StrategyDriven Enterprises Launches an Online Corrective Action Program Forum

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StrategyDriven Enterprises launched an online corrective action program forum; providing leaders access to decades of first-hand experience in programmatically resolving their organization’s most pressing issues.
 
StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program ForumStrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC announced the launch of an online Corrective Action Program Forum; providing innovative thought leadership and collaboration opportunities to help executives and managers programmatically drive the resolution of their business issues.

Corrective action programs encompass the identification, reporting, evaluation, resolution, and trending of an organization’s issues and work requests. Effective program execution ensures timely resolution of a business’s most pressing issues while fostering a high level of individual and organizational accountability.

“For a business to remain competitive, its leaders must be assured their company’s most pressing issues are resolved in an effective, efficient, and timely manner,” explains Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “To help clients programmatically drive issue resolution, StrategyDriven advisors compiled their decades of corrective action program experience into a library of best practice methods and tools easily accessible from our online forum.”

“StrategyDriven’s recommended practices enhance organizational alignment and accountability through thoughtful identification of corrective actions and deliberate assignment of action owners and due dates,” says Karen Juliano, StrategyDriven’s Editor-in-Chief. “Through this greater focus on achieving the organization’s goals comes enhanced resource utilization and bottom line results.”

Contributed to by highly experienced business leaders, StrategyDriven’s online Corrective Action Program Forum provides actionable methods and tools executives and managers can use to implement and enhance key components of their corrective action program including:?

  • Identification – Personnel at all levels of the organization recognize conditions deviating from established standards and expectations, adverse trends and events, and other needs for action.
  • Reporting – Individuals identifying conditions meeting established issue and/or request reporting criteria notify the appropriate managers verbally and in writing, via condition reports, of the situation.
  • Evaluation – Qualified personnel assess each reported issue and request individually and collectively to establish its priority and identify needed corrective actions and due dates, typically documented within a work and/or service order(s).
  • Resolution – Management reviews, approves, assigns resources, and monitors response actions assigned to issue and request resolution. Management’s actions are commonly documented on the associated work/service order(s).
  • Trending – Metrics and associated management reports provide a picture of overall performance based on tags characterizing each condition report and work/service order.

The StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program Forum’s thought leadership documents are being distributed to StrategyDriven’s clients, including some of the world’s most respected companies. These documents are available at: www.StrategyDriven.com/cap.

Trait-centred Leadership vs. Servant Leadership

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I’m a dancer. When I studied the Argentine Tango there was a foundational rule that I believe is true for all leaders: The leader opens the door for the follower to pass through, and the leader then follows. If anyone notices the leader, he’s not doing his job. The goal is to showcase the follower.

Much of what is written about leadership falls into the category I call ‘trait-centered leadership’: someone deemed ‘at the top’ who uses his/her personality, influence, and charisma to inspire and give followers – possibly not ready for change – a convincing reason to follow an agenda set by the leader or the leader’s boss. Sounds to me like a mixture of Jack Welch, Moses, and Justin Bieber.

What if the leader’s goal overrides the mental models, beliefs or historic experiences of the followers, or the change is pushed against the follower’s values, and resistance ensues? What if the leader uses his/her personality as the reason a follower should change? Or has a great message and incongruent skills? Or charisma and no integrity? Adolf Hitler, after all, was the most charismatic leader in modern history.

If You Can’t Follow, You Can’t Lead

Whether it’s for a group that needs to perform a new task, or someone seeking heightened outcomes, the role of leadership is to:

  1. facilitate congruent change and choice,
  2. in accordance with the values, skills, and ability of the follower,
  3. enabling them to shift their own unique (unconscious) patterns,
  4. to discover and attain new behaviors congruently and without resistance,
  5. within the parameters of the required change.

It demands humility and authenticity. It’s other-centered and devoid of ego, similar to a simple flashlight that merely lights the existent path, enabling followers to discover their own excellence within the context of the change sought. It’s an inside job.

Being inspirational, or a good influencer with presence and empathy, merely enlists those whose beliefs and unconscious mental models are already predisposed to the change, and omits, or gets resistance from, those who should be part of the change but whose mental models don’t align.

This form of leadership has pluses and minuses.

Minuses: the final outcome may look different than originally envisaged because the followers set the route according to their values and mental models.

Pluses: everyone will be enthusiastically, creatively involved in designing what will show up as their own mission, with a far superior proficiency. It will more than meet the vision of the leaders (although it might look different), and the followers will own it with no resistance.

Do you want to lead through influence, presence, charisma, or rationality? Or facilitate the unique path to congruent change? Do you want people to see you as a guide? Or teach them how to congruently move beyond their status quo and discover their own route to excellence – with you as a GPS system? Do you want to lead? Or enable real change? They are opposite constructs.

Power vs. Force

Here are some differences in beliefs between trait-centered leadership and more facilitative leadership:

Trait-centered: Top down; behavior change and goal-driven; dependent on power, charisma, and persuasion skills of a leader and may not be congruent with foundational values of followers.

Facilitation-centered: Inclusive (everyone buys-in and agrees to goals, direction, change); core belief-change and excellence-driven; dependent on facilitating route between current state and excellence, leading to congruent systemic buy-in and adoption of new behaviors.

Real change happens at the belief level. Attempting to change behaviors without helping people change their beliefs first meets with resistance: the proposed change pushes against the status quo regardless of the efficacy of the change.

New skills are necessary for facilitation-centered leadership:

  1. Listen for systems. This enables leaders to hear the elements that created and maintain the status quo and would need to transform from the inside before any lasting change occurs. Typical listening is biased and restricts possibility.
  2. Facilitative Questions. Conventional questions are biased by the beliefs and needs of the Questioner, and restrict answers and possibility. Facilitative Questions enlist the unconscious systems and show them how to adopt change congruently.
  3. Code the route to systemic change. When asking folks to buy-in, build consensus, and collaborate, they don’t know how to make the necessary changes without facing internal resistance, regardless of the efficacy of the requested changes. By helping people move from their conscious to their unconscious back to their conscious, and facilitating buy-in down the line, it’s very possible to avoid resistance.

If you seek to enable congruent change that captures the passion and creativity of followers, avoids resistance, and enables buy-in, open the door and follow your followers.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is a visionary, original thinker, and thought leader in change management and decision facilitation. She works as a coach, trainer, speaker, and consultant, and has authored 9 books including the NYTimes Business BestsellerSelling with Integrity. Morgen developed the Buying Facilitation® method (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) in 1985 to facilitate change decisions, notably to help buyers buy and help leaders and coaches affect permanent change. Her newest book What? www.didihearyou.com explains how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She can be reached at [email protected]

Follow the Green Lights – Small Business Success is a Mixture of Strategy and Intuition

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Work is life and life is work for small business owners. The lines are blurred between work and everything else — family, friends, faith and self. It is not always easy to balance the demands of business ownership and living a powerful purpose driven life. To have the best of both we have to rely on our resources, our experience, our talents, skills, and take advantage of all our opportunities. Yes, it’s that simple. To succeed as a small business, simply engage a few basic strategies and follow the ‘green lights’.

Of the approximately 543,000 new small businesses that start each month, only 50% will survive 5 or more years. Small business ownership is a life and a lifestyle that the owner chooses. It offers everything they want in a career, and it is an opportunity to create income and security for today and tomorrow. So, why do they fail? The most common reason is the owner does not have the business knowledge and experience they need to run the business. They know what they have to offer but not how to do so fast enough, efficiently enough, or as profitably as is necessary to maintain a healthy business. As the business struggles, so does the owner. Personal satisfaction is almost always tied to business success for the brave individual that risks it all to have the work life they want most.

So, what does it take? It can be challenging, but any business owner can deploy the strategic and practical aspects of small business ownership. Simply:

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About the Author

Sherry B. JordanSmall business consultant and expert Sherry B. Jordan has spent the past 15 years working to develop ways to help small business owners move from making a choice to own a small business to living a lifestyle they love while making a living. Her new book, Plan It! Do It! Love It!: Be Outrageously Successful in the Small Business Lifestyle, captures and shares an arsenal of strategic advice on how to plan and execute a successful business strategy. The advice that may be most valuable is that which she offers on how to engage the tools you are born with to get what you expect and deserve without sacrificing joy and fulfillment of a rich personal life.

Strategizing for Success: Keys for Planning Annual Sales & Marketing Goals, part 2 of 2

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The Strategy of Creating a Space for Success

A fundamental strategy for annual planning is creating a space for success. You can only have so many things. When something is occupying space, something else cannot occupy the same space. This is true both literally and in the metaphoric sense of occupying mental space or space in your business. If you no longer need something, getting rid of it can free up some space. This creates a space for you to attract something new to your business or other areas of your life.

To help you review the ‘space’ surrounding your business, here are some questions to ask yourself:

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About the Author

Eric LofholmEric Lofholm is a Master Sales Trainer, author, business success guru, communications expert and lauded speaker who has presented his proprietary, proven sales and success systems to Titans of Industry and thousands of other professionals world-wide. He founded and serves as CEO for Eric Lofholm International, Inc. — an organization that professionally trains achievement-minded individuals and employee groups on the art and science of selling. Connect with Eric online at www.SalesChampion.com.

5 Big Reasons Staff Training Should Involve E-Learning

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Every business leader and owner knows that training is critically important to the maintenance of a highly effective staff. What most managers don’t know is that staff training needs to incorporate a diverse types of training methods. Among these, e-learning is essential to both the staff and the company. Never heard of e-learning? Here are five reasons why you might want to keep your ear to the ground in the future.

1. 24/7

When you put materials online, they are accessible at any time of the day or night. A training course is rigid in the sense that you can only learn at specific points, chiefly when you are in the training course. But, with e-learning, an employee can decide to access the materials whenever they fancy. The result is that anyone within the business can better themselves in their own time and at their own pace. When they have the drive, they also have the tools at their disposal.

2. Cost Effective

The fact that the training course is online means the business doesn’t need to spend money on hosting the training session. That is not one-hundred percent true, however, as you will need to go to a training course to understand how to build e-learning programs. Oh, the irony! But, once you have a couple of Adobe Captivate training courses under your belt, there is no requirement to spend more. Businesses are always looking for ways to cut costs, and e-learning is probably one of the most effective cost cutting procedures.

5 Big Reasons Staff Training Should Involve E-Learning

3. A Greener Business

Does your company do its bit for the environment? It should because most authorities are less strict on businesses that are helping the planet. Plus, going ‘green’ saves you a lot of money too. E-learning makes your business greener because it is online. That means you use and waste less paper as there is no need for printouts or sheets. Also, e-learning cuts down on your carbon footprint. As everything is virtual, there is no need to commute to training sessions and burn fossil fuels in the process.

4. Improves Staff Retention

Staff can learn more from e-learning because of gamification. Gamification makes the process much more engaging as it adds competition with others, point scoring and rules. The staff has to use their brains more as a result as it is more challenging and interactive than sitting in a room listening to someone talk. When staff engagement and retention start to improve, your workforce will also get better at their jobs.

5. Further Reach

No matter where you or your staff is at any given moment, you are always able to participate in mobile learning if the information is online. So, instead of just affecting the people in the room, e-learning can affect the whole company. Everyone can get together and listen to the knowledge that will make them and the company better.

From your point of view, that is essential if you want to succeed and expand.