With the three key ingredients of trust, conversation, and flexibility, organizations can take meaningful steps toward easing the work/life issues plaguing the American workforce.Work/life balance discussions have taken on a new urgency lately, thanks in large part to Arianna Huffington’s bestselling book, "Thrive." The book begins with her personal "wake-up call." She found herself lying in a pool of blood after collapsing from exhaustion and lack of sleep. Her demanding and lucrative career overpowered her—the weight eventually crushing her ability to keep up.While this is a dramatic and high-profile example, this same scenario plays out day after day with average Joes and Janes. We may not crumple to our knees like Arianna, but the upward spike of stress reported by employees is sobering. And slowly, but surely, it’s taking a toll.The third annual 2013 Work Stress Survey, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Everest College, found that 83 percent of Americans are stressed at work. One of the top stressors? Poor work/life balance.In Fierce, Inc.’s 2014 Having It All Survey, which examined professional women’s attitudes about work/life balance, 70 percent of women reported being stressed, with nearly half experiencing stress-related health issues, such as loss of sleep (45 percent), weight gain (45 percent), and depression (34.5 percent).The impact is so strong that 1 in 5 women, according to the Fierce survey, reported leaving a more lucrative job for one that supported better work/life balance. And if you believes this issue is a "girl thing," think again. Just take ex-MongoDB CEO Max Schireson as a recent example. He quit his role as CEO to spend more time with his family, finding the demands of his job too much to support both work and home life.If corporations haven’t gotten the memo yet, their time is running out. While some may prefer that this issue disappear, it won’t. It has sprung forth yet again as our society gets further and further caught up in trying to run at the rate of technology and, subsequently, pays the price. And while we can replace the hard drive in a computer, there is no replacing a company’s most valuable asset—the hearts and minds of its employees.Here are three key ingredients to cultivating a workplace that fosters more balance and sustains long-term health for both the business and its workforce. And as with all things, it begins with trust.1. Without trust, there is nothing. Trust is BIG. Employees crave it, employers must give it, and people require it as a fundamental component to all relationships. Without it, there is hand-holding, micro-managing, clock-watching, and side-glancing paranoia. Decisions are made behind closed doors, people whisper at the water cooler, and a world of energy is spent paving every road in "Worst Case Scenario Land." In short, we spend our time focused on how to avoid failure or catching someone doing wrong rather than looking for possibilities, success, and spontaneous innovation.In the "trustless" environment, corporations are hamstrung when it comes to affording employees work/life balance because to give balance, one must have balance—balance of trust between management and staff, staff and leadership. Cultures of deep-seated personal accountability must replace command-and-control dictatorships.Building a foundation of trust at all levels, in every direction, is the launching point for creating a balanced workplace and is what’s needed to sustain it over time. To establish trust, one must choose trust. Trust is a choice—a belief—that resides within each individual and is his or hers to give. It starts from the top, and when trust is given, much is granted in return.2. Have the conversations, and keep having them. Once trust has been established, have conversations that identify what employees need in order to experience better work/life balance. In one-on-ones, ask where the challenges are and request recommendations for resolving them. Ask what the company is doing nowthat’s helpful and how it could be made more helpful. Lean in and get curious. The solution (or solutions) may be much simpler than imagined, as we often tend to over-correct for situations that merely need a small modification.Pull together a work/life committee made up of cross-functional and cross-departmental representatives. Submit the themes occurring in one-on-one conversations and task the committee with prioritizing, proposing solutions, and partnering with leadership to execute any new policies and/or cultural shifts that need to occur. As with all committees, ensure the work/life committee continues to meet on a regular basis to stay current with employee needs. Rotate in new members so fresh perspectives are routinely made available to the group. Peer groups also can give working parents, or individuals tasked with greater life responsibilities, an opportunity to share solutions and strategies for overcoming work/life issues outside of the company.3. Reach beyond your limits and flex your flexibility. More than likely, a request for greater flexibility will be a common theme in your work/life conversations. After all, life doesn’t happen on a Tuesday nor does it occur conveniently between the hours of 9 and 5. Life happens when it does. It’s the nature of the beast, warts and all, so it’s best to adopt a strategy that embraces reality rather than ignores it.Some highly adopted and emerging trends are listed below as options to consider. All of these address work/life issues and, on their own or together, will cover much ground in providing employees a less stressed, more engaged environment—both of which come with higher profits and lower turnover.1. Flexible hours. A wide variety of office positions have no real need to be religiously staffed during specific hours, such as 8 to 5. Instead, there may be core hours where overlap with other team members is crucial but, outside of this, mandating an 8 a.m. start time is without much purpose and is more an act of old policies unvisited.Evaluate all positions and identify core hours and the associated tolerance for flexible hours. Offering employees a grace period around when they need to be physically present in the office allows for life to sporadically bleed outside the margins into work, without causing undue stress.2. Telecommuting. Hand in hand with flex hours, telecommuting is a wonderful and practical option to give employees. Thanks to technology, employees can still participate in meetings while getting work done (sometimes even more!) when in the rather calm and controlled environment of home.Here again, assess which positions would be a good fit for working remotely and set clear expectations such as response time, indication of availability, and any specific days of the week where presence in the office is preferred due to weekly team meetings, etc.3. Unlimited PTO. Perhaps the pièce de résistance of work/life policies is adapting an unlimited vacation "non-policy." The latest high-profile CEO to roll this out is Richard Branson. He, like other CEOs, has observed the higher profits, morale, and productivity that the pioneering CEOs have experienced since implementing this bold policy.Of all policies, this one requires the most trust and asks employees to be highly accountable to themselves, their peers, and their company. And when it works, it works like a charm. Ensure employees understand the goals and objectives they are responsible for delivering and communicate the expectation that they may take time off when they feel their absence will not damage the business, the team, or their careers.While there may be a lot of initial fear around implementing this policy, most companies find they actually need to encourage employees to take more vacation! When trust is handed over, people step up in equal amounts.With the three key ingredients of trust, conversation, and flexibility, organizations can take meaningful steps toward easing the work/life issues plaguing the American workforce. Companies that begin now will have a tremendous leg up on those that continue to merely pay lip service to the cause. This issue isn’t going away. It’s time to get out in front of it before employees lose patience and take their talent elsewhere.This article was originally published on TrainingMag.com and was written by Halley Bock, President and CEO, Fierce, Inc.The post The Art of Balance: Cultivating a Sustainable Workplace appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

Hi!  Ed Cohen here.  I am in India for a few weeks. I conducted a leadership retreat in Delhi for Apollo Tyres and now I am in Hyderabad before moving on to Bangalore, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.  Everywhere I go people are worried about the economy.  Fear has set in across India all related to the recent happenings in the states. LEADERSHIP GUIDELINES FOR TURBULENT TIMES Adapted from Chapter 3- Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times (Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen, ASTD 2010)  ****  Don’t let the news of today undo the successesof yesterday or tomorrow. —Howard Richmond, MD  ****  During turbulent times, everything speeds up. The pressures of shifting emotions, processes, and demands increase as more and more is expected from everyone. You are simultaneously juggling the daily needs of the business, caring for the wounded, and helping pick up the pieces. Because these difficult periods are stressful, leaders must rapidly and proactively convert emotions into actions. Leaders must concurrently take care of themselves and everyone else. This takes time, patience, empathy, a willingness to shift priorities, and communication—constant communication, even "overcommunication." The leaders who lead "out loud"— those who maintain transparency, approachability, and integrity—are the ones with whom people want to work, in good times and bad. And these are the leaders whom others seek to become.  The 12 Leadership Guidelines The approach that works best in this situation is leading through learning—which primarily entails developing leadership guidelines. It is simple and powerful. Leverage learning to assist leaders with the complicated people and relationship dimensions of the business. Develop a set of leadership guidelines. Communicate and teach them to all leaders. Use these guidelines as the basis for coaching conversations. Here are 12 guidelines we used as part of our leading through learning strategy. Use these guidelines as a basis for your strategy, or adapt them to your unique situation: Understand That We Will Never Get Back to Normal Organizations are constantly in the process of evolving to something new. An organization in crisis creates revolutionary change, resulting in radical shifts occurring much faster than most people are comfortable handling. It’s natural to want a return to the status quo. But no matter how devastating the situation, there is opportunity in a crisis. At the heart of a crisis is learning. There were things that were once considered "normal" that helped pitch your organization into turbulence. This is your opportunity to see those things for the mistakes they were and begin to build better practices. The only constant about "normal" is that it is always changing. So instead of hoping for and trying to get back to normal, you need to move on, seek better ways to do things, and let these new ways become the new normal. Take Care of One Another Leaders must demonstrate emotional intelligence—transparency, empathy, patience, forgiveness, and inclusivity. They are obliged to look for ways to take care of one another. As a leader, first and foremost, explore your own feelings. Find someone with whom you can speak, someone who has an objective view and who provides you with empathic listening. At work, don’t be reticent to express your feelings, and allow others to express their feelings without judgment. Words like "hurt," "worried," "cheated," "shock," and "disbelief " will be spoken, along with phrases like "How did this happen?" and "Am I going to lose my job?" Let them flow. There is no need to always have an answer or even a reply. This is the time to be a great listener and to exhibit empathy. Use paraphrasing to let others know you have heard them. People need to verbalize their thoughts and feelings to work through them. They want to be heard and need to feel heard. The simple act of listening rapidly reduces anxiety. React . . . Pause . . . Respond For safety and expediency, leaders are counted on to react. Adrenaline pushes energies to parts of the body most required to handle the turbulence. Your mind might be more alert, thinking at a rapid speed, eyes dilated so you can see better, and hearing sharpened—and all this may bring on the "normal" reaction: fight or flight. When you react in that moment, a normal response, it may or may not be right. Pause. Reflect. Then collect as much information as possible, and consider the benefits and consequences of each possible course of action before deciding on the next thing to do. The enterprise’s response is critical for leaders to consider. As a leader, you face your own turmoil while the collective enterprise also faces its own. Thus the leader must balance his or her concerns with those of the organization by recognizing this duality and separating personal responses from business responses. For example, as a leader, you must take decisive action to help the company recover and care for others (see chapter 7). Yet as an individual, you must decide how you will respond by taking into consideration all the factors at that time, including your career desires, personal needs, and family situation. No matter how you respond, it will be right for you as long as it comes from information gathering, integrity, an open heart, and seeking to understand. Talk—Even When You Don’t Believe There Is Much to Say I don’t know what to say. Everyone is getting information daily from the company. They can see it on the news. The statements above are just some of the excuses leaders provide when asked why they are not communicating with their teams. There is no such thing as overcommunicating, especially during times of rapid change. No one has a valid excuse for not communicating. Provide regular updates as often as necessary. When Raju’s confession set off a crisis of massive proportions, updates were held every hour. Then we shifted to updates every few hours and then to updates daily and weekly. Never cancel an update. This scares people. Even when there isn’t much to report, people appreciate being told what is known again and again. They also appreciate the opportunity to ask you questions. They feel more connected to you and the organization with regular access. What may in normal times be seen as over-communication is good communication during turbulent times. You are communicating enough when people repeat your words to each other and to you. Consistent and continuous messaging prevents the rumor mill from gearing up and demonstrates leader’ approachability, transparency, and heartfelt concern. Be Visible—Now Is Not the Time to Play Hide-and-Seek I have my own stress to deal with. I have incredibly tight deadlines. I have no time to hangout and talk to people. The statements above are just a few of the excuses you will hear. It’s true that leaders are tremendously busy working to stabilize the company, have additional requirements placed on their shoulders, and are anxious themselves, but the need of the hour is still the team’s. When the leader goes into hiding, people become fearful. They question what is happening, and without the leader’s presence, they might even make up the story for him or her. This is how dangerous rumors and urban legends are born. Now is not the time to hide away at home or in your office. Closed doors make people nervous. Open the door, get up from your desk, walk around, and talk with people; let them know you care. "They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care." Listen, empathize, share advice, provide words of comfort; just be there. You may be injured; we all are. You may have a lot of work to get done; we all do. Be present, inform, comfort, and provide strength for others. Maintain Integrity and High Moral Values During turbulent times, leaders will have to take measures that they might not feel good about. There may be a pending layoff or a potential sale of the company, or quite possibly something even worse set to happen. Current circumstances should not influence, broaden, or distort your definition of integrity and other core values. Optimize Costs, with Retention in Mind The most common mistake leaders make during any kind of turbulence is implementing cost optimization, which often includes layoffs, without considering the retention of staff. Cost optimization should be discussed and implemented concurrently with a retention plan. If you must optimize costs, then simultaneously work to retain your best people. Your organization will emerge stronger. During and after turbulent times, retention should be one of the highest priorities. You should make cost optimization decisions, keeping in mind their impact on retention. This information allows you to assess risk and make more informed decisions. Be a Brand Ambassador The temptation during crisis is to tell everyone everything—the good, the bad, the ugly. Though transparency and adherence to core values is necessary, especially when leading through turbulence, the organization and its people need leaders who are brand ambassadors. As brand ambassadors, you are responsible for representing the organization both internally and externally in a positive manner. This does not mean stretching the truth. It simply means that you should refrain from making negative statements that might cause further turbulence. It also means seeking advice from your marketing and communications group on when and how to interface with the media and providing consistent messages to everyone. Assess and Rebuild Trust Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after truth." There are many advantages to being a part of an environment that is built on truth. People are more open, and there is greater productivity, less internal competitiveness, stronger relationships, and overall a more positive atmosphere. All stakeholders—from employees to customers, investors, and society—know when they are working with an organization built on trust. That said, damage control and rebuilding a seriously injured organization require difficult decisions that not everyone will understand. For this reason, you and the other leaders in your organization must continuously assess and rebuild trust. Seneca, the Roman philosopher and writer (4 bce-65 ce), taught that "no one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to." Can trust be rebuilt? It depends. People trust the trusted. In her article "Trust Fall," Pat Galagan (2009, 26-28) notes that "there are some who believe that organizations must do more than apologize and be truthful about past sins. The leadership experts James O’Toole and Warren Bennis caution that trust requires more than honest behavior from leaders. Rather, it takes cultures that reward honesty and punish dishonesty." Galagan continues with a quotation from O’Toole and Bennis: "A new metric of corporate leadership will be the extent to which executives create organizations that are economically, ethically, and socially sustainable." Remember, Leaders Are Human, Too Crisis and turbulence bring out both the best and worst in each of us. When your organization is facing difficult times, you go through a lot. You may feel hurt, damaged, worried—and that’s just the tip of the emotional iceberg. Sometimes you won’t be at your best, although it is important for you, as the leader, to hold it together as much as possible. Think Like a Child The guideline to think like a child may seem out of place—how could that help, particularly during turbulent times? But when you think about it, children do not carry the same burdens as adults; they live in the moment and, especially when very young, are constantly playing (figure 3-1). They may sense your sadness or turmoil. They may even ask you about it. Children allow you to take the opportunity to see the big picture; they provide a goal for you to get through things. They simplify everything, and this allows you to stop overanalyzing and complicating matters. Soon they will be running around, playing their games. Join them, the time will pass, and you will have a much-needed break. Try it. Live "in the moment" as children tend to do, and surrender to your playful inner child for a short period. This will remind you of the significance of taking time to tune out and not allow business to consume every moment. Work/life balance can still exist, even in a crisis. Take Care of Your Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual Well-Being Your health—your emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being—is important all the time, and it is critical during turbulent times. Don’t put any aspect of your well-being on hold. You will feel like ignoring your needs— but don’t! Calm your mind at night. Get a good night’s sleep. If you need to talk with someone, seek a counselor, a coach, or your best friend. Start or continue an exercise routine. Be more mindful of your diet. And look for the comfort that comes from following your own spiritual path. This is not an easy task for most leaders, who become so consumed by their professional responsibilities that they sacrifice everything else. Change and uncertainty at work are draining, but you cannot allow them to take over your life. These times will surely pass and as they do another set of challenges will come along. That’s now the crux of leadership, being able to lead through chaos and still sustain outstanding relaitonships that endure.

Change seems be quite the "norm" these days as organizations struggle to find a way to be more competitive and rise to the challenge of increasing regulations.  Having just returned from India where I facilitated a program for Harvard Business School on the subject, I can definitely say that it’s not at all different in India. There are a lot of change management programs available to meet your needs these days, including off-the-shelf, custom-designed or something in between.  Your selection should be driven by a number of variables: Think Navigation!  Whether your change is on an incremental level or system-wide, you’ll want to put a plan in place to help you and the organization’s leaders chart a course for success.  This is not about working through a series of steps with people.  Rather, the people are an integral part of the steps. The very word "change" can throw people in to an incredibly crippling heap of emotions.  Addressing how you will enlist, communicate, educate and reward employees during this process is critical to success. Change Management starts with the end in mind.  Examine your expected outcomes and work backward.  What will the change look and feel like after it is successfully incorporated?  For that matter, first you should define and agree upon what successfully incorporated looks like.  All too often we go through the steps, even meticulously, and forget that in the end we have to actually "live" this outcome.  It must be built into our orientation programs, processes and structures and even our performance evaluation systems in order to measure if what we said we were going to do is in fact what we are doing. There are a lot of decisions to make when you are considering change management.  Careful choices before you begin, evaluation during and dedicated implementation are all essential ingredients for making it work. Need a little helpful advice, or a full-on implementation?  Get in touch with us for a complimentary discussion of your needs. Priscilla D. Nelson, MA, MS, MCEC, BCC, CPT President & CEO

So we’ve got two megatrends going on in spaceship Earth. One is climate change. The other is global deflation. Are the two connected? The conventional view of deflation is that it is due to short term factors that lead to lower demand, absolutely or relatively. But there’s a growing suspicion that this may be a long term phenomenon spurred by what Laurence Summers calls secular stagnation. That would be due no doubt to aging populations, declining fertility and fewer people entering the labor force. But could there be another path to contagion here? Could it be that climate change is directly impacting the human population in ways that we haven’t considered yet? And that this is leading to lower absolute demand or lower demand growth and thus global deflation? Here’s a straw in the wind. Research from NASA indicates that global plant productivity is declining. Why? You might have thought it was going the other way due to warmer temperatures and faster growing seasons. But nope. The problem is drought. As in California, Sao Paolo and Beijing running out of water. That means that plants have less to drink and so produce less. So we can safely say that global plant growth rates are declining. That means that insects and animals that live on plants are being affected too. So the animal world is already seeing its own form of deflation in fewer plants, fewer insects and animals to eat them, therefore lowered demand for plant food and therefore lower prices to insects for plants. Insects have economies too right? So how would this translate to humans? We can grow our own plants so why would we have a problem? Well there’s another straw, declining human fertility. The conventional wisdom has it that human fertility rates are declining due to social changes; more women working, a lower proportion of young people in the population, more compelling entertainment than sex for young people in the form of videogames and Facebook. But there could be another factor, namely rapidly falling sperm counts in men. I have posted about this previously. Male sperm counts are about half what they were ten years ago in the developed world. No-one knows why. The best working hypotheses are pollution and metabolic disruptors in the food supply. But could climate change be causing it, just like it’s also impacting the plant world? Could the causes of the decline in plant productivity also be mirrored in some fashion in the human world with the same effect of declining human reproductive productivity? Yet another straw; declining labor productivity globally. Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF has recently broadcast her concern about how rapidly labor productivity is falling. She would see it as a result of lower demand. But is that lower demand also due to climate change, just as it is in the plant world? Are negative interest rates really a climate rather than purely a demand phenomenon? Of course this is a radical thesis. But it’s becoming clear that if secular stagnation is real, as increasingly people are coming to think, then we have to look for long-term causes, not just the latest changes in the stock market or changes in the value of the dollar. In the 18th century, the famous French philosopher Montesquieu postulated that the higher temperatures in the southern hemisphere made people lazy; that warmer climates impacted human productivity. For many years that was seen as specious or even racist. Maybe he was right after all.                Read More

Personality tests have been around since the beginning of the 20th century. They are part of the routine for HR organizations everywhere, especially for pre-employment testing. But do they work? Raising this question might appear to be heresy. But remember, the whole theory behind them dates from psychoanalytic and early psychological theory. We knew an awful lot less then. Moreover the original personality frameworks were designed by psychologists who had no interest in or focus on business and organizational performance and, moreover, had never run a business or an organization of any type other than a small medical practice. And these frameworks came well before the emergence of modern economics and finance including Keynesian theory, supply side economics and latterly behavioral finance, of which we will have more to say below. The originators of these tests had never heard of decision, game theory or other perspectives on leadership behavior. Despite the now ubiquitous use of personality tests in business, there have been some notable critiques of these which conclude they either don’t work well for personnel selection (from respected past editors of a well-known academic journal Personnel Psychology), or they only work at a minimal level (see Whitney Martin’s pivotal article in Harvard Business Review last year The Problem with Using Personality Tests for Hiring). These critiques point to a number of more technical issues such as test/retest validity and so on. But their basic premise is that the tests, alone, or (maybe) not used carefully, don’t work if you want to use them to predict the job performance of a future employee. Naturally there has been a furious response by personality psychologists including I/O (industrial/organizational) psychologists. However it’s difficult to take their critiques too seriously for a number of reasons. They now all have a vested interest in keeping the psychological testing profession going in business. And the global market for personality tests is in the billions, so if you’re in the game, that’s not a boat, you are going to rock. In other words, I/O and other business psychologists are often acting to protect the industry that sustains them, rather than as scientists. You really have to take that into account to be most objective Also, the psychologists are aided and supported by HR types, for whom these tests seem to be a godsend, investing limited resources in their hiring efforts with the veneer of scientific respectability. The problem is that despite their efforts in business the HR function has a terrible reputation for serving the needs those who actually run the business. You don’t have to believe me. Just look at the influential article by management and leadership guru Ram Charan carried last year in the Harvard Business Review ("It’s time to Split HR") or the recent talent survey by KPMG which concluded that "the Human Resources function is often viewed as being non-essential or ineffective" by HR clients in their organizations. Its survey is conducted regularly and this latest edition showed that the reputation of the HR profession has sunk to the lowest level since it started the surveys - only 17% of those surveyed think HR is effective. Yet another problem is that newer personality tests are routinely used in "leadership development" in order to help leaders’ ability to improve their "performance." There are a number of "meta" studies that have correlated "leadership" with organizational performance. However, the links are relatively weak, and these studies say nothing about what specific leadership behaviors may drive results. This is because modern personality leadership tests were never designed for this purpose - and in fact cannot predict the financial performance of senior leaders - which is what the vast majority of senior leaders, are really interested in developing. One of the unpleasant little secrets of some of these tests is that their proponents claim that they are "scientifically validated" because they are correlated highly with leadership effectiveness. But what is "leadership effectiveness?" Let’s take 360s. What they don’t tell you are that these ratings are by employees who know the leaders and may be quite flawed due to their own biases, and those of the people who create them - about what makes for good leadership, and not any scientific basis. Sometimes they can essentially be popularity contests or tools to say bad things about leaders they do not like. Nowhere do these "ratings" include objective connections to a leader’s business, financial and outcomes such as profitability or market valuation. Also nowhere does any leadership personality test correlate its findings with the financial and valuation outcomes of the organizations led by the leaders they purport to rate. This is no doubt why personality tests have a bad reputation amongst the many business leaders (as distinct from HR or learning leaders). It’s instructive that most of the support for these tests comes not from the business side but from the HR side of the house whose business skills perceived as quite poor, by everyone but them. Now before you stereotype me as being a typically narrow-minded business type that cares only for profits and financial metrics, let me tell you where I am coming from. I think that personality assessments can do a magnificent job telling us about the thinking ,behavior and interpersonal relationship styles of people and how they can leverage them to best effect how and whether people will "follow" them. However, there are many examples from business in which highly successful leaders exhibit "bad" behavior, yet people would walk of a cliff for them, and these leaders produce sustained positive business growth, wherever they go. Also, their use in mental health, general and career counselling and customer interaction is hugely useful and beneficial and they are worth their weight in gold in these uses. And yes, when used in leadership development to help leaders improve their interpersonal and social functioning, they can do a really good job too. The interpersonal relationship skills of senior executives can be very important in some organizational cultures - but, frankly, not all, if you look closely and don’t ignore many obvious examples. In other words, I think that personality tests are great for a huge variety of social and relationship applications including with employees and leaders. I think that claims that they are useful for predicting job and leadership performance, measured by outcome metrics, are pure bunkum - there is no useful or conclusive data to support this. It is just something that people who use these tests would like to believe. And let me also detail some thoughts on the I/O and management psychology professions. I know many psychologists who worked in line manager roles on the business side of the house. Many of the ones I have known also had MBAs or other types of business training. Almost all of these truly do understand the limitations of their discipline and the need to get some real business and outcome metrics into it. The problem is that these enlightened business psychologists are a small minority of the profession. In my experience the majority just don’t get it at all, partly because they had no real business experience or role or, even worse, have come up through the HR ranks. Also, in partial defense of the existing personality-first crowd, I would say that there hasn’t been anything else to use, so they have improvised. Some have done this very creatively. They have worked backwards from the desired business outcomes and deduce what types of leadership/management behavior would produce these, as well as the right "fit" for the organizational culture. However, their thinking about this is, at best, highly subjective, and subject to many biases of their own, as well as the people they work with in an organization. The problem is they are improvising sub-optimally with the wrong instruments and in the process have become complicit in a huge myth that these tests can essentially be used for any application where you want to predict job performance or worse, business performance - which is really important, anyway you cut it. Here’s the big picture from a historical perspective. When personality tests first came out they were truly revolutionary. They were generally based on a Jungian, later a 5 factor paradigm and they showed us facets of the human psyche we never knew about, at least not formally in a measurable way. That was the value of the now widely-used Myers-Briggs test (which is widely used for selection, though has no objective data to support this use). Other, newer tests can predict behavior well, but the link between these behaviors and "performance" has never been established. But the I/O and business psychology paradigm is now dated and showing its age very badly. It hasn’t integrated any of the lessons from modern economics and finance related to leaders’ behavior. For those with a more open mind, it’s now being superseded by the new kids on the block, behavioral economics and finance. If you’re not into these you just don’t have the frameworks to understand, predict and improve modern leadership as it pertains to true business and organizational performance - results getting. To some degree current business psychology is like Newtonian physics before Einstein. Newtonian physics, when it was invented, opened up new fields and allowed us to do things we had never done before, particularly predicting planetary motions. But it just didn’t and couldn’t understand many things, notably where gravitation and light fitted into the big picture. This is the situation that business psychology finds itself in now. When it was invented, (and personality tests are just one part of what it teaches) it provided dramatic new insights into human behavior. But all that stuff is old hat now. Moreover it doesn’t tell us important things like how behavior is related to financial, profitability and valuation outcomes, amongst many other things. For most of the real world of business that’s a total deal-breaker to most knowledgeable CEOs and heads of business units. Often they are either "true believers" in the use of these tests or just following HR’s lead to avoid having political problems. And the tragic thing is that the business psychology and I/O people haven’t caught up with all this new stuff that can help them better predict business performance. They are just hanging on grimly to their old knowledge insisting that it is eternally right and that modern knowledge can’t touch it. In essence, I/O psychology has transitioned from being a science to a religion. There are still some useful parts - albeit not in the area of predicting performance - but in general it has become more akin to a cult. That’s why you get such a furious response when you critique modern I/O stuff - from the psychologists. I/O psychology has become our modern secular version of Marxism/Leninism. Jung is the original God and anyone else - like Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of modern behavioral economics - is an apostate. I wish it weren’t so but someone has to call it out. The world is moving on and the new disciplines of behavioral economics and finance have provided us with powerful new tools, as important to leadership behavior in their own way, as was Einsteinian approaches were to the discipline of physics. Don’t forget that scientists truly believed the Earth was the center of the universe, and the Earth was flat. And people were burned at the stake or jailed if they purported to explain why those weren’t the case based on new observations. As long as I/O apologists continue to try to stop the tide coming in, the overall science of human behavior in business will be impeded and slowed down. Of course, that’s normal in the history of science. But if I can do anything to help speed up the introduction of these new ideas about human behavior, I feel privileged to have played my own small part.                          Read More

Did you see the recent article "Working at Amazon Is a Soul-Crushing Experience"? It was written by an ex-employee so he should know, or should he? It’s raised much controversy ranging from the defenders of Bezos to those who say I told you so. We have other poster-boys for alleged employee abuse including Elon Musk (seeAshlee Vance’s "Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" and the story of how Musk fired his long-time secretary). And recently, to the add to the bad rap he already received in the biography by Walter Isaacson the story emerged that Steve Jobs had refused to pay any money to the mother of his daughter to make up for the years she raised the girl alone in poverty. His refusal came with the epochal phrase "I don’t respond well to blackmail". Nice guy, right? But Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are probably the most exciting, visionary, breakthrough, amazing leaders we have produced globally in the last 20 years. They are truly global change agents with almost unimaginable powers of vision, effectiveness and, yes, transformational leadership. If we were to rate these three leaders using normal leadership scales, they would be abject failures. For one, their level of empathy and emotional intelligence is abysmally low. They would achieve scores of around zero on any employee engagement evaluation. They could never be hired in a "normal" company. So what’s going on here? It’s customary now for most large companies to conduct regular employee engagement surveys. If you do well on them, you get promoted. If you don’t, you won’t. So those who get promoted have higher empathy and emotional intelligence than the ones who don’t. But is it the case that these surveys are systematically excluding the people who are most likely to become the type of leader represented by the Big Bad Three? In other words, are our tests of engagement and leadership filtering out the most effective and exciting leaders because they are not nice enough? Here’s an interesting indicator. Ex-employees of companies such as Facebook, Apple, Tesla and Amazon are in high demand. Other companies believe that their experience in these companies gives them an edge. Why is that so given the apparent abusive conditions inside such companies? Could it be that these hiring companies actually value the employees of these companies precisely because they lack empathy and emotional intelligence? Is it possible that other companies want them for their experience in these conditions but are too scared to recreate them inside their own companies since it’s not politically correct to have low empathy? Are low empathy and low emotional intelligence now being demonized? If so, how do we account for the success of leaders with low or no empathy and low emotional and social intelligence? Is it possible that in our quest to produce the perfect leader we have dumbed down the requirements so much that we got nice wussies rather than meat-eating world-beaters? Is it the case that this is being enshrined and formalized through widely-used engagement and leadership assessment and survey instruments that promote this choice systematically throughout large organizations? If so, is this one of the reasons that large organizations are generally not able to innovate and rise to the heights of the startups that continue to change ths world every day? Now I’m not defending employee abuse, or saying that low empathy and low emotional intelligence make you a great leader. I’m just questioning the apparent global consensus amongst company managers and academics that these qualities are essential to good leadership. Clearly they are not. But the instruments and assessments that are used almost universally in large companies enshrine these assumptions. So Scotty, we might have a problem. Maybe we all need to be a little bit more open-minded about the pros and cons of emotional intelligence and empathy. Sure, it might not be a comfortable discussion. But that’s what blog posts are all about, right?                Read More

ROI Institute is seeking nomination for the 2014 Awards of Excellence ROI Institute announced today that they are seeking nominations for their upcoming Awards of Excellence. These awards are given yearly to professionals exhibiting a profound knowledge in the area of return on investments for their programs and events. Nominees must have shown outstanding work in measurement and evaluation, and have shown exemplary practices in research, design, and implementation of the ROI Methodology. Nominees can be selected for the following eight categories: Best International Implementation, Best Practice Implementation, Best Research, Most Innovative Approach to ROI, Best Published ROI Article, Best Published Case Study, Best ROI Impact Study, and ROI Practitioner of the Year. "2014 looks to be another great year for awards," Jack Phillips, Chairman of the ROI Institute, said. "This year was a busy one with more certifications, new focuses, and plenty of new offerings. We can’t wait to see the variety of entries we will receive as nominees." The ROI Methodology™ continues to be a breakout process for professionals in the fields of Human Resources, Human Capital Analytics, healthcare, technology, and evaluation. Since the workshops were first offered in December 1995, over 8,000 professionals have participated. In 2013 alone, there were about 500 participants. Recipients of the 2013 Awards of Excellence include: Best International Implementation: Suzanne Schell, ROI Institute Canada, Canada Best Practice Implementation: Gaston Pena, Banco Estado, USA Best Practitioner of the Year: Marcus Medina, Verizon Wireless, USA Most Innovative Approach to ROI: Selena Yuan, Mail Stop: 1560, USA Best Published Case Study: Malgorzata Mitoraj-Jaroszek, Ul. Centkiewiczow 9, Poland Best ROI Impact Study: The Verizon Learning & Development Team, Verizon Wireless, USA Best Research: Todd Hanson, Creative Visions, USA To nominate someone for an award, go to www.roiinstitute.net/awards. About the ROI Institute ROI Institute, Inc., founded in 1992 as a service-driven organization, assists professionals in improving programs and processes using the ROI Methodology developed by Dr. Jack J. Phillips. Jack and Patti Phillips are the leading experts on the use of return on investment (ROI) in non-traditional applications. They regularly conduct ROI workshops and provide consulting services, making the ROI Institute an industry leader in measurement and evaluation. The ROI Institute, along with more than 100 ROI consultants, applies the ROI Methodology in 20 fields, which have been implemented in 52 countries. The ROI Institute builds internal capability with a process to help individuals to achieve Certified ROI Professional (CRP), a designation respected by executives in various organizations. To learn more visit www.roiinstitute.net or contact us at info@roiinstitute.net. Want to SOCIALize? Follow, Like or Visit the ROI Institute on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. The post Seeking 2014 Awards of Excellence Nominees appeared first on ROI Institute.

2013 Awards of Excellence Winners ROI Institute announced today the recipients of the 2013 Awards of Excellence, which honor individuals for their outstanding work in measurement and evaluation, and to recognize exemplary practices in research, design, and implementation of the ROI Methodology. We were fortunate to have an unprecedented number of entries, particularly in the categories of Best ROI Impact Study, Best Practice Implementation, and Best International Implementation. The progress made with ROI is impressive as we continue to expand its use in many applications and in many different countries. Awards were given in the following categories: Best ROI Impact Study: "Verizon Smart Store Training ROI," Learning & Development Team, USA Best Practice Implementation: Gastón Peña, Banco Estado, Chile Most Innovative Approach to ROI: Ling Yuan, USA Best Published Case Study: Dr. Malgorzata Mitoraj-Jaroszek, "Selling Skills for Retail Sales Assistants," Poland Best Published ROI Article: "Why You Need to Measure Employee Engagement ROI," by Todd Hanson, Creative Visions, USA. ROI Practitioner of the Year: Marcus Medina, Verizon Wireless, USA Best International Implementation: Suzanne Schell, ROI Institute Canada, Canada Best ROI Impact Study: The Verizon Smart Store Training ROI Study stood out among the competition by demonstrating the use of the ROI methodology in the retail store environment. The goal of the training was to educate retail representatives and their managers about the new smart store design, to create a positive retail experience, and increase Verizon’s brand image. The scope of this study was based on the five pilot stores, tracking their key performance indicators (KPIs). Comparable stores were used as a control group to compare KPIs to those of the Smart Stores. Business objectives included impacting sales, while application objectives focused on fostering a new environment for customers. The training was built around the application objectives, so that store employees left training with adequate confidence to implement the new features. Contributors to Verizon Smart Store Training ROI study comprised of evaluation team members; including Angelique Ringgold, Amy Clapham, Kim Iorns, Erica Jones, Christopher Robinson, Kelly Taylor, and Lizette Zuniga. Best Practice Implementation: Gaston Peña, with Banco Estado, coordinated the implementation of the ROI Methodology in the learning and development area of his company. Peña has personally worked with the ROI Institute partner in Chile, Instituto ROI, for two years. During 2012, they trained over 30 people from different human resources and business areas. During 2013, Banco Estado evaluated over ten programs in levels four or five. Peña and his team have implemented various tools, templates, and processes to build accountability into their evaluation systems. Many studies are continuing to be developed as team members from Banco Estado are participating in certifications and are receiving the Certified ROI Professional (CRP) designation. Through tireless efforts, Peña has ensured that this is a smooth, effective implementation. Most Innovative Approach to ROI: Ling Yuan, Ph.D., Program Manager for Assessment at a pharmaceutical company, has been instrumental in working with the ROI Methodology within her team. Her case study, Product ABC Launch Training Evaluation Report, documents the Sales Training and Development department’s efforts to introduce a new product to the North American market. Their efforts included e-Learning, paper modules, a certification exam, and live training. Key stakeholders were involved throughout the process to ensure buy-in and support. On-going communication with participants resulted in high level of participation and candid feedbacks. Great discussion meetings were facilitated at various levels of the organization to talk about business implications and identify action plans. Best Published Case Study: Dr. Malgorzata Mitoraj-Jaroszek of Poland, wrote an impressive case study titled Selling Skills for Retail Sales Assistants. Her study for the Store Operations Development Workshop provided a particular example of how ROI can be used when multiple measures are involved. The study is thorough, well organized, and detailed in its presentation. This is an excellent display of Mitoraj-Jaroszek’s process to show others how to develop ROI studies for their projects. Best Published ROI Article: "Why You Need to Measure Employee Engagement ROI," by Todd Hanson, Chief Engagement Officer at Creative Visions. Hanson’s article provided a particular example of how ROI can be used when multiple measures are involved. He recognized the importance of proving the value of employee engagement programs, and how they can relate to the return on investment. He noted that just half of HR programs were measuring ROI on these programs, at a crucial time when companies were set to spend heavily on engagement. He thoroughly explained the value in measuring ROI throughout his article, and it was well received by the audience. ROI Practitioner of the Year: Marcus Medina, Verizon Wireless, has been a pioneer in bringing the ROI Methodology to life at his company. Marcus serves as Learning Architect Manager on a team responsible for training development to support the launch of Verizon Wireless products. In this past year, he has taken the lead on five impact studies. He stands out as a role model of ROI execution, laying a strong foundation for learning effectiveness in Learning & Development. Best International Implementation: Suzanne Schell, CEO of ROI Institute Canada, has driven the ROI implementation throughout Canada and beyond. In addition to Canada, she has conducted workshops and ROI Studies in Saudi Arabia, the USA, and the Caribbean. During this process, she spearheaded the development of new, custom ROI Certifications for Canadian’s learning leaders and HR innovators. In 2013, she hosted eight ROI certifications and numerous workshops to explain the value of the ROI Methodology to participants. The winners this year underscore a significant trend that we see in the use of ROI. Although the ROI Methodology had it’s beginning in the manufacturing and service industries, it is now entrenched quite well in government, non-government organizations, and non-profits. We salute all of the award winners and encourage others to submit entries for consideration early in 2015 for projects completed or published during 2014. For more information, contact the awards coordinator at the ROI Institute at info@roiinstitute.net. The post 2013 Awards of Excellence Winners appeared first on ROI Institute.

ROI Institute Announces 2014 Awards of Excellence ROI Institute announced today the recipients of the 2014 Awards of Excellence, which honor individuals for their outstanding work in measurement and evaluation, and to recognize exemplary practices in research, design, and implementation of the ROI Methodology. The progress made with ROI is impressive as we continue to expand its use in many applications and in many different countries. Awards were given in the following categories: Best International Implementation: Klaas Toes, ROI Navigator, Netherlands Best Practice Implementation: Maria Jude Testa, Honeywell, USA Best Published Case Study: Lisa Parker, IAMGOLD, Canada Best ROI Impact Study: Melissa Lobach and Elizabeth Perron, Verizon Wireless, USA Most Innovative Approach to ROI: Beryl Oldham, Fonterra Study, New Zealand Best International Implementation Klaas Toes is the President of ROI Navigator in the Netherlands. Klaas has been an educational economist in the world of learning since 1987. The value of learning for people, organizations and for society has never been concrete in terms of financial numbers. This motivated Klaas to develop the company called Navigator in 1998. This value was recognized and calculated as early as 1959, but those doing the calculating encountered the problem of collection and effective reporting of the "value of learning." In terms of that history, the ROI Navigator team has managed to build a robust digital information engine, one that enable many partners and clients to gain financial insight into the added value of a well-trained and educated workforce. Klaas and his team are the recipients of the award for Best International Implementation, not for a particular project but for their commitment to the ROI Methodology for the last 17 years. ROI Navigator has recently launch Phillips Analytics™, the online platform to make the effects of (learning & development) programs insightful. Best Practice Implementation Maria Jude Testa is the Director of Program Management for Honeywell in Phoenix, Arizona. Maria has 25 years of experience in portfolio, program, and project management. She has established a shared vision, alignment and execution to meet company business objectives including scoping, level of effort assessments, ROI, and change management. Honeywell’s HR Services group is a critical part of its organization, supplying standard, repeatable transactions to the organization. Maria has taken that one step further, demonstrating that the organization can not only deliver on transactions, but can do so with an emphasis on showing value to the business for projects that total over $12 million per year. Honeywell, like most MNCs, has a continual focus on cost savings and spending money in the right way. This must be demonstrated at many levels of the organization. Understanding this critical need, Maria put a standard ROI Methodology in place and ensured that all stakeholders received information in a standard way through impact documents. These documents efficiently and visually showed the different ROI levels. Maria’s vison has now become standard for the HRS group and are the benchmark for communications around ROI. Best Published Case Study Lisa Parker is a Senior Manager of Talent Management & Organizational Effectiveness with IAMGOLD Corporation based in Canada. Using the results from their first employee engagement survey, Lisa and IAMGOLD designed and implemented a comprehensive Supervisory Leadership Development Program (SLDP). The objective was to build a leadership pipeline while developing supervisory capabilities to engage, empower, and support employees. The program is highly visible, linked to key business objectives, and required substantial resources for the design and implementation, which covered a three-year timeline. These factors and a need to measure program success and improvement opportunities led to an evaluation study using the ROI Methodology. The evaluation study found that the SLDP favorably impacted IAMGOLD’s key business measures and a positive ROI was realized. Other intangible benefits not converted to monetary value included improving supervisory effectiveness, which ultimately impacted employee engagement. Lisa worked extremely hard on this case study. Her accomplishments have not gone unnoticed. In addition to being awarded Best Published Case Study by ROI Institute, IMAGOLD’s SLDP also won the gold Canadian Award for Training Excellence in the facilitated learning category which is awarded by the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD). Best ROI Impact Study Melissa Lobach and Elizabeth Perron at Verizon Wireless a US based organization, are this year’s recipients of the Best ROI Impact Study. These two individuals stood out among the competition by demonstrating the use of the ROI Methodology in an innovative training course to prevent employee attrition. The authors used the Phillips’ ROI (Return on Investment) methodology as a systematic approach for determining the value of the training to Verizon Wireless.  To quantify the results, the researchers analyzed surveys and attrition values via a control group arrangement. The study revealed a negative ROI leading to several recommendations to improve the potential ROI when offering the course in the future. The authors received their Certified ROI Professional (CRP) designation in January of 2014. Melissa is a Learning and Development Consultant and has worked in the field of adult education for over 20 years.  During her 15 years with Verizon, she has designed, developed and delivered new hire and continuing education courses with a specialization in leadership development curriculum.  Achieving the CRP designation has helped her promote greater leadership support for learning that results in lasting impacts for the V-Team culture. Elizabeth Perron is a Verizon Wireless Learning & Development Consultant.  She has passionately created engaging, meaningful and business impacting learning events for 8 years. The CRP process improved her ability to present the impacts of trainings to the business training sponsors. Most Innovative Approach to ROI Beryl Oldham is a Learning and Development Specialist with Bloom Training and Recruitment in Auckland, New Zealand. Beryl is a seasoned and well qualified professional who is passionate about enhancing people capability, managing talent, developing leadership and organizational culture, and measuring the return on investment (ROI). Fonterra, a global leader in dairy nutrition, has developed a Regional Sales Coach program to address the challenges of a geographically-diverse sales force by selecting and certifying sales leaders as in-region trainers and coaches.  This program enables Fonterra to execute one consistent selling approach to customers, while allowing for the flexibility to cater to regional needs and the ability to manage costs and logistics.  Beryl worked with members of Fonterra’s Sales Excellence Team to conduct an ROI evaluation pilot study using the Phillip’s ROI Methodology on Fonterra’s 20:20 SALES training program. The study was conducted using a sample of 68 participants by regional sales coaches in four regions - Auckland, Chicago, Dubai and Mexico.  The participants were surveyed and Price Achievement financial data were collected for each cohort six months prior and six months post the training. Program effects were isolated and the benefit attributable to the program was calculated using actual financial data for the six-month period. This figure was then doubled to represent a 12-month period. This figure was doubled to represent a 12-month period, resulting in an ROI of 961%. About the ROI Institute ROI Institute, Inc., founded in 1992 as a service-driven organization, assists professionals in improving programs and processes using the ROI Methodology developed by Dr. Jack J. Phillips. Patti and Jack Phillips are the leading experts on the use of return on investment (ROI) in non-traditional applications. They regularly conduct ROI workshops and provide consulting services, making the ROI Institute an industry leader in measurement and evaluation. The ROI Institute, along with more than 100 ROI consultants, apply the ROI Methodology in 20 fields, which have been implemented in 60 countries. The ROI Institute builds internal capability with a process to help individuals to achieve Certified ROI Professional (CRP), a designation respected by executives in various organizations. For more information on the ROI Institute, please contact info@roiinstitute.net or visit www.roiinstitute.net. The post 2014 Awards of Excellence appeared first on ROI Institute.

ROI Institute has added five new positions to their payroll over the past several weeks. The globally recognized consulting firm is incorporating new roles to continue to expand global outreach and enhance services. "Through our research and our clients’ needs for our methodology, we are finding an increasing demand among executives to measure the return on non-capital investments," said Patti Phillips, President and CEO of ROI Institute. "We knew we needed to find the right people to facilitate our growth, and I think we’ve done that with our new associates." The new additions include: • Nancy Norton—Chief Operating Officer: Nancy oversees ROI Institute’s operations and is located in the Blairsville, GA office. She has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, including marketing and sales management, training and development, event planning, customer relations, and public relations. Nancy is a metro Atlanta native with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University. Her previous employers include SunTrust and United Community Banks, Inc. • Anita Azeta—Customer Relationship Manager: Anita joined the Chelsea, AL office after obtaining a Masters of Science degree from Georgia State University in 2013. Anita has served in roles such as administrative assistant, trainer, customer call center representative, and chemistry tutor. Born in Nigeria and having grown up in Greece, Anita is a great fit to consult with ROI Institute’s global client base. • Cindy Cardwell—Editing and Publishing Manager: Cindy joined the Chelsea, AL office, bringing over 15 years of experience in editing, publishing, and public relations. Cindy reports to Director of Publications Hope Nicholas and will be a driving force behind all of ROI Institute’s publications. • Katie Mashburn—Content Design and Delivery Manager: Katie is a Blairsville, GA native and manages the development of ROI Institute’s products and services. As a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (designated by the Association for Talent Development), having served as a Training Specialist for United Community Banks, Inc., and with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Katie’s background is well-suited to enhance the quality of ROI Institute’s training materials. • Skylar Smith—Research and Project Manager: Skylar returned to his hometown to join the Blairsville, GA office after graduating from Maryville College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing/Communications and a minor in Business Management. He served as Sports Editor for The Highland Echo during college and has experience in journalism, public relations, and research. Skylar executes social media operations and supports marketing, public relations, and research projects. The new additions to the Chelsea team join Client Relationship Manager Jackie Healey, and the new additions to the Blairsville team join Marketing and Business Development Manager Debbie Golan and Logistics and Support Manager Doug Serra. "We don’t usually hire this many employees so quickly," said Jack Phillips, Chairman of ROI Institute. "With our recent climb in projects and activities, responsibilities across the board have increased dramatically. I believe our new team members will streamline operations and allow us to further enhance the services we provide for our clients." About ROI Institute ROI Institute, Inc., founded in 1992, is a service-driven organization, assisting professionals in improving programs and processes using the ROI Methodology™. Developed by Dr. Jack J. Phillips and Dr. Patti P. Phillips, the ROI Methodology is the global leader in applying return on investment (ROI) in non-traditional applications. ROI Institute regularly offers workshops, provides consulting services, publishes books and case studies, and conducts research on the use of ROI, which makes ROI Institute the most robust source of content, tools, and services in measurement, evaluation, and analytics. Working with more than one hundred consultants, ROI Institute applies the ROI Methodology in 20 fields in over 60 countries. ROI Institute authors have written or edited over 100 books, translated into 38 languages. Organizations build internal capability with the help of ROI Institute and its ROI Certification process. By successfully completing the certification process, individuals are awarded the Certified ROI Professional (CRP) designation, which is respected by executives in organizations worldwide. For more information on ROI Institute, please contact info@roiinstitute.net or visit www.roiinstitute.net. The post ROI Institute hires COO and four new managers to facilitate growth appeared first on ROI Institute.

August 30, 2015- Recent studies suggest the use of ROI is growing in a variety of areas. For example, in the learning and development arena, a significant area of focus for ROI Institute® in the last two decades, there are signs that ROI is becoming a dominant tool showing the value of programs and projects. A recent study conducted by CLO Magazine’s Business Intelligence Board, involving 335 Chief Learning Officers (CLOs), reveals interesting results describing the current and future use of ROI. According to their 2015 Measurement and Metrics study, 35.6 percent of the CLOs use business impact data to show the impact of the training organization on the broader enterprise; 21.6 percent of the CLOs use ROI data for the same purpose. In terms of planning, 22.6 percent plan to implement ROI in the next 12 months and 9.7 percent plan to implement it in the next 12 to 24 month time frame. Also, 17.3 percent plan to implement it with no particular time frame. This means that almost 50 percent of the CLOs plan to implement ROI in the future. When that number is added to the current use, this suggests that 71.2 percent of CLOs are either using or plan to use ROI in the future. "This is the most dramatic increase in the use and planned use of ROI since we founded ROI Institute twenty-two years ago," explains Dr. Patti Phillips, President and Chief Executive Officer of ROI Institute. "We knew that this would eventually occur, as we have seen steady growth in the last two decades. No doubt, ROI is key when it comes to showing the value of your programs." A study of the Chief Marketing Officer from IBM, shows that in 2015, the number one measure of success is ROI, followed by brand awareness and customer satisfaction. A Successful Meetings magazine study reports that the number one challenge facing meeting and event professionals is measuring the ROI of their events from the perspective of the people who attend them. A variety of publications have taken shots at the Human Resource function in recent months, including a major cover story in Harvard Business Review, "It’s Time to ‘Blow Up’ HR and Start Over." The articles in this issue, and other related articles, suggest that the number one challenge for the Human Resource function is showing the value that it delivers to executives, including the financial ROI. Since the largest investment an organization makes is the cost of employees, the HR function must provide executives with some sense of the ROI for this type of expenditure. "In all of these fields, we support, ROI is becoming the dominant measure of success, and it continues to grow," adds Dr. Jack Phillips, Chairman of ROI Institute. "When executed properly, ROI, showing the costs versus benefits of major programs or projects, is the ultimate level of accountability; a value that the executives fully understand and appreciate". The reason for this surge in ROI use is attributed to several factors: The continuing trend toward ultimate value and accountability. More functions in the organization are asked to show the business value and even the financial ROI for major projects. The competition for funds inside an organization. The function, or department, that shows how funds are best used often gets the most money. Although there are essential needs that must be met keeping the function or department moving, securing additional funds, gaining more support, or increasing commitment, requires a value stream that executives can appreciate and understand. ROI is easy for them to understand. The growing concern for measuring the value of non-capital investments. For years, we had a method of showing the value of investing in capital expenditures, such as buildings, tools, and equipment. Now, the non-capital investments such as Human Resources, Marketing, Quality, and Technology, are the dominant expenditures for organizations. For a typical organization, 80% of expenditures represent the non-capital investments. This trend has shifted from measuring the ROI for capital expenditures to measuring the ROI for non-capital expenditures using the same formula typical finance and accounting. The role of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in other functions. Some publications, such as The Economist, have labeled the CFO the most important person behind the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). CFOs have taken the role of monitoring and showing value for the different functions within the organization. The CFO’s number one tool for accountability is often ROI. The shift from faith-based investing to fact-based investing The soft functions such as a public relations project, a leadership development program, a new employee engagement program, a new branding project, a technology leadership initiative, or a business development conference is often assumed to be making a difference. This suggests that it would be difficult to measure and place a monetary value to the project, and even more difficult to connect the particular projects to a business measure. Things have changed. These roadblocks no longer exist, and it is possible to evaluate soft projects credibly with a reasonable amount of resources. Executives want fact-based investing, showing the monetary value of that investment with credible data and conservative processes. The desire to see the value of projects and programs before they are actually implemented. Before the recession, this issue was not so much of a concern. However, since the recession, this is a typical request, particularly if the investment is large. If you are building a four million dollar wellness and fitness center, you need to show the ROI in advance. If you plan to implement a ten million dollar leadership development program, you might have to show the ROI in advance. Forecasting in advance is important, allowing everyone to think about how the project works and how it can delivers results. It is a great exercise and many executives are forcing the issue with the different functions. "Collectively, these forces are driving this important trend and it is refreshing to see this level of accountability. It makes organizations more effective and more efficient improving the image of the function," adds Dr. Jack Phillips, Chairman of ROI Institute. "It is a long time coming, but we think that it’s here now." For more information on ROI and how it works, or for a free guide on how ROI can be used, please contact the ROI Institute, Inc. About the ROI Institute ROI Institute, Inc., founded in 1992 as a service-driven organization, assists professionals in improving programs and processes using the ROI Methodology™ developed by Dr. Jack J. Phillips and Dr. Patti P. Phillips. This Methodology is the global leader in measurement and evaluation including the use of return on investment (ROI) in non-traditional applications. ROI Institute regularly offers workshops, provides consulting services, publishes books and case studies, and conducts research on the use of measurement and ROI. This makes ROI Institute the leading source of content, tools, and services in measurement, evaluation, and analytics. Working with more than one hundred ROI consultants, ROI Institute applies the ROI Methodology in 20 fields in over 60 countries. ROI Institute authors have written or edited over 100 books, translated into 38 languages. Organizations build internal capability with the help of ROI Institute and its ROI Certification process.  By successfully completing this process, individuals are awarded the Certified ROI Professional (CRP) designation, which is respected by executives in organizations worldwide. For more information on ROI Institute, please contact info@roiinstitute.net or visit www.roiinstitute.net. The post ROI is the Fastest Growing Metric appeared first on ROI Institute.

The latest: Technology is changing how employment tests are administered, while online tools are providing greater reach and convenience.

Read why half of new employees are regretting their decisions to accept job offers, and how hiring managers can change this growing trend.

A new generation of cognitive testing instruments are available that remedy many of the old limitations and offer exciting advantages.

Avoid change resistance and maximize returns on your organization’s talent acquisition investments with this five-point checklist.

The presenters of DDI's webinar "Managing Talent at the Speed of Change: How You Can Win in a VUCA World" answer participant questions.

There are a number of actions organizations can take to increase career pathing clarity among leaders. Read about the 5 keys to success.

Failing to ensure the mid-level have the skills they need to succeed is like asking them to walk a tightrope without a safety net.

Sometimes connections with outside mentors are more valuable than internal coaches. Learn which situations are ideal for external mentors.

Most leaders are pro-diversity. However, when confronted by moments of difference, we react in ways that don’t always match our intent.

Four broad lessons that apply to addressing difficult employees.

We wanted to create something new with SCORM Cloud. Something that could take advantage of the changes happening in learning online. Something that could change the way we think about tapping the internet. Something that anticipated the needs of educators and trainers. And we think we did it. And we aren’t the only ones. In fact, SCORM Cloud was just short-listed for the e.learning age awards in the most innovative new product category. Sweet! SCORM Cloud is just at the beginning of its impact. It’s already making life easier for people with big open-source LMSs, anyone needing to do SCORM testing and those offering training via WordPress. And we’re looking for new ways to stretch all the time. Upcoming innovations? How about using it with Google Apps for domains? That one’s in the works to be available soon and could be a dream for small businesses. And we’re hoping to let you know soon about ways people outside of Rustici are building on top of SCORM Cloud.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said to someone on the phone, "SCORM is difficult, especially for the LMS provider." There are many moving parts, countless interpretations, and vagaries in the specification itself. For the most part, we handle these things exceptionally well. Sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can compound themselves. The Source of Today’s Problem In SCORM 1.2, mastery_score and lesson_status can interact with each other strangely. Frankly, the specification can be interpreted in two ways. From Section 3.4.4, "The SCORM Run-Time Environment Data Model", in the cmi.core.lesson_status section (henceforth called "The Narrow View"): After setting the cmi.core.lesson_status to "completed", the LMS should now check to see if a Master Score has been specified in the cmi.student_data_mastery_score, if supported, or the manifest that the SCO is a member of. If a Mastery Score is provided and the SCO did set the cmi.core.score.raw, the LMS shall compare the cmi.core.score.raw to the Mastery Score and set the cmi.core.lesson_status to either "passed" or "failed". If no Mastery Score is provided, the LMS will leave the cmi.core.lesson_status as "completed". From Section 3.4.4, "The SCORM Run-Time Environment Data Model", in the cmi.core.lesson_status section, incorporating text before and after "The Narrow View" (henceforth called "The Holistic View"): Additional Behavior Requirements: If a SCO sets the cmi.core.lesson_status then there is no problem. However, the SCORM does not force the SCO to set the cmi.core.lesson_status. There is some additional requirements that must be adhered to successfully handle these cases: Upon initial launch the LMS should set the cmi.core.lesson_status to "not attempted". Upon receiving the LMSFinish() call or the user navigates away, the LMS should set the cmi.core.lesson_status for the SCO to "completed". From above After setting the cmi.core.lesson_status to "completed", the LMS should now check to see if a Master Score has been specified in the cmi.student_data_mastery_score, if supported, or the manifest that the SCO is a member of. If a Mastery Score is provided and the SCO did set the cmi.core.score.raw, the LMS shall compare the cmi.core.score.raw to the Mastery Score and set the cmi.core.lesson_status to either "passed" or "failed". If no Mastery Score is provided, the LMS will leave the cmi.core.lesson_status as "completed". Herein lies the big difference. The bullets are intended only for the cases in which the LMS has been forced to manage the status on its own. In a piece of content that sets its status (as we’ll discuss below), we believe the LMS is not supposed to intervene with regard to the Mastery Score. What we did wrong, a while ago In SCORM Engine 2007.1, we went with this logic, which maps to the "Narrow View": If cmi.core.lesson_status has been set and cmi.core.score.raw has been set, compare the Mastery Score to the cmi.core.score.raw and set the status to "passed" or "failed". Ultimately, as this logic rolls up through the course, this tolerates content we believe is wrong and reads as "completion_status=complete and success_status=passed" or "completion_status=complete and success_status=failed" to the client LMS. Put another way, it cleans up the mistaken interpretations made by the content author. (It’s an understandable mistake.) This seems OK at first blush, but then you start running into content that expects the other behavior. If you’re a content author, one that reads the spec holistically, and you’ve intentionally set a value for lesson_status, and the LMS overrides it, that’s pretty confusing. If the spec were totally clear on the subject, we would stand behind it. Given that the spec is ambiguous here, we can appreciate the author’s point of view. So, we did what we do. We made accommodations. How we accommodate different interpretations of the specification We have long believed that the best way to have a highly compatible SCORM player is to accommodate different interpretations from content. This is a perfect example of why we do this, and it allows us to properly support content in a way that other LMSs and players just don’t. From our release notes for 2008.1: Mastery Score Overrides Lesson Status - In SCORM 1.2, there is a debate about when and if the LMS should override the lesson status reported by the SCO with a status determined by the reported score’s relation to the mastery score (i.e. if the reported score is 60 and the mastery score is 80, then should the LMS set the status to failed even though the SCO said the status should be passed?). This setting allows you to choose whether or not the LMS should override the status based on the score for this course. Alright, this is great, right? Now we can have our cake and eat it too. (The fact that cake is gross will have to be another post.) Every time we add a new package property like this one, we have to make a decision on the part of our clients. We have to decide what the default is. In some cases, this is easy stuff. When we’re tolerating departures from the standard, we simply go with the standard as the default. This is a tough one, though, because the spec is a bit ambiguous. In this situation, we go with what we believe is the correct interpretation of the standard. In this case, we decided to opt for "false", or, mastery score does not override status. We think that a content developer who’s smart enough to set his or her own status is also smart enough to retrieve the mastery score and compare against if they want to. We’re erring on the holistic side of things here, and I still feel good about this decision. I do not, however, feel good about our mistake. The Mistake We chose the default. We deployed the new version of the SCORM Engine. And we added the necessary columns as part of the upgrade script. In doing so, we used the default value. Big Mistake. Big. Huge. -Vivian, Pretty Woman (Note, this is not a wide spread problem. It’s isolated to content with an atypical interpretation, but it is very problematic for those courses. I just like to quote movies.) Some of our clients have content that expected the LMS to make the comparison against the Mastery Score even though they’d already set the status themselves. This content had functioned without issue for some time. And in upgrading to 2008.1, they introduced a problem with older content. With the new default, though, this is what happens. A course could set cmi.core.lesson_status to "completed" and then report a cmi.core.score.raw that exceeds the Mastery Score they’ve provided. The content could assume that the LMS logic defined in Section 3.4.4 (the narrow view) would then change the lesson_status to "passed". Because we’ve opted to go with the holistic approach by default, the status would in fact not be changed. This scenario, though, isn’t a big deal. The client LMS would still interpret this course as sufficiently completed and all would be well. The mistake manifests itself, though, when the cmi.core.score.raw is less than the Mastery Score. In this situation, the status values would remain "completion_status=complete and success_status=unknown". To the client LMS, this appears to be a course that is probably complete and has no testing, when in fact, it’s really a failed test. The conclusion? We have picked the right defaults for people going forward, but we probably should have set the defaults in the upgrade script to stick to the old behavior. (We have, in fact, gone back to the 2008.1 upgrade script and made this change for those of you who have yet to upgrade.) Now What? Well, we just, last night, discovered this side effect behavior, and it obviously merits immediate action for some clients. For those of you who ran against 2007.1 and have some concern that you may have courses that function like this, you can opt to revert to the old logic. If you’d like help doing just that, you can simply ask us for the queries to revert to that default. We’ll help you through that and we’ll help you examine any potential "false completions" that have happened since you deployed 2008.1. If you’re building a new SCORM Engine integration, you can opt to go with our defaults. It is our experience that more content (including some from a big authoring tool vendor) benefits from our new default behavior. But that doesn’t mean it catches every scenario. This is something that you and we will continue to be on the lookout for. In fact, we’re going to see if there’s any sort of a heuristic that we could deploy successfully to handle this ourselves. (We’re not optimistic, but we’d like to catch this one without human intervention.)

We made a small change in our reporting tool in the past month. You might not have even noticed. But it’s probably the biggest, baddest, best change we could have made. Because it fixes the source of many questions and much confusion about the tool just by changing to real-time reporting. We had originally meant for data in the reporting tool to update once a day. There’s this whole technical process where the form of the data has to convert from how it gets saved in the cloud and how it is reported in the tool. We really thought that once a day (and later, every 30 minutes) would be sufficient for admin types. Only, it wasn’t. In part because admins weren’t the only ones needing to see pieces of the data and in part because we’ve just gotten used to a world of real-time data. Our big concern - and the only reason we didn’t just jump on this one for a little while - was that the data transmogrification would throw a few kinks in the works and cause everything else to take longer. We dug a little deeper, spent a little time and realized this wasn’t going to be a problem. We’d hate to sacrifice performance in the process of adding a feature. So, enter the world of real-time reporting! Where you will actually notice this is when a learner completes a course, they can be informed of their completion status immediately. In addition, you can go straight to a launch history report and see what just occurred in a course where there was a problem. It will all be there, ready and waiting in real time.