Don't Let This Happen To You

Don't let surveys be a waste of time. Make your surveys intelligent and meaningful. Taking multiple surveys a year will only tire your workforce and waste time and money. Provide people with a "WIFM" - What's in it For Me? Let your people know their feedback will help the company and make it a better place to work.

Who the Heck Needs Benchmarking?

Why the heck should you care about benchmarking your business against somebody else's business especially since every company is so different in so many ways?I always thought it was nuts and a waste of good energy.

Being a business adviser, I think I am starting to get it.

When dining at a fancy restaurant, my wife likes to look at all the other husbands and compare how they look, their dress, styles, fi to me. If she sees a shlumpy dressed guy, she now says "how handsome I look tonight". Me, I don't really care, but a driving need to compare seems important to make her, and all those those corporate types feel good ...or even feel lousy. Benchmarking has ZERO business impact, other than seeing how you compared to others.  In fact you cannot compare yourself to others unless you are a twin, or both of you have the same fingerprint.  From a business perspective, it must have some value in generating cash and customers otherwise it wouldn't be such a big business.
 
As a well know secret, benchmarking must be an internal self evaluation, over time, improving YOUR own critical business weakness.

As they say, "go with the flow", so we at SurveyTelligence and Infotool now have a benchmarking database, by industry, built from over 250 surveys and over 300,000 survey takers we have done over the last several years. We give it to clients, for FREE. As the hustlers would say, "for customer delight, give the customer what they want...even if it's not necessarily what they need!"

Best Practices for Employee Surveys

I was on LinkedIn and came across a discussion question I couldn't help from answering.

The question was:

"I am looking for some guidance in determining best practices for a 6-month new employee survey."

This was my response:
Is it really best practices from a new hire you need? Most still have yet to find the cafeteria.
What's really important is to know if they are engaged, working for a caring, knowledgeable manager, understand the underlying driving forces to help achieve the "business of the business" get along with co-workers, culture and a bit more.
We have been doing this survey stuff for over 15 years and the only need you have is to make sure new hires are keeping their "bloom" on the flower. The items asked must have a capability for a quick fix, usually through manager relationships. Have a means to identify each worker by manager, and give each manager a report card as to how well they are mentoring their hires. It's one thing to ask questions, its another thing to have actions and fix what you discovered.

For analysis to have meaning, upscale from survey monkey. Get away from tools whose results only give high level norms or polling type results without analysis competencies like cross tabs, unlimited demographic slicing, comparing, etc.
 
Instead, get results that give you directed action plans that you can wrap your hands around.

Advanced News Update for SurveyTelligence

SurveyTelligence, Powered by Infotool has been selected from a competitive field of survey vendors, as the Survey Consulting Firm for the 2011 "Transformational Culture" project for the University of West Indies. UWI has over 50,000 students in both undergraduate and graduate program, with a staff of over 3,000 within 3 Residencies, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad.
The project will start in July with a senior level conference in Kingston, Jamaica to identify the vision and build a defined set of survey items around it. This will be followed by a well-publicized communication plan for conducting the UWI High Performance Employee Engagement Survey. After analysis of survey results, a senior level executive report will be presented with defined action plans for the most effective path to the vision. We will transform the existing culture to one of high engagement energy, with revisions to process and leadership initiatives to maintain the university's reputation as the leading provider of higher education in the Caribbean. Post analysis, the intent is to train and certify internal HR staff as coach/mentor to each of the managers/supervisors and facilitate action plans at each of the department level using the precise results generated by the Infotool diagnostic.

The project will take three months, with a follow up measurement in twelve months. The certified internal staff will continue in their role as talent improvement experts long after SurveyTelligence has left.

Stanley Labovitz, CEO of SurveyTelligence and Infotool has been selected as the key note speaker in September 26, 2011, in San Jose, Costa Rica for the GBM world wide organization. Using GBM's facilities, he will be broadcasting to all GBM's countries, also including over 12,000 people from BAC, a large multi-international banking conglomerate, Nicaragua and Columbia. Labovitz, a recognized expert in organizational transformation installing alignment, engagement and measurement principles, will spend the day sharing experiences, leading a panel and presenting best practices of highly successful companies that have transformed their culture for greater profitability, and beginning through measurement, how to build that sought after engaged workforce aligned to the "business of the business".

Redefining Leadership

In the 70’s and 80’s, we talked mostly about the strong and tough leader, the courageous leader, the results-driven leader and the leader who measured success by how many people followed.

During the past 15 years, our view of leadership has changed. We have redefined great leadership by adding more human capabilities and capacities, including behaviors such as empathy. Supporting and developing others and caring about the impact we have on those who look up to us.

“Co-creating” is a new and different word. Its meaning is not about negotiating, giving in or accommodating one time so I can get what I want another time. Co-creating is a state of mind and a way of working with others that is much more inclusive than what most leaders previously thought. It requires that leaders learn how to facilitate conversations with others in a new way. It requires that leaders are aware of themselves to correct behaviors that can ruin relationships.

As a consultant or HR professional, it can be difficult to address these issues. Survey data is key. Measuring the level of how in synch a leader is with his/her team in all the critical measures is imperative for co-creating. Many times, leaders see the world through "rose-colored glasses" but reality cannot be subjective.

If you are a leader, ask yourself, "does your team see the world as you do?".

Change From A Certified Survey Consultant

Certified Survey Consultant and Founder of FutureNow Consulting, LLC. Michael J. Stabile shares his experiences using SurveyTelligence techniques and Infotool Technology:

I have been working with a high school planning team at a well-known school in Cincinnati, OH. They had recently completed a survey process using Infotool diagnostics to get a “snap shot” of their school culture. However, at this particular meeting the dialogue keep focusing on a major process and structural change. For over forty-five minutes the administrative team and staff were conflicted over the change and the reaction of the staff. I asked if I could interject an idea that might be helpful.


With our ability to dig deeply into the data using SurveyTelligence’s Infool to analyze their data, literally within five minutes, I was able to help their thinking to change directions that would have been toxic for the school culture. Using the horizontal and vertical alignment visual (modified for education) they were able to clearly get the message.

On the following Monday, I was asked to present the data results and analysis of the High School's DNA of Culture Survey to about 40 of their staff members to position their school culture with specific and target areas to address. I presented what I am now calling the Strategic Learning Alignment Model. The initial stress about process and structural change became less and less of an issue, because the data analysis helped them to see the higher priority of vertical alignment. The leadership and department within the culture had some major misalignments and the results were mistrust, lack of real collaboration, and entrenched territorialism that was causing “toxic” relationships. We delayed the process and structural change and they contracted with me for the next school year on building high performance teams to address the vertical alignment issues.

Michael J. Stabile, Ph.D. is an experienced educator, life/leadership coach, consultant, author, and part of the SurveyTelligence team. He works with individuals and organizations in people and organizational capacity development. Mike is a professor at Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH and founded and leads FutureNow Consulting, LLC. FutureNow is committed to personal, group, and organizational transformation. For more information on the Strategic Learning Alignment Model contact Mike at mstabile@futurenowed.com or www.futurenowed.com




If you are interested in building your business becoming a Certified Survey Consultant, contact us at info@infotool-online.com or call 1-866-616-5552

Measurement for Turnaround Management Experts

Besides the metric of money, a Turnaround Management expert must have the support of the workforce (managers and workers alike) to exert the mental energy, commitment and innovation to continue supporting the effort to save the business. This is a turnaround and you need unbiased, critical historical operational information- not just from two or three people at top levels of an unsuccessful leadership team.
The measurement of organizational engagement is essential. Engagement measures include looking at strategies, process, people and customers through the lens of each workgroups. The more you understand your project, people, customers, and the entire culture, the more successful you will be in NOT CONTINUING TO PROPAGATE THE EXISTING CULTURE. (Principles of engagement are found in the Wiley best seller, Power of Alignment, a 1997 treatis by Dr. George Labovitz.)

This rapid learning process should take no more than four day, and it will be your "holy grail" blueprint moving forward with the entire project. Correlation and alignment tools provide a means to ID toxic managers and workgroups, operational needs, misfires in the value chain, as well as the strong people upon which you can rely will be at your fingertips. Expert analysis assistance should be available as you probably don't have time nor bandwidth.
Happy to tell you more...

Mind Taking Our Exit Survey?

Aligning Training to People Engagement

I was raised in the early part of my career working for a training company-1990's. The company training products were state of the art and we trained over 400,000 people. What we never were able to do was measure the effectiveness we had on the workforce post training. We trained people just for the sake of training because the perceptions were that 'trained people would improve performance'.
In the 2011 era, albeit in a different format, we now discovered that pre-measurement of the level of alignment of the workforce is necessary. Training is best served with a workforce that has passed a higher "workforce engagement threshold" than those that have a lower score.
Aligning the training to people "engagement" requirements provides a measurement mechanism to help ensure the training is sustained, takes hold to improve the culture, the manager skills and styles and more. In fact the training content should serve as the means of helping to grow and align the employee competencies to better serve the client/customer, teaming for better performance, and alignment to the corporate mission.
So, before training, get a measurement of the people's engagement, to include the culture, manager and leadership skills and styles, process, awareness of the company mission and whether customers needs are being met. First fix any significant misalignments discovered from the measurements. Then select a training tool kit that trains with a purpose of fulfilling the company mission with a workforce committed to performance improvement. The ROI will then be justified.

Did You Know?

Did you know that top managers, compared to average performers, deliver a 49% increase in productivity? That the average organization could reduce turnover by 9% by having the right leaders in place? And that the average hiring mistake can cost you up to 15 times the hire’s base salary? In today’s environment, finding the right manager or leader is a complex process and is a major challenge for many organizations. Many companies simply do not have access to the talent data they need to make informed business decisions on who will make the best managers and leaders.
Having the right leadership in place dramatically improves morale, retention, productivity and customer satisfaction. Identifying best-fit leaders and managers is more achievable than you might realize. Companies who have implemented leadership assessment programs drive incredible results.