In the past few days I’ve had so much fun filming stuff for my videoblog.
The weather has been perfect for outdoor filming and I’m taking the opportunity to record some information I’ve wanted to share for some time. But it’s also an opportunity for me to refresh the graphics and the whole look of the videoblog. Make it more dynamic and not forgetting informative

So watch out for the new uploads in the next few weeks…new information…new angles on business news and…
I just can’t wait as the excitement’s only just begun

Rehearsal time

I’ve had a number of meeting where team managers have suggested an “away day” as part of a team building strategy.

When asked “What’s the objective” I’ve sometimes been told “So that they’ll be motivated”
Further discussion around the outcomes can sometimes generate a confused response from the manager.
On one occasion I was told “I don’t know what outcomes but I want them motivated”

I was tempted to ask “Motivated to leave?” but persevered to a conclusion which resulted in the team’s manager attending one of my 1:1 strategy planning seminars. The result was even more positive than the team attending an awayday.
The lesson is to focus on the who as well as the outcome when planning team development.

I had a facinating discussion yesterday with a business friend on my observation that “Business teams are working hard at staying still”.

Teams standing still to survive
I suggested to him that, in the current economic climate, a majority of business teams had stopped evolving and developing new ideas. It seems that many businesses are afraid of the future and of spending money that may be needed for some unsepecified reason. The result is that teams have stopped evolving new ideas, improvements in process and new projects. They are standing still in the hope of surviving.

The problem is that doing nothing is NOT a survival strategy. Let me give the example that I gave my friend. The fewest number of business bankruptcies within the EU seems to be in Greece, Portugal and Spain. Countries where innovation and development and new business is at an all time low. The reason is that few businesses are being opened, fewer initiatives being created and a stagnation in entrepreneurial activity.

In Sweden and Norway, on the other hand, business failure is as high as ever…but then the number of businesses being opened and business success is also high. The proportion of success, however, vastly outsrips the failures. In the Uk the business teams that I’m working with have an energy that is developing new ideas, bringing in greater results and profits.

Formula for acceleration
It strikes me that the formula for mass and acceleration is applicable here: That being F=mA (F=Mass X acceleartion called a newton).
Replace F(Mass) For T (Team) and multiply it with ideas, innovation and experimentation and you can only end up with acceleration

I was interested to listen to BBCs Bottom Line last night to hear the discussion on how CEOs weaknesses

One answer given to “What are your weaknesses?” replied that “understanding weaknesses were really strengths”…much laughter.
However the statement is so true. In my work I’ve met a few CEO’s who suffer from an excess of ego and self-confidence and find it difficult to admit to weaknesses. This reduces effectiveness and encourages those around the CEO to fail to challenge thinking. Having one’s thinking challenged is always healthy and being aware that not being able to answer a question posed by an employee doesn’t mean I’m stupid!

Interestingly I was surprised that none of the people on Evan Davis’ panel (John Molton, Deborah Meeton and David Haynes) admitted to having a mentor of coach and yet they all agreed that a mentor can bring a person “Back to earth”. They also agreed that a mentoring programme should tell you what you “shouldn’t be doing” as well as what you should. It’s certainly part of the Assimilating-Talent mentoring programme.

One of the final lines was “I go to the right people (for advice)”.
I think that’s essential if you are to get a quality mentor.
So perhaps the panel DO have mentors…It’s just that their EGO insists on calling them something else

Stephen Harvard Davis

I was interested to read that the future of the government’s Work Programme “hangs in the balance” as research has revealed that 90 per cent of contracted Work Programme providers will miss their targets to get people back into work.

“The future of this vital employment scheme hangs in the balance,” said Ian Mulheirn, Director of the SMF.  “The programme aims to get some of the hardest to reach people off benefits and into work, but past performance shows that providers will be unable to meet the criteria required of them by the DWP”. As reported in Management Today

The statistic raises a number of questions:

• Were the targets too high?
• Were the providers promising too much in their application for the contract?
• Were the providers competent?
• Is the economic downturn so deep that it makes delivery impossible?
• Are employers just not employing?
  

No doubt the answers, arguments and “justification” will depend upon being in Government, Providers or DWP.
 
Perhaps they’ll all blame the unemployed!

Technorati Tags: employment, Ian Mulheirn, Management Today, work programme, unemployed, job, job serch

The
future of the government’s Work Programme “hangs in the balance” as
research has revealed that 90 per cent of contracted Work Programme providers will miss their
targets to get people back into work.

“The
future of this vital employment scheme hangs in the balance,” said Ian
Mulheirn, Director of the SMF.  “The programme aims to get some of the
hardest to reach people off benefits and into work, but past performance
shows that providers will be unable to meet the criteria required of
them by the DWP. As reported in Management Today

The statistic raises a number of questions:

• Were the targets too high?
• Were the providers promising too much when they applied for the contract?
• Were the providers competent?
• Is the economic downturn so deep that the job situation makes delivery impossible?
• Are employers just not employing
  

I’ve no doubt that the answers, arguments and “justification” will depend upon being in Government, Providers.
 
Perhaps they’ll all blame the unemployed!

I love working with new sales teams. In particular I enjoy planning how to to restructure a sales team to maximise sales.

Pertinent questions
Recently I was talking to a Sales Director that was concerned because his sales team, as a whole, wasn’t meeting target. Some of the team met their individual targets easily and exceeded them, others were average and some below average. The Sales Director was continually asking “Were the targets too high, Was the sales team capable of meeting the required results? or was the economy to blame?”. All very pertinent questions but ones that didn’t deliver the answers he was looking for.

Focussing on stars and passengers
In my experience a major reason why Sales Directors have problems with targets is because their focus is often confused by the stars and the passengers in their team (Stars are probably producing all they can and passengers simply reduce the good effect of the stars!).

Instead I persuaded him to focus on the group of people who are making “average Sales” and just below, which tends to be the larger number of people in any team. If this group could raise their sales by just 5% – 10% the effect can be to massively increase sales.
Action plan in the making!

email me: stephen@assimilating-talent if you would like a SKYPE call to discuss your sales team issues.

One of my best friends popped in for dinner last night. Over drinks we talked about how his business was managing with the financial downturn. Increases in unemployment, London riots and business difficulties were all discussed but I was delighted when he told me that his business was “Doing better than expected”. I heard about the new business plan that I expect will generate a healthy growth for the next year.

“What keeps me awake at night”
He’s managed to avoid laying people off work and whilst he wasn’t hiring people he was intending to restructure his team. The thing that was keeping him awake at night was that the restructure might cause some of his good people to leave. “I know jobs are hard to find right now but good people are still able to move quite easily” he explained.

5 Point Plan solution
After discussing much of the content of an article I wrote some months ago HERE for IQPC we talked about strategies for retaining his good people. In the end we settled on a five point plan. It would be specific to detail in this blog post but if you’d like to hear how we arrived at the solution then email me at stephen@assimilating-talent.com and we can arrange a SKYPE call and I can fill you in. 

Yesterday I blogged on Simon Swan’s article in the latest edition of Management Today and got quite a reaction. A whole load of people, shocked at the costs to their business, contacted me with questions and to discuss team restructures. They ranged from large businesses with a number of teams to a small company of four considering expanding to a team of just five people.

Not so boring stats
All of them were shocked to hear the answers to the “INfrequently asked questions”.
that business never asks*:

• What percentage of new hires fail within two years of appointment?
  A: 40%
• What % or restructured teams fail to meet objectives?
  A: 42%
• What % of projects are completed to time, budget and specification?
  A: 28%

But it doesn’t have to be like this and I talked through my callers an eighteen minute SKYPE call when I explained how to reduce the risks of new hire and team failure…easily.
They’ve urged me to offer the same eighteen minutes to my SKYPE contacts (stephenharvarddavis) and I thought I would offer this to my blog readers and at no charge.

If you want to take me up on this then email me at Stephen@assimilating-talent.com so that we can arrange a mutually convenient time for a SKYPE call.
For the moment I’m restricting this to the first ten respondents and during the next seven days so don’t let time pass if you want to take me up on the offer

* Stats from various sources including Fortune Magazine and HBR

Some weeks ago I was speaking to a group of Directors about to undertake interviews for a senior sales position within their business. They had collected a great list of candidates to interview.

Don’t lose the ideal candidate to the competition
After reviewing the characteristics of the ideal candidate they were looking for, the competencies that were needed to meet the job and the results expected I asked, “And what questions do you expect to be asked by the candidates and how have you planned to respond”.

I was met with a stony silence. The interviewers considered that they were in a prime position as having a job to offer with jobs being so difficult to find. That was until I observed that they might be upset if they found the ideal candidate, who then chose to join their competitor’s business because they did a better job at “selling” the attractions of working for their firm, it’s career path, benefits and culture to their ideal candidate.

To help I shared the video on the questions a candidate should ask the interviewer that we made a few month ago and it’s shared here. There followed a review of the information being given to the candidates to make the company more attractive to the “ideal candidate” they hoped to attract to them.

“This firm sounded much more attractive”
Yesterday, I heard that their ideal candidate had confessed to his new boss that he had been interviewed by their competitor and had been offered a similar job. The reason for not taking the competitor’s offer was “because this firm sounded so much more attractive to work for”.

Questions you should ask the interviewer