Org-Fitness Today!

Assessment Use Growing?

According to the Institute for Corporate Productivity, the use of psychological assessments for selection and development is on the rise. The percentage of business organizations that currently use assessments for these purposes is 58.3 percent and it is expected to rise to 75 percent.

With estimates of between 3000 and 7000 different assessment tools available, it's important to choose a good tool when using assessments. If you would like to know more about some of the things to consider when trying to choose an assessment, please contact me and we can discuss your interests.

March Madness: No Kidding, A Shocking Statistic on Lost Productivity in the Workplace

I am not a big sports fan. Let me rephrase that: I don't watch or listen to a lot of sports in comparison with a lot of men. I read in the Friday, Honolulu Star Bulletin an interesting statistic: Corporate America is likely to lose $1.2 billion in productivity during the NCAA basketball tournament. The full article is to be published in the Sunday Star Bulletin edition. If you would like to know the source of this information, I found it comes from Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc. which is a based in Chicago. Click here to read the full report.

I wonder how this compares with productivity loss on the Monday after the NFL Superbowl? According to one source (CNBC), the loss productivity in the work place related to the Superbowl is around $800 million. That was spread out over the entire month of January. Again, the CNBC data comes from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc.

Are there other large sporting events that impact work productivity like this? I would imagine the larger dollar loss for the NCAA tournament is based on the number of days involved versus the Superbowl being just one day, and a Sunday at that. Many of the NCAA games are played during the week, during regular, business hours.

Is your company doing anything to monitor or limit loss productivity? With the ability to follow most events via the web these days, are IT departments putting in place any filters? I know there have been companies that block access to sports web sites. How prevalent is that though?

I'd love to hear comments from anyone who is familiar with or has stories about loss productivity in the workplace related to sporting events. I'll say this, if the productivity lost at work during the NCAA tournament is anywhere close to these estimates, that is truly March Madness.

Must Read Post: Continuing the Discussion, Abusive Communication in Heathcare

Yesterday I posted about the verbally abusive physician and some "how to's" from Crucial Conversations.

Bob Sutton, author, consultant, and Stanford professor, has written about this on his site, Bob Sutton: Work Matters.

Bob has authored a new book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. He doesn't pull any punches and in a new post on his blog, he describes his own experiences from consulting in health care and shares a letter from a physician that is very revealing.

I don't want it to seem like this is a "pick on a physician" site. As Bob would say, there are assholes in all lines of work. Health care just offers a unique and different setting with the hierarchal nature usually putting physicians at the top.

What the people at Crucial Conversations discovered was that the reason a lot of health care incidents take place is because people don't speak up. Why don't people speak up? Because of fear. Why are people afraid? Because they don't like being humiliated or yelled at, etc. You can read more about that here in an executive summary of the report, Silence Kills. Let me know if you would like to read the full report.

Bob's post is very good. Check it out here. Let me know your thoughts in the Comments below.

The Communication Conundrum

What do you do in a situation where you've got someone being verbally abusive? Especially if that person is a doctor.

Since some of my work is in the health care field and I have heard stories of situations similar to what I described above, I was glad to see the latest from the folks at Crucial Conversations. Crucial Conversations is book and training program based on the work of an organization called VitalSmarts.

I was fortunate to get certified in the Crucial Conversations training while I worked at Servco. What I like about Crucial Conversations is it gives great examples and tools for dealing with common work related communication issues. The training includes a basic communication model that helps people understand their own communication patterns and also how to understand more clearly the communication of those around them.

Kerry Patterson answered our tough question here.

Let me know what you think of this. If you are interested in learning more about the Crucial Conversations training program, please contact me.

What is it I do?

Recently someone called me and was asking what I did for work. They knew I had the MSOD degree from Pepperdine University however they wanted to know more specifically.

Some of my friends think I do fitness related work within organizations. That would be nice, however it's not the case. Certainly fitness is a serious interest of mine, however that's not what I do everyday as a vocation.

So as I talked on the phone with this person, I described what I do:

"I am an organizational consultant who uses his training in OD consulting to provide management and leadership development training to organizations. I often times bring to my clients expertise and experience in team building, communication and dealing with strategic change. Additionally I provide executive coaching using assessments to provide a developmental framework for my clients."

After I finished the call and it went on for a while as we discussed this and some of the challenges this person was facing in their work environment, I realized this was a pretty good summary of what I do. For this reason, I wanted to capture it. We all have our niches and areas of expertise, this is mine.

High Performance Teams and The Five Dysfunctions of Teams

I have been reading a book based on Patrick Lencioni's, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This is really more like a guide or how-to book titled: Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide.

If you have ever read any of Lencioni's books, you know he writes in an entertaining and I feel effective manner using a fable to tell his story. I first read the original Five Dysfunctions a couple of years ago and felt it was an excellent story and that he had effectively identified and labeled some critical stages teams go through. I've used some of his work in discussion with teams over the last couple of years.

According the Lencioni, the Five Dysfunctions are:

1. Absence of Trust
2. Fear of Conflict
3. Lack of Commitment
4. Avoidance of Accountability
5. Inattention to Results

In his book, the model used is shaped like a pyramid with Absence of Trust being on the bottom or at the foundation and Inattention to Results is at the top. There is also an assessment tool for teams to measure or see where they are in relationship to these five dysfunctions. Whenever I mention or go through these five dysfunctions, people seem to resonate with them and I see lots of heads nodding.

I am currently designing a 4-hour training called High Performance Teams using this and other models. I will also have a longer--one to two day off-site training available for teams that are really committed to going beyond the status quo. Creating a highly effective team is never easy, as we sometimes describe the HURT 100 course, "we wouldn't want it to be easy," It is doable though!

Please comment and let me know your thoughts and interest on this topic.

Organizational Assessment Tool: Infotool

The best tool I know to find out what is going on in your organization is Infotool. Infotool is a web based organizational diagnostic tool. It is very easy to use, can be customized, and provides results back almost immediately. Here are some of the features:

An advanced, on-line organizational development diagnostic tool:

• Design and build a unique survey for your needs -easily customizable
• Instantly sort and analyze millions of critical data bits
• In-house analysis in minutes-not days
• Immediately isolate, with targeted precision, barriers to workforce productivity by each demographic

Instantly measure how effectively employees are engaged, managerial effectiveness and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Infotool is a diagnostic tool which precisely identifies critical pathways for changing a corporate culture from one of mistrust to trust, narrowness to openness, staleness to innovation, silos to collaboration and dilemmas to solutions.

Click here to see a partial list of Infotool clients.

Let me know if you would like to learn more about this great tool.

Facilitating Strategic Planning

For the past year I have been involved with several different clients helping them with their strategic planning. In some cases this has been for the whole organization and with other clients it has been with just a department or unit of the organization.

I try to use a similar process regardless as it provides a consistent framework to work with. Obviously each client is different and the results vary with what we are trying to achieve. The great thing about this framework I use is that it is scalable. In other words, it can be used for a large organization, a small department, or even an individual participating in executive coaching. The number one question we continually ask clients is to think about what is important. What's important? This question leads to the who, what, when, where, and how we will know. My colleague, Mike Jay says it this way; "How will Who lead Whom to do What, When, Why, and Where?"

The framework typically starts with a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and surfacing assumptions. From this we get a good sense of where we are (present state)and then we start looking at where we want to go (future state). The future state is the vision for the organization. The vision is a descriptive picture of where the organization is headed.

The time frame for a vision, as with strategic planning, is shorter these days. With change happening so rapidly these days, it makes little sense to do planning beyond 18 months to two years. This is true for visioning as well. This also relates to my belief in the perspective of strategic planning being a dynamic versus a static process. In the planning process, I recommend that plans be revisited quarterly or semi-annually at the very least.

The next couple of steps help the organization understand its decision making process and how it will operate or behave. We take a look at organizational values and the other ways with which the organization makes decisions. Sometimes these are called unwritten rules or guiding principles.

Once we have identified all of these things about the organization, we can focus on what's important--the strategic objectives and plan the specific steps for achieving them. Organizations may go about this part of the process differently. Essentially this is where the rubber meets the road or where the real work takes place. It's important to focus on strategic objectives that really matter and to establish effective measures for each objective. The final step in this phase is to make sure adequate monitoring and follow-up is built into the system or plan.

The final phase in this process has clients look at a creating a purpose or mission statement that encompasses all we have learned and are implementing. Ideally, this statement includes the key values and overall objectives of the organization into 25 words or less. It is a powerful statement for all stakeholders to understand what this organization is all about.

If you would like to hear more about this process or have questions, please feel free to contact me.

Cool Site: Bob Sutton's Work Matters

Bob Sutton is an author and professor. He has co-authored several popular business books including The Knowing-Doing Gap and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense. I'll add more later however if you are curious, check out his site Work Matters.

Assessment Tool: InsightMirror360

There are lots of assessment tools on the market these days. Being in this field for almost 20 years I have certainly seen my share of assessments. The InsightMirror360 is one we have been aware of and recommending for about a year now.

360-degree feedback tools get bantered about all the time. Used properly, they can be a good tool for individuals and organizations. In my mind, these tools are great for providing developmental feedback to leaders and managers.

What I like about the Insight tool is it's ease of use--everything can be done on-line and the fact that it includes a well thought out Action Guide. I've linked a brief fact sheet (click here) on the InsightMirror360.

Click here for a review of this action guide in Government Training News.

Click here for some client testimonials. 

Please contact me if you would like more info on this assessment.