Best Practice Institute faculty share models for improving organizations. They show applicant volume doubled from 116,000 to 251,000 resumes, sales targets jumped from 60% to 95% after training, and employees under poor managers face twice the cardiac event risk of smokers. Leadership development relies on continuous feedback and listening for the future.
Chapters
Well, back in '09, we were only getting about 116,000 resumes a year. Now we get— last year we got 251,000. You're like, well, that's a lot of resumes now. And I say, yeah. Now it's a larger pool to draw from when we do have to replace people by attrition, retirement, what have you. So that's a great business benefit when people start hearing about your organization and say, I want to work for you.
We're going to look at a model for developing yourself, developing yourself as a leader, developing yourself as a partner. And the model we use in coaching is a simple one. You begin by asking. You begin by asking people for input. How can I be a better leader? How can I— give me suggestions. How can I be a better team member? And you can either do this in a feedforward process or just asking for ideas for the future, or you could do it with a formal 360-degree process. You know what I found out? It doesn't matter so much. Just get people in the habit of asking. Now the reality is we don't ask.
Listen for the future. And we cannot really listen for the future if we are deafened by the present. And that line really connected with me because as the CEO of my own organization, we often get deafened by the present. By what's happening now, by the conundrums we're faced with. And we don't really listen for the future, and boy, we need to.
So this is a chart of the percentage of sales targets that are met. If you see the green line on the left, here's performance before training, so 60% of the goals are being met. But performance after training, we see that has gone up to 95%. So sometimes when people see that, they go, "Oh my God. Wow, I can see— look at the difference in performance before and after training.
I want training for my salespeople." Positive feedback is literally a signal to do more of something. And without positive feedback, we don't know what to do more of. So we really need that positive feedback. We learn a tremendous amount from other types of feedback as well, But that actually, whether we learn or not from that other feedback, actually depends on the mindset that we have.
You know, the first time I heard the term talent management, I burst into laughter because I thought, what are we doing now? Are we supposed to be talent scouts and talent agents? Is this like Hollywood? Well, the reality is that it is because any good movie director knows that depending on the name you put on the marquee of the movie, it makes a difference whether the movie is successful or not. So star power is very important in getting results.
People who work for a bad boss are twice as likely to have a severe cardiac event as someone who's working for a good boss. And this increased risk for a cardiovascular event, it's the same increased risk as if you're a smoker. So I mean, that really puts it into perspective. I mean, think about everything that public health agencies agencies around the world are doing to educate people about the dangers of smoking. And here, working for a bad boss can increase your risk of heart attack to the same degree as smoking.
What is culture?
It becomes very nebulous. It becomes very esoteric for people. It becomes fuzzy because they're not exactly sure, and they think they know. And I sort of found a way to define it a little bit better. So I'm going to start with this word, with heritage, which is about the past. And when I talk about this, I really do believe that companies in general that have phenomenal stories, great histories, great pasts, they of course have an awesome heritage.
As leaders, managers, and professionals, you have the opportunity to make a significant impact in your workplace every day. You can leave a footprint on others' lives, and you have control over what kind of impact you leave. In order to work effectively across cultures, we have to develop cultural agility. So what is the definition? Of cultural agility. It is the ability to look at both the business and cultural aspect of a situation and manage for results in a way that works effectively within the culture. So there's 3 important components to develop cultural agility. First, you have to develop the knowledge and really get to know the culture that you operate in.
The global connection. Information does and will connect everyone in business even more. And it means what? It means that everyone will be linked together. Entirely new business models, supply chains, customer care networks, markets, and industries will be born from this, always on global connectivity. How is your company going to catch up? Are you even aware of all the impact that can be on your company? When our strategy is unrealistic or it's weak or we haven't even got one, we skip over the hard part of how we're going to handle the conversation itself. We skip over what we're going to use as our tactics. So if strategy gives us what we want to say, tactics are how we will say it.
