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Senior leaders must frequently choose to devote their time to the company’s long-term strategy or focus on short-term execution. Often, the need for achieving quarterly earnings wins out, and leaders will lean towards the latter. With their time already monopolized by meetings, damage-control, and financial analysis, it’s too easy for senior leaders to slip into focusing exclusively on short-term activities. As one biotech executive said, “I think about strategy on my commute to work and my commute home. I don’t have time during the day.”

Most executives recognize the need to focus on both strategy and execution; however, what remains is how to do so. In an interview with an energy company’s board member, BTS consultants asked, “What makes an ideal CEO?” The interviewee expressed the need for a “bungee CEO” who could move quickly from big picture- to detail-oriented work. "Bungee CEOs" lie at the midpoint between strategy-focused CEOs, who are too far removed from day-to-day operations and struggle to connect with employees, and execution-focused CEOs, who run the risk of being perceived as micro-managers.

At a time when unforeseen shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic have made it even harder to focus on long-term strategy, here are four principles senior leaders can implement to achieve balance between strategy and execution.

1. Strategic pivots and scenario-planning

In the past, many executive teams thought that rapidly changing a company’s strategic direction would reflect poorly on the team to the board, because that meant the strategy was ill-conceived. However, with the increasing volatility of global markets, it’s become more critical than ever to anticipate and make quick strategic pivots.

One way to anticipate pivots is by leveraging scenario planning. For one senior executive team surveyed by BTS, identifying the worst-case scenarios and possible solutions for the business helped them to be better prepared for the pandemic. During a strategy session prior to the pandemic, these executives imagined the impact of a global pandemic on their industry. The leaders created a “playbook” that would enable them to make strategic pivots in weeks rather than in months, ultimately increasing their odds of surviving a shock without taking drastic action. In this case, these leaders was able to leverage their solution when the pandemic hit, so that its strategy could remain intact while its tactics for execution evolved. Clearly, scenario planning can pay great benefits in the long term.

Another kind of scenario planning is called “war games,” where executive teams break out into two groups to discuss an idea. One team presents the idea in a positive light, while the other argues the opposite. This exercise creates conflict within the team, helping leaders practice healthy, animosity-free debate so they are prepared for when the stakes are higher. Experience with war games is particularly useful in situations where there is strong ownership for an initiative and coming to a consensus is challenging.

2. Trust, the linchpin between strategy and execution

CEOs set the tone when it comes to building a culture of trust amongst senior executives. Cultures built on trust allow leadership teams to focus on what is best for the entire organization, rather than any one person or function. Trust is also the foundation for setting a team-wide strategy. As mentioned by one CEO, “We can argue as a team, but once we leave the meeting room, we all have to agree on a common message.”

Frequent strategic pivots are a very real part of today’s business environment. While these shifts will inevitably leave some negative effects on employee engagement, one way to circumvent this is by adopting a policy of radical transparency. By taking the time to explain the reasons behind a change, you will increase the chances of buy-in from your employees, which is critical for making any shift.

3. Risk-taking

Every risk comes with potential for failure, but in order to balance strategy with execution, senior executives must allow and even encourage their people to take risks. Without overly “scripting” out the future, leaders need to provide their teams with both the goals and the guardrails within which to accomplish them.

Senior leaders need to encourage teams to “fail fast and cheap,” using each attempt at executing an idea as an opportunity to gain insight for a future iteration. The risk-taking mindset is also an asset for senior leadership teams. As stated by one COO, “You need to have a short-term memory and not dwell on mistakes.”

4. Create a culture of psychological safety

Some employees fear that sharing bad news will adversely impact their career, so creating a culture of “psychological safety” where employees feel safe to share problems is critical for ensuring teams communicate problems quickly when they arise. This is imperative because failing to address problems early on can have a compounding effect. When errors identified at lower levels go unreported to senior leaders, leaders will often continue to make decisions that drive the business down the wrong path, unaware of the impact they are creating.

Executives who lead in a punitive fashion are particularly prone to employees withholding critical bad news. For example, one professional services firm’s CEO was nicknamed “Mushroom” because his team felt it best to keep him in the dark, just as growing fungi are, while they fixed the issues at hand.

Creating a culture where reporting issues early and often is encouraged is particularly important in matrixed organizations, where a small issue within one group may cause a large issue in another. Bad news travels slowly in these hierarchical organizations where information must go “up the stove pipe,” slowing down decision-making and exacerbating once-small problems into large ones. Therefore, senior leaders must establish the psychological safety necessary to ensure open communication from the lowest level possible.

Focusing on strategy and execution simultaneously has never been easy for senior leadership. Challenges already associated with rapid changes in technology, customer preferences, and the global economic environment have only increased with disruptions such as Covid-19. To address the dilemma of strategy versus execution amid such continued seismic shifts, senior leadership teams must pivot strategy, plan for worst-case scenarios, create cultures of trust and psychological safety, and allow for risk-taking.

Some of the teams I work with report to a boring leader, and it’s a problem. As someone who works with leadership teams, it’s easy to spot when this is happening because the clues are usually obvious. During meetings, the team is multi-tasking, they are checked out, and they’re often quiet, only offering thoughts when called upon by the leader to do so. Not surprisingly, the team retains little, to anything, that was discussed in the meeting, which often results in – you guessed it – more boring meetings and discussions on the very same topic.

Being boring isn’t just a benign idea or an interesting notion. It’s a behavior that presents serious consequences for leaders and teams because the negative impact on productivity and execution is real and here’s why: Boring leaders beget underperforming teams. When a team is led by a boring leader, it’s almost a guarantee that you see a team focused more on compliance and getting the work done, versus real engagement and energy to work together in an above-and-beyond way.   That may be because boring leaders often are the last ones to see this behavior in themselves, and consequently, they don’t recognize how their behavior is doing their teams a major disservice – a boring leadership style never brings out the best in others.

What does it mean to be a boring leader? The answer may surprise you.

Most of us can be a little bit boring

It’s easy to hear the word boring and think that it applies to someone else.  Personally, I hate the idea of others thinking I’m boring, but here’s the thing. The opposite of boring isn’t being charismatic, energizing, or rah-rah. That’s why it’s easy to think this concept applies to anyone besides us, because it conjures up an image of someone droning on about a dry topic in a monotone voice.

In the context of the workplace, boring leadership often takes on a different look, staring with a lack of awareness about the audience. When a leader is seen as boring, it’s often because they assume that what matters to them matters equally as much to others. We know that in practice, it just doesn’t work that way. This lack of awareness creates a dynamic where you’ll see the boring leader doing more talking than listening, asking few questions, reading slides or reporting out information, and then wondering why the audience is so quiet or unresponsive in the meeting.

The opposite of boring isn’t charisma, it’s curiosity

Here is a very cynical - and effective - place to start if you want to break the habit of being boring. Assume your audiences do not care. Even iif it is the board, your investors, your CEO, even if you’re talking about a matter of great importance. When you start from that cynical point of view, it forces you to ask yourself better questions and get deeply curious about your audiences. For example, rather than assume your board cares about how you’ve evolved your customer value proposition, you might ask yourself:  If they don’t care about this, what do they care about?  Is there any connection between our evolving customer value proposition and that issue? You might also wonder: Why am I assuming they would automatically see the value in this idea? Is it obvious why this is a good idea to others?  You could even ask yourself: If I imagine I am one of my board members, would I remember or understand why we decided to focus on our customer value proposition in the first place? Audiences will only care once they understand the value in your ideas and how that value applies to them. When we’re boring, we simply forget to connect those dots for the audience.

If you want to stop being boring, stop talking about boring things

Several years ago, I was invited to attend a meeting run by a Chief Audit Officer on reporting and I’ll be the first to admit that I was not chomping at the bit to attend what I anticipated would be a major snoozefest. (To all my beloved Chief Audit readers, forgive my ignorance.) Imagine my surprise when this meeting turned out to be one the best I’ve ever attended. What made the discussion so energizing was the leader himself, who had called the meeting together because of legislative changes requiring a major shift in reporting across the company. It would have been easy for the leader to focus on the challenges of making these changes, how tough it would be for the team, the difficulties ahead in managing workload.

To be clear, those challenges were very real, and the leader did address them, knowing that these were valid concerns on the minds of his employees. But he also focused on the future, painting a very powerful picture of what life would feel like once this project was behind the team. He engaged them in the vision of what it could feel like in six months, when the project was completed.  As he led the team in discussion, it was interesting to observe the team’s reaction. They went from panicking about the changes to seeing this effort as something that could make them better as an audit team. They began thinking about how the reporting changes would be a short-term hassle, but in the long run, it would help them finally break free from creating hundreds of low-value reports they dreaded generating in the past.

How to shift the balance

It’s easy to talk about what is difficult, tough, or challenging, but the problem is, it’s boring, it motivates absolutely nobody, and it keeps us stuck. After a while, it just gets boring to talk about the workload, the lack of resources, how busy we are, how tough our market is, the challenging quarter we just got through, and so on. What’s crazy is how often we do this inside companies, and it’s incredibly counterproductive, because in most cases, the conversation never really evolves beyond how tough things are. Start to pay attention to whether this a pattern you fall into, and simply shift the balance, so that you’re also talking about solutions, about the future, or about what we can control to influence a different outcome instead.

Being boring isn’t a personality defect; it’s something that can happen to the best of us, and the good news is that with simple behavior changes, we can improve in this area quickly. To start, ask yourself questions like:  Do others really engage in my meetings? Do I find myself talking mostly about challenges and how tough things are? Do people describe me as inspiring? Do I do enough listening and asking questions? Become curious about your responses and consider where you can put a few simple changes into place. It’s worth the effort, because when we can do more to inspire and engage others, we inspire and energize ourselves, too.

STOCKHOLM & SAN FRANCISCO -- BTS GROUP AB (publ), a world-leading strategy implementation firm, was recently recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers.

“We believe that being recognized as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers is a testament to our sales and marketing client partners — as a result of your trust, we’ve been able to develop and deliver innovative, world-class solutions for both training and transformation that unlock the next level of success,” said Rene Groeneveld, Global Head of Sales and Marketing at BTS.

According to Gartner, “Leaders have strong execution and vision scores and broad service portfolios that improve sales performance through skills and process training. Leaders have some of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging services of all sales training providers with offerings aligned to support seller execution of all parts of the sales process. Leaders are a step ahead with technology — specifically, AI and tight integrations with clients’ sales platforms such as sales force automation, LMS and enablement platforms, which allow them to measure progress and ensure adoption of new behaviors and best practices. Leaders serve a diverse customer base in terms of industry and are well-staffed to provide industry-specific expertise, tailoring engagements to make the learning more applicable to sellers. Leaders’ willingness to tie pricing to client success may be attributed to their high client retention and overall win rate.

A Leader may not always be the best choice for every customer. A focused, smaller vendor that is not a Leader can sometimes provide superior support and commitment. Other vendors may provide a specialized capability that is essential for some organizations. A vendor that focuses on a specific vertical market or within a limited geographic area may not be a Leader in the overall market, but it may be a competitive option within its chosen market or area.”

“Companies need sales and marketing partners who offer innovative solutions that meet them where they are and take them further than they thought they could go,” said Groeneveld. “For more than 20 years, our focus has been developing a breadth of offerings that empower sales and marketing teams to engage their customers in new ways. We’ve invested heavily in technology and digital learning tools to ensure that learning is seamlessly integrated into the flow of work and inspires true behavior change on-the-job.

”Read the full report here.

*Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers”, Shayne Jackson, Doug Bushée, Debbie Bender, Elizabeth Beard, February 28, 2022.

Gartner Disclaimer

GARTNER and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Rainforest Trust is a non-profit conservation organization devoted to preserving biodiversity and saving endangered rainforests through strategic land purchases, community engagement, and global partnerships. By allocating 100 percent of its donations directly to conservation action, Rainforest Trust offers wildlife and tropical ecosystems the critical protection necessary to help maintain a healthy planet for all species.

BTS made its first donation to Rainforest Trust in 2010, acquiring 100 acres of rainforest. These first acres contributed to the creation of Las Tangaras Reserve in Columbia – one of the most critical rainforest sites in the world, which is inhabited by tens of thousands of residents in rural communities. More recently, BTS’s conservation efforts include safeguarding Nicaragua’s El Jaguar Reserve to prevent tropical deforestation and the resulting carbon release. Since its initial land purchase in 2010, BTS has made numerous donations, which have protected over 63,000 total acres.

The pandemic has presented Rainforest Trust with some recent challenges, which include slowing land purchases, preventing community meetings, and reducing income from tourism. However, as part of its commitment to sustainability, BTS has continuously provided support to Rainforest Trust’s conservation initiatives. As a result, Rainforest Trust experienced substantial protected-area creation in 2021, and now hopes to build on this success heading into the new year.

‍We invite you to join us in making a lasting conservation impact.

SHANGHAI, CHINA – Bank of China (BOC), one of the world’s largest and China’s longest-operating banks, has been selected to receive an Association for Talent Development (ATD) 2022 Excellence in Practice Award for its “Private Bankers Performance Enhancement Program.”

The program, designed in partnership with BTS GROUP AB (publ), a global professional services firm, developed private bankers’ sales skills and incited mindset shifts from "product-oriented" to "customer-centric.”

“It is a great honor to be [recognized for] our rigorous research, excellent project design that enabled [shifts in participant] mindset, and meticulous follow-up action tracking and mentorship that promoted business performance,” said Ying Wang, from BOC’s Shanghai Advanced Academy. “The program received good comments from nearly 1,000 participants, and [recognition from ATD proves] that the project is at an international leading level… We are also very grateful to our partner BTS for their strong support.”The workshop immersed participants into the business using a customized business simulation. Three months after implementation, participants completed over 800 action plans, which reported increases of:

• 238 million USD in newly-added assets
• 1.55 million USD in newly-added, non-interest income
• More than 300 new private banking clients

“[This award speaks] to our commitment to designing programs with real business impact,” said Patrick Fei, BTS’s EVP and Asia Managing Director. Alex Xie, Director at BTS, added: “We are grateful for our client’s partnership and the team’s adaptability in ensuring the program’s success, and are glad to make a positive impact on the business and its people.”

ATD’s Excellence in Practice Awards recognize exemplary, well-designed, strategic, and sustainable workplace learning and talent development practices. This year, the program received >140 entries in 13 categories.

Board directors have a high stakes job, and even more so in times of turmoil, change and challenge.

While one of the Board’s key responsibilities is managing company risk, the nature of that risk has changed dramatically in our current environment. This leaves many Boards focused on an outdated definition of business risk that in this pandemic-influenced world is failing to meet the new bar to ensure business continuity and growth. And that bar was irrevocably raised in March 2020, when the workplace as we knew it changed as companies shuttered their doors and overnight became virtual.

What’s changed and why it matters to boards

The sudden move to remote work and the cascading changes, challenges and even opportunities that came with that sea-change have had a well-documented impact on the workplace culture. The “Great Resignation” that is now sweeping across all corners of the work force is the biggest indicator of change, and while this is an empowering movement for many employees, it is systematically upending plans for growth and even survival for companies in many industries. Leadership teams everywhere are newly laser focused on employee engagement and turnover, on retention and development, on inclusion and collaboration, as they seek to navigate a hybrid operating model, maintain business continuity, and deliver on growth agendas. Once considered the “that’s how we do things around here” backdrop that human resources and leaders managed around, the question of culture is now front and center in corporate strategy conversations. Getting culture right from the top of the house – and retaining and growing the talent needed at all levels of the enterprise – will make or break a company’s future.

What this means to Boards is a profound shift in where they need to focus when it comes to understanding and assessing risks to the business. Boards historically have focused on audit risk, reputational risk, cyber risk, and risk to the company value. Today, Board agendas must include culture and talent risks as significant disruptors to business progress and value. In many ways, culture risk IS one of the most critical business continuity risks, as more and more employees vote with their feet, and companies lose essential workers and key talent. The flight to “healthier cultures” where the employee value proposition is well represented means a drain on knowledge, productivity, morale, and growth for the companies they left behind.

The board as culture steward

We see this impacting Boards in several ways, from what they talk about with the CEO and each other, to how they organize to support this new role, to what they can bring to the table to elevate the conversation. Consider these 3 shifts as critical to your duty to guide and steward the company.

1. Have the culture conversation.

Boards we work with – particularly those at the leading edge -- are getting more involved in asking the questions of each other and of the CEO: if attrition has increased, why? What do employee engagement scores tell us? What is being said about the culture on GlassDoor? What steps are we taking to support engagement and collaboration in a hybrid work model? How is CEO/executive compensation linked to culture? Why are we doing it this way? In the past Board members would stay away from this conversation, but it’s time to wade in with both feet.

2. Make the talent strategy a core responsibility.

Legacy committee structures leave no room for critical conversations about culture and talent risk. On many Boards, talent conversations are limited to succession planning with a focus on “replacement planning” at the top levels of leadership. Assessing talent risk based on culture lacks definitive accountability at the Board level and is often left to the CEO and CHRO. If the topic is raised, it might occur in a Compensation Committee process, or in the Nominating & Governance Committee, but culture risk lies across all of these, making its ownership uncertain. The time has come to reimagine this risk as living in a Human Capital committee, whose job it is to connect across committees and keep the necessary line of sight.

3. Bring outside knowledge and insight.

Many directors sit on multiple boards and have a broader perspective of practices that they know exist elsewhere. They can bring that knowledge and insight to the dialog with the CEO and the rest the Board. This requires Board directors to see themselves outside of the more traditional siloed committee structure and having a stewardship if not a fiduciary responsibility to share knowledge. This requires the Chair or Executive Committee to facilitate the connections and recognize that there may be opportunities missed if the full Board isn’t participating in these critical conversations.

5 culture questions to ask at your next board meeting

If you want to ensure your Board is focused on culture as a key priority, add these five questions to your agenda for the next meeting:

1. How are we incorporating an assessment of culture risk in our Board meeting agenda now? How can we ensure that dialog?
2. How well is the CEO and their leadership team tuned into work force trends and risks in their company? What are the engagement and talent metrics being used, what are the trends, where are the trouble spots?
3. What is the CEO and Leadership team’s plan for managing and mitigating culture risk to ensure business continuity?
4. What can we do as a Board to support and enhance that plan? As individual Directors?
5. How do we need to restructure the way we work to ensure we embed a focus on Culture Risk?

As a Board director, if you are not addressing the impacts of the Great Resignation and actively querying or supporting your management team on how work force planning and changes to ways of working are impacting business continuity, you are missing a significant area of risk for the company strategy and long-term value. In the future, company culture will represent the single biggest risk to a corporation’s health, competitiveness, and opportunity to thrive.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA– BTS GROUP AB (publ), a world-leading strategy implementation firm, was recently recognized by Training Industry, Inc. as a Top 20 Sales Training and Enablement Company.

“We are honored to be named one of the world’s top 20 sales training companies once again,” said Rene Groeneveld, Global Head at BTS. “In 2021, BTS continued to deliver world-class solutions in a fully virtual environment, a space which accelerated innovation. Our maturing virtual and digital capabilities have unlocked possibilities that help our sales and marketing clients achieve success.”

BTS was selected based on the following criteria:

• Breadth and quality of program and service offerings

• Industry visibility, innovation, and impact in the sales training market

• Client and customer representation

• Business performance and growth

“This year’s [recipients] provided quality training to their customers… and the readiness to adapt to their needs,”

said Jessica Schue, Market Research Analyst at Training Industry.

“With virtual transitions and new tools for learning, these companies prepare their customers with the best offerings and innovations to help keep them up to date with new selling trends.”

Tom Whelan, Director of Corporate Research at Training Industry, adds:

“These organizations provided quality service to their clients, offering an exclusive learning experience. While constantly evolving to adapt to their clients, [they] bring unique capabilities to sales training to grow their learners’ skills.”

E-learning designers are still catching up to what brand differentiation experts have known for a long time. Experience matters.

Consider Bubly, a maker of sparkling water, recently purchased by PepsiCo. Bubly doesn’t try to differentiate at the product level: in a blind taste test between Bubly and LaCroix, participants were unable to tell one from the other. Instead, Bubly focuses on the consumer’s experience of the product.

To begin, there’s the enthusiastic welcome: each can features a pull-tab greeting that mimics text messages – “hey u,” “hiii,” or “yo,” – simulating the kind of playful rapport you might have with friends and family. Next, the product’s peach, pineapple, and grapefruit-toned cans and smiling logo work together to convey positivity, creating a look and feel that aligns seamlessly with its slogan: “no calories. no sweeteners. all smiles.” Finally, Bubly gamifies buying. As writer Elizabeth Demolat points out, no store stocks all twelve flavors at any one time, leading to online and in-person buzz about where to find specific flavors. This strategy, along with the release of a variety of limited-edition flavors, has essentially turned “the act of purchasing a product into a treasure hunt.”

Bubly’s brand differentiation leverages enthusiasm, emotion, and excitement—experiential elements that echo the design pillars of best-in-class e-learning. Here’s how to incorporate each.

1. Enthusiasm

Find new ways to breath energy into the experience. Take, for example, a short, animated video that uses action film motifs to explore emotional awareness in the workplace.

The sequence begins with an establishing shot of a manager providing constructive feedback to an employee. The action moves quickly into the employee’s brain, which is set up as a command center. A group of intelligence agents, straight out of Mission Impossible, look on with alarm. One more word from the manager on “areas for improvement,” and the emotion-regulating amygdala will be triggered, hijacking the employee’s normal reasoning processes. The intelligence agents strategize, introducing different tools and techniques that can be used to regain perspective, and the learning journey begins to take shape.

Greeted with a fresh, playful take on a critical workplace competency, learners are primed to go deeper.

2. Emotion

How do you get beyond the rational regions of your brain – the ones that “control language, but not decision-making” – to tap into feelings and emotions? One particularly creative course on human anatomy leverages powerful visuals to reach learners on that deeper level.

Participants begin by learning that there are more nerve cells in the brain than stars in the Milky Way, observing a close-up of the brain’s circuitry dissolving into tiny specks lighting up the night sky. Because the underlying anatomy remains hidden, medical-aesthetics practitioners learn that they will essentially be working in the dark. The stars fade out slowly, one by one, until there’s nothing left on screen but total darkness—a strange, slightly unnerving experience that drives home the importance of understanding anatomical structures on a visceral level.

3. Excitement

Give people something they’ve never experienced before by challenging the norms of typical training.

Data-protection policies, for instance, are critical safeguards wherever they’re in place, but existing e-learning on the subject is almost always designed as a passive, one-way transmission of information. One exceptional data-protection course takes a different approach, using live-action video and a dramatic soundtrack to depict a privacy breach occurring in real time.

While this can get gimmicky, immersing learners in a volatile environment with uncertain outcomes builds tension, a key lever for creating buy-in.

‍So, how can we help clients build better learning experiences?

‍Many clients see digital learning as a product, one that looks a lot like what’s already out there: didactic, uninspired, dull. By nudging clients toward digital learning courses that mirror what they already know about branding, we might just be able to help them build experiences that stand out in a crowd.

In 2020, COVID-19 radically changed everyone’s lives forever, with social distancing, mask mandates, and travel restrictions becoming our only means of survival. These measures, while lifesaving, crippled many businesses and accelerated the growth of others. The virus’s spread caused the global economy to plummet and then quickly rebound, inducing worldwide whiplash. We spent 2021 adjusting to this new world and bracing against new and unexpected shocks, such as global supply chain issues, the return of inflation, and severe labor shortages. So, what does next year have in store?

In early 2021, Executive Networks surveyed Chief Human Resources Officers from the world’s largest companies as part of a research project called the Back2Better Initiative. These 71 CHROs – who lead companies with a mean employee count of 69,000, and an average annual revenue of $19.5 billion – weighed in on the future of organizations, leadership, work, the workplace, and workers.

In this paper, we’ll explore how three of the themes from the Back2Better Initiative – remote and hybrid work, organizational and personal purpose, and company culture – played out in 2021, and how they’ll impact the world of work in 2022.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA – BTS Group AB, a leading global strategy implementation firm, was recently named a Top 20 Assessment and Evaluation Company by Training Industry.

With decades of experience in the assessment and industrial/organizational psychology space, BTS’s assessment team leverages customized business simulations to create the best assessments possible. BTS’s offerings range from individual and group assessment to executive coaching, action planning, enhanced 360-degree feedback and more. BTS assessments are digitally-enabled, highly contextual experiences grounded in scientific research, providing psychological and psychometric rigor in delivery, process, and evaluation, and can be administered onsite or remotely, providing effective assessments from anywhere in the world. 2021 experiments to BTS assessments include gamified simulation with competency scoring, situational judgment tests embedded in gamified delivery, and Ipsative scoring in trait and mindset diagnostic.

Selection to the 2021 Training Industry Top 20™ Assessment and Evaluation Companies List was based on:

• Diversity of assessment capabilities.
• Quality of evaluation techniques.
• Industry visibility, innovation and impact.
• Strength of clients and geographical reach.
• Company size and growth potential.

“It is an honor to be named one of Training Industry’s Top 20 Assessments and Evaluation Companies,”

said David Bernal, Head of BTS Assessments.

“We are excited to continue developing new assessment technologies and advancing these capabilities in the future.”

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA — BTS Group AB (publ), a world-leading strategy implementation firm, was Certified™ by Great Place to Work® for the second year in a row.

This prestigious honor is based on validated employee feedback about their experiences working at BTS, which is gathered using Great Place to Work’s rigorous, data-driven For All methodology. This year, 93 percent of employees said BTS is a great place to work – 34 points higher than the average U.S. company. Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention, and increased innovation.

“It is an honor to be Certified™ by Great Place to Work® for the second year in a row,” says Melissa Friedman, Head of People Experience, North America at BTS. “Amidst multiple challenging years, the BTS employee experience has always been a top priority and I think this is represented by our scores. We are proud that employees have reported a consistently positive experience.”

“Great Place to Work Certification™ isn’t something that comes easily – it takes ongoing dedication to the employee experience,” said Sarah Lewis-Kulin, Vice President of Global Recognition at Great Place to Work. “It’s the only official recognition determined by employees’ real-time reports of their company culture. Earning this designation means that BTS is one of the best companies to work for in the country.”

Chances are if you’re like any of the leaders I’ve worked with over the years, you may have a bit of each of these common communication styles show up in you from time to time when it comes to how you interact with the C-suite. Here’s what I’ve learned. These styles are incredibly easy to see in others and less so in ourselves, and they can interfere with leaders being as good as we can be in front some of our most important audiences. I’ve experienced them all and so have my clients, and the good news is that once you see it in yourself, you can address it.

Here’s a look at three common styles:

‍1. The Overcompensator

‍The Overcompensator mantra is this: I want you to know how much we’ve been working on.

You know you’re with an Overcompensator when: In every meeting or presentation, they seem to have an endless amount of activity to report on, with slide after slide that lists initiatives, projects, or updates.

The subtext is this: We have been very busy, we have been putting in tremendous effort, we have been doing lots of things, we are taking [insert important issue in here] very seriously. This tends to show up in board meetings and quarterly business reviews. Overcompensators may be some of your busiest, hardest-working leaders who also overemphasize activity instead of demonstrating results.

If you lead a team of Overcompensators, you might say, “Let’s stop talking about what we are working on and start talking about where we are producing results instead.”

‍2. The Expert

‍The Expert’s mantra is this: If I share enough information with you, you’ll see why I’m right.You know you’re with an Expert when: In every meeting or presentation, they present far more information than you want or need.

You’ll get plenty of details and data, but it may not necessarily help you make a decision or understand the bigger picture, with lots of ‘what’ but not enough ‘so what.’ Experts can be accused of too much talking (particularly when answering questions), being in the weeds, boring the audience, or overpreparing (after all, you never know when you might get asked a tough question).

What Experts can work on: A ‘less is more’ mindset driven by better judgment and discernment, so they include the right information (not all the information) in their messages.

‍3. The Assumer

‍The Assumer’s mantra is this: I already understand what you want and need, so let’s move to next steps.You know you’re with an Assumer when: You feel rushed or sold.

As the name suggests, Assumers tend to make assumptions about their audiences. It’s why they will leave a meeting and think there is agreement to a next step only to be met with silence or inaction. The problem for Assumers is that nobody else necessarily thinks there is a problem to the degree to which they do, nor do they have the commitment yet to solve for it. Assumers can be accused of lacking curiosity, not asking enough questions, or believing the audience has bought in prematurely before that is actually the case.

What Assumers can work on: Proving to themselves and others that their audiences care as much about solving for an issue and addressing a challenge as they do before moving to action.If you see these styles show up in your team, share this article with them and use it as a jumping off point about what may be interfering with their impact and how to show up differently with high stakes audiences.

In a future post, we’ll look at a few more common styles – the Unknown, the Defender, the Needy.

To be successful in today’s environment, it’s critical for organizations to go beyond the six major data technologies – Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, Data Science, Data Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data – and adopt a Data Culture. Many leaders wonder – what even is a data culture? Why does it matter for my organization?

An insatiable thirst for data

The demand for the technological subsector based on information, along with its storage and processing, is only growing with increasing speed. Searches for terms related to data on Google and other search engines have multiplied by more than 9 times in the last decade. Furthermore, the demand for purely technological job positions, mainly associated with the creation or expansion of “analytics” departments, is only the tip of the iceberg for what the world of data is capable of offering.

This growth has occurred for a reason. In today’s world, a company’s turning point for accelerating growth, if you’re focused on the technological side, is when the entire workforce has adopted a true data culture – they understand both how to leverage data and why it is important.

Raising awareness around Data Culture

This cultural shift, when the entire workforce adopts a data culture, is where the true potential of data lies. Digital services and e-commerce companies monitor all variables related to their business, which allows them, among other things, to anticipate changes, increase adaptability, and improve prediction. More traditional companies, even if highly digitized, generally waste too much of the data they generate. This is often due to a lack of practical knowledge or references of what they can do with it.

Entire organizations don’t need to understand Machine Learning algorithms or how to configure data services in the Cloud to be competitive, but it is important for employees to understand the basics of the world of data. This allows them to consider the possibilities it offers, and to obtain the knowledge that allows them to take advantage of the millions of pieces of data that a company uses daily.

Data-Driven Companies

This type of company – one where most employees understand the world of data and leverage the data to make decisions – is just another way to describe what has been commonly called a data-driven company, or a company that leverages data-driven decision-making. Google, Amazon, Netflix, and King, the creator of the infamous Candy Crush, are all good examples of companies who use data-driven decision-making practices.

What do these practices consist of? The list is long, ranging from the most classic statistics to prediction algorithms with neural networks through text mining. Some examples of data-driven decision-making are:

• Using A/B Testing methodologies in departments such as sales or marketing to add value to the services offered and improve efficiency.
• Dynamically readjusting the online sales catalog based on the time and day of the week to maximize the visibility of certain brands’ most popular products.
• Automatically classifying communication with customers into categories (for example, sales, technical service, sales, etc.) to speed up the flow of information in the appropriate department.
• Analyzing workers’ productivity and performance based on factors such as time or workload to adjust their schedule or distribution of functions in order to increase not only their performance, but also their comfort.

Implementing a Data Culture in your organizations is critical for future success. This type of culture allows everyone in the organization to understand the potential of data and how to leverage it in decision-making. This empowers every employee, from the senior level to the front line, with the tools to be a change agent, driving the business to the future.

How do you more effectively drive learner engagement and concept retention in your digital learning courses? Sound is key. Why? Sound elicits emotional responses which make moments more memorable, and also shapes your unique sense of space, time, and reality. Adding a layer of sound would amplify presentations of any kind.There are three elements to consider when incorporating sound into digital learning courses: sound effects, voice talent, and transitions.

1. Engaging sound effectsPractitioners of mindfulness meditation focus on the present moment in order to reach a particular mental state. The present moment is always changing, of course, depending on the surrounding constellation of smells, sounds, sights, and feelings. Try to isolate the ambient sounds in the air, and you will come to appreciate both the limits of your focus and the omnipresence of sound. Note, too, how memories involving both sight and sound are more vivid than those derived from just one sensory channel.Sound effects can perform numerous functions: emphasize a particular point, underscore a key concept, balance serious content with humor, and more. Try, for instance, to imagine films such as Star Wars, Titanic, or The Godfather without their orchestral scores and soundtracks. Just as sound effects are critical to each story on an emotional level, they can make the digital learning experience more meaningful and memorable.Consider using ambient sounds that are colloquial to your learners, such as the "ding" signaling the arrival of a new text message, or the "whoosh" of sending an email. Using these sounds tactfully throughout your presentations will increase learner engagement by initiating states of excitement, focus, or reflection. However, be sparing in your use of such effects, as space is essential for the appreciation of sonic subtleties.
2. Appropriate voice talentYour choice of voice talent is critical – any recognizably-human voices invoked for digital-learning purposes must align with your organization’s cultural DNA and corporate identity.For the digital learning course in question, be sure to consider its subject matter, audience, and tone. After identifying each, decide whether a stodgy accent, homey lilt, or something else entirely would facilitate the most engaging learning experience. Once you have a few options, be sure to send samples to your client for feedback and approval. Reactions to voices, after all, are highly personal.
3. TransitionsTry now to pinpoint all the recurring noises around you, whether infrequent or ever-present. Depending on where you are, you may hear the low hum of a fridge, the persistent honk of a horn, or even the steady beating of your heart. These periodic sounds, absorbed subconsciously, signify the passage of time and transformation of your surroundings.Transition sounds, like the famous musical motifs in each aforementioned film, aid in memory retention by stimulating an emotion, foreshadowing an event, or accentuating a concept. In digital learning courses, transitions work best at the beginning and end of a module. That said, if placed tastefully throughout a course, transition sounds will add polish, build a brand, and encode content in a memorable way.

These are just a few of the ways that sound can be used in your digital learning courses as a design pillar, making training more engaging and enjoyable. Whether you meditate or passively absorb your surroundings, sound adds texture, depth, and meaning to the fabric of our lives. How will you use sound to build your next creation?

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA —BTS GROUP AB (publ), a world-leading strategy implementation firm, was recently named to Selling Power’s Top 20 Virtual Sales Training Companies 2021 list.

“We are honored to be recognized for our virtual training capabilities,” said Rene Groeneveld, Global Head of BTS’s Sales and Marketing Practice. “In 2020, we pivoted to deliver best-in-class solutions to our clients in a fully virtual environment. We continued this work in a hybrid-virtual environment in 2021. We are humbled by our clients’ continued partnership and inspired by the results they have achieved.”

Companies on the list submitted a comprehensive application, which included their offerings for both training and retention, delivery methods, and response to changing market conditions. The main criteria for evaluation included:

• Strategies to keep participants engaged
• Breadth of virtual sales training offerings
• Methodologies for participant retention
• Innovation of offerings and/or delivery in response to customer needs or changes in the marketplace
• Strength of client satisfaction and client feedback

Selling Power also considered feedback from more than 250 clients, which included:

“Usable, to-the-point training delivered effectively and supported well. What more could you want?”

“Close, professional, and absolutely satisfying collaboration — they know what they are doing and perform at the highest level.”

“In just three months since our conclusion, we’ve seen our pipeline grow by 14% in dollars, and, more importantly, by 34% in number of opportunities.”

Selling Power advises CROs, sales VPs, and sales enablement leaders to leverage this list to find the right sales training partner to deliver best-in-class virtual sales training.

C-suite succession is rising to the top of the agenda for many Boards and executive leadership teams, as the tenure for CEOs continues to grow shorter.

Even before the pandemic, the failure rate of new C-suite placements was increasing and costing companies millions of dollars. As we're moving into the latter half of 2021 and 2022, we already see an upward trend in C-level transitions.

The Boards and CEOS we work with know that they need to get these highly visibly changes right. The risks are higher than ever as we continue to navigate Covid and back to office/hybrid work decisions, while looking for leaders who can deliver growth and energize a diverse work force.

The good news is that despite these odds, there are important lessons to be learned about how to avoid missteps. We recently convened a conversation with senior HR and executive leaders to share those insights and advance our understanding of how to help Boards and C-suite leaders get it right. The following highlights should help you start the conversation in your own company.

Sharing an expert perspective

I was delighted to have the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion with Karen S. Carter, Chief Human Resources Officer and Chief Inclusion Officer, Dow, and Board Director, Southwire and Lynn Dugle, Board Director, Avantus Federal, Micron, TE Connectivity and KBR, and former Board Director. These leaders shared a view on where C-Suite succession goes wrong, how to do it right, how to work with the board and the CEO to make CEO succession a company’s strength.

Key highlights

Several important themes and priorities emerged from the conversation:

• Change: Disruption will continue to impact markets, workforce planning, health policy and leadership. Change is happening at an increasingly rapid rate, and how we select and prepare C-suite leaders needs to change with it. What worked before won’t work anymore.
• Diversity: The need for diverse C-suites – and for the Boards that work with them – is an imperative that requires a comprehensive strategy to include building a deeper bench of diverse candidates and greater diversity at the board level.
• Partnership: The CHRO is on the front lines of leading succession strategy. A close partnership between the CEO and the CHRO is critical to the succession process, and in intervening to ensure diversity is consistently sought, encouraged, and supported starting with selection and following through to development, stretch assignments and support.
• Leadership behaviors: The cost of poor leadership is felt in the “Great Resignation” of 2021. Talented employees are voting with their feet and leaving even those companies that are performing well. Leader behavior is how culture is felt and should be front and center in the succession conversation.
• Transparency about the role: Not every successful executive is a willing candidate for promotion. C-suite roles are all-consuming and it’s important to have transparent conversations with those in the pipeline to make sure they really understand – and really want – the job to make sure the right people make it into the roles.

Recently, a client who had just been promoted to a CTO role began our advisory conversation saying:

“I want to fully step into my new c-suite role, and I’m concerned I’ll fall back into comfortable habits. This role is going to require me to think and lead differently and I want to hit the ground running. What do you recommend?”

This is a common concern of the senior executives we work with who are stepping into high-profile, high-stakes roles; perhaps this is where you find yourself right now. You’re thinking about how you’ll live up to the high expectations placed on you and how to keep the best of your current leadership style while stretching to embrace what’s possible for you at the next level. You’re concerned about how to show up each day in the way that’s expected and, quite frankly, the way you’ve always wanted.‍

These roles are a lifetime in the making and a lot is at stake.

And yet, so many comfortable habits can get in the way of stepping up, such as:

• Diving too far into the weeds,
• Being uncomfortable with having fewer details,
• Being unwilling or unable to trust your team,
• Letting your calendar be overrun by unnecessary meetings, and
• Focusing too much on your area of the organization at the expense of having an enterprise-wide view.

Now that you’re in a C-Suite role, your allegiance must be elevated to the C-Suite team. This can be hard to embrace because you feel connected to the teams you’ve developed and led for so many years. If you have a technical background, you probably love the details—and of course, the details are probably most comfortable for you.

Yet, embracing the uncomfortable is what you’re being called to do. If you don’t let go and embrace this discomfort, you won’t be the leader you need to be, and things will eventually go south.

As this client continued talking about her concerns and aspirations, it became clear that there were areas of her leadership focus and style that she needed to approach differently. To create a comprehensive list, we conducted a visioning exercise of her future state one year into the future. Through this process, she came up with a somewhat lengthy list of how she wants to be seen. Her list included themes we commonly see leaders moving into C-Suite roles looking to develop and enhance, such as:

• Spending dedicated time strategizing and creating/communicating a vision — Communicating a compelling vision is one of the biggest opportunities for C-suite leaders to create followership and inspire action. Our research shows that out of the 15 qualities of executive presence we measure, this one is often rated lowest.
• Enabling the leaders in the organization to make more decisions — Being intentional with how decisions will be made and clarifying how you expect your team to make and communicate decisions is vital in C-Suite roles to empower others to deliver on the vision. Read more about intentional decision making
• Helping leaders expand their thinking of what the future can look like — The first step is listening to understand what your leaders currently see as possible and then, through demonstrating humility and inclusiveness, engaging them in dialogue to expand the collective thinking. When done well, this takes time, yet has huge payoffs in terms of innovation and engagement in new future states. Read more about leading innovation here.
• Showing up as a creative leader who takes appropriate risk — Our research indicates that those exhibiting this trait are seen as confident and credible leaders. Modeling this behavior as a C-Suite leader creates alignment and energizes the team about what’s possible for the company, and for their roles.
• Building trust and respect with new C-Suite peers across the organization — It takes time to be viewed as a trusted peer. It requires resonating with colleagues from their perspective while sharing a well thought out Vision and demonstrating Practical Wisdom. It also requires demonstrating Composure when engaged in challenging conversation and being comfortable with constructive conflict.

Looking at her list, this new CTO commented that one of the most highly regarded leaders at her organization, who is still remembered 10 years after his retirement, had many of these qualities. And, she reflected that these themes had also been identified by her colleagues through her Bates Executive Presence assessment (ExPI^TM.) It became quite apparent to her that now is the time to embrace these new habits to truly embody an influential presence in her new role.‍

Mapping the gap‍

After identifying her future state, we applied a gap analysis to determine the distance between her current state and this envisioned future state. Once she knew how big the gaps were for each area of focus, she identified a list of actions to bridge each gap. Additionally, we took a look at her ExPI^TM to confirm her analysis of how big the gaps were and with which groups of colleagues.

Of course, this is only a starting point. She’ll need to review and modify this list periodically throughout the year. However, this first step was a big one, one this leader found inspiring and energizing—especially related to areas that seemed daunting at the beginning.

Tips to get started

This is a powerful process, whether you have an advisor or sounding board to walk you through it, or whether you do this on your own. It requires asking yourself the tough questions to see a potential future state; to challenge and expand your thinking about what’s needed and possible; to be honest about the gaps; and to determine how you’ll get there. And you’ll want to dedicate enough time to relax into the thought process to truly expand your point of view.

Set aside an hour, and:

• Grab a few pieces of paper and a pen, maybe one with your favorite color of ink
• Sit a comfortable chair, in a place where you won’t be disturbed—preferably not in your office and potentially outside to help you think more broadly
• Take a few deep breaths to relax your body and your nervous system
• Ask yourself these questions and jot down everything that comes to mind, without editing:

It is now one year from now and I’ve fully assumed my new role; my organization is crushing it and our business is thriving, what am I doing that’s working well? How am I leading differently than I was a year ago?

• Now look at each item on your list and give it a rating to indicate the gap between where you currently are and that new aspiration, using a 3-pt scale
• Jot down three+ ideas for each item on the list regarding how to close the gap
• Hold yourself accountable to the items on your list and review at least quarterly to check on your status

Leveraging feedback and insight from others to help to close the gap

To get even more granular about where to focus your efforts, invest in getting feedback and input from others on their perceptions of the gaps and also the strengths you have to leverage as a C-suite leader. A 360 assessment like the Bates ExPI^TM can shine a light on the areas to focus on first, where you can most readily move the needle to achieve the changes you are looking for. Often, our own perceptions of our behaviors are different from how others view us, making 360 feedback a critical arsenal in closing a leadership gap.

Senior executive roles give you an opportunity to shape the culture of the organization and to act as a role model for leaders throughout the enterprise. Devoting time and energy to this exercise will pay off handsomely when you find yourself realizing your vision a year in the future. And, you’ll be well on your way to leaving a lasting-legacy of outstanding leadership.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA – BTS GROUP AB (publ), a world-leading strategy implementation firm, won 31 Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards in partnership with clients. These represent some of BTS’s best solutions delivered to a variety of clients, including:

• Bank of China
• Bayer
• Bowmans
• China Minsheng Bank
• Chevron Corporation
• Corning Incorporated
• Game
• HDFC Life
• Indra Sistemas
• Johnson Matthey
• Pitney Bowes
• Repsol
• Salesforce
• Schindler Group
• Thermo Fisher Scientific
• Tiger Brands
• Vale

“More than ever, it’s an honor to be recognized for our partnerships with clients,”

said Rick Cheatham, CMO at BTS.

“Especially after the challenges 2020 presented, we are privileged to continue delivering best-in-class solutions, whether virtually, in-person, or in a hybrid environment – always in collaboration with our clients.”

These awards include 21 gold, 6 silver, and 4 bronze, ranging from Best Inclusion and Diversity Strategy to Best Learning Program Supporting a Change Transformation Business Strategy.

“Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards in 2021 provide well-deserved recognition to organizations that went above and beyond to support their stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic,”

said Rachel Cooke, Brandon Hall Group COO and HCM Excellence Awards Program Leader.

Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke mentioned,

“We added several categories to specifically address critical needs, including how organizations addressed the new dynamics of work and embedded the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion in their HCM practices.”

Entries were evaluated by a panel of independent, senior industry experts, BHG analysts and executives, based on fit, design, functionality, innovation and measurable benefits. Find the list of winners here.

Are you in a leadership rut?

It’s a hard question to answer because of the nature of ruts. You often don’t realize you are in one until you’re out of it. This is particularly true for senior leaders, who have demanding schedules and packed calendars, which may further delay the realization of being in a rut: You’re just too busy to notice.

Why is this a problem? For leaders, the risks of being in a rut extend beyond being caught in a boring routine or stuck in an emotional funk. Left unchecked, company innovation and performance suffers, engagement and morale may drop, and good talent leaves when leaders and teams fall into ruts. Leadership ruts are serious business, but what makes them hard to see is that the signs often appear in small ways. How do you know if a rut is sneaking up on you? Here are a few indications.

1. No bright spots on the calendar. Recently, I asked a client, “What are you looking forward to on your calendar?” There was a long pause. He replied, “Not much.”  If this feels like you, it’s an important area to explore, because calendars aren’t just timetables, they mirror how we spend our days. So, take a few minutes to review your calendar on a regular basis. Too many days in a row without bright spots has an impact. Over time, it can hurt our motivation, engagement, creativity, and we may not even realize it is happening to us. Think about it this way. Are you really at your best at meetings you don’t look forward to? Eventually, too many of those impact a leader’s performance in all kinds of ways.
   
   How to address: Recognize that a great calendar won’t just happen by itself. It’s easy to get caught into a trap of thinking that we don’t have control over our calendars or buy into the old story that work shouldn’t be about fun. As good as you are, you’ll be even better if you have days to look forward to and a calendar that energizes you, so commit to making small improvements in your calendar (more bright spots and fewer meetings you dread) and you’ll yield instant results.
   ‍
2. Too much of the same. Being in the same role for a while isn’t necessarily a sign you’re in a leadership rut, so the caveat here is that “it depends.” If you’re in the type of company where most people advance or move into different roles every 18-24 months and you haven’t, it’s an area to explore. While you’re at it, consider other aspects of your work that haven’t changed in a while, whether it’s the people on your team, the work you’re engaged in, or the number of new situations or people you’ve encountered. This can lead to a blind spot buildup and dull our ability to stay fresh, embrace change, or expose ourselves to diverse people and experiences that enable us to think differently.
   
   How to address: Deliberately force yourself to mix it up, and this is particularly true if you’ve worked at the same company for most of your career. Raise your hand to do something new on a regular basis that is a stretch for you. Over the years, I’ve had clients do everything from speaking at a major client event, to living overseas, to attending a Tony Robbins seminar and walking over hot coals. This is also a time when leaders engage a coach or join groups of other like-minded leaders to get exposed to new ideas. Whatever you choose, put it on your calendar so you know it will happen. A few small tweaks can create major change and transformation.
   ‍
3. You’ve stopped dreaming big for yourself. Being in a leadership rut can often start from a place of good intentions. Perhaps you’ve been leading through a challenging time and you’ve been focused on getting through the issues at hand. The question to ask yourself is when are you not in a period like this?  If it’s always code red, all the time, it’s easy to stay in a permanent state of firefighting. This produces the worst kind of leadership rut, where we are never able to get beyond the urgent and tackle the important, and it can lead us to some dark nights of the soul, where we wake up, 10, 20 years later and regret not tending to our longer-term goals, hopes, and visions for our own lives.
   
   How to address: Make daydreaming as important and strategic an activity as any other high priority in your life and treat it seriously. Set aside time to sit in your favorite chair in a quiet corner of the house with your pen and notebook and answer some simple questions for yourself, like, “What do I dream about?” or “What do I want to do that I haven’t done yet?” Daydreaming is about unfiltered, unedited thinking, and it is where some of the best ideas for your life and work can happen. The first few times you do this, you may feel uninspired or cringe at the word ‘daydreaming.’ Forget about all of that and remind yourself it is what the most enlightened, productive leaders do to get even better.
   ‍

Falling into a rut can start off innocently, like always going to the same restaurant and ordering the same thing off the menu. In leadership, it’s risky, because it limits our ability to be everything we can be for our organizations, our teams, and ourselves. Toughest of all is the fact that other people may recognize we’re in a rut long before we do. The good news is that we can address this with a few simple changes, and when we do, leadership becomes vibrant, energizing, and returns to technicolor again.

Throughout the talent acquisition process, candidates form impressions and assumptions about companies and jobs, all before a company even has a chance to interact with them. In fact, from the time that candidates first hear about a company, to when they settle at their new desks, they are continuously learning about the company and its opportunity. What candidates learn and the impressions they form in the early stages of the talent acquisition lifecycle can have a meaningful impact on 1) whether they will accept a job offer if extended, 2) what they will say to others considering roles at the company, 3) whether they will purchase products and services from the company in the future, and 4) their level of commitment to the company, should they become employees.Segmenting the candidate-to-employee journey into six phases – attract, apply, screen, select, onboard, and perform – ensures alignment throughout the process, and sets up both candidates and employers for success.‍

1. Attract: give prospective candidates a reason to take notice

‍During this phase, candidates learn about the company, business unit, and/or job. They do some research and become intrigued, and eventually decide to learn more.What are you doing to build your employment brand? Do prospective candidates regard your company as a great place to work? What do others say about the candidate experience at your company? If candidates research your company on a job site, what will they read? If you find yourself cringing as you read through these questions, take action. Specifically, consider the following:

• Review the careers page on your company's website and evaluate whether its messaging represents your values.
• Look into marketing, advertising, and sponsorships at college recruiting events, industry events, and in trade publications. These activities certainly come at a financial cost, but may be worthwhile if they improve access to qualified candidates.
• Analyze your screening and hiring processes from the candidate’s perspective, and consider soliciting their post-process feedback for more information.
• Evaluate the employee experience. If it's positive, find ways to share that message with candidates. If it's not as positive as you would like, first, fix it; and second, find ways to share the message with candidates after the repair.
• Ensure alignment between your company's sourcing activities and diversity goals.

2. Apply: explain what it takes to be successful on the job

‍During this phase, candidates learn even more about the job, determine whether it aligns with their capabilities and interests, and decide whether to apply, all along refining their impressions for your company.

Of course, for this decision to be favorable, the candidate’s information must be valid. To that end, it’s important for companies to ask themselves – do the requirements listed in position descriptions provide accurate reflections of what it takes to succeed? Does the language used in position descriptions appeal to viable job candidates?  How easy is it to navigate your company's careers page prior to submitting an application? Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Consider including a realistic job preview, such as a video, on your company's careers page to tell candidates a bit more about what life is like on the job. Remember, though, that “realistic” should be interpreted as “balanced” and the preview should include the positives and
• Review your company's position descriptions for neutral and inclusive wording. Researchers have found that certain words used on position descriptions can dissuade females, people of color, and people with disabilities from applying for jobs. Consider using software that can identify these potentially problematic words to review your position descriptions and ensure that they are as inclusive as possible.
• Review your company's careers page and online application to ensure that they are as straightforward and user-friendly as possible.
• Be careful not to lose sight of your current employees, as they may actually be better aligned with new openings than they are with current roles.

3. Screen: assess and teach candidates

‍The screening process further solidifies the candidates’ impressions and assumptions about the company and jobs from the attract and apply phases. Any tool, test, assessment, role play, interview, minimum qualification, etc. that a company uses to make decisions about candidates' applications is a form of screening.What does your screening process teach candidates about the company and job? How engaging is it? Is the time commitment associated with your screening process commensurate with the job level? Do specific steps of the screening process result in adverse impact? How effective are your interviewers? To what extent is your screening process biased against certain groups of candidates?All of these questions speak to the critical nature of this phase. Once again, if you find yourself somewhat concerned by your answers to these questions, don't worry – you’re not alone, and you can take steps to improve:

• Conduct blind resume reviews. Believe it or not, people make (potentially irrelevant) assumptions about candidates based on things like how professional their email address is, what school they attended, where they worked previously, and beyond. Of course, some of these judgments may have relevance, but don't assume that. Instead, consider using software that can facilitate blind resume reviews by blocking out particular pieces of information on candidates' resumes.
• Harness candidates’ attention during the screening process by teaching them about the company and job through an assessment that is modeled after the job.
• Ensure that the capabilities assessed during the screening process align with the most critical capabilities required for successful job performance, and that are difficult to learn in a short amount of time. Spending time assessing inessential or easy-to-learn-later capabilities is inappropriate and possibly illegal.
• Relatedly, consider the method(s) you are using to assess critical capabilities, and ensure that they are appropriate. As a simple example, if you wanted to evaluate candidates' verbal communication skills, you would not ask them to write an essay.
• Leverage structured interview guides, ensuring that interviewers are properly trained on interviewing best practices.
• Regularly monitor assessment data for adverse impact so that no step of your process inadvertently disadvantages, or is biased against, some candidates over others.

Properly constructed and validated talent acquisition assessments help to minimize bias through objective data, so build them, validate them, use them, and trust them.

‍4. Select: make informed decisions

‍Now that you have all these salient data-points about candidates, it’s time to put them to use. How does your company make hiring decisions about candidates? Is the process consistent? What guidance do hiring managers receive regarding the selection decision? What feedback, if any, is provided to candidates who are not hired?The answers to these questions can have a significant impact on whether your company finds itself in legal hot water (or how it fares if it does find itself in hot water). Consider the following best practices:

• Establish a decision process before it's time to make a hiring decision. If you wait until it’s time to make the decision, whatever process you establish will likely be influenced by your gut reaction to candidates. Your gut, generally speaking, should not make hiring decisions.
• Consider all sources of viable information when making decisions, looking for the preponderance of evidence. No one source of information is ever going to be perfect. By looking at all the relevant details, however, you can begin to paint a picture of what candidates would be like if hired.
• If you are going to provide feedback to rejected candidates, which is a growing trend even in the US, be sure to review your process and the nature of information with your legal team.
• Remember: relying on data rather than your gut will minimize bias and result in better hiring decisions.

5. Onboard – help employees acclimate to new roles

‍By this point, your company has invested significant time and energy into hiring employees, and now it’s time for them to acclimate them to the company and job. This is when assumption meets reality. Do candidates’ expectations, set by the hiring process, align with reality? How structured is your onboarding process? Are all new employees, regardless of role, onboarded in the same way? Here are some best practices to help make onboarding as effective as possible:

• Use what was learned about employees during the talent acquisition process to tailor the onboarding journey to be efficient. Suppose that you are hiring sales representatives. You know from a talent acquisition assessment that a new employee is quite adept at handling rejection, but struggles in following up with prospects. It would be best to spend more onboarding time on the company's account-planning process and follow-through, rather than on strategies to overcome rejection. Of course, for this to happen, your company's talent acquisition assessments must be closely aligned to both the job and onboarding.
• Ensure that onboarding covers the right topics. Yes, having engaging content is critical in winning over your new employees, but having the right content and the right amount of content is also important.
• Verify that the onboarding experience reflects the vision, mission, and values of the company, while also showing the personality, soul, and DNA of its people.

6. Perform: enable employees to perform to their fullest

‍Over time, because you have followed a best-practice approach to hiring and onboarding new employees, these new employees become not so new anymore. They perform their roles and make significant contributions to the organization.When you evaluate candidates on the right capabilities, assess them in a way that mirrors the job, trust the data collected during the hiring process, and analyze it in full, you minimize bias and can make the best hiring decisions possible. After that, onboard your new people in a way that aligns to both their individual needs and those of the role, providing the tools and support required to perform. If and only if you do all of these things will you achieve maximum impact. Shortcutting the process at any step is a service to no one, and a disservice to everyone involved.

The conversation around mobile learning has changed in recent years. Once viewed as merely a technical consideration (i.e., making sure training “works” on mobile devices), organizations now recognize mobile learning’s unique potential. The cadence of mobile learning is perfectly aligned with contemporary learners’ needs, and whether the method used is microlearning, spaced learning, learning journeys, continuous learning cultures, or personalized learning, organizations are delivering more value.However, in the new era of mobile learning, many organizations struggle with where to start. Best-in-class organizations use a shift to mobile as a way to rethink their learning strategy, rather than simply update a mode of delivery. Here are a few real-life examples.

1. Onboarding
   ‍Mobile learning proves particularly effective as an onboarding tool in deskless environments such as retail, in-field technical support, and safety. For example, one global coffee retailer, challenged with rapid scalability in emerging markets, uses mobile deployment to streamline competency formation for its newly hired baristas, ensuring a consistent brand experience.Additionally, mobile learning promotes a more journey-driven approach to onboarding, taking the pressure off single-event training. Employees now have a tool in their pocket that provides gradual reinforcement, helping them recall hundreds of espresso drink combinations in the moment.Adaptive retrieval practices also help support the onboarding journey in the initial phases of the baristas’ tenure. Push notifications remind baristas to continue working on their skills, while weekly challenges, mini-games, and leaderboards help sustain engagement. Flashcards (featuring information such as the right syrup ratios for customized drinks), are self-paced reference tools, which they can use in the moment of need.

2. Upskilling
   ‍A Canadian financial services advisory organization required a radical approach to reach its unique target audience: entrepreneurs. Familiar with entrepreneurs’ resistance to standard training modalities, the organization created a mobile solution with a new learning cadence customized for its ever-distracted, highly-resistant learners, replacing large-format, single-event courseware with quick lessons (of no more than five minutes each), ongoing knowledge checks, personalized learning paths, and a strong resource library for ongoing performance support. The organization can now meet its entrepreneurial customers’ individual learning needs

2. Sales
   ‍Mobile learning is proving to be a differentiator for delivering content to sales teams. For a major global automotive company, mobile learning enables its salespeople on the floor to keep up with sophisticated customers who walk into showrooms fluent in specific car models, pricing, and competitive offerings. Mobile learning helps the salespeople stay agile, providing product information updates and timely needs-based support through an adaptive learning engine.Even augmented reality plays a role in creating intuitive and quick access to content within a high-context environment: sales reps can point their phone to a new model on the showroom floor and immediately see information on specific aspects of the car. Off the floor, they can refresh their knowledge by completing retrieval practices, reviewing key selling scenarios through immersive interactive challenges, and consulting with mobile-friendly job aids prior to their next customer interaction. For this organization’s salespeople, mobile learning is indispensable when it comes to keeping up with customers.

Mobile learning is an effective training delivery platform in these examples and beyond. Successful organizations see the potential for mobile as a platform, rather than as a technology wrapper, and take a unique approach to its design. If you’re looking to make a bold statement and revolutionize training, leverage mobile learning as the catalyst.

So, you’ve got your eye on your next big technological investment. From afar, it appears to be the silver bullet that’s going to elevate your organization’s learning. What’s your plan for this new tool? In other words, what exactly will people gain, and how?When it comes to creating effective digital learning experiences, technology plays a key role — and so does content. Here are three ways to rethink content strategy and maximize the potential of your learning technology.

1. Organize your content architecture in terms of journeys, not events
   ‍Single event-based learning, though familiar to employees, opposes the brain’s preferred processes. Because true learning takes time, it’s critical to design learning journeys, not events. After all, in a self-paced, digital learning environment, the “classroom” can be anywhere, and open at any time.Think about how frequently you interact with your smartphone – for how many times per week, and for how long during each session. Digital consumption habits provide the optimal structure for a learning program, marked by brevity and continuity.Leverage technology to consider the context surrounding your content, its timeliness, and the moments when learning becomes performance. Rather than dumping information on a quarterly or yearly basis, transform your content strategy to support ongoing learning journeys, thereby promoting retention and a culture of learning.

1. Focus on the experience, not the functionality
   ‍When you’re working with technology, it’s easy to become caught up in its features. However, focusing on new functionalities can hinder your content design by leading, rather than enabling, your thinking.Start with a list of “dos” and “don’ts,” and grow from there. For example, make meaningful use of discussion board features, or social media links – don’t include any gamification trivialities not grounded in human motivation, and avoid inessential use of omnipresent leaderboard functions. Do develop a content guide detailing the technology’s different functionalities. Vet functionalities that you want to use against the experience you are trying to create, ensuring people use your platform to reach their goals.
2. Craft digital-first experiences
   ‍Most e-learning courses follow the same linear slide structure because they emerged during the era of e-learning “digitalization,” when converting legacy PowerPoint presentations into e-learning courses was all the rage. This approach, the hallmark of digital learning for decades, is hardly an exemplar educational experience. Thankfully, the digital landscape has changed tremendously since then, and the time is now to question and revise those old ways of learning.Reimagine your content in a digital landscape, resisting the temptation to port legacy materials from static learning events (e.g., PowerPoint presentations and reference binders), replicating the same learning experience. Yes, microlearning is the (controversial) mantra these days, but it means more than reducing legacy materials by half -- today’s learner is accustomed to digital experiences akin to those of consumer apps. Harness such technologies to achieve educational experiences you can’t offline, working with a now-requisite, digital-first mentality.

New learning technologies enable you to create modern digital experiences, but make sure your content strategy receives as much thought as your tool of choice. A well-designed content strategy makes all the difference in facilitating and sustaining a culture of digital learning for analog achievement.

In recent years, the coaching market has continued to make major advancements in how to scale coaching for the many. It is commonplace to see small-group coaching, learning circles, peer to peer coaching, bot coaching, self-paced coaching, asynchronized coaching, and even instant coaching, with a live person at your fingertips. It’s easy to believe that innovation in the science of mindset and behavior change knows no borders.

So, what’s the problem here? With such advancement, what could possibly jeopardize the quality and integrity of coaching today? It might be different than what you think. Yes, much comes down to the coach themselves, their experience, and how they are resourced to do their work; but with more qualified and well-equipped coaches out there than ever before, this is less of an issue. The problem lies in the pivot towards selecting your own coach, and the challenge is ensuring you make an unbiased choice.

‍Swipe left to reinforce your bias

‍Today, choosing your coach is as simple as swiping left. Aided by apps modelled after unregulated dating platforms, employees can select their coach by scrolling or swiping through a list of options. These dating apps appeal to some of humanity’s most rudimentary motivators, such as physical attraction and affinity bias (defined below). Instead of matching with the best fit, Coach selection processes are becoming riddled with the same biases towards race, gender, and sexual orientations that most organizations are working hard to eliminate.

There are two main biases emerging in this approach to coach selection:

• Affinity Bias: Affinity bias, also known as similarity bias, is the tendency for people to connect with others who share similar interests, experiences, and backgrounds.
• Confirmation Bias: Confirmation bias is the inclination to draw conclusions about a situation or person based on your personal desires, beliefs, and prejudices, rather than on unbiased merit.

These biases lead to two common coaching traps:

‍Coaching Trap #1: Many scaled coaching organizations today use dating algorithms (think swiping left or right) to assist in coach selection. At first, an employee will only see a coach’s photo and would need to click on their image to see further details. While this is a fun and inventive way of enabling the employee’s speed to coach selection, as exposure to someone’s face only further reinforces basic biases; based on psychology, employees are more likely to choose the person that looks like them.

‍Coaching Trap #2: Across the globe, there is a strong bias towards both a specific set of educational institutions (the Ivy League) and certain levels of academic achievement (graduate degrees, whether in medicine, law, or other fields). Thus, graduates from lesser-known institutions and bachelor’s degree-holders may be considered less valuable. When selecting a coach, this bias frequently plays out with the perception that coaches with rarefied educational backgrounds will deliver better results.

By enabling coach selection in this way, employees are almost encouraged to reinforce their own biases, which include ageism, sexism, racism, name bias, beauty bias, cultural bias, and more. These biases are the ones that companies are working hard to disrupt via policies on rewards, hiring, employee lifecycle, and in society. Despite this, recent studies show alarming trends, even in early careers:

One study of high school students found that females considered to be attractive earned eight percent more than those who were not considered attractive, and men of below-average attractiveness made 13 percent less than other men who were considered attractive.¹

In another study, White-sounding names received 50 percent more call backs for interviews than Black-sounding names. Even with a higher quality resume, there is still a strong bias towards White-sounding names, which elicit 30 percent more call-backs. For Black-sounding names, the increase is much smaller. Applicants living in better neighborhoods also receive more call-backs, but this effect is not impacted by race.²

So, here’s the problem: the coach you think you need could not be the one you actually need. Just because you feel comfortable with a person or “see yourself” in them doesn’t necessarily correspond to effective change. Many people reflect on their coaching experiences and find that the coaches or people in their life that they’ve learned the most from are very different from themselves.

In a time when everyone is working together to eliminate bias and encourage equity, this is one more area where we need to lead change.

What’s the alternative?

‍To ensure quality coach selection, you need to follow a few key principles in your approach:

1. Make sure your coaching approach and initiative are aligned to strategic outcomes, a change agenda, and your organization values. This can be used to simplify and focus your pool of coaches based on experience, industry knowledge, specialties, and organizational or individual need.
2. Ahead of time, ask your employees to reflect on what they believe is important to them in a coach. This will normally result in them naming some of the higher order needs based on past experiences, current needs, and context.
3. Your coaching partner should have a “Coach Talent Director” role or similar. This person should know all there is to know about how to maximize their coaches’ talent and match it to yours. Invest in this relationship, carefully scoping out how this person can you be your guide on the side in getting the fit right for your organization.
4. Allocate a coach to each employee based on their stated needs. Take pulse checks along the way from both parties to check in on how the match is going.
5. If the coaching match isn’t working, or the chemistry isn’t there, make it easy for people to change without judgement or impediment.
6. If choice is a key requirement, introduce the coach selection only after working with the Coach Talent Director to select the information that is critical for employees to know. This information should be designed to help employees make an unbiased choice – qualities such as coaching style, approach, experience, and industry background are appropriate, but photographs and names should be avoided.

So much effort to reduce bias has been implemented into hiring, promotion, succession, and performance management processes that it would be a mistake to ignore biases in coach selection. To continue moving the needle on equity and inclusion – which not only delivers business results, but also makes our society better as a whole – it’s essential to take a critical look at your coach selection process. You just might be accidently helping to reinforce bias by encouraging employees to swipe left on a coach in an app.

‍References

1. Gordon, R. A., & Crosnoe, R. (2013, December 10). In school, good looks help and good looks hurt (but they mostly help). Council on Contemporary Families. https://contemporaryfamilies.org/good-looks-help-report/.
2. Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2003, July 28). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor Market Discrimination. NBER. https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.

Many organizations invest large sums in assessments and training programs, but too often, employees revert to their previous ways.

This occurs because the initial assessment and resulting intervention targeted the symptom (behavior), rather than the root cause (mindset), of a performance gap.

So, how can an organization create long-lasting, business-improving behavioral change?

Assessments should expose the subliminal thoughts, feelings, assumptions, and beliefs that drive an employee’s current performance, or that may obstruct their full potential. Only then can assessors accurately design interventions that shift mindsets, and therefore behaviors, for the better. Here are three instances of how your organization can use this approach.

From individual insight to customized coaching

Oftentimes, excellent salespeople-turned-sales managers struggle to share their wisdom and drive peak performance from their teammates. Why? Because their individual insights into the art of selling are not universal.

No one skillset nor tried-and-true script makes a great seller. Rather, successful salespeople have a certain belief system that drives their curiosity towards customers, reactions to rejection, and general stamina. A simple shift in any of these mindsets can transform a sales team.

So, how do you implement this within your own team? Start by leveraging a mindset assessment that identifies the beliefs, values, and experiences currently at play. Then, follow up with a behavior-changing tool, such as personalized coaching, to help team members shift to mindsets that cement learning and ensure long-term behavior change.

Mindset shifts in multitudes

Pod coaching, also known as small-group coaching, is another way to leverage mindset assessments. Mindset assessments can be deployed at scale to provide cohort-level data, helping you select the key mindsets that need to change within a larger community.

For example, a leading multinational energy organization leveraged mindset assessments to map out a pod-coaching journey for its teams. The organization assessed 80 employees, identifying and creating customized coaching content to address the group’s most-needed mindset shifts. As a result, the journey was highly relevant to the teams’ most critical needs.

Some organizations have adopted cloud-based, self-paced individual learning journeys, the design of which is informed by mindset assessments. These mindset assessments identify individuals’ most beneficial shifts, which are then incorporated into their individually-personalized learning journeys.

Armed with this data, organizations can prioritize the shifts they see as critical for their people’s development today and save the shifts that will be more impactful in the future for a later date. The result is an ongoing personalized journey that grows with employees.

To ensure that your people’s default behaviors are the right ones for your organization, consider using mindset-evaluation assessments rather than behavior assessments. Mindset assessments allow you to identify and address the root cause of your peoples’ existing beliefs, shift them to ones that are aligned to your organization’s values, and structure a sustainable future for your organization.