Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is essential to successfully establish future talent needs aligned with organizational strategy! 

I recommend your workforce plan extend out six (6) quarters, with a rolling quarter. The focus of your workforce plan is on your future talent needs and also your succession of leadership.  You can extract from your workforce plan to create your staffing plan; which focuses on the current quarter (90 days), with a rolling month. You can complete a replacement chart for your immediate operational concerns within your staffing plan.

Organizational Development

According to Google, "Organizational Development (OD) is a field of research, theory, and practice dedicated to expanding the knowledge and effectiveness of people to accomplish more successful organizational change and performance." (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia expands this information, "Organization development (OD) is a field of research, theory and practice dedicated to expanding the knowledge and effectiveness of people to accomplish more successful organizational change and performance. OD emerged out of human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation. More recently, work on OD has expanded to focus on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management and transformation of organizational norms and values. Key concepts of OD theory include: organizational climate (the mood or unique “personality” of an organization, which includes attitudes and beliefs that influence members’ collective behavior), organizational culture (the deeply-seated norms, values and behaviors that members share) and organizational strategies (how an organization identifies problems, plans action, negotiates change and evaluates progress." (Wikipedia)

"Simply put, an Organization Development practitioner is to an organization as a physician is to a human body. The practitioner "diagnoses" (or discovers) the most important priorities to address in the organization, suggests a change-management plan, and then guides the organization through the necessary change. There are different definitions and views on how the change should occur." (Free Management Library)

For JD Sanders Consulting Organizational Development is the engine that allows us to assist organizations to grow and achieve outstanding results!

Strategic Thinking

Leaders, managers, staff members, employees and others often struggle to understand if they are strategic.  You may be in that group of individuals who often question yourself, "Am I able to think strategically on a regular basis?"  Some of you are well aware of your strategic thinking skills and exercise them very effectively. However, most of you are unsure about these skills.  You are more capable of strategic thinking than you realize!

If you have graduated from college in five years, planned a wedding or enjoyed a planned vacation you have used strategic thinking skills. To help you recognize when you are being strategic or using strategic thinking skills please use the following strategic thinking process.

• Open Minded Thinking
• Narrow Minded Thinking
• Evidence Based Thinking
• Whole Minded Thinking
• Value Proposition Thinking
• Shared Thinking
• Organize and Finalize Thoughts for Planning

Following this process will improve your discipline in strategic thinking and build your confidence to know that you are strategic!

*If you would like more information about this process please contact JD Sanders

Vulnerability Analysis

A vulnerability analysis is a process to help prioritize the potential risk to your organization. The analysis has two basic things to determine.

1. The likelihood that the identified risk will occur.

-and-

2. The significance of the impact if the risk should occur.

Vulnerability Analysis

Risk Management

When was the last time you completed a risk assessment and developed a plan to deal with the risk identified? To serve your business well, you have a responsibility to correctly anticipate and manage risk that your organization might face as it conducts ongoing operations. One possible process to use for managing risk is as follows:

1. Complete an organizational assessment of possible risk including a list of likely risk your company must manage, mitigate or eliminate.

2. Prioritize the list of potential risk and understand the implications of these risk to your company vision, mission, values and strategy.

3. Create a specific action plan/initiative for each of the risk identified beginning with the most critical first, based on your prioritization.

4. Implement the action plans/initiatives and monitor to ensure that each prioritized action is appropriately managed, mitigated or eliminated.

5. Evaluate the success of your implementation based on predetermined metrics, accomplishment/completion of actions plans and risk management results that successfully move your business forward.

Whether you use this process or another, it is critical that you take steps to deal with the risks that your organization has to manage, mitigate or eliminate for your future success!

JD Sanders Consulting can help your through this critically important process!

Business Research

Making a successful business case or comprehensive strategic planning requires thorough business research. Business research involves gathering relevant information from both "Primary" research sources and "secondary" research sources. Primary research is from firsthand sources within your organization like direct observation, surveys, interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, discussions, and analytics. Secondary research is from other sources gathered by another organization or institution such as, benchmarking, best-practice reports, professional journals, books, media, professional organizations, consultants, industry reports/information and government records/reports. Many leaders and organizations place a higher value on secondary research and often ignore primary research opportunities.  This is a significant error that could result in missing very critical and relevant information that should be considered in your analysis! Both primary and secondary research must be considered to ensure you have a complete and thorough investigation that will lead to successful business results!

JD

Leadership

My father used to tell me, "If you think you are leading, look behind you to see if anyone is following!" This is true and to this day, every time I think I am leading, I look to see if I have followers.  This advice is both literally and metaphorically helpful for leaders. All leaders should examine each opportunity they are call to lead to ensure their followers are present, aligned,  inspired and have the correct image of success in their minds!

"Look behind to lead up front," as you inspire your team toward that future vision of success!

JD

Use Personality Inventories Correctly!

I do not recommend using personality inventories for performance management or hiring or employment decisions.

You can use these tools for successful improvement of communication and interaction between and among team members and improve trust.  You can use these tools for self discovery and to learn about others on the team. Your team can learn and improve how to interact and communicate with each other during conflict situations or difficult projects.

Most of these tools do not have the reliability and validity to support the decision and do not comply with the Uniform Guidelines of Employee Selection Procedures.* This will create legal issues that develop into unnecessary liability.  There are other valid ways to make these employment decisions.

JD

*There are “some” new inventories available that have acceptable validity.

Selection Reliability & Validity

Selection Reliability and Validity

  All selection procedures and employment decisions must be made in a reliable and valid manner.

-Reliability: means consistency or repeat-ability of the process, procedure or decision.

-Validity: means the process, procedure or decision actually measures what it is intended to measure.

*Failing to have reliable and valid procedures and processes for selection will significantly increase the potential liability of your employment decisions. Your organization will reduce this potential liability by following the Uniform Guidelines of Employee Selection Procedures (UGESPs). The UGESPs recommend Content Validity, Construct Validity or Criterion-Related Validity.

You should not accept “Hobbies” at work!

If you are assigned an initiative that should be a project, you need to ensure that it is in fact a project.  Do not accept project assignments that are incomplete, because they are really “Hobbies.” Hobbies are great for non-working situations and can be a lot of fun and enjoyment. However, hobbies usually result in failure and a waste of effort in work related situations. 

Do not accept them!  Insist on having a true project plan that includes the “Triple Constraint’ or Project Management Triangle.”

This means that the project shall be “on time”, “within budget” and “according to specifications.” Make sure that before you accept the assignment that you have all these aspects to your assignment identified.

If your boss does not give this information to you, then you should determine your best guess at what these should be and share them with your boss.  If your boss does not accept your proposal do not do the assignment. (Be tactful and remember you are dealing with your boss!) You will most likely fail, if you accept the assignment with the vague information! Anything that is aligned to the strategic direction of the company will justify resources, timelines and specific purpose.  If it is not aligned with the organizational strategy, why bother to do it anyway?! Work on things that matter and add value!

If you are the leader or supervisor, assign projects not hobbies!

From Wikipedia:

The Project Management Triangle (called also Triple Constraint or the Iron Triangle) is a model of the constraints of project management. It is a graphic aid where the three attributes show on the corners of the triangle to show opposition. It is useful to help with intentionally choosing project biases, or analyzing the goals of a project.[1] It is used to illustrate that project management success is measured by the project team's ability to manage the project, so that the expected results are produced while managing time and cost.[2][3][4]

The project-management trilemma

The project management triangle as a "pick any two" Euler diagram.

Arthur C. Clarke cited a management trilemma encountered when trying to achieve production quickly and cheaply while maintaining high quality.[16] In the software industry, this means that one can pick any two of: fastest time to market, highest software quality (fewest defects), and lowest cost (headcount). This is the basis of the popular project management aphorism "Quick, Cheap, Good: Pick two," conceptualized as the project management triangle.