Business Improvement Project | 20%
Michelle Chafin
Director at Engine Room Business Innovation | Leading Change Agents and Change Leaders
The last 24 months have changed everything. For businesses. For leaders. For employees. Now, as the dust settles, one fact becomes clear:
Power has shifted.
From organisations to people. From profit to mutual prosperity. From “me” to “we”.
Employees are now asking ‘human questions’ about the work they perform with increased passion.??Why am I doing this? What is it for? How can we do it better? The competition to attract new talent is growing fiercer than ever.
This poses an existential threat to businesses everywhere. A business is only as good as the people it employs; those businesses that want to survive and thrive in 2022 will need to respond to the new power dynamic in kind.
What is happening?
How can you even think of moving forward? The last two years have just been about surviving. Change was forced, extreme, reactive. But out of all this disruptive change came something incredible. We learned to work in an entirely different way.
Developing Change Agents?
Over the last four years Engine Room Business Innovation has been working with business owners to think strategically when selecting people (high performers and high potentials) to join the Manager Acceleration Program – they are to be the Change Agents in the business.?
Why???Imagine if everyone in the business was working on a project that saved the business time or money … or they were designing an innovative product or service that could change the business’s direction towards a better future.
To make this happen we need to develop more change agents in the business.
The programs we have designed at?Engine Room Business Innovation?empower current and future leaders to focus on creating a new work habit - instead of working 100% ‘in the business’ and being caught up in the ‘whirlwind’ of operations and busyness. They learn to work more efficiently on the 80% - by developing the discipline to focus and work on the?important?and not just the?urgent.??They then develop the discipline to block off time (20%) to work ON a?Business Improvement Project?- that will ultimately strengthen the business DNA.?
Let’s face it … for businesses to survive and thrive in the future they cannot continue to rely so heavily on the business owner/senior management team to make all the decisions.
The leadership model of ‘telling’ your team what they need to do, had dramatically shifted way before the pandemic.??The new future leaders were asking their team what they thought was needed.??Leaders that were more comfortable in asking questions within their team possessed a growth mindset.?
The pandemic has certainly accelerated people’s thinking about what leaders are needed to drive a high-performing team.?
This is why Engine Room Business Innovation has focused on the future leaders in the business.??This is to create a strong ‘leadership pipeline’ for the business to continue to thrive - everyone in the team is then?‘working on the business’?by executing a?Business Improvement Project.?
The future will continue to be full of opportunities and challenges.??Climate change.??Digital disruption.??Global shortages and supply chain issues.??And don't forget the discerning customer.?
Learning for the Right Reasons
We know that training must be innovative and constantly adapting within this fast-paced business world we live in today.??This requires?strategies to secure the niche and in-demand skills that your team needs to succeed.
Enrolling them to ‘get a Certificate’ - to tick a box for training provided - will not cut it anymore.
Developing your team is more about being future focused and to ensure that?learning agility?is a?‘must have’?for everyone in the business (not just leaders).
“69% of the world’s most admired companies value learning agility and curiosity over career history and experience when it comes to hiring”.??Korn Ferry
At Engine Room Business Innovation, we are continually creating new techniques and tools that are relevant for leaders now and in the future. This is why our training model is continually innovating to adopt different formulas of?blended learning?which is needed at different times to drive a high-performing business.?
With this focus, we know it will lead the business towards outstanding possibilities in the future and beyond.?
Everyone in the team should be inspired to work on?20% improvements.
It creates a more dynamic team as they learn how to be more productive by thinking consciously about how they spend their time; deciding which tasks matter most to them and the business.
If your leadership team are not leading the way … and encouraging their team to – stop – think and reflect on how to improve everyday operations, then … nothing will change, and innovation will be?just a word?and not an action/reality.?
领英推荐
Leadership is an ACTION not a position.
Undertaking a?Business Improvement Project (BIP)?provides the following key skills:?
The BIP will develop the leadership qualities needed now for businesses to take on the challenges ahead.??
To create accountability and ownership, firstly, you need to provide the techniques and tools on how to inspire the?‘above the line’?behaviours in the business … if leaders talk about accountability and ownership and yet have not (and will not) develop their own?coaching skills?to lead this – then the business will continue to have slippages beyond their own awareness.?
As you create the right environment and implement these coaching habits, you will start to build something more powerful than a few strong players on your team.??You will create a positive/constructive culture — a set of norms and values about how work gets done efficiently and effectively— that will persist long after your team disperses.??Your culture will be filled with a sense of adventure and a productive combination of initiative and accountability.??People will have the confidence they need to learn and innovate and the agility to adapt to moving targets.??Your business will have the collective strength to tackle hard problems, navigate ambiguous situations, and pursue opportunities.
The participants on the Manager Acceleration Program – for Change Agents?- are provided with the?steps and?tools to take a project idea to execution?– via the Learning Management System (LMS) .?
A major part of the program is that the participants must commit to a project to apply their learning (obtained in the workshops and via the pre and post workshop material on the LMS).??By achieving this, they are continually learning new ways to execute a?Business Improvement Project?– thereby, gaining new skills (that they did not realise they needed) in the process.?
What our research has provided us …
People do struggle to implement/execute a project.?
So, my question is … what are people working on every day? … tasks and projects – yet if they struggle with the skillset to implement/execute … just imagine how many tasks and projects are not completed on time or within a budget.?
We have also found that they may be great with their technical skills … but it is often the ‘people skills’ that let them down … not making them wrong … as they have probably never been provided with an opportunity to learn the?‘power skills’.?
To successfully complete any project the?‘people skills’?within your team are going to make the business much more competitive – you can create the best product and service … but if your team do not have the people skills?‘power skills’?– then ‘you will always get … what you’ve always got’ when it comes to team/group dynamics – nothing will change - if behaviours and habits don’t shift.?
We provide performance intel …
The Manager Acceleration Program for Change Agents provides performance intel for the business.?
People generally need two types of information to achieve top performance.???The first is clear direction: What is the target, and why is it important? (In other words, the W.I.N. (What is Important Now).?
The second is performance feedback: Am I hitting the target? Am I doing it right? Think of feedback as critical information — data that people need in order to calibrate and adjust their approach — rather than a critique.??When feedback is simply much-needed information, and not a personal judgment, the feedback is easier to both share and receive.?
We will be dialling up the Business Improvement Project in 2022
We have developed templates for the Business Improvement Project.??These steps need to be completed by the participants to receive a badge for successfully completing their BIP.?
The Business Improvement Project should??deliver a return on investment for the business that will far exceed the cost of the program.
Who is the program for??
Do you want to be a change agent in the business??
Do have high potentials in your business – who you would like to invest in??
Do you have a hunger to learn more and gain the skills required to be a future leader???
Contact us?www.engineroombi.com
m:?0458 691 299
email:?[email protected]
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