Lower performance in January should not become the norm. Many people experience a slump in morale, motivation and subsequent productivity in January. This is a factor of the effects of a Christmas break, poor weather and just ‘getting going’ after the December excesses. Economists have suggested that the trading year is really only 11 months long because of the holiday season in August and December. We need to ensure that January is not added into an ever-increasing period of sloth and low productivity by ensuring that the workforce is fit, healthy and well. Even a small investment in health & wellbeing activity at a corporate level will have a dramatic and measureable impact on the performance of your workforce.

Make the most of the Budget cycle. For many organisations, this may be the final quarter of the budget cycle and with reductions in revenues and the need to drive greater budgetary accountability, now is the time to be thinking about how to measure the impact of the budget you hold and manage. Focus less on how to create budgetary ‘padding’ and create key measures of impact – it may just be the difference between success and failure for you this year.

Become more alive to the real world. There is no doubt that the external world appears to be getting tougher. Whether this is a product of media scare mongering or a reflection of some real seismic changes, everyone needs to be more commercially aware this year. Some simple precautions can help avoid a meltdown: Make your customer service appreciably better than the competition – even retailers have started to see that good products and great customer service make a difference on the bottom line of a business; Build a more flexible workforce – Hay Consultants report that employee satisfaction is likely to be less positive this year, but with less option to move externally, so the need to create flexible structures and increased opportunity needs to be part of any Talent Management or business strategy.

Change Management is back…!  It’s debatable whether it went away, but the need for commercial awareness and the flexibility and innovative approaches needed to grow revenues in a tough climate means people need to be more personally resilient in order to make the need for constant change possible to realise. Developing emotional intelligence and mental toughness allied to improved health and wellbeing work together to create optimum performance in people. Popularised in books such as the “corporate Athlete’ we all need to be more comfortable with and in ourselves to ensure that we can welcome, accept and optimise the need for change.

Re-engage with relationships. The drive towards new technologies, social media and marketing has created workplaces where people often spend insufficient time building and optimising relationships.  Most technology pundits agree that there is little new and exciting technology to buy in the short term before CES, so why not resist the urge to buy anything new and spend time getting to know co-workers and team members. Instead of sending an email to the person sitting in the next office, go and speak to them.  After all, with all the great new technology set to launch later this year, it may be your only chance….!

Focus on Value. A popular saying goes thus: “they know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing”.  With tightening budgets and the need for ‘more from less’, we need to ensure we have systems and processes in place to avoid cutting things which are easy to measure in terms of cost but which may deliver real value. Examples of excellent training and marketing initiatives being axed are starting to appear because the only measurable was the financial cost rather than a real appreciation of the value. This focus on the ‘wrong kpi’ can cost you the future of your company.

Needless to say, Continuum have solutions for all of the suggestions above – feel free to contact us for more information……?

Recording of recent podcast:

The concept of the flawed genius, the Maverick or the ‘prima donna’ is recognisable on the football pitch, in the recording studio and through myriad TV detectives. This talent should also be recognisable in every organisation. The people who constantly challenge the status quo and bend the ‘rules’ to the limit are often the ones that make the biggest leaps forward.

Also present – somewhat more in the background – is the manager of that talent. This is the leader who directs the talent, and liberates their potential to create outstanding results.

So what are the leadership skills required to do successful talent management training?

Well, firstly Mavericks need to be identified and engaged inside the organisation. Most organisations are far too conservative in this area and in actual fact let little or no challenge through the front door (despite believing that they do!)

Working day-to-day, other attributes for leading Mavericks include: a great deal of patience; an ability to focus on the big picture, and the emotional intelligence not to react to the inevitable abuse and accusations. Often there is collateral damage to clear up too. Also, at a deeper level of leadership skills is an in-depth understanding of human assets and how to grow and exploit human capital. Getting this right can lead to outstanding results.

The biggest judgement calls within Talent Management can be around trust. Star performers are rarely short on self-belief. So how much freedom needs to be provided to achieve the highest performance – and how is that freedom balanced against managing risk?

What if getting the highest performance from Mavericks involves challenging invested-in processes, personal beliefs, or even the organisational values that drive ‘the way things are done around here’

In effective Talent Management for Mavericks, the leader sets the environment for performance and therefore the levels of trust given. This means clearly demarcating boundaries and the extent of boundary-pushing allowed.

There must be boundaries established that cannot be crossed. If they are crossed there must be major consequences for the individual. These consequences must be clear, unequivocal and must be followed through if the boundaries are crossed. The big question is – where are those boundaries set?

In an age where lack of innovation is the biggest risk to an organisation’s existence, harnessing the potential of the Mavericks is more important than ever.

• Ensure that the organisation has sight of initial coaching goals and contracts
• The organisation should set specific goals and targets for the coaching relationship
• There should be some establishment of a ‘basepoint’ against which to measure progress made
• There should be a set of reporting processes agreed in advance so each of the parties (coach,coachee and organisation) can have sight of progress
• There should be clear ‘rules of engagement’ around the issue of confidentiality
• The coaching itself should be focussed on internal implementation rather than personal development to ensure deliverables can be created
• Coaching should be integrated with other development processes (especially training courses) to ensure practical application and to create an overall framework for ongoing evaluation
• ‘Coachees’ should be encouraged to measure the financial impact of the interventions they create

With just a little forethought,a successful coaching programme will deliver value,but will also be SEEN to deliver value through tangible outcomes.

And perhaps,it’s not? Plenty of people point to more valuable assets including Brand,Physical Assets,Cash etc as however,in most modern organisations,most opportunity and risk really resides in the ‘Human Capital’ of the business.

There is a school of thought which subscribes to the notion that the ‘right’ people are our greatest assets –the difficulty with this is that the concept of ‘rightness’ needs to be defined and that is not always politically correct or acceptable.

In effect,being ‘right’ is a combination of high productivity,high effectiveness,high potential and present and future relevancy for the organisation –this is a challenge both for employees and organisations themselves.

The issue for people is that it places a responsibility for them to maintain relevancy in terms of capability and effectiveness. It may free them to be much more employable and commercially ‘attractive’,but may also create the need for personal career planning and ‘effort’ and some people simply like to place their careers in the hands of their current organisation while they choose to simply live their day to day lives.

The issue for the organisation is that it assumes that it can think and plan forward for the types of people and effectiveness it will need. Some organisations who simply have a number/target which defines their mission and purpose will find this difficult. Larger and,possibly,more thoughtful organisations will need to be prepared to see their precious Engagement scores drop in the face of employees who become more purposeful and demanding of the organisation in helping them achieve their personal objectives. Another issue may well be the lack of sensible development required to help the organisation create the cultures and leadership/management styles required to create the level of dialogue needed to create the ‘right’ people.

The HR department may also be a block to the achievement of the goal of ‘rightness’ creation as they are often focussed more on their own purpose (arguably,risk prevention) and legitimacy (deciding whether they add value to the enterprise) to create a more ‘adult’ dialogue and introduce the concept of ‘rightness’.

Oddly, unions may well feel that their members would benefit from these approaches if they can get past the language used (‘rightness’ etc) which is too much the preserve of academics and consultants at the moment.

So –a dilemma presents itself….the rhetoric is achievable,but only with some real change. The change must start at the top of the organisation –possibly the most tricky place of all where the pressure to deliver short term results gets in the way of the conversations and focus necessary to think differently and deliver the rhetoric. Ironically,the Board or Exec Management team (those who trumpet the loudest) may be the least ‘right’ for the organisation.

Maybe the debate needs to move away from the Human Capital arena and into the world of accounting. Much of the recent HCM research is (being polite) woolly and worthy and usually misses the real issues. Adding people to the bottom line of the business would focus the minds and work we have carried out with a range of VC’s and Private Equity firms who can value talent would become more common place.

If you have a solution or an opinion,feel free to add it to the mix…!!

A whole industry flourished in the training world around outward bound training,team events,treasure hunts and conferencing to name but a few ‘teamy’ activities.
So what happened…? Why are managers and leaders so relentlessly and single-mindedly focused on individual development,arguably at the expense of teams…??

I believe the fault lies in the definition of a team. The idea that a team is ‘a collection of individuals in pursuit of a common goal’ creates a low performance expectation and is the root of why teams seem to fail to deliver returns –never mind the current plethora of fads around individual assessment and development…!

I have always preferred some of the John Adair concepts (call me old fashioned..!) around synergy –the idea that the definition of a team is when the outputs are greater than the total of the inputs –in other words,the team creates increased value in some way to the individual efforts and outputs of a group of individuals.

This creates an opportunity as well as an problem for managers and leaders –at one level,they must think pragmatically whether they run a team,or just a group. Also,they need to figure out how they can create synergy –in addition,given they are part of the team themselves,they also have to consider how they add value to the team themselves (rather than the team adding value to them).

I wonder how many managers see team working as much more than the building of a sociable working climate with a bit of shared good practice thrown in,concentrating far more on the down sides of personality clashes,jealousy,rivalry and bitching which can characterise an ineffective team (or even a group).

Many managers spout the team mantra but really have no more than a group of people only bound together by being a report to the same person or a shared input to a section of a P+L.

Perhaps it’s time for good leaders and managers to recapture the team ethos and really develop a modern idea of synergy –really begin to exploit the performance gains they can bring and begin the measure the outcomes –after all,if you wan to avoid cuts,why not seize the initiative and demonstrate some synergistic value?