Is Your Organization Prepared for the Future?

“Before companies can start to think about their succession plans, they have to understand their jobs.” – Sharlyn Lauby, President of ITM Group, Inc. For the past few weeks I’ve been focused on helping a client complete a People Review of their top talent and outline their succession plan. Each April they complete the People Review, evaluating their top talent on the areas of performance and potential, risk of leaving the organization, and mobility within the organization. In working through this process with them, I’ve discovered that for most of their key employees, they don’t have a good succession plan

Leaders Should Be Learners

Guest blog written by: Steve Graham The Commitment: Leaders set the tone for an organization.  They must be agile in their responses to the ever-changing marketplace and business climate.  Leaders are charged with growing organizations, and learning is a part of the growth process. Learning can take various shapes within an organization.  It can be organic, formalized, personalized, or on-demand.  Whatever the shape, learning needs to be part of a leader’s commitment to improve both personally and professionally.   One big lesson of learning is how to use failure.  The old saying, “Failure is not an option”, is not realistic.  Even

What are Company Values and How do you Create Them?

We’ve been spending some time here at The Point Blog highlighting some of our company values.  But what exactly do we mean by company values and how do you form them?  Many people, I believe, misinterpret what organizational values are and should be. This leads leaders to stay away from setting them, limiting their ability to drive organizational competitiveness through a common company language and culture. So, organizational values are:  Not moral in nature. They aren’t right or wrong in a universal sense.   They are however, right or wrong for your organization. They should be guiding principles that govern behavior.  They should

How to Move Your Goods to Greats

Our previous post, “Leaders, Focus on Moving Your Middle – Play Offense, Not Defense”, emphasized the importance of focusing on moving your middle majority to high performers. But how do you do that?  How do you get your good players, or your B players, to become A players? They all can’t be converted, but those who have usually have a leader that: 1. Sets high expectations.   This comes in the form of setting challenging goals and holding people accountable to them. 2. After high expectations are set, the leader then provides Assurance and Confidence.  This involves saying things like,  “I know we’ve

7 Steps to Implement a Realistic Job Preview

Last week  we discussed why it’s important to do a realistic job preview.   Well you might ask, how exactly do I do one? Companies. Internships and co-op programs are long-term realistic job previews. This set up can provide a company with an opportunity to screen candidates without a making a permanent hiring commitment, but it may take too long.   For tips on starting a job shadowing program, click here. In the absence of setting up an internship or co-op program, you can do a realistic job preview in a day or a week. The ultimate goal is to simulate the