Issues Celemi Solves
Celemi designs business learning solutions that rapidly improve business performance through developing peoples' business skills, knowledge and motivation! We help companies address many challenges including:...and every challenge requires its own solution. Leading companies have successfully addressed these and other business issues using Celemi Learning Solutions.
Implementing Change
When an organization is planning to make a major transformation, the stakes are always high. You need to pull people toward the vision - without pushing them out of their comfort zones!
Whether it is new structures, strategies or systems - the most important inhibiting factor to change is the inertia that comes from the old, existing thinking. This is sometimes referred to as "resistance to change", as if this is a flaw in human nature. On the contrary! Companies are learning that this so-called resistance is actually energy that only needs to be funneled in the desired direction.
Learning requirements:
- People need to fully understand the need for change - as opposed to just being told the reasons.
- The way forward must feel credible and feasible - to avoid people feeling intimidated or cynical by a wide range of seemingly disconnected initiatives.
- Perhaps most important, individuals must be able to picture what their daily work will look like in the desired future.
If these requirements are met, people focus their 'resistance' on those behaviors, decisions and actions that are not in line with the future vision.
Creating Alignment
In an organization, the different parts are separate in function but mutually dependent. Every unit - and person - is an integral part of the whole. In an operational sense, the challenge is to make sometimes-conflicting interests more productive! "Much of the recent management literature has been devoted to how corporations are organic entities, as if the mere word 'organization' hasn't implied that from the very beginning."
Issues to be addressed:
- Units are working in relative isolation when defining their roles, goals and criteria for success.
- There is insufficient feedback from related units, or unit's performance measures are defined too narrowly.
- Reward systems or organizational structures promote the unit rather than the whole.
It all boils down to one thing: perception. If people cannot see themselves as an integral part of the bigger whole, we cannot expect them to act accordingly. When they get this big-picture perception ("...and are measured on it!" notes another client) it is hard for people to avoid taking the necessary responsibility.
Boosting Performance
Habits are easy. Good habits take some work!
Control costs... Raise service levels... Close more sales... Increase utilization rates... Improve quality... Reduce environmental footprint... Forecast accurately... Capture more market share...
There are many different situations where companies have a focused need for boosting performance. They want to get results faster and foster continuous improvements.
These mandates are often broadcasted - but the fact that people know what they should improve does not mean they know what they need to be doing differently.
"We didn't want to improve one thing one thousand percent - but to improve one thousand things one percent," observed one Celemi client. "But if people don't know how things work, they cannot be expected to fix them."
People need to develop an intuitive understanding of the mechanics and inter-relations of the business - and get feedback on how their actions affect the bottom line. They must be allowed to explore key behaviors behind a certain achievement, determine their relative importance, and find ways of changing their working habits accordingly.
"People naturally work by habit or routine," states one manager. "it's our job to make sure those habits are good ones."
Reinforcing Values
Values play an integral part of the organizational fabric - whether it is corporate culture, brand identity, service standards, codes of conduct, or individual core ethics. If the desired 'personality' is seen by all customers and employees - then there is no problem.
However, many organizations experience the following:
- "We tend to lose contact with our founding principles."
- "The structure and processes are in place, but we are losing energy and drive."
- "We need a sharper profile to stand out from the competition."
- "We are a concept-driven business, which employees need to understand and internalize."
"We used to deploy values by issuing slogans presented in colorful booklets," says an HR manager. "But obviously we never got the desired effect."
Words and statements are never sufficient. When people are engaged through conversation, images and comparison - they discover what it means to "live" the values. You need to develop people's behavioral instincts, so they can act without needing to think.
Enhancing Capabilities
Competence development is a strategic issue in most companies - and covers a range of topics, from hard to soft skills. It's simply a matter of empowering people to apply their certain knowledge to a task.
In the attempt to manage the business literacy and competence development of thousands of people simultaneously, there has been an over-reliance on delivering information - through books, training, courses and such.
Typical pitfalls experienced by many organizations:
- "Our ambition was to make better financial decisions - but our goal became to send everybody on a business finance seminar."
- "We chose a standard e-learning course package to save money on training costs - but the lower quality of content was ultimately an expensive trade-off."
There is a growing sophistication in companies today about the need for providing opportunities to build knowledge. This is why we now hear so much about concepts like participative learning, action learning, learning by doing, experiential learning - even expressions like "learning-oriented teaching".