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Have you ever walked into an office space, maybe even your own, and seen a big bold, typically framed, vision statement hanging on the wall? If you have, then it’s likely you’ve asked yourself if employees really know it, let alone use it to guide their daily work.

Vision statements are great and can be very valuable, but a question every leader must ask is, “is our organizational vision providing a compelling purpose for our employees’ daily responsibilities?” If the answer is no, you have some work to do. But don’t worry, it’s highly worthwhile. Very few people are motivated to act based on a singular task alone. In fact people want to know that their work matches up with a long-term direction. Employees want to know that their work means something and is valued.

How can you help renew the passion in your organization for its vision?

• Ask yourself: “Does our current vision help define our organization’s long-term destination?” Ensure that your vision statement isn’t just a jumping off point. The end destination must be clearly communicated and understood.
• Keep it simple. A vision by nature should be easy to understand. Still, it’s quite common to find overcomplicated, complex terms muddying the waters. Just remember: If your employees don’t understand your vision, they won’t be motivated by it.
• Get an inside opinion. Ask employees for their ideas on how they feel their work enables the vision. Don’t miss out on a perfect opportunity to involve your workforce by giving them the chance to individualize the vision.
• Get an outside opinion. Validate with customers if your organization’s vision is in alignment with their current and future needs. Ultimately, if a vision is not customer-centric, it stands the risk of becoming irrelevant and subject to frequent change.
• Revisit often! As decisions are made, goals are evaluated, changes are proposed, and new strategies are defined, be sure to revisit the vision to ensure that alignment is not lost. The vision should serve as the measuring stick and help guide day-to-day decisions.

Take time to make your organization’s vision statement more than a fancy wall flower. You’ll find that your attention to and communication of your vision statement will renew a sense of organizational purpose for yourself and your workforce.

How does your organization respond when the “way things have always been” just won’t cut it? Every organization will inevitably face a situation where its people are challenged to question long-standing assumptions governing thinking, processes, and accepted practices. In light of the current economic climate, your organization might be struggling to make uncomfortable adjustments even now.

Research shows that high-performing organizations excel during tough times. One way they do this is by not taking the easy way out, by not simply accepting dogmatic practices that are just plain out of touch. What do you think might happen if you were to challenge your organization’s current assumptions about the way of doing business? Sure, you might get some pushback and/or some uneasy stares, but what you are certain to gather are some fresh, innovative, and unique ideas.

Five Star recently conducted a companywide brainstorming exercise that you could quickly and easily implement in your organization. This activity was inspired by Michael Michalko’s book, Thinkertoys, which chronicled the creation of the Smart Shirt.

1. Put together a list of accepted, organizational assumptions.
2. Break into small groups, and assign each group an assumption.
3. Ask each group to “flip” the assigned assumption.
   Example Assumption: We work Monday through Friday.
   Reverse Assumption: We work when the customer needs us.
   Potential Idea: Allow employees to work a more flexible schedule to meet increased demands.
4. Work through ideas of how things “would be” if the reversed or flipped assumption were true.
5. Share ideas.

The goal of the activity is to gather every possible idea and then evaluate each one’s potential effectiveness. Studies show that if ideas can work for the flipped assumption, it’s likely they can also work in some form for the original assumption.

Whatever your particular situation, your organization can use this activity to brainstorm new ways to push the envelope and be successful in today’s economic climate.

While phrases like “I give you my word” may seem antiquated in a world of contracts and dotted lines, the importance of trust-based relationships has never gone out of style. Isn’t it true that we still long to interact with a boss who is not only understanding, but trustworthy and honest as well? Would you share your personal and career goals with anyone less?

A fresh way of thinking about trust in the workplace is to understand that leaders don’t carry the burden of building trust-based partnerships with members of their workforce alone. The leadership principle of trust is based on a mutual influencing relationship between leaders and individual employees, one that requires a true interdependency of values and vision-sharing.

How can your organization get there? What does it take to build trust-based partnerships between leaders and employees? Here are the primary principles for leaders to follow:

Act with Integrity:

• Model the kind of values that employees can identify with and respect.
• Honor commitments and be counted on.

Demonstrate Caring:

• Take a genuine interest in employees’ backgrounds, interests, and motivations.
• Work toward a win-win solution when problems arise.

Deliver on the Shared Vision:

• Establish shared expectations and determine what success will look like.
• Pave the way for employees by making it possible for them to deliver their very best.

The mark of an effective leader is his or her ability to garner the trust and respect of a workforce. Once trust is established, there must be a focused, continual effort made by both parties to sustain it. This is a critical component of achieving and sustaining high performance.

Learn more about trust-based partnerships and Five Star’s “Leading the High-Performance Workforce” program.

The recent economic climate has accentuated the need for finding and retaining top talent. Having a motivated workforce that is focused on executing your organization’s strategy is critical for achieving and sustaining a high-performance organization. Yet, recently we have been asked by numerous clients: “How can we keep employees motivated as our organization navigates through this turbulent economy?”

To answer this question, it is important to first point out that finding the right people is paramount to creating a motivated workforce. People who are doing work which aligns with their interests, desires, and skills provide the “fertile soil” in which strategy execution can thrive. But, what can be done to ensure that the right people are continuously motivated?

We offer four specific recommendations to organizations seeking to keep top talent motivated:

1. Get a pulse of your current organization.
   There has never been a better time to invest in resources that provide employees with the opportunity to share their perceptions of the current organizational pulse and enhancements that could be made to improve it. There are many instruments available in the marketplace; however, as you evaluate them, be sure to select an instrument that reports information in a clear and easily understood format so that immediate action can be determined. Additionally, it is critical to receive both quantitative (hard data) and qualitative (open comments) data. Oftentimes, it is the open comments area that provides the most valuable insight as to what employees would recommend to improve their organization and ultimately their level of motivation.
2. Objectively analyze the data.
   When you receive organizational data, it is important to analyze it objectively and without bias. Understand that when employees provide their input, they are anticipating direct action to be taken as a result of the time to share their feedback. Therefore, it is critical to commission a team of people to evaluate that information and seek additional clarifications as needed.
3. Take immediate action by confronting obstacles head-on.
   Once data has been analyzed, clear and measurable action plans must result. These action plans must define key responsibilities and milestones. More importantly, action plans must have executive sponsorship. Any meaningful change cannot be enacted without executive sponsorship and support. Every organization is different, and therefore, the actions which result will differ. Still, no matter what the plan is, it is important to deliver results quickly. To this end, as data is analyzed and plans are developed, it is important to tackle roadblocks that cause the greatest frustration, but it’s even more critical to determine solutions that be quickly implemented.
4. Reassess your organization frequently.
   The real value of any assessment process comes not from the initial assessment alone, but from frequent reassessments. By reassessing using the same criteria, an organization is able to monitor improvements made and identify any additional changes.

By implementing these recommendations, you will be able to get a firm understanding of employee motivation, and execute plans to remove roadblocks preventing high motivation.

Recently, a group of Five Star team members attended a discussion, titled Blended Learning: Integrating On-Demand Approaches within Development Programs, between the American Management Association and Bersin & Associates. The discussion focused on the ever-increasing need for organizations to provide solid, blended solutions to support their workforces. Several key concepts resonated from this discussion, and they are shared in this blog.

High-performance organizations understand the necessity of a skilled and motivated workforce, without which business strategies cannot be executed. But today’s workforce is overwhelmed by the volume, speed, and variety of content necessary to do the best job. What can be done to offer support? According to the speakers, organizations must develop and implement:

• An on-demand infrastructure that allows for a seamless exchange of content that is well-organized and easy to find.
• Content alliances to share not only content, but processes, standards, tools, and even staff.
• A suite of solutions that enables workforces to quickly find the right information in the best format at the point of need.
• Learning professions with expanded competencies to become content brokers, organizers, and facilitators.

It is critical for an organization to understand the needs of its workforce, but it’s even more crucial for that organization to see those needs met. A skilled and motivated workforce can only exist when it’s well-supported and continuously developed. The implementation of a blended learning strategy by focused and aligned leaders is an excellent place to start.

The highly competitive global market has placed a premium on arming sales forces with the information needed to engage clients in a dialogue about products and services as quickly as possible. Developing customized sales presentations that contain current, branded, and legally approved content can be a challenge for both large and small organizations alike. Sales teams spend valuable time and resources retrieving and verifying relevant information from a variety of different sources for their sales presentations. Time spent searching through old sales presentations and consulting product development and legal departments to validate information is time taken away from their primary role of selling.

To make the process of designing, developing, and delivering more efficient, Five Star recently partnered with one of our largest global clients to develop support tools that leverage this kind of expertise across key organizational departments, including sales, marketing, product, and legal, to deliver on-demand presentations. These “Presentation Builder Tools” allow a sales person to step through a series of questions or options to craft a presentation deck that considers product mix, sales life cycle stage, and competitive intelligence. In a few short steps the salesperson has a current, legally approved presentation to share with their clients. A process that once took several days can be completed in a matter of minutes.

The presentations developed using these tools are not only effective for use with clients, but they also serve to keep sales staff up-to-date on new product offerings and enhancements. The tools can be used to onboard new staff, showcase new product and service offerings, and highlight previous successes. In addition, they can also provide information to augment the presentation, such as audio files that provide talking points about products and lifecycle stages. These clips provide expert direction, pointing to relevant case studies and checklists to help solidify an effective sales delivery.

Solutions like Presentation Builder Tools illustrate the value of integrating the Five Key Drivers. High-performance organizations continuously improve to support their workforce by providing technology that enables the efficient delivery of services to customers. In this case, the Presentation Builder Tools helped our client maximize their sales team’s efficiency by delivering accurate, consistent, and approved offerings to their customers.

What current processes hinder your sales organization’s ability to effectively execute it’s sales strategy?