Reverse Benchmark?

Photo Credit - Pixabay

In the 80s, 90s and 2000s benchmarking was a big part of organization strategy.  The approach was to copy excellence of the industry leaders and apply them to your own organization. There were mixed results for sure. 

Those who tout the virtues of benchmarking are a kind of copycat.  Most of the time the benchmarking exercise doesn't yield the kind of results that are expected.  That is because of the difference in the key factor - people.  By people I include all levels, particularly the leadership.  While the skills of people from Organization A may be similar to those in organizations that it is trying to benchmark against (even though they are in the same industry), the mindsets will be different, and therefore, the way that variations in methods are applied would be different.   This means that their organizations' cultures would be different. 

This is also the reason why top performers from one organization don't always do as well in another organization they move to, even though the industry and business is the same.

Even if there are positive results, they don't really do much to make the organization stand out i.e. distinguish itself from it's competition.  Customers are not going to be in a hurry to come to you if you are offering services or products that are commoditized.

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In the current adoption of AI scenario, we see similar attempts to incorporate AI into the organization without sufficient thought (beyond costs) of the possibilities and probabilities of long-term multiple -layer benefits.  This will eventually lead to the feeling of sameness.  Today, some of us are able to tell when a document (email / report / presentation) has been written by AI.

What might happen if the organization were to reverse benchmark?  Have a look at the short clip  that inspired this short piece.

Definitely food for thought for me- please share yours.

Perhaps this Reverse Benchmarking might help us make better choices when choosing how to apply AI at work or in our lives.

Action from Training for Improving Long Term Performance

Here's the action from a program I did for a group of new employees from sales with varying years of experience (1 yr to 20 years).  The objective was to get them to think on how and why to go about improving performance in the long term.

Some of the topics covered were Personal Brand, Motivation, Resilience, Mindset, and how to develop Power Habits that make one successful.  The time allocated was less than optimum to cover such topics in detail, but I managed to get them thinking with the help of facilitator-led group discussions and processes.

The participants were alert and full of questions and insights that made the workshop fun and interesting and gave positive feedback about me to the organization.

Here's some of the action from the session.

Expectations

Habits that make us unsuccessful

Habits that lead to success

Building Resilience

Learnings of the day

Action from IAF Mumbai Hub Session - The Art of Focused Development Discussion

Feedback as an activity, is not looked at with pleasure.  Try telling someone that you have "feedback" for them, and watch their expression and body language.  If you happen to be their manager, then you may get grudging acceptance.  

Few team managers and leaders are comfortable giving feedback.  This is mainly because they haven't been trained on how to do it.  I recall in my career, during the months of February or March, we in HR were running training sessions on the appraisal process. These appraisal sessions were for both managers and employees.  They consisted of a slide deck, and comments by the HR presenter - that was all. 

Employees were told how to accept feedback from their bosses. Bosses were given information on the Appraisal process, and feedback was considered a side effect. Appraisal Feedback anyway tends to focus on past performance, and little is discussed about future.  The employee is focused on getting the best possible rating for themselves and so any form of Development Feedback takes last place.  Bottom line - the development discussion is not given much importance for the future.

With this knowledge, Varsha Chitnis and myself decided to put together a session to enable a Focused Development Discussion.  Our experiences told us that individual biases and trust have a huge impact on how a development discussion can be conducted. So we incorporated these aspects into our session design and called it The Art of Focused Development Discussion.

Here are some images of the action on that day.

Desired Outcome for the session

Our Session Flow

Harvest from our First Activity

Clustering of behaviours

Clustering of biases and behaviours

Connections made between biases and behaviours

The Blueprint for the FDD

Learnings and Feedback that we received.

The enthusiastic learners

We thoroughly enjoyed designing and running the session. Our sincere thanks to the International Association of Facilitators - Mumbai Hub for the opportunity to do this session.  We are grateful to all the participants who took the time to attend and contribute their experiences into the session.

The Power of Meaningful Recognition Using CliftonStrengths

 Great points in this article about #recognition of employees. I like how there are links to #maslow's model. Here are some quotes from it that resonated with me:

"Positive reinforcement indicates for people exactly what you value -- what benefits the team and the organization -- and how they can do more of it."

"Employees want to know that their unique impact has been seen and valued. Writing “great job” in an email is not individualized #praise."

Read the rest of the article here.

Choosing your Mood - Every Day, Every Time

This post is about choosing our moods on a daily basis.

Some times we do it consciously, but most days we are reacting. 

The above image (image sourced from Pinterest) got me thinking.  Some thoughts about this interesting image (you can substitute the word 'mood' for the word 'chair') :

1) Which of these chairs did you spend the maximum amount of time last week?
2) Which other chairs did you occupy during the week?
3) Which chair would you justify your choice the most, perhaps subconsciously?
4) In this week, which chairs would you intentionally like to spend the most time?
4a) In this week, which chairs would you intentionally like to AVOID spending the most time?
4b) What exactly will you do about these intentions?

Post your responses if you are comfortable, or don't.

Definitely do reflect on them and have a wonderful week.

#coaching #coachingquestions #performancecoach #emotionalintelligence #managingemotions #strengthsdecoder #reflection #introspection #emotionalregulation #emotions #coach

How to Deliver Strategic Change

Many change management initiatives in organizations don't succeed, for a variety of reasons. Here is a super article (and model) on how to deliver #strategic #change.  

From the article: "the need for clarity at the outset of a change initiative—the lack of which is a chief cause of failure."

Read the article here.

How to give Feedback That Lasts.

For a lot of managers and leaders, giving feedback is a challenge because they don't really know how to, haven't been through positive feedback experiences themselves, or just don't like to be the bearer of "bad" news.

Here are #practicaltips on how to deliver #feedback that lasts. FYI - the Sandwich method isn't one of them.

#practicaltips on how to deliver #feedback that lasts. FYI - the Sandwich method isn't one of them.

Read the article here.