Creating a Collaborative Workplace

From the BusinessWeek Small Business Blog...

November 19, 2006
Creating a Collaborative Workplace

Creating a productive and collaborative workplace is not easy, but as a small-business owner, building such an environment starts with you. Here are some tips:

1. Make sure everyone on the team knows exactly what the mission and goals are.
2. Clearly articulate everyone's roles and responsibilities.
3. Cultivate a variety of work styles, talents, and skills to ensure a creative mix of perspective, experience, and thought.
4. Create a relaxed work climate with an emphasis on collaboration.
5. Take advantage of lessons learned to leverage what has worked in the past and what missteps to avoid.
6. Confront problems as soon as they arise to clear the air and allow the work and relationships to move forward.
7. Empower the team to carry out its work.

Mallary Tytel
President and Founder
Healthy WorkplacesSioux Falls, S.D.

Comments:

Mallary Tytel raises some excellent points with respect to creating a collaborative workplace. I would like to add, however, that it is nearly impossible to establish a collaborative workplace without establishing trust in the workplace. When trust is absent, relationships are characterized by an adversarial attitude: me vs. you; us vs. them. Rather than goodwill, there may be deep, often hidden animosities and resentments. We struggle against one another for what we want. The more you win, the more I lose and vice versa. Respect is lost and our performance is compromised as our energies go into manipulation, coercion, and protection rather than working towards our shared vision.

Organizations that create a collaborative workplace are those that know how to create a climate of trust among all of their employees. Doing so is not easy and requires the alignment of philosophy and organizational design. However, even more important than these elements is the quality of person-to-person interactions. Trust is a highly subjective experience that is strengthened or weakened each day through our interactions, the respect we demonstrate, the way we talk to people, and the way we go about working out our differences of opinion and competing needs.

Randy Bancino
Managing Partner
Profitable Growth Partners, LLC.

Posted by: Randy Bancino at November 22, 2006 03:55 PM

What if we don't train them and they stay?

At Profitable Growth Partners, we work with organizations to develop their strategy and develop their people. On occasion we have heard clients wonder “What if we train our employees and they leave?” We often respond “What if you don’t train them and they stay?” We believe that the real question is not “if” we should invest in our people, but “how” do we do it to insure increased productivity and profitability.

Many organizations have tried sending people out for “training.” Often they go to half day, one-off seminars designed to teach a new idea or skill. Unfortunately most people report little behavior change as a result. We have all experienced coming back from such a session “fired up and raring to go.” Unfortunately the day-to-day responsibilities of our jobs soon dominate our thoughts, and within a short period of time we have lost the passion to change the way we do things.

At Profitable Growth Partners, we believe that “spaced repetition” is one of the keys to developing new skills and new behaviors. For example, our Boot Camp for Managers program is a series of 12 half-day workshops that are designed not only to teach new skills, but to build in accountability, coaching, and practical application between sessions.

Spaced Repetition is just one of the ways people development at Profitable Growth Partners is different that traditional training classes.

RANDY BANCINO COMPLETES CERTIFICATION IN HIGH PERFORMANCE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Grand Rapids, MI, (PRWeb) NOVEMBER 20, 2006: Profitable Growth Partners, LLC., a Grand Rapids-based high performance business and people development firm, announced that Managing Partner, Randy Bancino, completed High Performance Business Development certification training provided by the Center for Organizational Design, Inc. of Littleton, Colorado.

Mr. Bancino’s background includes many leadership and executive positions in large, global companies, as well as people development at the corporate and University level. He has various degrees, including an M.B.A from Western Michigan University and extensive executive training from the University of Michigan. This latest training and certification continues to add breadth to his world-class business development expertise.

“The program was rigorous, but continuing to grow and add skills in the areas of high performance development was truly exciting,” said Randy Bancino, Managing Partner with Profitable Growth Partners. “Our clients continue to demand world class expertise, backed up by real world experience. This additional certification helps us continue to offer the best to our clients.”

The week-long certification training, lead by Dr. Roger Allen of the Center for Organization Design, focused on organizational assessment, strategic business design, and executive business coaching. Participants gained greater knowledge of the principles of high performance and their real-world application through a series of lectures, exercises, and case studies.

About Profitable Growth Partners, LLC.
Profitable Growth Partners, LLC. works directly with the leadership of small and medium sized companies to help them harness their potential to accelerate growth and enhance profitability. Through their exclusive Business Acceleration Process and their Top Gun for Business People TM series, the experienced business growth experts with Profitable Growth Partners deliver improvements to a business’s strategy, processes, structure, systems, and culture, resulting in measurable improvements in both the top line and bottom line.

Contact Information
Claire Zevalkink, Managing Partner
Profitable Growth Partners, LLC.
info@profitablegrowthpartners.com
616.942.4769

The Momentum of the Flywheel

At Profitable Growth Partners, we work with a lot of businesses in different stages of their life cycles. Often we talk with our clients about the current momentum of their organization; positive, negative, or non-existent. In his best selling book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins talks about “the flywheel effect.” The illustration is that of an enormous flywheel mounted horizontally on an axle. Initially it takes great and sustained effort to just get the flywheel moving. However, over time it becomes easier and easier to keep the flywheel spinning as it is carried mostly by its own momentum. A company’s real breakthroughs come when the heavy weight of the flywheel does most of the work for them, with what the author calls an “unstoppable force.”

Building “unstoppable” momentum takes not only effort, but sustained, consistent effort. Strategy plays a key role in keeping your efforts sustained and consistent over time. Rather than push the flywheel clockwise this quarter, and then attempt to move it counter-clockwise next quarter, a company needs to stick to a well thought out strategy over the long haul. After all, a strategy is as much about what an organization is NOT going to do, as about what it WILL do.

Executing a well designed strategy builds momentum over time, infusing the organization with purpose and power.