Keeping Calm - Visual Thoughts...

I thought I'd share this little illustration I drafted up recently to provide to a client for a customer service 'reminder' for the team. As well as some other key actions for the team to remember, like answering incoming calls swiftly, supporting the team and thinking of the customer in each interaction ... this one struck them. They said it was a great reminder to just .... breathe. Keeping calm sometimes gets pushed out of the way as we rush to fulfil a request or complaint or just respond to an email. Many things happen so quickly that we're barely conscious of doing them. So for today, and many days and moments beyond today, keep calm...

Training is not a presentation

Several times in recent weeks I've been working and consulting with teams and organizations who see 'training' as delivering a PowerPoint slide show. And handing out copies of the slide deck as 'the workbook'

Such a presentation can be information transfer, it can be knowledge sharing. But rolling through 65 slides in two hours doesn't transfer skill or build capability.

This approach - of an expert, in full-flight 'tell' mode - is a presentation. It's ok to call it that. You can call it a briefing or a lecture too. But don't mislead managers, people leaders, or employees by calling it training, or worse, a workshop and lifting their expectations that they might get to participate or contribute - and then not allow that to happen.

Whether your organization's learning and development team are involved or not, be clear about what is building capability in your business and what's sharing information, what is changing attitudes vs what is shifting behaviors.

Then design your learning and training experience from there. There will likely be segments where you'll have to tell participants some content, but there are endless ways to engage with people and 'ask' them what they know and share that knowledge. Then reinforce that with a concrete application of the message or chunk of content. And it doesn't need to involve any PowerPoint slides!

A structured process for adult learning can create engaging, creative and changing experiences. So have a look through the latest training session you're working on. Is it all tell and no ask? Is it you the expert rather than you the facilitator of learning? Is it full of PowerPoint slides?

Then pull the plug and start again!

Your "participants" will love you for it.

Fulfilment is the basic expectation

Fulfillment is the basic expectation

When I order something online, I expect it to arrive. Fulfillment is a basic part of business – it means satisfaction and completion but it seems it’s too often delegated to logistics companies and that’s where the responsibility lies.

When something doesn’t arrive, it reflects on the logistics company and on the distributor from whom I bought the product. Their fulfilment process was flawed. If something goes wrong, they need to rectify the situation.

Resissue? Cancel and start again? Try a different delivery company?

To deliver is part of your responsibility. You've taken our money, now deliver it. Don't blame the courier. You chose them. They are part of your fulfilment process. They are part of your distribution channel. Expect high standards from them or move along and use a service that you can rely on.

If I’d embarked on a 21 day cycling adventure I would have got my delayed product quicker. The 2000 km it travelled took three weeks. A commercial airfare and two cab fares would have resulted in quicker and more positive fulfilment than the service provided by one of the world’s leading logistics businesses.

Would I use or recommend either company now? The logistics firm? No. Never. The interactions with them about said product were less than fulfilling! And the distributor of the product? I’ll recommend the product, but I won’t speak well of the backend of the business.

Is the product good? Sure, it's doing the job but it has this bad aura around it when I look at it. It’s as if there’s writing on it that says "not cared enough by the seller or the logistics company". Instead of an addressee, does it read "who cares, there are plenty more customers out there”?

Some in the industry may say, you got it, you're lucky. Do you know how many of those pesky brown packages we freight around this massive globe? And the sales targets we have to reach and the shareholders we have to appease? Do you? It's a tough work world out there.

It is a busy world out there – so busy that I had three other packages swiftly arrive from other corners of the globe all the while I was waiting for that ‘other one’. Big bulky packages. Arrived, quickly, simple, no hassle.

That is fulfilment. I bought products and they arrived, as promised. In fact, they arrived quicker than promised. That is fulfilment, completion, satisfaction.

Facilitating Onboarding or Induction

After recently completing a big project where more than 110 induction and onboarding sessions were facilitated, I wrote an article published here in Human Capital.

Too often the PowerPoint data show gets plugged in, new members of the team walk in to a darkened theatre and the ‘on boarding’ begins. It’s ‘oh so boring’.

Facilitated discussions, questions and interactive activities can very much be a part of onboarding, inductions and other welcome sessions in organisations. If the excuses are about budget or timing or urgency, then the development team just isn’t being creative enough. If you want to invest in the new people joining your team, start with some of the first experiences they’ll have with you - make these sessions engaging and interactive using talented and capable facilitators who can work with structure as well as uncertainty. It will be a nice change from those passive information sessions that ran in too many organisations this week that are called ‘onboarding’.