Business Growth thru Individual Effectiveness

Individual contributors are the people who execute strategy and make a business succeed. There is no business without people who create, implement, monitor and maintain systems. And without healthy, productive relationships with each other and with customers and suppliers, the whole system putters along in a lower gear than desired.

How productive are your employees? Are they truly engaged? Are they as effective as they could be?

If you’re satisfied that everyone is clear on what’s expected of them and they have the knowledge and skills and attitude they need to perform but still the business is not performing as you desire, then you should look at leadership.

However, if you’re not sure, then talk to us. We can help you develop highly competent team members and grow your business.

If you talk to us, this is the general approach we’ll recommend and then assist you with:

1. Clarify the Required Competencies.

By Job Analysis methods and interviews as well as reviewing current job profiles, we clarify the current and required competency framework for the organisation. Using Drotter’s “Performance Pipeline” model, we then chart the optimal structure and performance criteria for the growth of the organisation. These conclusions are tested and validated by the Executive leadership of the business.

2. Assess the Current Competency.

Skills Navigator.  To assess the current competencies in the organisation, we use Wilson Learning’s excellent tool, the Skills Navigator which was designed for managers and knowledge workers in organisations that require a greater depth and breadth of talent than was required in the industrial era, that are committed to continuous learning, and that share responsibility and move decision making closer to the customer. The intent is to provide a framework for a dialogue on competencies.  Clients may already have models or wish to have models that differ from our core model; this tool provides an underlying structure that allows for flexible applications. The Skills Navigator report is comprehensive and insightful and can lay the foundations for powerful competency development programmes.

3. Target Competency Development.

Using our Extended Learning System  to maximise the learning effect and create sustainable performance improvement, we recommend the most relevant training and coaching to bridge the current and desired competency of each individual and role across the business.

The required competencies may include: Leadership, Management, Negotiation, Presentation, Communication – whether Social Style versatility, global awareness, or high-stakes conversations – Innovation & Creativity, Performance Improvement, Coaching, Customer Service, Selling (B2B or B2C) or any other interpersonal skills.

4. Measure Learning Impact.

Impact Evaluation is designed to answer a deceptively simple question – did you get the desired result from your performance improvement efforts? Options include post-course Impact Surveys, which measure behaviour and performance changes; Opportunity Reviews that examine employees’ performance changes using a case study approach; and Business Metrics Analysis, a research-based approach that determines the effects of your performance improvement effort on your specific metric of interest (e.g., revenue, quota, productivity). All of our Impact Evaluation services can be customised to address your specific needs.  

Return on Investment. Finance Executives often look sceptically at expenditures on learning and development programmes and when times are tough they argue hard to have such expenditure curtailed or eliminated in their efforts to drive profitability. In a recently published cartoon, one manager says to another, “What if we train them and then they leave?” The other replies, “What if we don’t train them and then they stay?!” 

At the urging of our clients, Wilson Learning has researched this question and developed an algorithm that is defensible in any budgeting discussion. In fact, finance directors all over the world now use this algorithm themselves to evaluate the potential Return on Investment in learning and development before and after training initiatives. If you are feeling the increased pressure to justify your spending on learning & development, call us and we will help you implement this approach. Save yourself the humiliation of having your proposals rejected because they don’t appear to stack up financially. Work it out before you go into battle and watch as your CFO smiles in satisfaction with your business case.

To learn more about ways Growing Organisations can help your organisation develop highly effective individual contributors contact us now.