People Hardly Invested....

Did you know your employees have great ideas that could be saving your company thousands and thousands of dollars, but may not come forward out of fear or lack of trust? In order to achieve sustained competitive advantage, you employees must be engaged and invested in company outcomes.  For employees to be engaged and invested, there must be bi-directional trust between management and employees at all levels of your company.

For example, management introduces a new process and Jack knows a better, more efficient way.  Jack is not about to open his mouth and rock the boat out of fear of retribution.  Or worse yet, what if he looks foolish in front of his peers?  It is safer to stay quiet so he does.  The cost to your organization may be a brilliant idea that saves time and money, streamlines efficiencies or that improves customer service – which is lost forever in that moment.

An employee idea management system can help to bring transparency to people and systems problems.  People do not operate in a vacuum, and should be involved in the planning stages from the outset to prevent confusion and rework.  As in the example with Jack above – Jack could clearly see from the very start, that the new process would not work as he is the one performing the work and actively engaged with customers, suppliers, systems and processes on a daily basis.  If management had brought Jack into the goal setting and planning process – problematic issues would be identified up front and alternate solutions found – ones that Jack and his colleagues would buy into as well.

Idea Share Tip of the Month!

Your employees see 80 percent of all improvements that management can’t see.  However, most companies neglect the vast potential in the untapped ideas of their employees who know their job best. 

Sign up for the Idea Share Tip of the Week! at Frame of Mind Consulting

Frame of Mind Consulting understands the unique DNA of your organization, which is necessary to turn any organization into one capable of leveraging the full idea potential of its employees. Would you like to drive connectivity and ownership throughout your company?  Contact Page at (860) 559-7942 to set up your complimentary consultation during which you will receive some invaluable tips that you can apply to your business right away.

Choices

Your current life is culmination of past choices you’ve made. Those choices come in the form of attitude, behavior, thoughts and actions or inactions you’ve taken. They are all based on choice. There are some things that we are born into that can be argued are not choices. Regardless of your belief in that regard, there is a choice involved as to whether or not that defines and confines who you are, what you are doing and who you are being. 

Take a moment to define at least one desired outcome. Is everything you are doing oriented towards the outcome you are wanting? What can you do to focus yourself on that outcome?

If it’s a better relationship with someone, are you taking the time to listen to that person and really hear what he or she is saying? Are you willing to let go of preconceived notions about what you think they are meaning and get clarity from them? Don’t expect someone else to change, rather be willing to change the way you are approaching situations in order to alter the normal chain of events. Be open to different approaches.

If you are looking for a better job, are you updating your resume and your LinkedIn profile? Are you talking with people about what you are looking for? Are you networking? Have you defined what that better job may look like? The latter is a huge point. It is easier when you know what you are looking for and also much easier to enlist the help of others in that process.

There are so many possibilities. Each step is a choice, many of which can lead you to your ambitions at varying speeds and others, which will send you in another direction. Choose wisely and remember you always have a choice. It all starts with you.

Please feel free to contact me at www.lucindasmith.com to share your successes and experiences, or to get answers to any of your questions.

Lucinda Smith

Coach ~ Speaker

Life Transformationalist
Solutions for Living

Ideas: The Stepping Stones to your Success!

Last month I wrote about the pitfalls surrounding a traditional suggestion program where ideas go to die. This month I would like to discuss the benefits of having a simple, focused and powerful system for generating, capturing and implementing ideas where ideas become the stepping stones to your success! 

An organized system enables you to effectively manage and execute your ideas and results in less confusion and complexity. It also increases connectivity and ownership as it allows your employees to channel their energy towards ideas that require action instead of them falling flat. The system becomes a visual platform to prioritize ideas and for employees to see the ideas they are going to pursue in a way that helps us and others relate to them.  Without structure ideas fail to build upon one another.  An organized system also has a built in feedback loop.  This is a key missing element in the suggestion box type of program.

Most companies are better at blocking and snuffing out ideas rather than promoting them. Streamlining operations or being cost effective is no longer enough in today’s competitive environment. Leadership is being continuously asked to do more with less, which is a big for reason flagging profits and increased competition. Leadership is then stuck with too few resources in terms of time, money and people and is operating in survival mode. They then do not allocate the proper resources to the idea system for it to be successful. When constantly putting out fires, the challenge then becomes following through on ideas. To follow through on ideas successfully, you need those things that leadership is short of – time, money and people to evaluate and implement ideas.You also need time to properly train and direct management and employees.

Promoting new ideas can turn your organization into a top performing idea generating company that may result in entirely new business opportunities, innovative product lines, services and processes. Promoting new ideas increases cash flow as ideas may improve old products, services and processes or revitalize markets. Promoting ideas creates a learning organization as everyone is trained to see problems as opportunities and are empowered to develop solutions to complex business problems. Implementing ideas effectively requires an incremental process which requires idea exploration, information gathering and research, experimentation and testing, as well as feedback. Your idea system becomes an immense learning and development tool - every idea incorporates inquiry and learning which drives your organization forward.  Ideas become the stepping stones to your success.

Idea Share Tip of the Month!

An ineffective idea system will demoralize employees and result in fewer ideas than no idea system at all.

Sign up for the Idea Share Tip of the Week! at Frame of Mind Consulting

Hartford CT/ Springfield Area:  Page will be speaking on November 18th on the topic of:  Talent and Imagination:  Map Out the Social Power in Your Organization.  For more details and to register, please visit http://bit.ly/1OJlGdt 

Frame of Mind Consulting understands the unique DNA of your organization, which is necessary to turn any organization into one capable of leveraging the full idea potential of its employees. Would you like to drive connectivity and ownership throughout your company?  Contact Page at (860) 559-7942 to set up your complimentary consultation during which you will receive some invaluable tips that you can apply to your business right away.

Are you Contributing to the Pipe Dream?

In a perfect world, your employees would align themselves with strategic targets and not focus on their own agenda.  But we are not living in a pipe dream – we operate in reality.  Often, we fall short of getting our employees truly invested in their jobs.  We hear employees say such things as “I am just here to collect a paycheck – I don’t have to think about solutions” or your employees sit on the sidelines with a 'wait and see' attitude.  Sound familiar?

Today, I am going to touch upon how you, as a decision maker, can release control and build trust with your employees so they make better decisions and produce better results. 

1.  Provide a clear definition of success that makes conclusions clear.  Vague objectives result in a vague focus.  Keep communication simple so employees can repeat it to others.  Take time to align around what you should communicate and not just what – but WHEN to communicate it.

2.  It is crucial that you talk with and not at your employees by communicating in terms of what matters most to them. How your employees work on a daily basis is an important consideration in your communications.  What do they actually need to know to achieve the strategic goals of the company?  

3.  Whether you seek it or not – your employees’ perspective is their reality and pretending it doesn't exist – doesn't mean it doesn't.  Solicit their feedback and more important act on that feedback!  Allow your employees to grow your business!

4.  Paint a clear picture of the case of change through stories.  What will be the impact of the change and how does that affect their jobs?  Link where you are and where you are going with what you have done and what you are going to do.  Build enough momentum going forward to convince those who are sitting on the sidelines with a ‘wait and see’ attitude.

5.  Give up some measure of control by trusting your employees and allow them enough room to find their own way from point A to point B. Provide them with a loose road map and let them navigate it. When you tell your employees what to do you are taking accountability away from them.  Furthermore, if you tell them what to do and you turn out to be wrong – you have lost credibility with your employee base and it is twice as hard to win that trust back.  Be a guide and a mentor, as well as a leader!

Idea Share Tip of the Month!

Create buy-in with your employees by demonstrating and showcasing the impact of implemented ideas and how employee actions make a difference in outcomes. Create a living timeline of ideas implemented.

Sign up for the Idea Share Tip of the Week! at Frame of Mind Consulting

Frame of Mind Consulting understands the unique DNA of your organization, which is necessary to turn any organization into one capable of leveraging the full idea potential of its employees.  Would you like to drive connectivity and ownership throughout your company?  Contact me at (860) 559-7942 to set up your complimentary consultation during which you will receive some invaluable tips that you can apply to your business right away.

How to Get More Clients With a Podcast

If you're a coach, author or expert you've probably heard the term "know, like and trust." This is the concept that people have to get to know, like and trust you before they will buy from you. What I want to share with you is some ideas to build YOUR know, like and trust factor with a podcast, and how that can help your business.

How many listeners do you need to your podcast for it to be successful? When I ask my clients this question, they often say 5,000 or 10,000. But what if just one person listened to your podcast? Would it still be worthwhile?

I would argue that it is. If you think of a podcast as a way to build a deeper connection with your audience and as a way to serve, then even if one person gets lots of value out of your podcast it can be worthwhile.

Take the following scenario: You are talking to someone who is thinking about working with you, but they have a lot of competing things going on in their life. They are not certain if you are the person that they need to work with, and they have so many challenges going on that they don't know where to start.

Here's what I suggest: Ask that client what their biggest challenge is, and what they would they would like to know more about. Then do a podcast addressing that challenge and possible solutions. If it's a solo podcast it can be you talking about it, and if you are doing an interview based podcast you can bring in an expert who can speak more in depth about the topic.

After you finish the podcast, you can follow up with an e-mail telling the person that you just finished a podcast addressing their very challenge and ask them for their feedback. You are not asking or trying to convince that person to do anything, you are simply providing a solution to their problem via a podcast.

If that one person becomes a loyal client and tells other people about you, was it worthwhile to do that podcast episode? (Of course I think the answer is YES!) The nice thing about podcasting is that there will be more than one listener and your client's challenge will be one that other people have, and you'll be able to serve and connect with those people to.

My challenge for you is to ask your potential clients about their biggest challenges and think about how you can create a podcast that helps them solve their problems. Do this over time and you will be their go to person for your specific topic!

About Doug:

Doug Foresta is a coach who helps coaches, speakers and authors expand their reach and build their platform with a podcast. He has helped hundreds of people from all over the world start their own successful podcasts. For more information visit www.standoutwithdoug.com or call 413-883-5518 for a free 30 minute Expand Your Reach session.

Employee Ideas…Creativity…Innovation…Growth!

“Making your company a great place to work by teaching your employees to leverage their great ideas and to execute them well!”

Page A. Thibault, MBA

The question begs – Why don’t people just do what brings about results?  After all, they understand the importance of being effective. Your company may suffer from low morale and disengagement and your employees may shrink from high visibility roles for fear of reprimand.   In addition, your employees may be cynical and not take risks to bring forth their knowledge and valuable ideas.  In future blogs, you will discover how to best create an environment that is conducive to driving creativity, knowledge sharing and innovation through your company’s best asset – its employees!

I customize employee idea systems that are unique to the DNA of your organization.  This simple, yet powerful process captures your employees’ most beneficial ideas, while dramatically reducing the number of ideas in the management pipeline – making employee idea generation a manageable process.

Employee Idea Management System - a simple, powerful system that allows the free flow and exchange of ideas throughout your company; customized to your unique culture and how your employees work on a day to day basis.

A ‘personal touch’ is essential to building trust between all layers of your organization from management to the front-lines. My conversational and hands on approach focuses all employees on the right results and allows employees to practice new techniques in a safe and non-judgmental environment to maximize learning.  I teach managers and employees how to work together to achieve results with mutually beneficial input and clear expectations of the idea management process, complete with a feedback loop that results in maximum buy-in from your employees.

Idea Share of the Month!

An idea system should integrate into the fabric of how your employees already work.  If the system is too complex for your employees to understand or too time-consuming – they won’t use it.  When an employee idea system integrates into how your employees already work, they are more likely to buy into and accept the change.  

To sign up for Page’s Idea Share Tip of the Week! Please visit Frame of Mind Consulting.