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5 Ways to Build a Brilliant Organization Part 2

November 23, 2021 by Scott Ritzheimer

Most corporate training is terrible, and one simple driver is responsible, but it's probably not what you think. In this article, you'll learn how to address this issue that is crippling your training and build a program with the power to transform your organization for years to come!

In part two of this series on using effective training to build a brilliant organization, I will show you why most training programs devolve into compliance drives and fail to increase productivity and boost the organization’s future performance. I will also show you how to turn the tide in your organization, increase the productivity baseline across the organization, and create the opportunity for your employees to challenge the status quo and boost the future productivity of your organization.

Boost the baseline

Most training programs these days talk about development; they do little to actually provide it. Instead, they effectively track compliance. This is awful, but it’s understandable. 

Development, by nature, is difficult to measure. And when training programs are competing for resources within an organization, we need some way to justify their impact on the P&L. The cost of the program is clear as day. However, the benefits can be murky. To combat this imbalance and justify the investment in training, we look for metrics. 

Unfortunately, the most measurable facets of training are the least effective. We measure attendance, or assessments, or annual feedback forms. Unfortunately, most of these measurements focus on compliance and not development. And that is a tragic mistake.

Once we use compliance to justify training, we reduce training effectiveness to be little more than a legal defense strategy.

Instead of shortcutting the process and using the easy measurements, you need to constantly refocus your decision-making processes and your training curriculum on training and developing your employees to be better at what they do. If you need to justify it, there are ways to do that, but more importantly, you need to build a culture where individual development is a given. 

When you approach training culturally instead of financially, you position your training program to move you forward. To this end, keep the following in mind when “budgeting” for your training activities.

  • Focus on engagement, not attendance: Great employees love to learn about things that make them better. When you focus on their development, you’ll see top performers engage more, produce more, and stay longer.
  • Focus on the future, not the bottom line: Of course, you have to be reasonable here, but don’t let dollars and cents dominate the conversation. Instead, open the conversation up to what the organization will need in years to come and build your training around that.
  • Focus on opportunity, not threats: Too many training programs are the over-reaction to something gone wrong (read lawsuit). Don’t put attorneys in charge of training. Dot your I’s and cross your T’s when you have to, but keep compliance on the fringes. Keep the core of your training focused on the development of future talent. Don’t use training as a disciplinary tool. Instead, treat it as a privilege and benefit for those who genuinely seek to improve.

Challenge the status quo

Once again, most training programs do not meet this test. Instead, because they were built and designed to keep us out of trouble, they usually become the bedrock foundation of the status quo. We tell our employees what to do and how to do it. It’s a one-way monologue save a few token requests for comment or forced discussions.

Because most corporate training programs were built to keep us out of trouble, they usually become the bedrock foundation of the status quo. Click To Tweet

Don’t ever let the phrase, “This is how we’ve always done it.” anywhere near your training program. 

Training by its very nature should cause us to do things differently. Think about how crazy it would be for a team to go to spring training, then come back, toss out what they’ve learned, and start the season doing exactly what they did beforehand. Yet, that’s precisely what we expect of our training programs.

Training should provide your employees with room to fail, try new things, challenge each other, and challenge the very way we do business today.

I cannot overemphasize how important this point is. Virtually every single great organization that lost its way did so by institutionalizing the status quo. And most of them had a training program that did little but speed up their inevitable decline by demanding compliance and smothering creativity.

Up next

By resisting the urge to prove your program’s effectiveness through readily available but ultimately wrong metrics, you will create the opportunity to spark the growth and improvement your employees need for your entire organization to succeed.

You’ll also set the stage for two more powerful transformations that will not only revolutionize your approach to training but create an exceptional capacity for future growth in your organization. We’ll explore both in the next article.

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  • 5 Ways to Build a Brilliant Organization

    5 Ways to Build a Brilliant Organization

    How quickly can you get your new employee from hired to absolutely crushing it?
    How many of your long-time employees are still highly engaged and performing at their peak?
    How long do your top performers stay with your company? How many are about to leave?
    If you have a problem in one or more of these areas (most of us do) or if you don’t know if you have a problem or not, then there is one tool you can use to transform the performance of your current employees (and your future employees too)
    Corporate training.
    Now that is a topic that is sure to create hours of white-knuckled page-turning excitement, right?
    Before you and I both fall asleep, you are welcome to pause this video and watch the promo video I linked in the description below from our good friends at Veridian Dynamics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pe1HFh12as. I promise it’s worth 34 seconds of your life. SMILE
    That said, corporate training, at least as we know it today, is no laughing matter. Most of it is just plain terrible. You stick the word corporate on the front of anything, and most people would rather stick the sharp end of a paper clip into their eye than hear whatever you have to say next. And corporate training is the epitome.
    I’m sure at the mere mention of the phrase, your mind is filled with mindless PowerPoints and compliance training, but let me relieve the tension and say that’s not corporate training.
    Corporate training, when done right, can do wonders for the vitalization or re-vitalization. Training (let’s drop the word corporate from now on and lower all our stress levels). It is actually one of the essential imperatives for scaling an organization and sustaining a high degree of success.
    In this article, we are going to look at what training should be as I show you the five hallmarks of an effective training program.
    There is no tool as effective as training for boosting long-term performance across an organization. An effective training program will onboard new employees faster, increase the productivity baseline across the organization, encourage new, and veteran employees to challenge the status quo, embed visionary creativity deep in the organization’s ethos, and foster rapid information sharing up and down and left and right throughout the org chart.
    In this video series, I’m going to give you five different ways that you can build a brilliant organization by building a brilliant training program, one that everyone loves, even you!

    Ready to Scale Your Organization? https://predictablesuccess.com/2021-livestream-series/

    #business #entrepreneur #focus #people #businessowner #businesstips #businessquotes #businessgrowth #businessgoals #coach

    Like what you see? You can find more great content from Scale Architects here!

    Website: https://www.scalearchitects.com
    Blog: https://www.scalearchitects.com/blog
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/achitectscale
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scalearchitects
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLj9yjac5P7UMFxoWuG8Zw/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architect_scale
    Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/scale_architect
  • How to Onboard New Employees Faster and Better than Ever

    How to Onboard New Employees Faster and Better than Ever

    The impact of a strong employee training program can be seen even before an employee is hired. Job seekers are looking for organizations that will make them better. New skill development and challenging work are highly sought-after traits. For this reason, a hiring brand that boasts a strong training program will have a significant competitive edge even before the employee is hired. If you want to attract up-and-coming talent, training is the way to do it!
    The benefits of a great training program only increase as new employees are hired. By taking the time to develop quality training around the core curriculum and the culture, values, and expected behaviors within the organization, you will not only increase the rate at which new employees get up to speed but also ensure a better team fit, higher engagement, and greater alignment with the organization's goals. This is true both in companies and cause-based organizations.
    As you are developing your core curriculum, here are two things you want to keep in mind.
    First, Be the university.
    The gap between the output of the educational system and the needs of organizations across industries is growing. You can't sit back and wait for schools to get their act together.
    Instead, step back and look at the skills you need in new employees versus those you can teach. You can likely teach far more than you do already. And by increasing the number of skills you teach, you will:
    create more room to hire for cultural fit and contribution
    make yourself available to newer, more affordable talent
    make a compelling offer to give more value to potential job candidates
    lower the threshold for a capable employee without lowering quality or productivity expectations
    increase the size of the pool of prospective job seekers
    The second thing you want in your core curriculum is culture.
    You cannot put culture in someone. They either share your values, or they don't. By being the university, you can focus your effort on finding great cultural fits. We must, however, be careful not to confuse cultural fit with "being like us." By focusing on those few values and behaviors that are truly core, you can open your organization up to the new ideas and influences that will help shape a more competitive, creative, and effective organization in the future.
    But hiring right is only half the equation, especially if you do it right. If you attract and recruit the "movers and shakers" that you need to ensure greater success in the future, you will have to invest in aligning them around your shared culture.
    While you can put values into someone, you can most certainly call them out and hold people accountable for those values.
    And once you've hired and onboarded your new employee, you want them to perform. And in the next video, I'll show you how to boost the performance baseline across your entire organization.

    Ready to Scale Your Organization? https://predictablesuccess.com/2021-livestream-series/

    #business #entrepreneur #focus #people #businessowner #businesstips #businessquotes #businessgrowth #businessgoals #coach

    Like what you see? You can find more great content from Scale Architects here!

    Website: https://www.scalearchitects.com
    Blog: https://www.scalearchitects.com/blog
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/achitectscale
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scalearchitects
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLj9yjac5P7UMFxoWuG8Zw/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architect_scale
    Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/scale_architect
  • Boost the performance baseline across your organization

    Boost the performance baseline across your organization

    Most training programs these days talk about development; they do little to actually provide it. Instead, they effectively track compliance. This is awful, but it's understandable.
    Development, by nature, is difficult to measure. And when training programs are competing for resources within an organization, we need some way to justify their impact on the P&L. The cost of the program is clear as day. However, the benefits can be murky. In an effort to combat this imbalance and justify the investment in training, we look for metrics.
    Unfortunately, the most measurable facets of training are the least effective. We measure attendance, or assessments, or annual feedback forms. Most of these measurements focus on compliance and not development. And that is a tragic mistake.
    Once we use compliance to justify training, we reduce the effectiveness of training to be little more than than a legal defense strategy.
    Instead of trying to shortcut the process and use the easy measurements, you need to constantly refocus your decision-making processes and your training curriculum on training, on developing your employees to be better at what they do. If you need to justify it, there are ways to do that, but more importantly, you need to build a culture where individual development is a given.
    When you approach training culturally instead of financially, you actually position your training program to move you forward. To this end, keep the following in mind when "budgeting" for your training activities.
    First, Focus on engagement, not attendance: Great employees love to learn about things that make them better. When you focus training on their development, you'll see top performers engage more, produce more, and stay longer.
    Next, Focus on the future, not the bottom line: Of course, you have to be reasonable here, but don't let dollars and cents dominate the conversation. Instead, open the conversation up to what the organization will need in years to come and build your training around that.
    Finally, Focus on opportunity, not threats: Too many training programs are the over-reaction to something gone wrong (like the threat of a lawsuit). Don't put attorneys in charge of training. Dot your I's and cross your T's when you have to, but keep compliance on the fringes. Keep the core of your training focused on the development of future talent. Don't use training as a disciplinary tool. Instead, treat it as a privilege and benefit for those who truly seek to improve.
    With your focus on developing your employees to achieve higher performance, you open the door to one of my favorite facets of an effective training program. Challenging the status quo.

    Ready to Scale Your Organization? https://predictablesuccess.com/2021-livestream-series/

    #business #entrepreneur #focus #people #businessowner #businesstips #businessquotes #businessgrowth #businessgoals #coach

    Like what you see? You can find more great content from Scale Architects here!

    Website: https://www.scalearchitects.com
    Blog: https://www.scalearchitects.com/blog
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/achitectscale
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scalearchitects
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLj9yjac5P7UMFxoWuG8Zw/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architect_scale
    Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/scale_architect
  • Challenge the status quo

    Challenge the status quo

    This is the principal challenge facing every single great organization today. Can you continuously challenge the status quo and embed, enfranchise, and institutionalize visionary creativity throughout the entire organization. This is the essence of building a visionary organization, and it is the only way for a successful organization to stand the test of time and resist the long, slow slide into irrelevancy.
    Unfortunately, it is very, very hard to do for several reasons.
    Visionary creativity is risky.
    The game changes when you achieve greatness. The road TO greatness is relatively simple. Before achieving greatness, you have relatively little to lose. But once you've achieved greatness, there is an immense pull to protect what you have. You've worked so hard to get there, and you don't want to lose it by taking unnecessary risks. The problem is, greatness is only achieved through risk. The key is to build systems to manage risk and know when to break them.
    Visionary creativity is unruly.
    Visionary creativity doesn't play nice. It doesn't obey the rules. It hates the status quo. It is always changing things, breaking things, and sometimes building something better. It is a messy process that is hard to control. This lack of control makes it hard to scale. It is far easier to build, implement, and measure a training program that teaches employees what to do and how to do it. But the real benefit comes from teaching employees why you do what you do. Then give them the room to find a better way.
    Visionary creativity is inefficient.
    Visionary creativity doesn't lend itself to a predictable process from start to finish. It is seldom linear. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but visionary creativity never works that way. If you were to draw the process, it is more like a Picasso than an architectural schematic. Even a cursory look at our revered inventors and visionary organizations will clearly indicate failure is essential to the creative process. However, when you're developing a training program and submitting it for budgeting, that's a rather poor proposition. "We're going to get less efficient as we teach our employees to fail more often." Yet, that is exactly what must be done.
    In the final video in this series, I'll show you a simple way to create an incredibly nimble, flexible, and responsive organization through rapid information sharing.

    Ready to Scale Your Organization? https://predictablesuccess.com/2021-livestream-series/

    #business #entrepreneur #focus #people #businessowner #businesstips #businessquotes #businessgrowth #businessgoals #coach

    Like what you see? You can find more great content from Scale Architects here!

    Website: https://www.scalearchitects.com
    Blog: https://www.scalearchitects.com/blog
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/achitectscale
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scalearchitects
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLj9yjac5P7UMFxoWuG8Zw/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architect_scale
    Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/scale_architect
  • How do you embed visionary creativity throughout an entire organization

    How do you embed visionary creativity throughout an entire organization

    This is the principal challenge facing every single great organization today. Can you continuously challenge the status quo and embed, enfranchise, and institutionalize visionary creativity throughout the entire organization. This is the essence of building a visionary organization, and it is the only way for a successful organization to stand the test of time and resist the long, slow slide into irrelevancy.
    Unfortunately, it is very, very hard to do for several reasons.
    Visionary creativity is risky.
    The game changes when you achieve greatness. The road TO greatness is relatively simple. Before achieving greatness, you have relatively little to lose. But once you've achieved greatness, there is an immense pull to protect what you have. You've worked so hard to get there, and you don't want to lose it by taking unnecessary risks. The problem is, greatness is only achieved through risk. The key is to build systems to manage risk and know when to break them.
    Visionary creativity is unruly.
    Visionary creativity doesn't play nice. It doesn't obey the rules. It hates the status quo. It is always changing things, breaking things, and sometimes building something better. It is a messy process that is hard to control. This lack of control makes it hard to scale. It is far easier to build, implement, and measure a training program that teaches employees what to do and how to do it. But the real benefit comes from teaching employees why you do what you do. Then give them the room to find a better way.
    Visionary creativity is inefficient.
    Visionary creativity doesn't lend itself to a predictable process from start to finish. It is seldom linear. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but visionary creativity never works that way. If you were to draw the process, it is more like a Picasso than an architectural schematic. Even a cursory look at our revered inventors and visionary organizations will clearly indicate failure is essential to the creative process. However, when you're developing a training program and submitting it for budgeting, that's a rather poor proposition. "We're going to get less efficient as we teach our employees to fail more often." Yet, that is exactly what must be done.
    In the final video in this series, I'll show you a simple way to create an incredibly nimble, flexible, and responsive organization through rapid information sharing.

    Ready to Scale Your Organization? https://predictablesuccess.com/2021-livestream-series/

    #business #entrepreneur #focus #people #businessowner #businesstips #businessquotes #businessgrowth #businessgoals #coach

    Like what you see? You can find more great content from Scale Architects here!

    Website: https://www.scalearchitects.com
    Blog: https://www.scalearchitects.com/blog
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/achitectscale
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scalearchitects
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLj9yjac5P7UMFxoWuG8Zw/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architect_scale
    Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/scale_architect
  • The Best Way to Foster rapid information sharing

    The Best Way to Foster rapid information sharing

    Great training programs do wonders to tear down walls within an organization. Whether it be the divide between senior management and everyone else, sales and fulfillment, long-standing employees, and new recruits, it is organizational nature for walls and silos to form, especially as an organization increases in both size and age.
    Bad training programs make the problem worse, institutionalizing the siloes while pretending to tear down organizational divides.
    While there is any number of reasons this happens, there are two you can change immediately and see a dramatic improvement.
    Democratize training
    Many of the best training programs in practice today (like Pixar University) leverage the existing talent within their organization to build up the potential talent within their organization. This benefits everyone involved.
    Attendees: Anyone can attend anything. There’s great freedom and empowerment in being allowed to choose your own path. You are far more likely to retain and enjoy what you choose to learn than you are what someone else has forced you to endure. Some of the most enthusiastic learners I know were terrible students. Yet, now that they can direct their own learning, their thirst for more is insatiable.
    Trainers: I believe the best way to learn something is to teach it. Being taught is a largely passive activity. We have to work to engage in learning while being taught. Teaching, on the other hand, demands learning. You cannot teach something well if you don’t understand it very well. It’s also a confidence booster. It is a great feeling to know that the organization you work for values what you know enough to let you teach it to others.
    Leaders: Democratizing training moves leadership from a heavy push mode to a much more effective pull mode. You are able to focus on the context for the training while allowing others to provide the content, and it’s the best of both worlds. All the while, everyone is benefitting. Your trainers and attendees are deepening their knowledge, and you’re making it possible.
    Involve senior leadership
    At a glance, this may appear to be the opposite of the previous point. It isn’t; it’s simply another facet of an effective training program. If senior leadership steps out of the program or never steps in in the first place) any progress made in all of the other areas mentioned in this series will be short-lived.
    You simply cannot shape a culture of development without senior leadership modeling that culture.
    You simply cannot drive productivity from an ivory tower without looking like a heartless taskmaster.
    You simply cannot create room for the status quo to be challenged if senior management isn’t in the mix, lending their authority, power, and influence to make it stick.
    You simply cannot build a visionary organization if all the "visionary-ness" is reserved for the leaders at the top of the org chart.
    You simply cannot democratize training if all the power is held by an authoritarian elite.
    By bringing your leaders into the mix, allowing them to not only teach but also learn, and letting them model the culture you want to create, you will move your organization toward a more successful future faster than ever.
    In closing
    While corporate training is all too often dreary, disheartening, and even dire, your training doesn’t have to be any of those things. You can build a vibrant, visionary organization that will develop and grow long after you’re gone by building a brilliant training program for your employees.

    Ready to Scale Your Organization? https://predictablesuccess.com/2021-livestream-series/

    #business #entrepreneur #focus #people #businessowner #businesstips #businessquotes #businessgrowth #businessgoals #coach

    Like what you see? You can find more great content from Scale Architects here!

    Website: https://www.scalearchitects.com
    Blog: https://www.scalearchitects.com/blog
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/achitectscale
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/scalearchitects
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChLj9yjac5P7UMFxoWuG8Zw/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architect_scale
    Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/scale_architect
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Category: Focused StructureTag: scalability-index

About Scott Ritzheimer

Scott is passionate about helping businesses scale and achieve Predictable Success. Having helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and with his business partner started and led their multimillion-dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase (over 10 years of double-digit growth) all before he turned 35.

Today, he’s on a mission to help train and equip coaches, consultants, and internal advisors so they can help architect incredible organizations and personally enjoy immensely rewarding careers!

Previous Post: « 5 Ways to Build a Brilliant Organization Part 1
Next Post: 5 Ways to Build a Brilliant Organization Part 3 »

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