Human Behavior

Training Is For Animals

Training is often seen as the answer to many organizational challenges.  Besides, it’s less expensive than hiring a consultant, right?  When you look strictly at the outlay of cash, training may be less expensive than many other alternatives.  However, when you consider the return on your investment, which should repay your cash outlay and lost productivity many times over, training is often money thrown into the furnace.

Most training is so poorly designed that it is clearly a waste of every dollar spent on it. 

Trainers have learned how to use PowerPoint slides.  They’ve learned how to use stories to make concepts stick.  Some trainers are even very good presenters. 

But, oh so often, trainers fail to make the link between the knowledge they share and the change in beliefs that has to happen in a participants mind that will, ultimately, change a the participant’s behavior.

Here’s the formula:  Knowledge that changes beliefs will change individual behavior.  Change enough individual behavior and you can change organizational performance.  And, since organizational performance determines organizational results, effective training should help an organization improve it’s results. 

When selecting a trainer, ask for references who will say that the training provided actually helped improve the organization’s results.

Next post:  Do you need training or consulting?

Average Effort Will Never Yield Great Results

Would you pay for the premium cable package each month and settle for access only to the basic channels?  Would you buy a new sports car, but agree to accept a used compact car in it’s place?  So, why do we settle for mediocre results in our companies?  As Jim Collins said, “Good is the enemy of great.”

• If your sales people understood the psychology of the sales process, could they sell more?  Could you sell more with fewer sales people?
• If your managers learned more effective leadership skills, could they lead more effectively?  Could managers manage more employees?
• If your senior leadership team viewed the organizational change process as a human behavior process and not a list of tasks to be accomplished, would your changes be implemented more fully and more quickly?  Could change become a normal part of your organization’s culture?
• If you dealt with the top 3 troubling people issues now, would productivity, morale, departmental performance and organizational results improve?
• If you understood that organizational structure, by its very existence creates dysfunction, would you stop creating new processes to fix the dysfunctional old processes?  Isn’t there a better way?
• If you acknowledged that the management model we are all using is more than 100 years old, would you consider some management innovation concepts to reduce costs and build competitive advantage? 

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re already so busy.  “How can I find the time to address these challenging issues?”  The problem is that if you don’t do anything, you’ll continue to get the results you’ve gotten in the past.

However, if you’re committed to addressing these issues, find experts and resources with the advanced skills and experience to help you with these issues.  If done right, the cost of getting the expertise will be offset many times over by the on-going organizational and financial benefits.  In fact, if you ask us to help, we guarantee your results.

All of our free blog articles are posted here in 12 categories.  Our Web site with testimonials from clients in a variety of industries is here.  Finally, for a free, no-obligation consultation with our Founder and President, Jim Connolly, contact Jim here.

To your success!

Organizational Change - An Everyday Occurrence

If you thought all the talk about “organizational change” was a fad that would pass by like many of the other tired fads (quality circles, ropes courses, personal coaches, managing up, etc.), the “Great Recession” has changed that.

I just got off the phone with yet another CEO who wondered out loud when the pace of constant change brought about by the “Great Recession” was going to end.  I told him what I tell all of my clients.  Organizational change will be a constant presence and to pretend any differently will negatively affect employee performance and organizational results. 

We, and our employees, all want the merry-go-round to stop so we could get off and rest.  But it’s not going to stop.  At least not for a while (until we get near the peak of the next economic expansion).  So how do we cope?

Three Organizational Strategies

1. Treat the organizational change process as a human behavior process, not an organizational structure project.  These are people, not boxes and lines on a chart.
2. Set the expectation that your leaders will guide their people through the process instead of telling them to “sink or swim.”  You need those who can swim to step up.
3. Find a way to embrace on-going organizational change as a key component in your company culture.  Make change normal.

If you do these things, employees will perform, leaders will lead at a higher level and the organization will deliver improved results.  In doing so, you’ll build proactive competitive advantage that can’t be matched by sale prices, staff cuts, search engine optimization or the status quo.

For more insights on building organizational performance and breakthrough results, check out our other blog resources at www.orgresults.net/newsblog.  To find out how we have delivered results for organizations like yours, visit www.orgresults.net or contact our Founder and President, Jim Connolly here or call him at (309) 828-9060.

Employee Performance Drives Organizational Results - A Reminder

A group of Fortune 500 managers was beginning several days of training together. 

“As we go around the room,” said the facilitator, “tell us how doing your job well increases the profits of your company.” 

There were 25 managers in the room.  Only five could make a credible connection between their jobs and the profits of the business. 

Had they been a jazz group as poorly organized, it would have sounded liike the first day of fourth-grade band.

What Do You Do After You Cut Costs? Two Things!

After one or two or three rounds of cutting costs, now what do you do?

Cutting costs as a method to achieving profitability rarely works, but this is especially true in the current recession.  The falloff in September 2008 was so precipitous that there was no way for companies to “trim the fat” in order to be profitable.  

Several companies I’ve worked with on organizational restructuring efforts over the past 15 months lost 30%, 40% and 50% of their revenues. In the most extreme case, one company that asked me to help them ended up losing 68% of their revenues.

There is no way to cut enough costs to make a company profitable in these circumstances.  So, what do you do?  The only option is to reinvent the company.  

It’s about taking a leadership team through a 5 month strategic planning process in 5 days.  In essence, it’s about asking “based on these new realities, what are the market opportunities that we are uniquely qualified (compared to our competitors) to take advantage of?” This process is hard to do while the ship is still on fire and sinking.

What’s the secret to successfully navigating these treacherous seas?  It’s two things. Use an effective planning tool that bubbles the best opportunities to the top quickly. And, it’s about understanding how humans behave in high stress situations and still being able to capture their attention and creativity while they are in shock and bailing water.

Sure, it’s easier said then done, so proceed with caution.  But, it’s often the only way to restore an organization to profitability when cost cutting isn’t enough.

While Every Person Is Unique, Human Behavior Is Predictable

As an organizational behavior consultant, I view every business challenge as a combination of organizational issues (policies, organization structure, processes, etc.) and human behavior issues (predictable patterns of human behavior that influence our actions and reactions).  Today, I want to dig deeper on the human behavior side of this equation.

Human Behavior Is Predictable

From the start, some argue that, because each person is unique, human behavior cannot be predictable.  However, beginning with the fight or flight instincts present from early human existence, there are many such predictable behavior patterns evident today.  If we understand these patterns and apply this expertise, it’s possible to improve employee performance and organizational results.  Today we’ll look at four predictable human behavior patterns.

Organizational Change

From the time we first hear about any significant change (organizational or personal), there are a series of predictable steps that each person hopefully progresses through until the time they fully embrace the change.  

For example, the boss announces “our company just bought another company.”  Our first reaction is to want to know all about it.  What happened and why?  Next we move on to the ME questions.  How will this impact me?  And so on through the process until we fully embrace the information and return to full productivity.

There are many applications for this model to help employees move through the process as effectively and productively as possible.  Check out my other articles on organizational change.

The Path to Peak Performance

The process from being brand new to a task (new job, promotion, new responsiblity) to becoming a peak performer is a very predictable process.  There are some roadblocks along the way that, when we know about them, can be overcome more quickly. 

Here’s an example of this process in action.  A new employee may appear almost giddy the first day on the job.  We call this the Enthusiastic Beginner.  Then comes a phase commonly called buyers remorse.  “Wow, there is so much to keep track of in this job. I don’t know if I can do this.”  The process continues through other steps until we get to the Peak Performer.  The Peak Performer does the job very well and is able and willing to train/mentor others. 

Again, there are many applications for this model to improve employee performance and organizational results.

Non-Verbal Behavior

Non-verbal human behavior is very predictable. 

I don’t mean the books that say if a person looks up and to the right they are lying.  That’s not science.  It’s garbage.  I mean, for example, that there are seven facial expressions that humans display unconsciously, sometimes only for a fraction of a second, before they hide them with the expression they want you to see.  So, by looking for patterns of consistency in expressions and body language, it’s possible to gather more information than the person shares verbally.

There are many applications for this expertise from job interviews to employee performance.

Communication Style

Finally, by getting to know a person briefly, it’s possible to predict, in a broad sense, how each person is likely to view the world.  In addition, it’s also possible to predict how a person will also react under stress and pressure.  For example, some people thrive under pressure; others shut down. 

These insights have many applications in business from selecting the right employees to helping them succeed so that they are contributing to improving the organizations results.

Application for Improving Organizational Performance

These four models of human behavior are predictable.  The challenge in each of them is that there is no guarantee that an employee will progress all the way through a model.  That’s why, in many cases,  we get less than desirable results such as:

• the employee becomes an average performer instead of a peak performer
• the person hired is not the best fit for the job and later quits or is fired
• the employee is resistant to change and, as a result, reduces productivity and progress
• the employee’s communication style causes them problems and reduces their effectiveness.

Human behavior is predictable.  If we approach business challenges with this mindset, then we can more effectively appply these models and to improve employee performance and organizational results in our organizations.