This handy tool provides a way for employees to suggest ideas for improvement (a new market to go into, a new product to sell, or a new way of doing business). Using a simple template, it asks for five pieces of information that are important in evaluating whether the idea has merit. Leaders can tell …
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This tool lists 10 ways to encourage innovation. 1. Create a corporate venture fund, establish clear criteria for picking projects, and seed the fund with enough money to make people pay attention. Then promote it and see what happens. 2. Put together in-house teams to track the competition, with each team focusing on one product …
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This tool describes four key factors of new product development. First, if a new program or product isn’t to your liking, think twice before imposing your critical judgment on it. If people believe it will work, then you’ve got to embrace it until they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. It’s easy to say you …
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This tool explains how to prepare for a business crisis that you hope will never happen. We can all think of examples of leaders who failed to react well when a crisis hit. Think about Watergate. Think about Arthur Anderson and the Enron scandal. Think about Ford Motor Company’s failure to replace faulty tires on …
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This tool explains the skills of effective crisis leadership. It is inevitable at some point in your career you will face a situation that requires extraordinary courage under fire. More than at any other time, you will feel a lack of control. This is a frightening feeling. In a crisis: Events are unfolding more quickly …
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Once you’ve defined your corporate core values, you can reinforce them by incorporating them into your performance appraisals and organizational assessments. In order to do that, you need to identify the specific behaviors associated with each core value. For example, “being flexible and adapting to changes in customers’ needs” might be a core behavior associated …
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In high performing organizations, company core values are linked to “we statements” that list the specific behaviors needed to support each core value. These “we statements” can be used for recruiting, hiring, promotions, and performance appraisals. In this way, all the work of the organization is tied to the core values. The following sample set …
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This is a balanced scorecard example tied to an organization’s core values. Each core value has at least one performance measure. Core Value: Reliability Goal Statement: Provide timely, accurate, and cost effective products and services the first time, every time. Performance Measures: Percentage of individuals who receive products, benefits and services without adjustment. Percentage of …
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Business core values are the activities essential to the success of the organization. In healthy organizations, people share a clear understanding of what these core values are and how they are measured. This tool helps people identify and develop core values. It is best used in conjunction with the “Six Rings Model: Integrated Strategic Planning.” …
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This tool outlines 15 habits that highly effective facilitators focus on. Facilitators organize the conversations that other people have. Their role is to guide the conversation by defining the desired outcomes, deciding the sequence of topics, ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard, asking relevant questions, limiting non-productive communication, and summarizing the conclusions reached. Highly effective …
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