can spot problems at an early stage, permitting corrective measures to be implemented to prevent further problems. Some time and effort will be essential, but the payoffs far outweigh the effort needed. By encouraging a good team dynamic and demonstrating good listening techniques, you can have the best in business success.

Talent management is crucial in order to achieve the best in your business success. With a little effort you can succeed in learning these skills. It can be an advantage to have a innate affinity for people, all the same there are a few things you can do to help the process. Build relationships: Start by remembering the names of the staff. Speak to employees; get eye contact during a conversation. Develop a respectful attitude, and be attentive to the other person’s point of view, even if you don’t agree or have another opinion. Listening to what employees say is one of the best people management skills you can develop. Be sure to welcome any input from team members. Live up to promises: Do not make promises you can not fulfill. If your word is not kept, it can ruin trust, and without trust your staff will not give you their best. When you make a statement or make a promise about something, make sure that you can follow through or it would be better not to give your word at all. The truth is, if you can’t be counted on, they can’t be trusted on to be committed if you truly need them.

Feedback is important: It’s a two way street. Keeping an open mind with regard to other people’s views is an important skill in effective talent management. If you are able to demonstrate that you are accessible and open, you establish that you appreciate other’s feedback, and they will appreciate yours. Encouraging conversation in addition encourages creative trouble-shooting, innovative methods of achieving goals, and strengthens the bonds of an excellent team. By allowing the staff some input, the project will become important to every employee.

Encourage all sorts of communication: Managing employees comes down to the same concept — good communication. Keeping an open door policy, listen attentively to other people’s opinions, be open minded, and permit all your staff to express their views. Inspire team members not just to communicate to you, but also with each other. The exchange of ideas is important in the creative process, and through listening to each other, it is easy to spot issues before they present as problems, and corrective measures can be implemented before matters get out of hand. Some time and effort is essential, nevertheless the payoff is worthwhile. By building the bonds of a good team and listening to your team’s ideas, a successful business can be achieved.

Still awaiting the birth of my baby (I am overdue), it is increasingly a challenge to go grocery shopping. Thank goodness I have wonderful friends and neighbors who offer to go for me.

This forces me to know EXACTLY what groceries I need for the upcoming week. I don’t want anyone to have to make repeat trips to the store so I’ve been honing my meal planning and grocery shopping skills as best I can.

What I’ve discovered is, I only have to cook 3 times a week, providing that I make enough quantity, for 6 weeknight dinners.

Once I realized that organized meal planning only required me to come up with 3 meal ideas, I now actually ENJOY trying new recipes and experimenting on the weekend. I never thought cooking could actually become fun!

Try it out! Sit down with a pen and paper on a Sunday afternoon or whenever works best for you and find pick 3 recipes for the upcoming week.

Look through each of the recipes and list ALL ingredients you may need and create your grocery list.

I really feel strongly about the importance of a well-planned grocery list to eliminate having to go to the store more than once a week. The lines, crowds, and pre-dinner stress can be a HUGE waste of time.

If you know how to use a computer, you can also use a grocery list program that is one of my favorites. It is easy to use and takes some of the “shlep” out of the chore. You can download it at http://www.best-organizing-products-superstore.com/aislebyaisle.html.

Rebekah Slatkin is a professional organizer dedicated to getting people organized through hands-on decluttering sessions, teleconferencing, coaching, and her website http://www.best-organizing-products-superstore.com.

Visit http://www.best-organizing-products-superstore.com and subscribe to Organewz, her ezine dedicated to organized living and get organizing tips and downloads- free.

Business relationships much like personal ones are built on impressions. These impressions spring forth from how one entity presents itself and is perceived by another. The world is built on these emotional structures which guide our judgments on how we interact and exchange thoughts, ideas as well as with whom we will share our commercial activity for mutual gain.

The business environment which surrounds us, therefore, depends upon kinship between companies with the goals of a shared success in mind. Each side of the partnership has a vested interest in cultivating a positive image to the other. This is for the purpose of gaining the attention and respect that could lead to a state of connectedness for the purpose of profit and company health on both sides.

One way to bring about a fruitful union on a corporate level would be the exercise of the sharing of interesting corporate gifts. Business relationships are as unique as the emotional bonding among individuals. You must, therefore, come to a determination if your commercial enterprises share a certain type of theme or posture to be reflected in the gifts to be proffered.

Do you share an artsy flair? If so, the interesting corporate gifts can extend its boundaries to the more bold and daring. The imagination may be expanded with the gifts to allow the creative energies to flow without ceasing. This would tell the other side that you wish to engage in a partnership from which new and exciting experiences could emerge for the betterment of all. The offering would, therefore, reflect this type of theme ranging from the surreal to the downright silly.

On the other hand, would more of an effort be needed to find and share gifts that would remind each side of the essential bottom line? The items transferred would display what must never be considered trivial or a distraction from the serious duty of profit. The offering must not veer one’s attention away from concentrating on the importance of company goals. Meeting these objectives must come before the luxury of non-essential pleasures can be considered.

There is also the happy medium of interesting corporate gifts that share a little of both extremes with the added flavoring of a custom theme between them. Is there, for instance, a mutual love between the two partners for the game of golf? or gourmet food? or gardening? or Italian food? or delectable chocolate? There are as many unifying ideas for giving as you can possibly imagine that would strike just the right chord intended.

The ways to express true appreciation toward the other business entity can be custom designed to fit perfectly after just a little thought and planning. Gifts granted should have the goal of fostering a deep and abiding respect that will be remembered down the road. Make the other side get the point that they are recognized and appreciated and will be for many years to come.

Brian is the owner of Gift Basket Paradise and invites you to consider his ideas for interesting corporate gifts at http://www.agiftbasketparadise.com/corporate.html

Recent news concerning IT industry strategic alliances increasingly trumpets the
word “unique” as in ‘unique alliance’ or ‘unique partnership’. Usually these unique
arrangements bring together a marketer (either a system integrator or a service
provider) with a solid footprint in a niche market and a technology developer or
manufacturer with an innovative or proprietary capability.

This type of alliance transfers to the marketer a unique technological edge. The
marketer’s objective in many such cases is to keep competitors at bay, grow market
share or create enough performance value to justify a higher price. For the
developer partner, aligning with the marketer provides a significantly extended
market reach that simply translates into the sale of an increased number of units as
well as a branding leap into greater market visibility.

This deal constitutes an excellent exchange of value for both partners. But as
business alliances are not forever, the true assessment of the deal’s value must be
evaluated over time. In its early days Microsoft supplied DOS in a partnership with
IBM’s original desktop PC. In time Microsoft’s OS took over the PC market supplying
all manufacturers. IBM was forced to back up out of the PC driveway, but it learned
the power of partnering brilliantly transforming its business model into the world’s
most prolific and successful IT services partnership network builder.

Acquiring a Unique Value Proposition

Of the many reasons for initiating a strategic alliance, the most highly-sought after
type is one that creates a “unique value proposition” (UVP) the three golden
words so enticing to venture investors throughout the world.

How do you get UVP if you don’t produce it?

A strategic alliance can transform nearly any traditional sales and distribution
enterprise into a uniquely positioned provider — all you need are customers! Have
you considered this? Transform your company instantly into an unstoppable
juggernaut simply by formulating a strategic alliance with one or more suppliers
who may add a unique piece to your package, program or end-to-end offerings.
Suddenly, your company acquires a UVP. More orders, greater equity value…before
you know it, investors come sniffing around.

What are they looking for?

They want to know what you’ll do for your next act.

Sure. That first alliance you just made was a successful move. It got attention. And
it’s working. But, don’t get too busy with that. Save some time for developing
additional alliance ideas. You need to look at your company’s future in terms of a
total, long-term strategic alliances plan.

Six key questions to formulating a long-term alliance road map

Use these six Partner M questions to develop your own alliance road map:

- What are my core competencies?

- What are my customer assets?

- How bad are the performance gaps as experienced by my customer/user?

- What are the innovative upgrades desired by my customer/user?

- How well are my competitors performing in areas where we are weak?

- Where do we perform better than our competitors?

Now answer this:

Can you locate and negotiate a deal with potential suppliers who can deliver to you
a unique product or service that:

(a) your company cannot duplicate more profitably with its core competence;

(b) will be highly valued by your customers;

(c) will fix a problem or enable you to offer customers an optional upgrade;

(d) will strengthen an area where you had been weak; or,

(e) will help insure that you can continue to outperform our competitors?

If your answer is yes to any one or more of these options, then you have the basis
for a strategy that would result in higher order volume, as well as a path to added
value and increased brand equity.

How do you validate that assumption?

Project the pros and cons of executing your alliance plan

Calculate a scenario assuming the amount of revenue you could generate and
profits you would achieve after you’ve found one such partner and have successfully
negotiated an alliance.

Be sure you have identified and adjusted your projection for any possible downside
and cost of implementing the partnership. Next, forecast where you’ll be in three
years without this alliance or a comparable strategy.

In addition you should assess the impact of your alliance on the competition with a
sober determination of how they may react. Here is where the value of establishing
a ‘unique alliance’ becomes so important. Paradoxically, your alliance’s UVP shelf life
must be viewed as both temporary and continuous. Any one alliance you enter is
temporary. Your strategy must be continuous.

How temporary is your alliance? If any of your competitors can match your
partnership with another and duplicate the contribution of your unique ally in fairly
short order, your UVP will not last long. You may need to move faster to extend your
UVP shelf life and begin to plan your next UVP partnership. Within this scenario you
would need to move faster on the alliance front or find yourself having to play deep
catch up if your competitor takes the initiative before you do.

Design an ongoing alliance strategy

To develop a continuous UVP plan extend your alliance road map by duplicating
your forecast calculations to include all potential alliances you foresee into the
future. How far can you go using this strategy? If possible, don’t stop until you’re
able to imagine this process reaching a global scale or an exit strategy. Finally, your
alliance plan must weigh alliance costs and risks against the benefits/costs/risks of
alternative strategies.

Whether your enterprise takes the role of a marketer or a supplier, you should
consider formulating a phased-in partnership plan containing a list of target partner
prospects, financial validations, a timeline and undertake a marketing initiative
aimed at shaping a receptive and synergistic relationship with partner executives
and operational teams. Executing the plan is your next challenge. Don’t hesitate to
seek help in developing your plan and making it happen.

Harvey Kraft is Managing Director of Partner | M — the leading California-
based marketing consultancy specializing in executive support for strategic
alliances and partnering initiatives. Mr. Kraft is a skilled partnerships
executive, author and speaker and creative marketing director with two
decades of senior level experience in the media, finance, publishing and
wellness sectors. Are you interested in building a successful partnering
strategy, a revenue producing alliance network, a value creating co-branding
campaign? For serious executive support with your partnership efforts from
marketing initiatives through innovation facilitation, please contact Harvey Kraft at
Partner | M.

A series of articles exploring the seven critical areas that can indicate a partnership is in trouble.

Conflict Becoming the Norm - Part 2

In a previous article, I wrote about how unresolved conflict can create havoc in your business and can often end in a failed partnership. Today, I share with you a story about a pair of clients I recently worked with.

Sue and Vicki were partners in a service organization that thrived on new membership and putting on events. Sue and Vicki had been coaching with me for over a year and had learned well how to keep things running smoothly running between them. Now they were stuck on an issue that they weren’t able to resolve on their own. They knew enough not to escalate it before their next coaching session.

Vicki had decided that one of Sue’s responsibilities had more appeal and status than some of her own. Sue enjoyed the task and was loathe to relinquish it. In our session when Vicki pressed, and because they had developed deep caring for each other, Sue was ready to say a reluctant yes.

Before allowing that to be the unsatisfying resolution, I asked Sue to explain what the task meant to her. She said that everything she did prior to that task was build up towards it and that completing the task was closure to a job well done.

Vicki had never looked at it that way. To her it appeared as an isolated task. It was a revelation and she had a different understanding, backing off of her request.

Sue looked relieved.

However, I wanted Vicki to feel satisfied as well, so I asked if any part of her responsibilities gave her that same feeling of fulfillment. She pondered for a few minutes and was able to affirm that a lot of what she did was that meaningful to her and she preferred to continue doing what she was doing.

What happened here? Conflict was averted early even before it became a festering resentment.

And Sue and Vicki got a bonus — they each achieved an appreciation and understanding not only of the other partner but of themselves and the work they did. Their self knowledge increased and their partnership bond deepened even more.

Here is an example of another conflict with a different resolution. The Home and Garden TV Show “Designing for the Sexes” is a brilliant example of resolving conflicts for a win-win with very little compromise. A designer goes in when a couple has two opposing views on how they want one of their rooms to look.

A recent episode was about a husband who did the cooking and wanted his kitchen to look like a restaurant, industrial and stainless steel throughout. His wife wanted a traditional old world look. You couldn’t be farther apart than that.

I always appreciate how the couples (probably coached) never argue for their point of view, but always in a reasonable matter of fact voice state what they want or what they like or don’t about a suggested item.

The outcome is always a beautiful room with very little compromise. What I have observed is the designer is able to incorporate each person’s wants within other options that they hadn’t even thought about.

In this episode, sleek wood panels on the cabinets and refrigerator, stainless steel appliances, granite counter with tiles used as accents created a look that thrilled and pleased both people.

Lesson to be learned: your way is not the only way. If you open your mind and keep your emotions in check you could discover many other and perhaps even more pleasing ideas than the one you think you must have.

About The Author

Dorene Lehavi, Ph.D. is principal of Next Level Business and Professional Coaching. She coaches Professionals and Business Partners and teaches teleclasses on techniques to break through barriers to the next level. Dr. Lehavi offers a complimentary coaching session so you can experience how coaching can work for you. Contact Dr. Lehavi at Dorene@CoachingforYourNextLevel.com or on the web at Http://www.CoachingforYourNextLevel.com. Subscribe to Mastering Your Next Level monthly e-newsletter at http://www.coachingforyournextlevel.com/newsletter.html

dorene@nextlevelpartnership.com

IBM, which registered 3248 patents last year, has decided that sharing technology can sometimes be more profitable than jealously guarding its property rights on patents, copyrights and trade secrets (Herald Tribune, April 11 2005).

International Business Machines have come to the above conclusion 205 years after the invention of electric light - thus clearly illustrating that even the 19th largest company in the world (fortune.com) with a market capitalization on $141 billion (nasdaq.com) is still only learning about creativity and innovation.

Of course the issue of control is important but a quick history lesson indicates that the above should not have taken so long!

The first electric light was made in England by Davy, in 1860 Swan attempted to devise a long lasting light using carbon paper, in 1877 Brush lit up Cleveland Ohio and in 1879 Edison began work on a practical light bulb that would eventually glow for 1500 hours.

Recently, Linux - open source software developed through collaboration on the Internet - has grown to the extent that it is closing in on Microsoft’s market share (news.com).

The above two examples indicate a number of factors about creativity and innovation that IBM should have learned a long time ago, some of which include:

a) Creativity (problem identification and idea generation) and innovation (idea selection, development and commercialisation) can take years and use huge resources - collaboration, networks and shared tacit knowledge rapidly reduce investment and rapidly increase speed to commercialisation.

b) Radical changes result from incremental improvement.

c) Radical shifts require the input of new knowledge.

d) New knowledge and incremental improvements result from eliciting tacit knowledge from a broad knowledge base.

e) New knowledge and incremental improvements result from eliciting ideas from a number of sources, a number of diverse sources and a number of novel sources - by utilising networks.

f) New knowledge and incremental improvements result from eliciting ideas from a number of sources, a number of diverse sources and a number of novel sources - through collaboration.

In conclusion, the probability of producing world changing innovation in-house is low. The knowledge pool is simply too shallow. And that can be said without considering motivation, group structures etc etc etc.

This topic is covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http://www.managing-creativity.com. You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

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You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.

Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached on http://www.managing-creativity.com.

Does this happen in your organization? A request comes through to the training department to roll out a course on the new invoicing system. Course designers and trainers then spend considerable effort in putting together and delivering a training program that they think meets the needs of managers and employees. Employees attend and at the conclusion of the program are all fired up about putting the new skills into use. The trainers regard the program as a great success. However, a few weeks later the Training Manager receives a call from a disgruntled supervisor complaining that the training was a waste of time and money. It seems that beyond the initial enthusiasm, the training participants had quickly lapsed back into the old ways of doing things. What went wrong?

If your organization is struggling to see the skills learned during training transferred to actual application in the participant’s job, here are ten pointers to help you figure out why. Think here about your last course in which the training was not transferred successfully.

* Did instructional designers, trainers and line managers work together in partnership or was work on the program done in isolation with little collaboration?

* Were non-training solutions seriously considered or was a training request received and an off-the-shelf solution delivered?

* Were training outcomes stated in behavior and performance terms or were outcomes unstated or stated in fuzzy terms?

* Were training objectives tied to stated organizational objectives or were they left floating in the organizational ether?

* Were managers and supervisors actively involved before, during and after the program or was the program divorced from the employee’s day to day work?

* Was post-training support provided back in the workplace, such as coaching and on-the-job aids, or were employees left to flounder with no opportunity to practice?

* Were new procedures and role expectations clearly communicated to employees or were they left wondering why they were nominated for the program?

* Were workplace performance expectations agreed with employees prior to the training, or was it back to “business as usual”?

* Was the training integrated with a well thought-out and implemented change or improvement program, or was the training a single point “silver bullet” solution?

* Did you measure the organizational impact of the program or rely solely on “happy sheets” for feedback?

How did your last training program measure up? From your answers, draw up an action plan that you can implement for your next program. Remember, the responsibility for transferring training to the workplace is not the sole responsibility of the trainer. It is also neither the sole responsibility of the training participant nor their manager or supervisor. It is a shared responsibility between all three parties acting in partnership. Only with all three roles collaborating to ensure that skills are transferred to the workplace will training participants change their behavior back on the job and the organization reap the benefits of training.

2006 © Business Performance Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

Vicki Heath is the Director of Business Performance Pty Ltd, a company providing practical online information and resources in a range of business areas, including training and development. Her company’s guides, tools and templates assist organizations engage and develop people, manage organizational change and improve project delivery.

Available resources include a training effectiveness guide and training template packs. Investigate these and other useful resources and download the free Session Plan Template at http://www.businessperform.com.

It is important to mention that it is the size of the organization matters more than for-profit or non-profit status in determining the objectives, steps and activities in the Strategic Planning process. Small non-profit and for-profit organizations have a similar manner of conducting business and planning activities that are different from larger non-profit and for-profit organizations.
However, there are certain characteristic distinctions between non-profit and for-profit organizations in relation to focus of the planning activities. Unlike for-profits, which tend to focus primarily on profit-maximizing activities, the non-profit organizations generally are more focused on matters of board development, fundraising and volunteer management. Hence, Non-Profit Strategic Planning concerns keeping in mind the interests of the board, its development and the well-being of its units. It is also aimed at laying stress on raising funds, while the other aspects of planning take a backseat.
New non-profit organizations need to take down strategic plans on paper and create a formal plan, including all the number of considerations a starter non-profit organization needs to take care of.
In case of old or pre-existing non-profit organizations, Strategic Planning requires preparing a long-term map delineating the sequence of activities over several years, from where one is today to where one aims to be in the future. Usually, a period of 3 to 5 years is covered by a strategic plan. The following are to be presented in the plan:
•Mission statement of organization, stating the reason for its inception and activities.
•Vision statement throwing light on what the organization is hoping to become.
•Values to be adhered to by the organization in the conduct of its activities.
•Assessment and description of the needs to be fulfilled by the non-profit organization.
•The organization’s immediate goals.
•An assessment of the organization’s present status.
•Strategies adopted to meet the goals and objectives.

Non-Profit Strategic Planning provides detailed information on strategic planning , non-profit strategic planning, strategic business planning, strategic media planning and more. Non-Profit Strategic Planning is affiliated with Strategy Games.

“Your first reaction is you try to find an explanation. Finally, we don’t find one, so you turn the page and look to the next day.” -Johan Bruyneel

Bruyneel’s remarks were made following Stage 9 of this year’s Tour de France when Lance Armstrong’s Team Discovery Channel inexplicably vanished, leaving their leader to fend for himself. It was a shocking occurrence for those who follow the Tour and raised questions about Armstrong’s ability to win the race for an unprecedented seventh time. That’s because the Tour can’t be won by an individual riding aloneit can only be won though the efforts of an extraordinary team. Team Discovery Channel was thought to be that extraordinary team and was considered nearly invincible. Interviewed after the Stage, Armstrong left no doubt that the meltdown would be the topic of serious discussion that evening. He was looking for an explanation.

Bruyneel, however, is rightsometimes there is no explanation when things go wrong. That’s difficult for most of us to take. We live in a world with round-the clock cable news and talk radio, we have access to literally hundreds of TV channels that cover a vast realm of topics and, of course, we have that 800 pound information gorilla at our finger tipsthe internet. In fact, it’s so easy to get information that we’ve invented a phrase to describe it: when we need a question answered, we simply, “Google it.” But there are times when even Google can’t figure it out. There are times when there is no explanation.

It’s important that leaders accept that not knowing might be the most they’ll ever know about a situation. And it’s doubly important that when they realize that there’s no explanation, they move on. If they don’t, the consequences can be severe.

Revisiting past failures and obsessing over what went wrong can devastate an otherwise effective team for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s distracting. Instead of focusing on where they want to go, the team looks back to where they’ve been. Unfortunately, while they’re looking back, the competition is moving ahead. Getting stuck in the past also saps confidence. One of the chief reasons people hate failure is that it makes them feel so lousy. Constantly reliving mistakes is depressing and, in the end, limits your chances of future success. Of course we want to learn from our mistakes, but if the answers aren’t apparent, and time’s an issue, it might be best to just press on. Keep your antenna raised for problems, but don’t sacrifice your forward momentum.

Team Discovery Channel took Bruyneel’s advice. Instead of succumbing to second guessing and letting themselves get down, they approached Stage 10 as champions. They rallied for that Stage and performed fabulously in the following days. They didn’t let an anomaly cost them their advantage. They didn’t let one poor performance characterize their entire performance. They moved on.

About the Author:

George Ebert is the President of Trinity River Seminars and Consulting, a firm specializing in the custom design and delivery of team building, personal growth and ethical development programs. Mr. Ebert is a highly sought after speaker, educator, and consultant with over thirty years experience in both the public and private sectors. He has presented widely throughout the Unites States. George is the author of the management cult classic, “Climbing From the Fifth Station: A guide to building teams that work!”