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Costly Labour Issues
Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Skill Development Teamwork Workplace Culutre

Productivity Insulation: How your business could save $27,000

Overlooking your biggest investment

One of the most overlooked parts of owning or managing a business is the need to safeguard your labour. In the vast majority of businesses, labour is the biggest portion of an organization’s operating expenses. Depending on the size and type of your business, it can be between 50-75% of your total overhead. Yet, most businesses and organizations do not put much focus on protecting and maintaining the productivity of their staff. If you look at it from a completely financial perspective, it is mind boggling! If a business has a piece of equipment that is a major expense, let’s say, 15% of your entire operating costs, it would be taken care of extremely well. Business owners and managers know that protecting and maintaining your important assets is how you ensure the best productivity and profitability from your business.

The Problem

This begs the question, why is it that people are quick to protect and maintain their equipment, but will not put the same focus on protecting and maintaining their labour?

Maybe, it is because equipment is seen as an investment, and labour is seen as an expense? Or maybe it is because equipment is a tangible, noticeable asset. Where labour is your staff, a bunch of people doing different things and different times. It’s less noticeable and more subtle.

Regardless, the why is puzzling, but not the most important thing to understand. What is important to understand is that, as with your equipment, if you do not invest time and effort into your staff, you are losing A LOT of money. This could damage the financial future of your business.

Labour Value Loss

The impact of not investing time and effort into your staff is called Labour Value Loss. It is the very scary consequence of neglecting to protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. It is the financial toll that common labour problems have on a business.

For example: According to the Center for American Progress it costs the equivalent of 20% of a person’s salary to replace them. The costs associated with replacing staff include, but are not limited to:

  • Paying overtime
  • Recruitment costs
  • Drop in productivity
  • Any associated customer loss

Labour Value Loss is a startling reality for most businesses. What makes it so concerning is that the money lost is slow and subtle, like a leaky faucet or a poorly insulated roof. This is happening everywhere, every day.

So, the real question is how do we fix it? Well, just like a drafty home, we fix it with insulation.

The Solution

To address Labour Value Loss, you need Productivity Insulation. This is the way you protect and maintain the productivity of your staff. The easiest way to think of Productivity Insulation is to look at it as robust HR policies and Employee Engagement. HR policies are important to make sure rules and procedures are clear and transparent, keeping businesses compliant and employees informed. However, the lion’s share of effective Productivity Insulation comes from Employee Engagement.

Employee Engagement is the efforts that organizations make to create a high level of motivation and enthusiasm in employees. For Employee Engagement to be effective, it doesn’t need to be complicated or costly, it just needs to be understood and consistent.

The return on your investment from Employee Engagement can be astonishing. The Labour Value Loss from Disengagement, when employees have a low level of motivation and enthusiasm, is 34% of their annual salary. This number alone makes Labour Value Loss expensive. Add other elements, like Turnover or Absenteeism, and you have a costly problem that you cannot ignore. The future of your business depends on it.

If you would like to learn more about Labour Value Loss, here is a short video. This video is part of a FREE, on-demand, 30-minute course we provide to businesses called: Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity. Click here to check it out.

Oh, I almost forgot!

You are probably wondering where the $27,000 in the title of this article comes from. Well, that is the average Labour Value Loss that a business will experience from Disengagement each year. If you would like to know how it was calculated:

Here is where we got the numbers for our formula:

Here is our formula:

(# of Staff) x (Annual Salary)x (Percentage of Employees Disengaged)x (Cost of Disengagement)= Total Labour Value Loss due to Disengagement
4 Employees x $41,000   = $164,00050% of employees are disengaged     x 0.50disengaged employees cost 34%     x 0.34= $27,880

This is a conservative, yet well supported, number. However, it is only one aspect of Labour Value Loss.

To learn more about Labour Value Loss, and to calculate how much your business may be losing due to Disengagement, Turnover, Absenteeism, etc., take our FREE course.

Rethinking Labour Costs: Increasing Profits and Productivity.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

Adult Education Improve Your Career Skill Development

How SALT Can Help You Learn Online

Learning and education are critical to a functional society

Learning and education are critical parts of any society. Passing down information is a fundamental part of the human condition. It is a critical part of how we evolved from our more primitive origins and progressed from the dark ages through to the digital age. However, learning hasn’t always been an easy exercise for us. As information evolved and became more complicated and specific, the methods we employ to turn that information into knowledge has also become more complex and individualized.

This has sparked generations of great minds to deconstruct the learning process and give us better insights into the intricate system of the human mind. Theorists and educators, like Neil Flemming, gave us insight into how people learn through visuals, aural, reading, and kinesthetics (VARK). Academics and researchers, like Howard Gardner, brought us ideas like multiple intelligences and how to engage and reach a variety of minds by encompassing an array of learning preferences. Over the past few decades, we have started to see formal education systems, such as schools and institutes of higher learning, adopt more progressive understandings of the learning process and shift the methods of education to address the uniqueness of how we think and learn.

Fast forward to today, the formal education system that has been making gains in helping people learn more effectively by meeting their unique learning needs is now shifting to a new medium – online learning. Online learning or e-learning, is not only becoming the new normal for many types of education it is becoming big business. According to statista.com, Projections show the e-learning market worldwide is forecast to surpass 243 billion U.S. dollars by 2022.

This move toward online learning has a lot of benefits; fewer limitations of location, a greater variety of course and topic selection, and more convenience and flexibility in time and duration, just to name a few. However, these benefits can only really be seen as advantages if the online learning method works with how you learn.

What makes learning online challenging?

One of the challenges associated with the move towards online learning is that we seem to be starting over in our efforts to meet the unique needs of the learner. In-person or classroom-based learning has allowed progressive educators to meet the unique learning needs of their students by providing meaningful interactions and using multiple methods of instruction. Many online learning options haven’t quite figured out how to create the same amount of meaningful interactions or how to incorporate multiple methods of learning. Evidence shows that online learning is not yet able to meet the effectiveness of in-class learning.

Part of the challenge with some online learning, especially self-directed learning, is that it is often heavily dependent on reading and writing. Current online learning is similar to what formal learning was like decades ago, before we started to incorporate strategies like Flemming’s VARK and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theories. Online learning interactions cut out most of the personal interactions and can often limit the meaningful group-based discussions and personal connections that are essential to many people’s learning experience.

What is needed are new ideas and new strategies to help educators to create a better understanding of the complex nature of the modern online learner, which will in turn allow those learner take control of their learning journey.

There is where Roman 3 comes in

Over the past number of years, Roman 3 Operations has been working on new ideas and strategies to address the challenges of online learning. We have developed an experimental learning theory that brings together a collection of best practices from learning, intelligence, and personality theories and a strong understanding of how these practices work together during the learning process. This theory has been a passion project of mine, W. Coby Milne, since I finished my Master’s degree in Adult Education. I call this theory the Collective Operation of Learning Domains (COLD). The four domains of COLD are: Acquire, Process, Equate, Execute (APEX). We call our experimental theory the COLD theory of APEX.

The development of this experimental theory comes from years of academic research and the experimentation of applied strategies. While we still have work to do in the academic validation and in the peer review processes, we feel that we truly have something of value in the practical strategies, based on our current research and experimentation. In light of the changes to the world as a result of COVID-19, we felt it necessary to make the themes and strategies available to people who are being forced to engage in online learning like never before. The desire to improve the online learning experience for both the educator and the learner is what led us to the creation of the Strategies for Accessible Learning Tool (SALT).

SALT can support more engagement with online learning

A fundamental concept in Adult Education is critical reflection that can lead to a type of transformation in your learning (Mezirow, 1993). This leads us to the benefits of self-awareness in learning. Conventional wisdom and historical theories support the idea of self-assessment tests, like those used in Flemming’s VARK and Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theories, providing a valuable critical reflection of how we think about our learning. When learners reflect on how they learn and develop a better understanding their uniqueness in cognitive preferences, they can better apply the strategies that will maximize their education. Studies have found a positive relationship between applying strategies that reach a student’s learning preference and increased engagement in the learning process, both in class and online.

This is the goal of SALT; to provide a simple and engaging assessment that identifies the learning preferences at different stages of the learning process. It then seeks to provide practical suggestions and strategies that can empower the learner to be more effective in their online learning, even if the courses they are engaged in are not designed to use multiple methods of instruction to meet unique learning needs and preferences.

The current version of SALT is designed to be a free tool to support learners with their online learning journeys. However, this only the beginning for SALT and our experimental COLD theory of APEX. The courses offered by Roman 3 Operations, both in-class and online, are designed with the best practices of the COLD theory of APEX approach and supports learners by incorporating the strategies and preferences identified through the use of SALT. Our goal is to provide the best learning experience we can through our learning projects. But what we really want is to help change the learning landscape and support best practice learning programs for everyone. The free SALT assessment will be available to everyone, forever. Furthermore, we will continue to improve the tool and the strategies it uses in order to support learning institutions and online learning companies around the world. In addition, we aim to increase the accessibility of online learning for everyone. As we have already said, learning and education are critical parts to any society and we want to do our part.

The Takeaway

An essential part of maximizing education is by designing learning experiences that meet the needs of the learner. Learning styles and preferences are an important part of meeting those needs. Roman 3 has created a tool, called SALT, to identify individual preferences and recommend strategies, based on our experimental COLD theory of APEX. SALT incorporates best practice approaches to learning that will allow individuals to the most out of their online learning experiences.

If you would like to try out SALT yourself, please use this link.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, learn to collaborate, become progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support, reach out to us at info@roman3.ca

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Skill Development

Quantum Thinkers Have Real Superpowers – Are You One of Them?

Quantum Thinking: What is it?

There is some confusion about what, exactly, quantum thinking means.  Some think it’s connecting your mind, body and spirit; some think it’s a tactic to better understand and embrace physics, and still others think it can be a magical way to live a happy and perfect life.

Now, I don’t know about any of that. I won’t tell you how to connect your mind, body and spirit, or help you understand physics or promise you a perfect life. I want to talk about quantum thinking from a cognitive, adult learning perspective. Quantum thinking is about a depth and speed of processing that could be a vital and game-changing skill when it comes to leadership, innovation, management and education. It involves using multi-dimensional thinking and thematic analysis to discern and synthesize complex information from seemingly random memory, in real time. In an overly simplified way, quantum thinking is about developing a seemingly limitless mental capacity. Who wouldn’t want that?

I first came across quantum thinking, or to be more to the point, “high capacity” quantum thinking, when I was a grad student doing research on cognition and transformative learning. I was reading a book by celebrated adult educator Jane Vella. She only touched on this concept in the book, but it peaked my interest and I dug further into it.  I discovered that different kinds of thinking can be expressed as an upside down hierarchy in terms of capacity and depth. In this model, linear thinking falls on the bottom, creative thinking (spreading your thinking outward) and critical thinking (reflecting and analyzing information) sit in the middle and high capacity quantum thinking has all of it and more.

So, again: What is it?

High capacity quantum thinking is the ability to simultaneously and systematically connect six different skills:

Creativity – explore alternate options and pathways, even unconventional ones.

Intuition— trusting the information, higher-order concepts, and ideas that come to your mind.

Unrelated storage – being able to learn and store information without immediate relevance and then recall and connect it once it becomes relevant.

Information integration – the ability to integrate information from all sources into actionable and practical concepts

Synthesis – creating foundational and practical knowledge from the information and concepts created and stored.

Accelerated Processing – being able to make connections, process and learn information, and master new tasks at an intensely quick rate.

How can I use this information?

The real question is, how can high capacity quantum thinking help you?  For the purposes of this article we’ll talk about how to look for signs of quantum thinking in your potential job applicants.

High capacity quantum thinkers are a gift to some industries and a curse to others. If you’re looking for employees to just tow the company line, be given tasks to repeat the same way everyday until they retire, maintain status quo, and think within the box, then you need to stay clear of high capacity quantum thinkers. They will drive you crazy, be unhappy, and most likely will not use their hyper accelerated thinking skills to make your life easier.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for more efficiency in your process, looking for new and meaningful connections, need answers to questions you haven’t even thought of yet, and want all of this yesterday—then you, my friend, need to be in the market for a high capacity quantum thinker.

So where do you find them?

That’s a tough one. Most high capacity quantum thinkers don’t even realize this is what they are. They tend to believe that having a mind that goes a mile a minute and sees all the angles is what everyone experiences. Interestingly enough, many high capacity quantum thinkers may have been misdiagnosed as having ADHD as kids. This might be because ADHD is marked with having a need to have your mind stimulated, and looking beyond the task you are currently engaged in to find that stimulation.  The undisciplined high capacity quantum thinker may appear to be scattered, unfocused or having poor follow through. This is because having information and inspiration constantly coming at you can be overwhelming and extremely distracting. Like most super powers, they’re a burden until you learn to harness and control them.

So, let’s reframe the question.

Where do you find DISCIPLINED High Capacity Quantum Thinkers?

It’s likely they’re already applying for positions in your company. High capacity quantum thinkers know what kind of work and projects interest them and they’re eager to seek them out. You will find them among the resumes and cover letters that speak about their potential, their achievements attained in a short period of time, will likely have had three or four jobs in a ten year span, which they’ve left to pursue more exciting prospects. They won’t have the twenty years of experience you’re looking for, they will be the ones who sound confident and engaged, but whom you thought were probably “too green” or inexperienced to consider as a serious candidate.

Overlooking high capacity quantum thinkers is understandable. Lots of people claim to be great and able to meet all of your needs. Hiring people is risky, so you play it safe and go with the most experienced candidates.  It makes logical linear sense. But if you’re going to choose people who have done the job before, you’ll likely get employees who will do things the way they’ve always been done. However, if you want to increase the capacity of your business, you need to invest in increasing the “High Capacity” of your employees. The best advice I can offer to help you spot them is to look for people who have been able to complete excellent work in surprisingly short time frames, people who routinely over-deliver in terms of quality and deadlines, and people who can find connections, unique perspectives, and transferable elements in seemingly random or limiting situations. If you can harness the power of a quantum thinker you can have your very own super hero at your disposal, and again…who wouldn’t want that!

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Effective Management Employee Engagement Human Resources Improve Your Career Skill Development

Investing in Psychological Capital- Maximizing Yourself and Your Talent Pool

– Written by W. Coby Milne – Director of Roman 3 Operations

I have an incredible investment opportunity for you. I’m asking you to consider investing in Psychological Capital, also known as PSYCAP.  PSYCAP is a form of capital that involves the personal resources people bring to their jobs.

Now, before you dismiss this as a type of investment scam, stop reading and close this article, hear me out.

An investment in your own Psychological Capital, and in the Psychological Capital of those who work under you, can create amazing personal, professional and financial return.

Hopefully, I kept your interest. Let’s see where this journey takes us.

A little about me

In my work history I used to teach Workforce Navigation and Psychological Capital development to unemployed and under-employed people in Nova Scotia’s rural Annapolis Valley. I now provide corporate training to industry, governments, and nonprofits. My students former were going through different levels of career transition and are all trying to be more competitive job candidates and stronger employees. My former students are probably the most diverse that you can imagine in terms of education, skill set, cultural background, disabilities, age, and career goals. So when I say this is a universal investment opportunity, I mean what I’m saying.

The focus on Psychological Capital in my work came from a shift in the culture from where I used to work. Our focus used to be to make people really good at finding jobs, but as we started to support more services for business, we realized that we were only making good job seekers, not good employees. This led to my team re-evaluating our approach and methods. We ended up throwing out everything we took as standard practice and completely starting over. This led to copious amounts of academic research and a wide range of business needs assessments. All of this investigation led us to a unanimous conclusion. We found that in order to increase the capacity and employability of employees, we needed to increase their value add (capital) in the job market.

This is the basis for the concept of Human Capital: the economic value of an employee’s skill set. So the new question was the simplest, yet most difficult: How? How can we increase people’s capacity and employability, in a meaningful and efficient way?

Investing in people

This is what led us to the concepts of Psychological Capital. Psychological Capital is simply understood as the positive union between the cognitive skills of Hope, Efficacy, Resilience and Optimism (easily remembered as HERO). The idea is if you can build and strengthen these skills in yourself or your business, you can significantly increase your competitive advantage in your marketplace (business or job), embody the concept of “Work Smarter, Not Harder” and considerably increase achievement capacity.

This new found information and direction was a real game changer for both our students’ efforts and our own careers. Our employment rate for students jumped from around 65% to a little over 80%, but most significantly, our employment retention (the ability to keep a job for at least the length of the probation period) jumped from 68% to 93%! This success was consistently reinforced with multiple iterations of our training program, delivered to almost 150 students over a two year period.

With a focus on Psychological Capital, the graduates of our program were more quickly promoted than in past programs, they reported much higher job satisfaction, and were able to recover from jobs that didn’t work out and find another job much faster.

How do you build these skills?

This is a much more complex question. In building our program, curriculum and research models, we were fortunate to have a diverse team. We had people with extensive HR backgrounds, expertise in business services and needs assessments and, my value add, cognitive skill development. The specific details are too much to include in this article, but feel free to contact me with any questions you have.

What I can share at this time are our guiding principles. These were the foundations for every step along the way.

Hope Theory – (Hope)

Create a culture that supports two basic, yet essential ideas.

  1. Pathways – There is more than one way to achieve a goal and success looks different to different people.
  2. Agency – You have the capacity to effect change. Your actions and efforts matter; in fact they are often all that does
Experiential Learning (combined with Flooding) – (Efficacy)

While I’ve covered this elsewhere (Three Essential Elements for Effective Training), it’s worth revisiting the three key approaches to adult learning:

  1. Rote learning– focuses on learning specific content, understanding steps and processes, for example, how to format a resume.
  2. Reflective Learning–working with information and ideas to get students really thinking about themselves, their pasts and their biases. This approach provides perspective and hopefully will encourage growth. A sample of reflective learning would be considering how negative thinking and biases hurt mental resilience.
  3. Experiential Learning–where students are immersed in the learning and experiencing the value of the tips, knowledge and understanding they’ve gained. One example of experiential learning would be mastering the steps for high level problem solving by making a survival plan after a theoretical plane crash.

Our program utilized the best learning approaches to meet the students’ needs in achieving our training outcomes. We wouldn’t use experiential learning just because it was fun, we would only use it if it had real value in helping learners learn. We combined experiential learning with a process used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, called flooding. Flooding involves getting people to move out of their comfort zones by placing them in situations where they need to push themselves beyond their usual limits. An example might be building conflict resolution skills using specific scenarios and increasing the complexity of the scenes to go beyond the normal, typical situations they would commonly encounter. If they can handle the most challenging scenarios, then the everyday ones will seem easy by comparison. The principle is similar to practicing lifting weights that are heavier than you need to lift, so when you are lifting your targeted weight, it seems much easier.

Let Yourself Fail – (Resilience)

We did a lot of research around Growth Mindset and rewarding the making of an authentic effort over the achievement of results. Growth Mindset is a concept best described by researcher Carol Dweck, who said, “people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” The theory goes that failure is a mindset, not an inevitable outcome. In a Growth Mindset, failing is not seen as the mistakes or the wrong choices we make.  A failure is framed as letting the mistake or the wrong choice define us.

Realistic Expectations – (Optimism)

We may have been told things in life like, “if you can dream it, you can do it” or “shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you will end up among the stars.” These motivational quotes sound nice, but can do more harm than good. We need to accept the reality of our situations and be realistic with our optimism. Our role as trainers and educators is to help our students recognize their strengths, assets and professional value, but also realistically see their baggage, limitations and weaknesses. Our students need to know and accept all of these aspects of themselves as the cards they’ve been dealt.  With this knowledge, they can start to play their best hand.

Improve your efforts moving forward

Throwing out our previous work and questioning the foundation and guiding principles of our industry was a huge risk and, to be honest, pretty scary. But even we couldn’t predict the positive impact it had on our students. Also, we’ve consulted with other organizations and businesses on their professional development efforts, and encouraged them to consider incorporating a PSYCAP focus. They’ve reported great successes and momentum building, plus a renewed structure for intentional training.

Teaching to build PSYCAP is all about maximizing the potential of the learners.  You don’t have to hire for talent if you can build it in house. Instead of being a hunter and gathering new talent, farm the talent you currently have and grow it to feed the success of your business and your efforts.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Improve Your Career Skill Development Teamwork

Why am I Intimidated by Networking?

Do I Really Have to Network?

Ok, so let me guess, you have been seeking a new job or trying for a promotion, however, you can’t catch a break. You have a great resume and cover letter, a good reputation from people who know you and you are skilled and ready for the next step…still, you can’t seem to capitalize on any opportunities. What are you doing wrong? Well, for starters, the main opportunity you are not truly capitalizing on is the fact that you have all of those essential things in place and you know you are ready, but do enough people realize that you are ready?

This is the whole idea behind networking, it is really about just making your skills and ambition known to others, which is where the intimidating part comes in; many of you feel like you are a shameless vacuum cleaner salesman who needs to go around and steer every conversation about how great and needed their product is (in case I lost you, the product is not a vacuum, it’s you), which turns people off and often makes a bad impression. This is true, no one likes to be around a pushy salesperson or talk to folks who are only there to sell you on something.  People hate talking to others who are not being genuine and are only there to push forward their ulterior motive or personal agenda.

Another part that really intimidates people with networking is a lot simpler.  Most of us don’t like talking to strangers. Maybe it’s because, like me, you grew up in the 80’s with ‘Stranger Danger’, or maybe you simply have an introverted side and it just takes a lot out of you to meet and chat with those you really don’t know.

Networking Doesn’t Have to be Complicated

So, do you need to be an extraverted, natural salesman to network?  No, not at all, networking is traditionally thought of as going to formal events and mingling and chatting with strangers, exchanging business cards, making small talk and looking for ways to humbly brag.  Now, I will admit as someone who does this a fair amount, this is both intimidating and exhausting.  In the work I do, I spend a lot time “schmoozing”, which is the part I like the least even though there are those rare times I meet someone who I really click with and who gives me new ideas and viewpoints.  Is it my most meaningful form of networking? No, not even a little.

The most meaningful networking approach for me revolves around two simple, yet impactful, strategies; looking for information or looking to help.

There is a professional speaker and author named Michael Goldberg, (here is link to his TEDX talk), who is an expert on networking and he has a great definition for it: “A proactive approach to meet people to learn with the prospect of helping them” – Michael Goldberg

Personally, I like this definition of networking because it is not suppose to be about convincing people to hire you, buy from you, refer you, or listen to your ideas.  Nor is it meant to be an intimidating and overwhelming process; it should be about learning and helping.

How to Comfortably and Effectively Network

The trick to the formal networking events is to have a reason to network, a purpose for the conversations. When I do the “schmoozing” the only real benefit I get out of it is that people see my face, maybe learn my name, and hopeful share contact info. The main payoff is that if I follow up with the new person I met, I have a starting point to the conversation where I can reference where we met. However that follow-up contact (phone or email) is where the real networking begins. Normally when I reach out to people to follow up it is because I am trying to get information, learn something or look for a way to help. Oddly enough, my follow up from the schmoozing is only marginally more effective than when I cold call someone to get information or look to help. That could mean one of three things; either I am a bad conversationalist, a relentless cold caller, or the real impact of networking is looking to do something with or for the person I met. For my own self-esteem, let’s hope the later is true.

The key is to network with intention, not just at schmoozing events but with everyone you come in contact with while going about your everyday.  Always look for any reason to reach out to someone new with a purpose whether it is at work to contact a new vendor, service provider, government employee or community member, or even if it is chatting with another parent at your kid’s basketball game.  It is important to have a reason to look for information or to help; this will give you the purpose to contact them.

Keep in mind; it is really only by a continued relationship that you start to build a network. Only by working with people, following through on your commitments, showing your passions and dedication and providing the give and take that is essential to all successful relationships will a new person actually become part of your network. Then you begin to capitalize on your skills and ambition plus build the reputation you need to get to where you want to go. The old adage, “It’s not what you do, it’s who you know” is not accurate.  A more fitting adage is, “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.”  This is how you start to make a difference and build up your reputation.  There is no sense being ambitious and passionate at something if you are only working with and preaching to the converted. Remember, an effective way that networking can make a huge difference in looking for information or looking to help is with volunteering.  I wrote an earlier article about on LinkedIn this titled: Volunteering is Your Career Marketing Plan. Check it out for more depth on this.

The Takeaway

Networking isn’t just about the intimidating schmoozing events, it is about the conversations you have with people and the connections that you make as you are trying to look for information or to help. This is how you show individuals, ideally lots of people, your skills and ambition. This is how you build a network that will capitalize on those skills and ambition.  Events are an okay place to start, but it is about the follow-up and the actual work you will do with people that makes for effective networking. So if you are looking to be less intimidated by networking, you just need to have a reason to reach out to people who are outside your existing network and find ways to learn from them or to help them.  After that, your skills and ambition will take over and you will create the reputation you deserve and develop the network to match.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca 

Employee Engagement Human Resources Improve Your Career Skill Development

What an Indispensable Employee Looks Like

Intrapreneurs, The Heroes of the Workforce

I spend a lot of time working with and teaching highly skilled and highly motivated people, young professionals and experienced professionals, entry-level workers and high-level executives, technical focused and people focused; a really wide range of people. Of all the different kinds of people I deal with on a regular basis, the most welcoming and exciting to work with have to be the Intrapreneur. For those of you who are not familiar with the Intrapreneur; they are people who exhibit the personal drive, dedication, professional pride, and intrinsic motivation and are the hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs, except they choose to work within an organization or business. These are the people who work in a company that makes other people wonder; “With their skill and drive, why they haven’t started their own business?”

Intrapreneurs are the heroes in their company who are not necessarily in it for the money or prestige, they are motivated by a need to seek innovation, solve problems, and, most often, they believe in what they do, and they look to do it better. Intrapreneurs are often the backbone of a successful company, if a company creates an environment where Intrapreneurs can thrive, be recognized and given more responsibility to create a larger impact then they will lift the company beyond anyone’s expectations.

 What makes Intrapreneurs?

Developing Intrapreneurship is really not that different from developing a garden. You need the right materials, the fertile soil to get started, and the right resources to be nourished.

In this sense, the right materials are likely within the personality qualities of the person.  As someone who researches and teaches topics around cognition and skill development, in my professional opinion, these qualities are best identified in the Big Five Factors personality traits. This is part of the foundation of Personality Psychology and an excellent inventory of the qualities that make us who we are. The main quality strengthens that are needed to create an Intrapreneur would be:

Openness

-Adventurousness (prefers variety and trying new and different ways to do things)

-Intellect (likes complex problems, enjoys going in depth with complicated ideas)

-Liberalism (avoids convention, tends to not be satisfied with the status quo)

Conscientiousness

-Self-efficacy (has the confidence to take on tasks and successfully complete them)

-Achievement-striving (self motivated to work hard)

-Self-discipline (will complete tasks, regardless of how distasteful)

If you would like to test yourself against the Big Five Factors and find your score on the above traits, among many others, you can take the actual IPIP-NEO assessment that is the representation of the scientific assessment used by Personality Psychologist. Find the test here.

What environment is needed to develop an Intrapreneur?

Going back to the garden analogy, what is the fertile soil to plant the budding Intrapreneur? Basically, flexibility is key. An environment where there is not just a linear process to accomplish outcomes, where there is a way to fine tune and improve processes or look at new ways to create efficiencies. The Intrapreneur is all about ideas, sees the angles, and wants the flexibility to pursue the best option.

Another essential piece is the resources to be nourished; the key to this is really access. The Intrapreneur needs to have access to information, equipment, and support to develop the idea or solve the problem. Access can be the greatest form of appreciation for the Intrapreneur, as it is not just lip service to their efforts and potential, but a tangible endorsement of their efforts, which will be key to keeping a successful Intrapreneur at your company.

The Takeaway

We have all seen Intrapreneurs in action; they are the indispensable co-workers who we know will go above and beyond and find better ways to do their job. It’s the person who works for a company we regularly deal with and enjoy interacting with because they take pride in what they do; they are self-motivated. If you have ever dealt with someone and have been impressed with their ingenuity, commitment, work quality and thought to yourself “this person is going places” then odds are you have been dealing with an Intrapreneur.

Intrapreneurship needs to be fostered, cultivated and appreciated. They are essential to the growth and sustainability of any organization or company. The reality is that human capital is the most important resource to any business and Intrapreneurs are the gold standard that gives any business its greatest value.

 

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca