It’s an unpleasant truism that managing in good times is like reading the newspaper in the back of a black cab. The destination is known, the road is familiar and the driver has the knowledge. Managing in difficult times or challenging environments as the annual report is quick to tell us is where leadership comes in, an aspect of which would be rebalancing in line with the commonly held remedy for the ills of the national economy.
The different breeds of a corporate culture will through force of circumstance mix urgency and deliberation in the same melting pot as accuracy and innovation. It is an emotional blending, that soon leads to powerful engines of personal enterprise that can polarise, amalgamate or oppose specific groups of `others’. This simple fact is a root cause of shackled growth or loss of control. Locating the approved touch points of command is quite a straight forward operation, whereas going beyond them will mean considerable co-operation and commitment on both sides.
cla could be instrumental in gaining a much clearer understanding of how your organisation or certain aspects of it currently function. This will enable you to evaluate strategic options in a way that permits the rehearsal of battles before they are fought, calculating the short and long term prizes along with the costs involved.
cla would be able to create a paradigm of your business sector, increasing the effectiveness of the management team by letting the group face possible or probable events well in advance of their occurrence.
cla in this way could help you replicate an approach used to develop an international rugby fifteen or a world class ballet company, practise and rehearsal. A rugby team for example is made up of fifteen specialists and a good management team is equally deployed. The difference normally lies in an approach to winning in that the rugby team gets together to practise the skills rather than just discuss the “where are we going” and in so doing each specialist learns more about the strengths of their colleagues, dispelling the myth of `fighting for the failure of others’ allowing, “people who feel good about themselves to produce good results” in recognition of self worth and organisational success.
cla would not presume to know your business as well as you do, here we regard you as the experts. We can however help develop a better understanding of its dynamics so that future decision-making will be built from a much stronger empirical base. Examples of teaching materials and courses in organisations
For organisational training departments Reaching Full Potential is a long established development programme grounded in the work of trainers on platform from 9 – 5 for at least four out five working days. The following activity “Who are these people that I have in front of me?” is designed for those trainers and teaching professionals who want to take their understanding of their role that much further, by getting into the world of their learners and seeking to establish essential rapport as early as possible.
“In small groups determine how the following situations would be explained and handled. Use your understanding of transactional analysis, I’m OK – You’re OK and the introduction of learner friendly phrases to explore how learners receive information in different ways whilst considering as you do so the prospects of developing even more self discovery through applied skills in negotiation techniques”.
1. Although standard procedure this person has no name badge? Why might this be and when would be an appropriate time to deal with it?
When asked about doing an activity replies, “I’ve left my glasses at home”? 3. What might this tell us about this student or attendee?
3. Needs to be seen leading the group? How could we as a `team of learners’ make positive use of this quality?
4. The group includes a wounded learner who is uneasy about using the course materials, writing up notes or addressing activities in the manual?
5. Address the needs of learners who are good on their feet but unable to reflect this valuable ability through the written word?
6. Feels uncomfortable when involved in an activity? How could this aspect of personality affect the rest of the group?
7. Finds eye contact difficult and prefers to study the floor? What do we need to do by way of modifying our training or teaching style?
8. “I’m not sure that this course is relevant to me?” How might we need to react to this statement?
9. “There’s so much to be done back at work. I don’t know why I was sent?” What concerns could this person have and how might we help?
10. Keen to be involved with others but is not being accepted by the rest of the group? How might the trainer assist in making the day work for this person?
SIX STEPS IN A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF LESS AND CONSTRUCTIVE CHANGE
The management of less whether its budget reduction, resources or time is now an essential organisational learning curve and firmly in place for the foreseeable future. However, whilst preparing for unthinkable change is a useful modelling concept, constructive change for the inevitable is to adopt a more practical strategy, involving the whole workforce and carried out as a therapy of self efficacy.
1. Agree the strategically important operations that drive productivity for the organisation.
2. Agree what would not be possible, impractical or wise at this time in attempting change.
3. Agree the more flexible areas of the business operation.
4. Agree how flexibility can promote enterprise leading to proactive change.
5. Agree where operational flexibility could bring about improvements in productivity
6. Agree constructive changes that could be made tomorrow, next week or next month.
REACHING FULL POTENTIAL
A two day course designed for experienced and new starter trainers and teachers, taking their learning well beyond those levels most associated with presentation skills training or styles of classroom delivery. Special emphasis is placed on the practicalities of the `one to many communication’, the emotional and psychological relationship developed between the trainer and a group of learners and those responsibilities that we all have for translating classroom learning into real situations for application `back at the ranch`.
DELEGATION, REDEPLOYMENT AND THE INTRODUCTION OF ALTERNATIVE SKILLS
There would be no difficulty in fully appreciating the need to rebalance the national economy especially in the light of those painful lessons learned from an unprecedented overreliance on the financial sector. However, the need for rebalancing closer to home might appear less immediate although on reflection and in reviewing the future of the organisation, a similar situation confronts us all but will probably mean different things to different organisations depending on the industry or service sector culture. The object of this one day course is to understand these different working environments as organisational cultures of productivity, precariously constrained by relationships, personal ambition and at times unwillingness to let go the reins and risk the walk on groundless ground. The course draws heavily on the need for enterprise, re-skilling and adapting to competitive change using literature from the management sciences in response to market forces and global economies.
TEAM DEVELOPMENT AND CUSTOMISED PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES
Although there is no such thing as an ideal organisation introducing a mission statement will bring into sharp focus the goals and aspiration of the company. However, it is the workforce especially those at the sharp end of the sales operation who will be expected to `deliver the promise’ and successfully handle those `moments of truth’, securing repeat business for us all through the healthy mechanisms of referrals. Customised People Development will offer at an introductory level, a range of innovations that will initiate opportunities for sales growth and constructive change through empowerment and career development.
WHAT IS CUSTOMISED PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT ABLE TO ACHIEVE?
• A considerable upgrade in customer service
• Measurable improvements for internal service
• Able to promote staff empowerment as being mutually beneficial
• Noticeable reductions in absenteeism and staff turnover
• Creates important opportunities for advancing employee relationships
• Credible balance between achievements of individuals and contributions from the collective
• Offers a review of recruitment and induction techniques
The process then becomes self-perpetuating with post course demands being made from those within the organisation to achieve even higher levels of productivity and self-worth, as part of their individual or team development plans
POST PROGRAMME ATTITUTE SURVEY REVEAL THE FOLLOWING IMPROVEMENTS
• Better working relationships with boss and colleagues
• Higher levels of commitment to colleagues, team development and organisational goals
• More opportunities to win and retain customers
• Increased knowledge of other parts of the organisation
• Heightened appreciation of colleagues work problems
• People development acknowledged as a valuable investment
• Immediate opportunities for individuals to influence change
INDUCTION PROGRAMMES REVISTED
Having spent time assessing organisational needs within a range of cultures cla are able to explore business structures even further with induction programmes being a good example. Their strategic importance and value for the end user is often overlooked since they are usually seen as a process to be rolled out as required. For many organisations a renewal of the induction programme is long overdue and therefore cla would provide mechanisms for the aspirations and enthusiasm of the training department to be realised in developing and then road testing a fully customised induction programme.
CORPORATE AND OCCUPATIONAL FILMED ETHNOGRAPHY
Corporate and Occupational Filmed Ethnography is a research led technique designed to evaluate organisational procedure, performance and operational effectiveness. It is able to capture on film aspects of organisational behaviour and operational procedures, providing factual evidence for the design of jobs, corporate restructuring and assessments for planned maintenance programmes. In essence COFE offers enabling techniques for identifying specific areas of concern or `organisational pain` often to be interpreted as a signal that something is wrong. (Lawrence (1954) and Bauer (1995).
PROJECT MANAGER INFLUENCING SKILLS
With the increasing amount of project management work being undertaken by organisations, this course is designed to give professionals in their own field the opportunity to assess their current influencing skills in a safe environment. Specifically, it examines those situations where advancing the project will depend to a large extent, on personal interactions not usually covered by project management training per se.
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