The New Leadership Training
What does it take to run an Organization smoothly? You know that when you hire a new employee, you have to train them so they know how to do the job the way you want it done. But how do you guarantee that they are getting the best training? Is training all that important? Of course it is! Without proper training, your company will suffer losses due to errors and re-work so you are essentially paying someone that costs you money instead of making you money.
The best way to avoid this is to have proper training methods in place and to have the best leadership to enforce it. This means that you will need trained leaders to back you up. If your leaders don’t possess the skills and knowledge below, you should get them re-trained right away or start looking for someone who does:
- The skill of thinking in terms of systems and knowing how to lead with systems
- The skill to understand the variances and problems in daily work and planning
- The skill of understanding how we learn, develop and improve
- Understanding people and why they behave the way they do
- Knowing the interdependence and interaction between systems, variances, problems, learning and people’s behavior
- Providing objectives, purpose, direction, and concentration to the Organization
The power of systems thinking –
Consider these statements:
- To improve the way we treat customers, I’m offering a free 36” T.V. to anyone that doesn’t get a complaint in the last quarter.
- To improve productivity, I want you to find ways to get more organized and move faster.
- To improve sales, I’m offering a trip to the Caribbean to anyone who gets a 25% sales increase.
- Costs are out of control, I want you to buy less and get more done cheaper.
Systems thinking helps people avoid these examples of over simplistic solutions to problems. Let’s take the first example; the Manager offers an award, a free T.V. to encourage employees to treat customers better. What is wrong with this way of thinking? It assumes that:
- The worker knows instinctively how to talk to upset customers
- Giving material rewards works
- People must be forced to be respectful
- Workers have the information needed to keep upset customers happy
In the second example statement; the Manager assumes that people know instinctively how to get more organized and to move faster than they naturally do. Improving productivity requires a series of factors and interacting, interdependent steps. This requires data to find the better way.
In the third example; to improve sales by way of offering a trip to the Caribbean, the Manager is again operating under the assumption that:
- The sales people are not functioning at their capacity by not applying enough effort
- Carrots and sticks work
- Sales people have enough quality leads and knowledge to increase sales
- Pushy sales people won’t harm relationships
If Managers could develop a system of sales, they could learn ways to improve the sales process, rather than “motivating sales people.”
In the final statement regarding out of control costs; the Manager is trying to put a band-aid on the problem, rather than find out the cause. Costs are the result of a series of situations. Again the statement requires data to support it. Without drilling down into what drives costs, no one can begin to learn if they can even be reduced.
Variance and Problems
Psychologists have known for years that criticism and abusive language don’t result in long-term improved performance. They learned that most variances in people’s outcomes didn’t come from intervention of the leader but from data collected during observation of the process they followed. If Management knows exactly where problems or variance occurs; rework, waste, errors, work promised but not completed, it is usually either build into the system or has no system. So the truth is that most problems and variances will continue to reoccur until the process or method of work is changed.
In an Organization without data (knowledge), opinion is king. Why are people not focusing on systems development? Probably because people don’t like math, they want instant results, or they believe there’s already too much data and nobody uses it.
In the new leadership system, trained people know how to lead better, understand how to correct variance and solve problems, understand that improvement comes through learning, understands why people behave as they do and focuses the Organization with purpose and direction. The best Organizations are run by trained system leaders. The system is the solution.
We have developed turn-key system training modules for Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Management. For more information, an Executive briefing, or pricing you can contact us here or call 989-791-2475.
What are your thoughts on training? Do you get it right with very little errors? If so, how do you accomplish this? Do you struggle to keep yourself or your employees on the right tasks? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
Also, if you found this informative or think your friends and coworkers could benefit, please share; they might appreciate it as much as I do!
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