How to Plan for the Future of Your Business with the Help of Employees

The opportunity to change the structure of the company toward a more versatile or bureaucratic structure can now be determined by your management team. The importance of the way your employees perceive your company and the way they think it should be, cannot be denied. These gaps between the actual and the ideal should be given special attention, and can provide your management team with ideas that can be developed and expanded in strategic planning sessions. Assessments can provide a most valuable tool that puts the management team on notice and causes them to consider change within the organization. These changes may never be apparent without this assessment, because it is unbiased, confidential, and provides a comprehensive diagnosis of an organization.

This is certainly needed in our highly competitive environment. Isn't it about time you got your camera out and took a snapshot of your company?

Organizational Assessment Tools are one of the instruments available to provide any management team with a real photograph of their company today, and it also allows them to let the employees paint the picture of the company that they would like to see in the future. These assessment tools are relatively inexpensive compared to the cost of employee turnover, especially on the management level.

The Organizational Needs Inventory (ONI) is an example of such an assessment tool that provides a comprehensive analysis of an organization from the perspective of its employees with regard to the three areas which management experts regard as critical: Predominant Leadership Style, Organizational Culture, and Structure. These assessments provide a comprehensive diagnosis of the organization today through the eyes and ears of the employees. Any management team worth its salt will welcome a snapshot of their company today so they can properly determine the appropriately plan for the future with a clearer sense of direction and purpose.

This assessment tool will allow the management team to establish training and development programs that will not only produce the skills required, but the attitudes and work habits needed to move the company in the direction they desire relative to its mission and vision. It is not an easy task to change an organization and its people swiftly so please commit your organization to a time investment. The most important factor to remember is that this change is being planned, rather than just randomly happening.

It is also very important to learn the dominant leadership style present within your company. Once your predominant leadership style is acknowledged, the velocity of change will be proportionate to the support and direction offered by the management team of the company. The first step is to establish goal - setting measures with appropriate target dates to insure the proper direction of this change and to increase motivation internally.

The determination of your organization's culture should provide management with a better picture of the organization's effectiveness and allow them to develop an implementation plan that can be achieved in a reasonable time frame, while promoting teamwork at the same time.

The organization's culture today may reflect a low trust level. The results of this assessment will help you work on the cause and develop methods and plans to improve results, enabling the company to succeed in its overall goals and objectives.To see a free sample of an assessment your company would be using please contact us

(Painting by Jennifer Sandquist)

How to Properly Use Performance Appraisals

I was reading an article titled, “Bias Found in Employee Appraisals” on hreonline.com. It elaborated on the fact that new research shows vast discrepancies in employee appraisals by workers who report to two bosses.

Performance Appraisals have always shown bias from one manager to another. Many consulting firms even recommend that companies not spend money on the training and development of their managers regarding the delivery of an employee appraisal by a manager. If we don’t train to develop consistency in delivery, then how can we ever have a Performance Appraisal System without bias?

Small business owners and managers, listen up, it’s time to realize that the Performance Appraisal Process is the best means to communicate workplace expectations with the employee and that employee engagement is key to retention moving forward.

• Managers must utilize a system for monitoring performance on a day to day, month to month basis and not just wait for the annual performance appraisal process for the data to appear. A Performance Log or file must be maintained throughout the year to note successes, learning opportunities, behavioral tendencies, etc. The Performance Appraisal Process must be more objective than subjective and certainly results-oriented. It must be based on the job description or role assigned to the employee as the role is defined today, not five years ago. It must reflect technical skills as well as performance skills that demonstrate an above average performance in that position.

• Clear expectations must be defined. Clarity and good communication are key management skills for this to succeed. We must communicate workplace expectations in a clear, decisive, and definitive manner with the creation of a development plan for the employee. All managers must be willing to coach and mentor the employee to high performance through the use of a solid Developmental Plan of Action. I have always believed that the formulation of a developmental plan for a high achiever is one of the most difficult tasks a manager can undertake. And it certainly shouldn’t be….it should be the opposite.

Both bias and the dreaded “Performance Appraisal” mentality must be eliminated from the equation…discuss expectations, monitor performance daily, and make employee engagement a priority. If you do that, the bias and subjectivity will be removed.

We need to tell people that we are interested in their performance and career direction. We must focus on their performance in respect to the competencies needed to do an above average job in their current role but help them develop a plan of action that will enhance their performance skills to reflect the achievement of a higher position in the future. What competencies will we need from our employees five years from now? That is what we should be focusing on with our people development processes. Isn’t it time to put the “whip” away and start moving people forward by providing the opportunity to succeed with their career objectives…all through the proper use of the Performance Appraisal Process. Don’t make it an event…it is a process.

Employee Engagement is Performance and Productivity

Managers have more impact on engagement then their companies.

In Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to be the Best…and Learn from the Worst by Robert Sutton, the author noted that about 75% of today's workforce reports that their immediate supervisor is the most stressful part of their job. It has also noted by several surveys including the initial work by Gallup that immediate supervisors have far more impact on engagement and productivity than whether their companies are rates as great or lousy places to work.


We believe that the immediate supervisor is an integral component to productivity and performance. We also believe that the value of the immediate supervisor is under estimated and their level of competence is over estimated. In a recent survey, we have concluded that the majority of supervisors and/or managers in mid-size and small companies have no formal leadership or management training. Image how a well trained boss can enhance the success of your company.

Our Leadership and Management Development Courses teach people the practical application for the skills and competencies that make great managers. As stated in his book, Robert Sutton says that the two “acid test” for great bosses is 1) whether people want to work for the boss and would they enthusiastically choose to do so again, and 2) is the boss hypersensitive to how others feel about them and the work their people do. They are compassionate, competent, and empathetic.

Leadership is learned and we teach people how to be “Good Bosses” while allowing them to apply the learned material immediately in the workplace using our “adult action-leaning” process. We also measure results with a defined ROI and guarantee. For the development of your future leaders, call 609.390.2830 for more information or click here on our Leadership Courses and Workshops.

How to Assess What Training Your Employees Need

This training needs assessment works best in small to mid-sized organizations. It will give you a quick assessment of the training needs of an employee group. It helps find common training needs for a group of employees.

Difficulty: Average Time Required: Approximately 1-2 hours

Here's How:

1. Gather all employees who have the same job in a conference room with a white board or flip charts and markers.
2. Before the meeting ask each employee to write down their ten most important training needs. Write specifics, like disciplining an employee when late or communication with other management.
3. Then during the meeting, ask each person to list their ten training needs. As they list the training needs, you capture the needs on the white board or flip chart. Make a tick mark when there is a duplicate need, some may seem a little different, but may be the same underneath the surface.
4. When all training needs have been listed, use a weighted voting process to prioritize the training needs across the group. In a weighted voting process, you use sticky dots or numbers written in magic marker to vote on and prioritize the list of training needs. Assign a large dot 25 points and smaller dots five points each. Distribute as many dots as you like. Tell needs assessment participants to place their dots on the chart to vote on their priorities.
5. List the training needs in order of importance, with the number of points assigned as votes determining priority, as determined by the sticky dot voting process. Make sure you have notes (best taken by someone on their laptop while the process is underway) or the flip chart pages to maintain a record of the training needs assessment session.
6. Take time, or schedule another session, to brainstorm the needed outcomes or goals from the first 3-5 training sessions identified in the needs assessment process. This will help as you seek and schedule training to meet the employees' needs.

Note the number one or two needs of each employee, that may not have become the priorities for the group. Try to build that training opportunity into the employee's performance development plan.

Tips: Training Needs Assessment can be, and often needs to be, much more complicated than this. But, this is a terrific process for a simple training needs assessment.
Make sure you keep the commitments generated by the training needs assessment process. Employees will expect to receive their key identified training needs met.

To discuss your employees needs call Innovative Leadership at 609-390-2830 or email us at info@innovativeleadershipdv.com

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How to Motivate Employees

How will you motivate employees, improve staff retention, increase productivity, and boost morale this year? All of this can be and should be summed up into one word: TRAINING.

Take for example Derek Christian's business, My Maid Service. He had extremely high turnover, two out of three new employees were leaving, which meant a less experienced and productive staff. The quality of work also lacked and it was having a huge impact on his business.

Once training was introduced, there is now virtually no turnover, his employees and customers are happier, which all translates into loyal customers and a bigger bottom line. Read His Full Story

So, what are you going to do this year? You can still give them a box of candy, but we highly suggest you take a serious look at the coming year and how training can help your company tremendously.

Innovative Leadership is a performance improvement company that provides solutions for today's business, small or large, challenges. Unique programs, products and processes all of which can be customized to fit specific needs of your company is what sets us apart.