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General
Fagre ny økonomi
[lang_da]Af Mike Hohnen
Børsen havde i fredagens Executive tillæg 3 artikler, der alle slår på et tema vi har været omkring ved flere lejligheder på to Grow’s diplomlederuddannelse:
1. Kun de stærkeste overlever opsvinget
Med rubrikoverskriften “kunder vil se værdi”.
2. Strategisk nytænkning
Skrevet af Steen Hildebrandt. Vi vidste godt, der var for mange ting, som den kortsigtede optimeringspraksis ikke tog hensyn til.
..Det vigtigste er en forretnings model der tager udgangs punkt i at det væsentlige er levende systemer…
3. Skab dit eget momentum
…ved at skabe nye værdier for sine kunder skaber man virkelig vækst…
Ud på den anden side – en ny begyndelse
Jeg har desuden lige set et videoklip med en af Deutche Bank’s cheføkonomer, som forklarer, hvorfor det her ikke handler om et lille dyk i vækstkurven – men er en længerevarende forestilling.
Også Wired magazine i denne uge en artikel med overskriften: “This crisis is not just the trough of a cycle but the end of an era. We will come out not just wiser but different.”
Jeg skrevet om de her tendenser tilbage i august – Getting to grips with the big shift.[/lang_da]
Kick-off i Berendsen Textil
[lang_da]Det første GROW Leadership forløb for mellemledere i Berendsen Textil er skudt i gang, og kick-off modulet fokuserede i høj grad på Service Profit Chain, og hvordan man skaber intern kvalitet i sin virksomhed.
Vi brugte en del kræfter på at arbejde med Team V-modellen og teamforståelse. Team V-modellen er kort beskrevet en model over den proces, der skal til for at skabe et stærkt team.
Først skal man bruge tid på at skabe tillid, en fælles forståelse og afklaring af forvententninger i gruppen – og definere gruppens mål og og indbyrdes roller (ved at arbejde sig ned gennem den ene side af v’et). Det kan man gøre ved at lave et ‘team manifest’ ud fra nogle centrale spørgsmål, der skal klarlægge gruppens potentiale:
Først da er man klar til at skabe et ‘commitment’ i gruppen og lægge en plan for udførelsen af et givent projekt (ved at arbejde opad gennem den anden side af v’et)
Vi arbejdede med forskellige øvelser, der havde det formål at øge forståelsen for Team V-modellens funktion og vigtighed i gruppeprocesser – så budskabet ikke kun blev forstået intellektuelt, men af hele kroppen.
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“How can we improve learning in organizations?”
Jay Cross asks the question:
Here is Jay’s website with more on informal learning
Musen er død…
[lang_da]Det er ikke alt, hvad Alexander Kjærulf siger, jeg er helt enig i, men i hans pointe om den dødssyge mussamtale, har vi gjort mange af de samme observationer.
Den er for mig en forfærdelig sutteklud, som i bedste fald ikke gør nogen skade, men i værste fald er voldsomt demotiverende. Det er en sutteklud, fordi den giver mange ledere en illusion om, at de gør det de skal i form af feedback.
Men forestil dig at du var tenniscoach og du har fået opgave at coache et supertalent
– ville du gøre det ved at holde årlig MUS-samtale?
Masser af lederer bruger MUS-samtalen som undskyldning for ikke at bruge tid i dagligdagen på at give løbende feedback: “Vi tager det til MUS’en”…
Feedback is the breakfeast of champions – det er ingen tvivl om, at der er en tæt sammenhæng mellem performance og feedback. Det er derfor, at tenniscoachen står på sidelinjen og giver sin spiller feedback under træningen. Masser af feedback – hele tiden.
Det der virkelig giver arbejdsglæde er at vide, at man bidrager, at det ikke er ligegyldigt om man er der – at gå hjem og føle, at man har gjort en forskel er helt afgørende. Måden man bliver klar over det på er gennem feedback – masser af feedback.
Men læs selv Alexanders indlæg her
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Our NPS is 83% as of today…
We often use the net promoter score in our trainings – it is a great tool to show participants the value and power of customer loyalty.
So why not practice what we preach?
We always ask our participants the final key question before they leave us:
“On a scale of 1 to 10 how likely is it that you would recommend this training to a friend or colleague?
We have added up the evaluations for trainings that we have done during the first 6 months of 2009. And I am both happy and proud to say that our NPS score is running at 83% – not bad ! ( If you are wondering how one calculates the NPS score you can see more here
We have previously written about NPS on this blog here
Getting to grips with the Big Shift
[lang_en]For a while now I have been talking to friends and colleagues about this gut feeling that I have, that what we talk about as the economic crisis or downturn is possibly not a traditional crisis and/or downturn in the sense that once it is over things will return to normal.
I have this very clear feeling that a fundamental shift in many of the ways that we have been used to conducting business and interacting with each other is underway. (see also my previous post are you a frog in the pot) And that when the dust settles things will not return to what we have known previously as normal but will have undergone a clear shift. This is not a passing storm but fundamental climate change.
In pursuit of that theme I have been hunting for signs that would support this gut feeling.
This has led me to The 2009 Shift Index published by Deloite and presented on the Harvard publishing website.
Her you will find the following resume of key findings:
The 2009 Shift Index reveals a disquieting performance paradox in the US corporate sector. On the one hand, labor productivity has nearly doubled since 1965. During those same years, however, US companies’ Return on Assets (ROA) progressively dropped 75 percent from their 1965 level.
How can firms be getting lower returns even as they’re becoming more efficient? The answer resides in the heightened competition among firms. Competitive intensity nearly doubled between 1965 and 2008, forcing firms to compete away the benefits of productivity gains, which were instead captured by creative talent in the form of higher compensation and numbers of consumers through increasing performance/price ratios and wider choice.
It’s little surprise to find also that the highest-performing companies are struggling to maintain their ROA rates and are increasingly losing market leadership positions. Taken as a whole, the findings portray a U.S. corporate sector in which long-term forces of change are undercutting normal sources of economic value. “Normal” may in fact be a thing of the past: even after the economy resumes growing, companies’ returns will remain under pressure.
To respond to this performance challenge, U.S. companies will need to let go of industrial- era organizational structures (and the reporting relationships, incentive systems, and managerial processes that go with them) and operational practices in favor of the new institutional architectures and business practices needed to create and capture economic value in the era of the Big Shift.
Companies must move beyond their fixation on getting bigger and more cost-effective to make the institutional innovations necessary to accelerate performance improvement as they add participants to their ecosystems, expanding learning and innovation in collaboration curves and creation spaces. Companies must move, in other words, from scalable efficiency to scalable learning and performance. Only then will they make the most of our new era’s fast-moving digital infrastructure.
So what does this Big Shift entail in pratical terms?
John Hagel one of the co-authors of the 2009 Big Shift index does a superb job summarizing what he essentially sees as a shift from push to pull on his blog Edge Perspectives
What obviously caught my atention was this:
From knowledge transfer to knowledge creation
Most companies today will acknowledge the importance of knowledge flows, but they tend to focus on transferring knowledge more efficiently, especially within corporate boundaries. While useful, this is ultimately a diminishing returns game on multiple levels. The greatest economic value will come from finding ways to connecting relevant yet diverse people, both within the firm and outside it, to create new knowledge. They do this best by addressing challenging performance requirements that motivate them to get out of their comfort zone and come up with creative new approaches that generate more value with fewer resources.
This correlates well with the experiences that we have using action learning as our primary developmental tool in helping managers and organizations tackle the changes that they are in. It is not our job to teach but to help them learn – and that is a very different story.
But I urge you to read the full unfolding of this thinking here under the following headlines:
From knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.
From knowledge transfer to knowledge creation.
From explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge.
From transactions to relationships.
From zero sum to positive sum mindsets.
From push programs to pull platforms.
From stable environments to dynamic environments.
Lots of food for thought, and now I realize that my gut was telling me something important and I shall continue to pursue this investigation.[/lang_en]
Are you the frog in the pot?
During summer, a period notoriously known for its lack of news, the media seem to have been very busy reporting and analysing a steady news stream predicting their own demise. We have seen headlines such as ‘Not dead yet’ or ‘Thinking the unthinkable’ the latter referring to a possible scenario in a not too distant future where the New York Times is no longer published — not on paper at least.
If you have not followed the discussion the crux of the matter is very well summed up in the following video clip:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| End Times | ||||
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My point here is not so much to enter into the discussion — to me the conclusion is inevitable — but to point out the fact that once again an industry has been caught out by the famous frog syndrome.
( if you drop a frog into a very hot water it will do its very best to scramble and get out, if however you put it in a pot of cold water and heat the pot slowly, the frog will not try to get out before it’s too late ) i.e. not responding to gradual changes in your environment. The situation in which print media finds itself today was predicted five if not 10 years ago. They just all hoped that the pot would not get too hot. In 10 years time this will be a classic business school case in line with the one about the buggy whip manufacturers, typesetting and landline telephones.
So how does that relate to the world of hotels, travel and conference centres? Well – I think there is a similar shift taking place in our environment. Well possibly not directly in our own environment but in the environment that provides us with our business.
There are three key drivers of this shift: The financial crisis, energy/co2 awareness and Web 2.0 together they have inspired a growing number of business leaders to rethink the need for travel and face-to-face meetings.
IKEA a trendsetting company is running an internal campaign under the banner of: Meet more – travel less. Encouraging the use of interactive web technology for meeting purposes while at the same time reducing travel costs and CO2 emissions. The target for 2009 is to reduce travel by 50 percent and CO2 emission as a consequence by 25 percent. And they are not the only ones, they are just very visible in the way they do it.
It makes sense. Cramming 20, 50 or 500 people into a conference room and feeding them an endless parade of PowerPoint slides, be they ever so pretty and well-designed is not efficient knowledge transfer, (let alone learning) We know that.
Ah but wait – I hear you say – what about the networking? That is the truly important part of meetings – it may be important, but traveling 4 or 6 hours, spending 2 days away from the job and then taking a chance on who you share the stand-up coffee table with during a 10 minute break is not efficient networking.
You could spend an hour systematically working LinkdIn, Facebook or even Twitter and you would probably produce some far more interesting connections and possibilities. So lets not kid ourselves about the networking.
And there is a fourth driver adding to this:
“During the next 5-10 years, the Millennium generation will become a signi?cant proportion of meeting participants. This is perhaps the largest generation gap in history and the consequences for meetings will be fundamental. If meetings for the older generations serve the purposes of information and networking, this means online communities, such as Facebook and MySpace to the younger generations, and they learn from Google, Wikipedia and online peers more than parents, teachers
and conference speakers. They don’t see the difference between virtual and real any more than they see why work and play should not happen at the same time. ” From The Meeting Manifesto
But it is not just meeting planers who are shifting their focus to ROI – the other sector where we can see a shift is taking place as well is within the training industry. Traditional training companies are also in the hot pot if they still believe in classrooms and PowerPoint’.
“Learning budgets are decreasing. Spending on external services are decreasing even more. And learning departments need to do more with fewer resources.
If you are inside a corporate learning department, assuming you still have your job, then you feel this by being more busy. In many ways, that’s not a bad feeling compared to either the person who lost their job. Or the people who have seen their learning business crushed by this”
Read more here
So two major purchasers of hotel rooms, F&B and meeting space, the meeting organizers and the training companies are in this shifting paradigm. Looking for new solutions and ways to connect but with out the travel. What was once a considered a perk – is now almost a curse.
Meetings and tourism are now two different worlds.
Tourism is all about pleasure and experiences which is fine, but meetings/training are business and business means somebody is looking for a return on investment. If there is no ROI or if it is too low, meetings (gatherings/trainings etc) in their current form will be cut.
That is what is happening in the market just now.
And if you think that once the so-called crisis is over then everything will be back to normal and we can do business as usual then and you have just joined all those very uncomfortable newspapermen in their very hot pot.
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If you would like to pursue this subject here are a few links that you may find interesting:
European Event ROI Making Meetings and Events More Profitable.
The Meeting Architecture Manifesto