Learning at Work with BI Worldwide

We've just spent the day with managers at BI Worldwide, sharing the Genius at Work methodology with them.

HR Director Karen Minto says, "It was very  thought-provoking, and yet was also run to demonstrate and prove how extremely simple it is to apply and achieve results !

The interaction and participative examples you gave us were great for bringing home the message/s. Without exception, we have come away with techniques and ideas of what and how we can apply our learning to make improvements in our various areas of the business.

Thank you once again for a very useful day’s activities that we can all utilise in our different roles."

Our next stop is with Canon on Thursday...

Get The Unsticker from the Google Play Store Now!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jsdev.unstick

The Unsticker is Back!

My unique and, frankly, amazing problem solver, The Unsticker is coming back!

An Android and possibly iPhone app is being developed as I write this, and it will be available very very soon through the Google Play Store (and obviously iTunes if you are an Apple fan and if we decide it's worth the extra trouble).

The Unsticker is a problem solving tool. Not only that, users regularly report that after only 4 or 5 questions, they can't even remember what their problem had been, and they certainly feel very differently about it.

You'll be able to use The Unsticker with yourself to solve everyday problems and dilemmas, you'll be able to use it with your team for creative problem solving sessions, and if you're a coach, you'll be able to use it with your clients to literally unstick them.

We'll also be sending the app to some carefully selected reviewers so if you have an Android phone and you would like to be considered, get in touch.

Revelation joins BI Worldwide for Learning at Work Day

This year's Learning at Work Day is on May 23rd and Revelation Consulting Ltd will be supporting the Campaign for Learning's annual celebration of workplace learning by spending the day with BI Worldwide, helping a number of their managers to understand how to use the modelling toolkit from Peter Freeth's book Genius at Work.

Karen Minto, BI Worlwide's Head of HR & Development, said, "I felt the offer was very topical for us as we are in the midst of some real growth in the business and are on course for a stretching set of targets and goals in 2017. Going hand in hand with this, the managers have been so busy managing the work and operational perspectives, the people side may have been overlooked, or not running as efficiently as could be. This is confirmed in some of our Best Companies results we are just starting to review."

Peter Freeth of Revelation says, "All too often, companies look externally for knowledge and skills, bringing in consultants and trainers to provide easy answers. However, the most valuable knowledge of all is already within your business, and it's evolving every day as staff interact with customers, solve problems and make business processes more efficient. Getting access to this tacit knowledge means that the whole business can benefit from this ongoing process of learning that always takes place within any organisation, and the skills to do so can easily be learned so that staff don't just know 'what' to do, they also know 'how' to do it successfully."

Revelation's research over the past twelve years shows that the performance of an individual is the result of a unique combination of their attitude, their practical skills and the culture within which they're operating, so part of the Genius at Work modelling process also involves mapping the organisation's culture so that it enables high performance rather than getting in the way.

"One thing that we have consistently found about high performers is that their results are achieved in a counter-intuitive way. They rarely set out to achieve the result that they are recognised for, and so it's understanding these hidden thought processes that is at the heart of the Genius at Work approach.", adds Peter. "When organisations work so hard to develop intellectual property and business processes, it's absolutely vital to protect and develop that knowledge so that it continues to serve as a valuable asset, supporting current and future staff and helping the business to deliver real value to its customers".

Seven Things that Motivate Us

http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/10/what-motivates-us-at-work-7-fascinating-studies-that-give-insights/


Seeing the fruits of our labor may make us more productive

The less appreciated we feel our work is, the more money we want to do it

The harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it

Knowing that our work helps others may increase our unconscious motivation

The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules

Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance

Images that trigger positive emotions may actually help us focus

National Learning at Work Day - Free Workshop

Peter Freeth to Support National Learning at Work Day this May

In partnership with the Campaign for Learning, Peter Freeth is supporting this year's national Learning at Work day on May 23rd with the offer of a free Genius at Work workshop for one company.

Learning at Work (LAW) Day is an annual awareness campaign organised by the Campaign for Learning (CfL) since 1999. LAW Day promotes and supports workplace learning events across the country, and this year’s theme is 'Many Ways to Learn'.

In partnership with the Campaign for Learning, Peter Freeth is supporting this year's national Learning at Work day on May 23rd with the offer of a free Genius at Work workshop for one company.

Peter says, "In any business, there are individuals whose performance is head and shoulders above their colleagues. They seem to have a gift for delighting customers, or motivating staff, or gaining commitment from even the most evasive customers. And yet, on the surface, it's not immediately obvious what they're doing that's different. If you've ever wished that you could get inside their heads and 'clone' their talents then this is your opportunity to do just that."

For Learning at Work Day, Peter Freeth, author of Genius at Work, and his team are offering companies a free training workshop for their business leaders and managers to show how they can develop the performance of a team or business by discovering and sharing talents. The workshop can also be delivered to a cluster of small businesses.

Visit www.askrevelation.com to find out more about Revelation Consulting Ltd and the Genius at Work book and talent modelling approach. Learning at Work Day is co-ordinated nationally by the Campaign for Learning as part of Adult Learners' Week

See the press release over at PRlog

Blockbuster Busted

Only a couple of weeks ago, we said to each other, "How can Blockbuster survive? Who wants to go out of the house to rent a DVD and then have to take it back the next day?"

Blockbuster rose to fame when home video recorders hit the mass market. If you wanted to watch a recently released film then you didn't have a choice but to rent it from a video library. As the market shifted to easily copied DVDs and downloads, small, independent video libraries began to close down. Blockbuster, through the buying power of its franchise, mopped up what was left of the market. But a dying market is a dying market, regardless of how big your share is.

And so Blockbuster bites the dust along with the other dinosaurs who failed to respond quickly enough to changing buyer behaviour.

One rising star appears to be old High Street favourite Argos. They have made a number of smart moves which have tapped into customer behaviour.

Years ago, you'd pay for your item then just wait at the collection desk. More recently, Argos introduced an electronic allocation system where you receive a ticket with a number on, then wait until your number appears on a screen. The items don't come out in numerical order, so what Argos cleverly created was a lottery game to entertain shoppers while they wait. If that was intentional, and I suspect it was, then Argos have done an outstanding job of understanding who their customers are and what they like.

Argos have now tapped into a new seam of gold. Internet shopping has moved on from its early days when shoppers knew that buying over the Internet was risky but were tempted by low prices. Internet shopping is now a mainstream sales channel with all of the High Street brands having online stores which have lowered customers' perceptions of risk.

Since the risk is lower, price sensitivity has reduced too. Customers no longer feel that they are taking a big risk which must be rewarded by a lower price, their criteria is moving to convenience, which they are prepared to pay more for. The problem with Internet shopping has changed from the risk of a purchase not turning up to the frustration of having to wait for it.

Next have addressed this problem with a next day delivery network. Argos launched their 'click and collect' service. Brilliant. All the excitement of Internet shopping, and you can go and collect, so you don't have to wait in all day for the courier to turn up, only to find a 'you were out' card on your doormat as you come out of the toilet.

Focus, Comet, HMV, Blockbuster and Argos have all proven that the Internet is more than a sales channel, it's a whole market in itself. The only thing that comes as a surprise is how many retailers still don't want to believe that.

Accountability

Frequently, businesses replace management control with some other method or resource to keep the business operating. This means additional cost, and the more indirect that cost is, the more it is hidden. The end result is increased costs and decreased profits, all traceable back to the root cause of management control.

As managers lose or give away control, accountability shifts up the organisation.

The symptoms of this include:

• Managers working longer hours while staff go home early
• Technical skills being valued above business skills
• Managers afraid to use performance management processes
• Managers take back previously delegated tasks and responsibilities
• Activity and performance reports reflect what should be happening rather than what is happening
• Customer demand driving business strategy

More Casualties of the Retail Wars

Just after Christmas, when HMV announced their biggest sale ever, I predicted that they would be the next High Street casualty. When business is down, you can't recover by cutting costs. The only reason for discounting is to dump stock ahead of store closures.

Well, HMV are planning to enter administration. The brand that many of us grew up with was first pushed off its pedestal by Virgin, and it has clung onto physical media sales long after the world has turned to mp3 and Netflix.

Goodbye Jessops

Ratners, Game, Clintons Cards, Focus, Comet, and now Jessops.

Once an expert camera retailer, they allowed themselves to be dragged into the Internet price war and paid the price.

The problem is this: When online retailers undercut you, how do you respond?

In 2003, I bought a video camera from Jessops. I only bought it because it was in stock, and they offered to match the price of any online retailer.

What a stupid idea.

Online retailers are cheaper because they don't have 2,000 staff and 192 stores; they have a handful of staff and a warehouse. You can't beat them by joining them.

The average consumer either bought from Tesco or just used the camera in their mobile phone. The serious amateur needed expert advice, and Jessops couldn't provide that with the inexperienced, cheap staff that they had to employ to cut costs. Professionals hadn't shopped there for years.

Jessops could have cornered the market in 'prosumer' advice, but instead they fell into the same trap that Comet and Focus did before them; chasing every customer, regardless of whether they were the right customer.

Ironically, of all things, Jessops needed to focus.

Happy New Year, It's Time for the 2013 Survey

Another year and another Revelation survey into the business impact of office politics and hidden agendas.

Visit our survey now and help us gather more data, and on our resources page you'll find the results from previous years.

New Revelation Website Launched

Today we've launched the all new Revelation website, complete with a refreshed logo and branding.

The new book, Genius at Work, is featured, along with the Business Model Canvas toolkit that we're being asked about more and more often.

See what you think: www.askrevelation.com

The Revelation Survey is Back

We've finally been able to get the survey up and running at Google, since KwikSurveys let us down and deleted all our data earlier this year.

The all new, same old survey is at its new home of:

www.askrevelation.com/survey.htm

Please take part and help us to build an even better picture of the business impact of corporate politics, and share this with all your colleagues and friends too.

Revelation 2012 Survey Problems

In a bizarre twist of fate, or an example of life imitating art, we have hit a problem with our survey into the business impact of politics and manipulation.

Our survey was hosted by a provider who has always offered the survey service for free. That website was then bought back in July by one of the paid survey providers who shut the site down, deleted all the data off it and then relaunched the site as a paid service.

Their excuse was that the site had been hacked and they had to take it offline.

Well, of course, that's nonsense, isn't it? As evidenced by the fact that you can get your data back, if you pay them a fee.

Many websites have tried this business model; get enough people hooked on a free service, with valuable data stored within the site, and then start charging them.

Suffice to say, we looked around for an alternative, and surprisingly, found one in our old friend Google.

So once we've remembered what all the survey questions were, we'll get the survey back up and running.

2011 Revelation Survey Report

You can download a PDF copy of this report from the Revelation website.

Ask most people in businesses today if they think that manipulation and office politics affect their working lives and they’ll say yes. But ask them to quantify the impact on the business and that’s a much more difficult question to answer.

In 2011, Revelation Consulting Ltd set out to answer that question, and are now running an annual survey which has turned in its first set of results.