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Achieving your Strategic Plans with Superior Talent

In creating your company’s strategic plan, you’re familiar with three essential stages: Where are we now? Where are we going? How will we get there?

Guest Post by: Adam Wong

The first two stages are undoubtedly completed with key stakeholders hunkered down in your company’s conference room. For “Where are we now?” you connect your mission statement to your core values, then begin your SWOT analysis.

how to retain top performing employeesAs you move into “Where are we going,” you are forced to identify your sustainable competitive advantage — what makes you unique — and from that births a vision statement that vividly idealizes your desired outcome. You now know who you are and what you want, but how are you going to get there and outshine your competition along the way?

It’s at the third stage of a strategic plan where specific activities must be identified to help you achieve your vision, and these activities are entrenched in the people who make up your organization. “How will we get there?” could be interchanged with “Who is going to take us there?” The people who make up your organization are the ones actively working within your finances, your customers and your operations. So, if you don’t have the right people in the positions you’ll need, how are you going to achieve your strategic goals and realize your vision?

Clearly defined positions are crucial for the success of all personnel, and this is where TTI Success Insights’ job benchmarking assessments make it easy for you to identify qualities in your current employees and desired outcomes in their unique positions.

With a product such as TriMetrix®, you can benchmark each position to identify the behaviors, motivators, acumen and competencies required for success in that position. Then, you can match the employee to his or her job and straightforwardly identify the gaps between the demands of the job and your employee’s capacity to be successful in his or her position. Once you have the right people in place, you’ll be able to outshine your competition simply by fulfilling your strategic plan.

Read our success stories about other companies around the world that have been using TTI Success Insights employment assessments to outshine their competition.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Wong is Director of Network Development for TTI Success Insights, driving excellence through careful thought and attention to detail, consistently anticipating the needs of all customers. He serves as an integral member of the product development team, creating new products and improving existing tools to better support the company. @TTISI_Adam

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Multivariate Analysis Leads to Predictability

Guest Post by: Bill J. Bonnstetter

New research demonstrates the value of using multiple assessments to predict and identify entrepreneurs.

TTI’s statistician uses multivariate analysis, which involves observations and analysis of more than one statistical variable at a time. Using this approach, TTI analyzed its database of serial entrepreneurs showing the following results:
using assessments to identify entrepreneurs

  1. If we only used Behaviors (DISC) to identify serial entrepreneurs, we would be correct 60% of the time.
  2. If we only used Motivators, we could correctly identify serial entrepreneurs 59% of the time.
  3. If we used both Behaviors (DISC) and Motivators, our accuracy goes up to over 80%.
  4. However, if we add soft skills into the equation, our success rate of picking serial entrepreneurs goes up to 92%.

Serial entrepreneurs have five unique soft skills in common: leadership, personal effectiveness, goal orientation, persuasion, and interpersonal skills.

This research proves that TTI’s approach to using multiple assessments to benchmark a job is much more effective than using just one assessment for selection like some other assessment companies advocate.

We will be conducting multivariate analyses on other unique groups, such as sales people, leaders and entrepreneurial-minded engineers. Stay tuned for more research data.

 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill J. Bonnstetter is chairman of TTI Success Insights and founder and chairman of Target Training International. He is considered one of the pioneers in the assessment industry because of his significant contributions to the research and study of human behavior. @bbonnstetter

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What makes some businesses soar and others fail?

Guest Post by: By Dr. Ron Bonnstetter

What makes some businesses soar and others fail? The usual answer is economic conditions, poor market analysis or under capitalized.

building strong work teamsBut a strong business must start with a strong team. A team inspired by a common goal and a crystal clear purpose.

For several years now, Simon Sinek, consultant and author of Start with Why, has been explaining that our best employees do not work for a result but for a purpose. Their focus is not on what the business does, but on why they are there and their role in promoting a belief, a vision. He believes that much of our marketing and hiring practices need to be inverted.

For example, most employees can tell you “what” they do and even how they do it. But can they tell you “Why” they do their job? What is at the core of your business? What are the core values and beliefs that drive your organization? If you are having difficulty seeing the application and implication in business, just look at educational reform for perspective.

Since the implementation of No Child Left behind, our national focus has been on the what (higher test scores) and the how (more rigor), and we have forgotten the richness that only comes when we promote the why of education. The why component includes beliefs in the love of learning, the sharing of a teachers’ passion for a subject and the joy of accomplishments driven by mutual and shared visions.

Now back to the business world. The best businesses understand the power of shared beliefs. When a team has a shared set of purposes, they go the extra mile, not for overtime, but for a cause and mission that is bigger than any one individual. This is devotion verses salary.

The neuroscience behind this concept is also solid. We know that our newest brain, the neocortex, offers humans rational and analytical thought. It also allows us to verbally communicate through language development. This brain region serves us well as we handle the many daily encounters with the What’s and the Hows’ of life.

But recent neuromarketing research suggests that up to 95 percent of our decisions are made at the subconscious level. In other words, not the neocortex, but our much older and deeper brain region called the limbic system. This complex set of brain structures controls emotions, behavior, motivation and long term memory. Oh, it also has no capacity to support language.

As a result, many of our behaviors, are driven by this paleomammalian brain. These driving beliefs are hard to verbalize, but they are driving the bus and helping us decide what is important.

In summary, if you promote a product, whether education or your business, by focusing on the what and how features, you will fail to capture the heart of your employees or your customers. Remember that the why behind our actions is the most powerful influence you have at your disposal. The next time someone ask you “What you do?” Start by passionately explaining “why” you care enough to do what you do.

I wonder why I wrote this?

To read other posts about this topic, click here.

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5 Tips for Sustainable Succession Planning

Guest Post by: Adam Wong

According to the 2012 Chief Executive study by Booz & Company, of the world’s largest 2,500 public companies, 15% of CEOs were replaced last year, and 72% of the CEO turnovers were actually planned successions, suggesting that companies are working more thoughtfully than ever to ensure they put in place new leaders who will best serve the company for years to come.

hiring for long term developmentConsider the senior leadership of your organization. Has your company made plans for the transition of these individuals? Succession planning is least effective when it is developed on an as-needed basis (in fact, it really should be called “crisis management” in that case); rather, succession planning should be ingrained in your complete talent management plan, making it a part of the way you do business.

With every new hire you make, and as you onboard each employee, there are simple ways you can ensure the strength of your bench can withstand the inevitable changes that lie ahead:

Benchmark every position. Succession planning originates in the role definition process. It is there that stakeholders begin to truly understand the traits necessary for success in the role.

Don’t just hire for now. If you hire for now, you may miss the candidate who has the opportunity to flourish in the future. Picture each candidate in future roles within the company.

Be candid throughout the interview process. As much as you are interviewing candidates to better understand if they will fit into the culture of your organization, those candidates are interviewing you. Listen for their desires to grow within your company.

Instill the ubiquitous question, “What’s next?” Don’t wait for new employees to become acclimated to their jobs to intentionally communicate the company’s plans for growth. When you start having these conversations from day one, your “A-players” will subscribe to your vision and will see themselves in the company’s growth plan.

Don’t assume all employees desire the same things. Just because you see leadership potential in an individual doesn’t mean he or she shares in that desire for growth. Make sure those employees are comfortable in positions that are more constant, and continue to communicate with those individuals in case desires change as the company changes as well.

When you are operating with a sustainable succession plan, you will be able to look ahead and identify any gaps before they can affect the company. And, as you are identifying high potentials within the organization, you’ll be able to adjust each person’s development process to suit the critical needs of the company.

Read this former blog post about how a family-owned company overcame emotional bias in its succession plan.

 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Wong is Director of Network Development for TTI Success Insights, driving excellence through careful thought and attention to detail, consistently anticipating the needs of all customers. He serves as an integral member of the product development team, creating new products and improving existing tools to better support the company. @TTISI_Adam

 

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