BUT without the Goal you will have failure, or if the work does get done it’s late, over budget, below quality standards, and people are angry and demotivated.

I recently led this Team Development activity with a company of Environmental Consultants and it created a great discussion about the knowledge and lack of knowledge about the goals of the Organization and the people who work there.

What’s The Goal?

Objective

• Complete quality work on time, within standards
• Create a discussion about the companies overall goal
• Clarity of why the company is in business
• Enable employees to make decisions that are aligned with the Organizational goals
• Employees to discover how their work, is aligned with the goals of the company

Materials

• Flip chart paper
• Markers

Group Size

• Works best with teams of 6 or less

Preparation

• Take some time and research the company see if you can determine what their goal is. Generally you can find some version of this on their website and materials.
• Make sure you have flip chart paper and plenty of markers
• If you want to get fancy, you can have the questions written before hand or on a power point slide

Instructions

Break people into teams of 6 or less there are a variety of ways to do this.

I suggest you try to mix people who don’t normally work together, that will create a richer discussion.

This is a 2 part activity, in their groups they are going to answer the following two questions. Then create a shared visual / metric / representation of all your responses as a team. The shared information must be visual with no words or letters.

The questions.

What is the Goal of the company?

• The larger organizational goal, why we are in business.

How does your role within the company contribute to this goal?

• Create a shared visual / metric / representation of all your responses as a team.

Allow for ~15 – 20 minutes of discussion and drawing. Walk around answer any questions and listen to the discussions going on.

After the 20 minutes ask the teams to take turns sharing their responses to the 2 questions. Facilitate any question and answer time – then tape the flip charts to the wall so everyone can see the responses.

Connections and Concepts

Goals drive everything a a company. Many manages and C-level executives believe that people ‘should just know’ what the goal is, and they themselves may not be too sure of the goal! Having a discussion and hearing from the employees what they see as the goal and how they think their work contributes to this goal will strengthen the work that everyone does.

Keeping it visual will also keep it simple. The goals should not be too complicated the visual representation will keep people engaged in the discussions.

The power of this activity is in the discussions that happen, keep them talking and gather the information for people to use later.

Processing and Reflection

Now that everyone has shared and you have the images hanging on the wall, it’s time to see what we can do with this information. Here are some discussion questions.

• In your small teams how did you reach agreement on the goal of the company?
• In your small teams how did you reach agreement on how your work contributes to the company goal?
• Looking at these representations, what commonalties did we discover?
• If we all knew, with certainty what the Company Goal is – how would these images be different?
• How would your contribution to the goal be different?
• What about this activity was useful to you?
• What about this activity was useful to the company?
• What is one step that the management can take to make the goals clearer?
• What is one step that you can take to understand the goals better?
• How will we know that this has happened?
• When can we go-and-see?
• Once those steps are accomplished, what will be better about your work?
• Once those steps are accomplished, what will be better about the company?
• What is already happening that shows up progress is being made?

Variations

Instead of company ask about the Department you work in, the project you are working on, the people you work with, etc…

Hire Mike

Need experiential and hands-on ways to create lasting memories and content in your programs / workshops / and lessons.

Mike is your answer. He will create and develop customized activities and simulations for what you need. Contact Mike (mike@create-learning.com)

Mike will come to you to facilitate the action learning and processing, or can just send you a document with videos and photos of how to do everything you need.

Mike will make you a success and your next meeting and training program better than ever.

Working + Managing Across Generations:

From Traditionalist to Generation Y & Beyond…An Interactive Workshop

“I am finding it challenging aligning and getting the best out of my staff. My senior staff complains about these young kids not wanting to do anything, and the younger staff complains about how none on the senior staff want to hear their ideas.” 

Sound familiar? You are not alone, this is a direct quote from a CEO.
This workshop has been designed to STOP the nonsense and get people working.

Outcomes:

This session engages participants to:

• Enhance workplace productivity
• Develop Managerial Action plans to increase the Trust, Team-Work, Effectiveness and Productivity of Multi-Generational Work Teams
• Learn to recognize patterns that influence workplace attitudes and expectations
• Gain insight to understand and resolve generational misunderstandings in the workplace and avoid unnecessary conflict
• Explore generational diversity in the workplace today
• Identify and exchange perspectives and expectations informed by their generational identities
• To read more click here

Can be facilitated Anywhere;

• Face to Face with an audience of 5 – 5000
• Through a Webinar Format
• 1 on 1 in a Managerial-Coaching Process
• On Your Own – I send you the materials, power-point and Do-It-Yourself Activity + Facilitation Guide
• Contact Mike to discuss your team and options. 1-716-629-3678

CONTACT…

• mike@create-learning.com  1.716.629.3678

To have your team learn and apply the necessary skills and talents to

Work and Manage Across Generations: From Traditionalist to Generation Y and Beyond…

My job is to support you.
Please email me ( mike@create-learning.com ) share your ideas, questions and feedback.

When planning content for Team Building, Innovation and Leadership programs I use a Chalk-Board. Above is an image from a wall in my office. It is covered in Chalk-Board Paint. I have found that drawing, charting, modeling, listing my ideas in writing on this big wall where I can see everything and how it fits helps me to plan better and more creatively. 

What you see is the outline for a 5 month Emerging Leadership Program that I am creating and facilitating for about 30 students enrolled in a Local College. This challenge was unique, the Deans I am meeting with wanted “Something different than the typical Leadership program. Many of our students have already learned about Goal-Setting, Time-Management, Planning etc…We need to make this stand out”  Also they wanted a Hybrid model, meaning an on-line and face-to-face component, because many of the students are commuters. This is NO problem because the Exponent Leadership Process is a hybrid model. BUT the challenge was Something Different from the typical Leadership Program.

What are your ideas, what would you offer that was Different from Typical Leadership Development Programs?

Here is what I got so far (As you can see in the image, it is still a work in progress);

Is Leadership about me? Or we?

• Overview: The focus of leadership is impacting others, the need to focus on you is also important. How do successful leaders balance this challenge? They determine and know what they are great at, what they are developing, and what they are just bad at. All of this comes from YOUR ‘Current-Actual-Capacity’.
• Once you know your Current-Actual-Capacity then you can start developing plans and knowing with decisiveness how you can make the greatest impact on others while still flourishing yourself.

What’s my temper got to do with it?

• Overview: Your temperament an enormous impact on your ability to lead. Determining what behaviors are acceptable and how to best use, change, adjust your temperament will increase your success as a leader.
• You will take an on-line DiSC Behavior profile which will illustrate your preferred behaviors under stress and how others perceive you as a leader. We will use this information to develop normative-leadership-behaviors and determine when and how to best use and adjust your behaviors to increase your success.

Steps to Solutions

• Overview: Knowing the problem DOES NOT equal the solution. Solutions equal Solutions
• Leaders are responsible for making decision and using their judgment; Solution Finding. If they cannot find the solution, competent leaders know how to work with a team to find to solution steps to handle complexity and interacting systems.
• You will learn the 8-step solution finding model and together we will solve real problems and determine some action steps towards the solutions.

Organizational and Personal Complexity

• Overview: Your ability to handle the complexity of your work will make or break you as a leader. This workshop you will; 1. Determine your current ability to handle complexity; 2. Learn how to measure others ability to handle complexity; 3. Develop action-steps to increase your ability to handle complexity; 4. Work with others to discover solutions to complex problems.

The Best in Others Comes From the Best in You

• Overview: For people to follow you, you must show competence, learning agility, respect for self and others, and add value to their work. Leadership consists of ups and downs, you will have to make decisions that other people don’t like. How can this group and you as a leader stay healthy and focused on doing your best, while facing challenges?  

There is home-work, discussion time, and on-line content, blah blah blah… I really just wanted to show you my Chalk-Board wall and see how you think things through.

Now Your Turn;

How do you think through new, creative things? Do you still go analog for stuff or are you all digital? I tried mind-maps and they frustrate me.

What should I add/remove/change from the ideas I have above?

michael cardus is create-learning

One area of focus was decision making and how this group can support you in making choices and learning from the choices made. I decided to use an activity I call

‘Choosing Choice to Choose Connection’

• Overview: Teams of 3-6 are supplied with 4 ropes tied in loops, 1 rope connects all the ropes like a key ring. The teams have to choose which rope connects them all together.
• Outcomes: The ability to practice making decisions that have no clear answer, all that can be done is choose which one looks like the best answer. This becomes complicated when in work teams. Practice in creation of a decision making systems for agreement as well as listening + speaking for collaboration is necessary.

While processing the activity with the teams I asked;

I am going to ask you a weird question, Pretend that we all go on break and during this break your team does what it normally does on break…But unknown to the members of your team everyone else was shown which rope is the correct rope to choose. BUT your team did not know this because you all were on a break. In what ways, besides just telling you which rope was the correct choice, could the people and teams support, guide, serve your team in making the right choice?

Each team them had ~8-10 minutes to create lists and discuss the question.

WOW! the responses were awesome and really tied SO WELL into creating a community of support for the students and faculty.

Now Your Turn;

• Think about the question above; How would you respond? Your team respond? Your boss respond? Your subordinate respond?
• In what ways could you alter this question to be appropriate with your team?
• If everyone BUT you knew the correct choice – How would you go about asking them questions to find the answer? How would you treat them the same or differently?

Share your usages and ideas.

michael cardus is create-learning

___________________________________________________________________

To register

High Performance Team Development: Quality Tools for Quality Teams

I presented a similar workshop last year. This one is going to be similar yet different. Some major differences are going to be more time spent on Clarification of Role Responsibilities (who does what when; who is accountable to whom; authority of assigning and taking away existing work and project tasks.)

Who should attend and why?

If are a Project Sponsor / Champion, Team Leader, Team member of a Quality Team and want to enhance your skill sets in Team Development, Facilitative Leadership, Project Management and people skills then this is where you should be. The material and learning simulations in this workshop are designed to make you a better leader and team member, plus we will have fun!   

This will be accomplished through;

• Interactive delivery of content.
• Experiential application and practice of the content
• Followed by processing and steps for integration into your team and organization.

The material is able to be used and understood by people, who have a working knowledge of Quality Teams (6 Sigma, Lean, Process Improvement, etc…) Whether you lead teams or are a team member the material covered and techniques shared will be useful for you to harness the hard skills, interpersonal skills and political skills (Soft Skills) needed to complete successful Quality Projects.

Outcomes:

You will walk away from this workshop with;

• How to develop high performance Quality teams; With a prescriptive model that can be applied and utilized. 
• Facilitative leadership of teams.
• Effective Prevention and intervention methods of maladaptive team member behaviors.
• Steps to create “buy in” for the Quality projects from people who are outside the team.
• A community of professionals that will share resources, best practices, and serve as solution finders to Quality Teams within their organizations.

If that is enough for you – Register Now

If you need more information look below.

High Performance Team Development: Quality Tools for Quality Teams – Agenda

• it is lofty and subject to change depending upon who is in the room and time constraints.

Roles and Responsibilities of Quality Teams

• Pitfalls common to all teams
• High Performance Teams Model and its application
• Define Roles & Responsibilities of; Project Sponsor / Champion; Team Leader; Team members; stakeholders
• * Task Initiated Role Responsibilities (TIRR) – are cross-functional relationships in which A is authorized to initiate B’s doing something but where it is B’s manager and not A who is held accountable for whether or not B does it and for B’s output. TIRR define who can do what to whom. These are generally lateral or horizontal relationships. (Jaques 1998)

Team Leader

• Facilitative leadership
• Exploration of content vs. method and ways of providing evaluations and feedback on both
• Establishment of team ground rules
• Agendas for agreement
• Decision Making Methods
• Dealing with project de-railing behaviors of team members
• Team prevention and intervention strategies
• Pressure Paradigm activity

Managing Quality Team Projects

• Getting buy-in from people outside of project team
• Defining and showing relevance to project stakeholders
• Influence Strategies
• Communication with people outside the team who’s help is needed
• Pitfalls of emails to Quality projects and how to avoid them
• What to do when you are not getting cooperation

If that is enough for you – Register Now

• Questions? Contact Mike

michael cardus is create-learning

image by GollyGforce trying to catch up on commenting

After working with the University of Rochester NY, Simon Graduate School of Business Executive MBA program, I had the absolute joy of working with the Professional MBA Program.

Much of what we covered was similar to the Executive MBA program.

Outcomes;

• Systems in place to drive positive behaviors and increase effectiveness of team members. Leading to less stress on team members and a clear + distinct process that all people know and agree upon.
• Knowledge of each team members strengths and opportunities-leading to trust of each other and the ability to properly assign tasks that will get done with the highest quality.

Below are some images from our time together;

How would any / all of the outcomes above improve your team and leadership? Contact Mike to arrange this or a similar workshop for your team.

michael cardus is create-learning