All of us and our companies are in constant change, and we know this. Different people need different levels of information and motivation for the change to happen. As a manager YOU NEED the wisdom and ability to manage the process and add value to peoples decisions and work.

Contact Mike to make your Organization, Team and Leaders – plan for change better.

Planning a Change

When planning for a change you need reflective and purposeful steps. This change may be personal and or professional.

By setting a model for you to place objective thoughts into. As a leader you will be better equipped to determine areas of success and which areas to proceed into next with planning and decisions.

• I don’t know the original source of this model.

Below are questions (by no means comprehensive) that will serve you in thinking through, planning, and making successful action steps for a change.

Planning a Change Question Sheet

Vision

• What is the purpose?
• Who will it affect? How?
• Why is it important to your team? The organization/business/community?
• What made you decide that this is important?
• Did you ask your team for input? If so how and what was their input? If not, why not?
• How will this change affect the staff? Those you serve (clients, customers, vendors, suppliers, supervisor(s), etc…)? You as a leader?
• Describe the ideal state…Describe the current state…How will you achieve the ideal state?

Skills

• In what ways might the staff and your existing skill set be useful for the change?
• What new skills will be needed?
• How will you accomplish training these new skills?
• Explain, in detail the necessary skill set for completion of change (if multiple people have/need multiple skills, list the key responsibilities of the change and the necessary skill sets for success)
• What skills will you as leader(s) need for implementation of the vision?
• How can the Leadership team partner with you to enable completion?

Incentives

 Explain your plan to move your team and yourself towards completion of this change

• Why should we work towards this change?
• How is this change relevant? Now? In the future?
• Identify the resistors to the change.
• Identify the champions of the change. 
• What will keep you, as the leader motivated?
• How will you continue to keep the team focused?
• How will you measure success and failure?
• What steps will you take to reward success and re-direct unmotivated team members?

Resources

Explain what you have and what you need

• What kind of budget will be available?
• How much time is needed?
• Explain how this change will be delegated to staff members.
• What will be the steps for follow-up and accountability?
• What resource do you currently have available (list everything from paperwork to people to machines to policies – the more explicit you are in what you have the better your completion will be)
• What resources will you need (list everything from paperwork to people to machines to policies – the more explicit you are in what you need the better your completion will be)
• In what ways may you secure these needs?

Action Plan

Explain in detail what you are going to do and how it will get done

• Re-visit your Vision – and break the change into steps.
• What are the steps for completion?
• Goal (Quality, Quantity, Time Frame, Resources) – What is the 1^st step for completion?
• Strategy – In what ways might you implement a strategy for completion of the 1^st step?
• Objective – How will you know that you have completed the 1^st step?
• Responsibility – Who’s going to accomplish the objective?
• Timeline – When is the implementer going to accomplish that objective?
• Feedback and Evaluation – Who and how is the implementer going to know if they accomplished good or bad work on their objective?

Final Thoughts:

• How do you plan for a change?
• What existing processes do you / team / organization have in place for reflective thought?
• Would this system work for plans outside of change? what would be different?
• Describe how this applies to your current practice / life?

Having the Model is Easy, Making Change Happen is NOT…

I have successfully led change and solution focused efforts for organizations, teams and managers of all sizes and structures. To make change happen CLICK THE BOX below, and be the reason that change is successful and people love the work they do.

michael cardus is create-learning

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

High Performance Team Building: Quality Tools for Quality Teams

Great Team Work happens on purpose. With a set of tools that people can be trained & coached to use. These tools allow all team members to do their best work in conjunction with the team.

Getting work done. 

Outcomes:

• Enhanced effectiveness of teams and people on teams.
• Increased productivity of teams.
• Decisions made faster and with greater buy-in from team members & leadership.
• Problems solved at the team level, increasing the amount of work getting done.
• Understood and repeatable metrics to show progress & setbacks.
• Skills in continuing and repeating progress made.
• Skills in learning from setbacks and finding solutions.

How Is It done?

• The consulting, coaching and training takes place in real-time. The implementation of this process happens during real-team-work. This is not Pretend.
• Working with the people and team where they are, during actual Team Projects and work.
• During team meetings content is covered the team implements the Quality Tool.
• Observing team meetings questions and exploration of ‘what was done, how to continue the success, how to understand the failure’. Are applied to the measurements of performance.
• One on One coaching for the Team Leader and any Team Member is offered to enhance the process and Get the Work Done.

Does it work?

• Yes, and Mike will be with you every step of the way to support and guide success.

Contact Mike to discuss making your team better using Quality Tools for Quality Teams.

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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

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• Lycra tube final sequence-focusing on creating a proper sequence of risk from trust circles to body movement to coordination and team-work.

One part of my work is facilitating Train-the-Trainer workshops. These workshops vary from corporate audiences, classroom teachers, non-profit organizations and colleges + universities. Here are some images and notes from a Train-the-Trainer Experiential Education for Physical Education Teachers at The College at Brockport, New York.

Exploring Critical Thinking & the L>E>A>R>N model. Teaching these soon to be teachers low risk interactive ways to create community and critical thinking skills within their classroom. We began with some noodle innovation.

Physical education is about motion and learning to better understand how your movements coordinate with others. Above is an example of a great partner activity that creates – shared movement, connections and negotiation skills.

HOOPDOM – is a always a favorite – a non-competitive version where the students must work together to solve a challenge. In our processing after this activity we spoke about applications to the classroom and how HOOPDOM can be used in Physical Education.

Using metaphor cards to teach reflection skills. For teachers and students the ability to reflect and connect the activities to school and lives is necessary. The teachers really enjoyed exploring and learning many, many, many variations of using metaphor cards.

With one team we used the Cycle Time Puzzle – VERY TOUGH. For Physical Education we were able to discuss how to handle challenging situations within the classroom and how to decide whether to modify or stop the activity all together.

Using I2U2ME2WE as a closing and learning activity brings the students back together in small learning teams. Additionally we were able to use this time as a reflection and connection time.

At one point I took out the “Putting It All Together” kits and one of the students said, “We have already done that!” That gave me a great opportunity to talk about how do you handle that in a classroom? The solution is variations!

A nice closing discussion of Experiential Education and it application in a Physical Education Classroom – using the lycra tube.

Thank you The College at Brockport Physical Education Department and I will see you again soon!

To enroll your class, team, yourself in a train-the-trainer workshop;

Contact Me I travel to you and can develop a program to make your team and you better.

michael cardus is create-learning