"The Jelly Effect" by Andy Bounds

One of my colleagues has been reading "The Jelly Effect" by Andy Bounds this week and it has some great pearls of wisdom in it. They include:

 

* Never compare your inside to somebody else's outside. Because you'll always lose" Marie Mosely

* There are only two things customers are interested in. If they know with 100% certainty that they will get the AFTERS they require, they will buy

* The grass isn't greener on the otherside. The grass is greener where you water it.

* Customers don't care what you do; they only care what they're left with AFTER you've done it

* When networking "Be interested (in them) not interesting (about yourself)

* "Do or do not. There is no try". Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

We're currently busy marketing our latest event. It is the The Resolution Revolution.

Mediation Seminar

I attended a mediation seminar on Saturday last in Letterkenny Donegal and came away with the following learning points:    

* In most employment cases a mediator should escrow an agreement giving parties time to seek professional advice before signing an agreement.

* It's advisable to ask all parties for any notes they have taken for you to destroy after a mediation has finished.

* A good mediator should hold onto a closed mediation file indefinitely afterwards

* "Professional advice" is a better term than "legal advice" for it wider and encompasses medical and business advice where necessary as well as legal

* Any person shadowing a mediator should be referred to as an assistant rather than an observer. Co-mediators are just that and share responsibility and liability equally.

As always we're busy devising more employment law seminars

Change Management Issues

At the moment the company is researching change management issues and have discovered a lot of mistakes that caused failure. We noted five common mistakes:

                                                        

Mistake #1:  Lack of skills and resources - change does not happen through goals and exhortation alone. Like any business operation, It also calls for the right skills and resources, Organizations often simply fail to commit the necessary time, people, and resources to making change work. Paradoxically, successful behavior change often demands the very skills the change Is trying to create. 

Mistake #2: Not enough leadership - several leaders focus too much on management and too little on leadership.

Mistake #3: Ignoring current corporate culture - when people in an organization realize and recognize that their current organizational culture needs to transform to support the organization’s success and progress, Mistake 3change can occur.

Mistake #4: Not envolving the employees - leaders must actively involve the people most affected by the change in its implementation. This will help ensure employees at all levels of the organization embrace the proposed changes.

Mistake #5: Lack of communication - change management communications need to be targeted to each segment of the workforce. It should be delivered in a two-way fashion that allows people to make sense of the change subjectively.


We're currently busy marketing our interview rooms for Northern Ireland

Young Leaders Conference

The Young Leaders Conference was also one of the courses my colleague attended to two weeks ago. It was all worth it and she learned the following important points:

1.       Vision was again reiterated at this course, the importance of sharing the vision.

2.       Make a decision and stick to it – even if you know it will mean people may dislike you for it. If it needs to be done, stick to the decision and carry it through.

3.       Taking risks – a good leader should not be afraid to take risks – whether they be good or bad.

4.       Power of psychology/ persuasion. Think about how you put a suggestion forward. Say for example you have 5 ideas and there is one in particular you would like the person to choose. Place it at number 3 in the list. Research shows that the choice at number 3 is most likely to be chosen as by then the person feels they know what you are talking about and are drawn to number 3. If you have 4 ideas, still put it at number 3 and if you have 3 ideas, make up a first or fourth and place it again at number 3. (David Meade)

5.       Don’t hide away from the bad stuff – don’t bury your head in the sand and pretend it will go away when there are problems, deal with them head on even if you know the outcome could mean change.

We're currently busy marketing our Inhouse Training for Northern Ireland

Common Purpose - Passion and Resonance

Passion and Resonance was the second topic discussion in the course, "Common Purpose" which one of my colleagues attended to last week. She got some helpful learning points from the discussion:

• "Without passion, you don't have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion" ~ Donald Trump

          Communicating a business’ passion:

-          Engage in conversation with our customers through our website/ Twitter/ Facebook

-          Think about the content, be creative.

-          How is it we want staff to communicate?

-          Be strong, honest, true and accurate

• "Passion and purpose go hand in hand. When you discover your purpose, you will normally find it’s something you’re tremendously passionate about" ~ Steve Pavlina

• "Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion" ~Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

We're currently busy marketing our seminar rooms for Northern Ireland

David Meade's Insights

A colleague of mine attended a course two weeks ago hosted by David Meade. She got 5 helpful important points from the conference:
 
1.       Power of positive thinking – being told you are terrible at something will make you worse at the task, being told you are good (even when you are not) will make you perform better as you believe you are good at the task (research carried out by team of ballet dancers who were asked to play basketball. They were then randomly selected and told some were good and some were terrible at playing – even if they were really good. The ones who were told they were great outperformed the ones who had been told they were terrible).
2.       Awareness – when given a task be aware of the other things going on around you. It is amazing how you can miss the most obvious thing because you are so busy focussing on the task in hand. 
3.       Know when to take a risk – David Meade relayed the story of how he took the chance and left his University job to start a career doing Mentalist TV work. On his first appearance on the Stephen Nolan radio show, he was expected to be “car crash radio”. His determination and desire to succeed proved otherwise.


We're currently busy marketing our interview rooms for Northern Ireland

Common Purpose - Broadening Your Vision

One of my colleagues underwent a lot of courses last week and one of them was entitled "Common Purpose – Broadening Your Vision". She learned 5 important points from this course:

1.       Heard from Peter Dixon from Phoenix Gas, provided a very interesting insight into how a business needs a vision in order to achieve results. Results cannot be expected without the vision behind them. 

2.       Baroness May Blood also demonstrated how humour and humility can take you far in life.

3.       Heard from Baroness May Blood, truly inspirational woman who clearly had a vision for what she wanted to achieve and showed the energy and determination to match it.

4.       The day itself raised questions on our own visions – do we have a personal vision? and do we know what the true vision of the organisation we work for is?

5.       Paul Rooney from PWC gave an interested session on Leadership and who he looked to for leadership and vision both in his career and personal life.

We're currently busy marketing our seminar rooms for Northern Ireland

Employee Engagement

One of my colleagues has been researching staff engagement recently and has come up with the following conclusions:

1. Define and refine your culture to engage: Keep your “culture to engage” in the front of employees’ and managers’ minds.

•  Make “culture,” “engagement,” and similar subjects frequent items for discussion.

2. Spot an Engaged Employee, engaged employees are:Authentic

• Employees who are themselves are more effective in the workplace.

3. One of the most effective strategy to impact engagement across an organization: Start at the top

• It will be an uphill battle for everyone if your most senior teams are not true believers of the power engagement.

4. One of the most important rules of Employee Engagement: Rules are meant to be broken.

•  Sometimes, you may find that it is necessary to break a rule to easily proved extraordinary service or just to make things work as they should.

5. Engage remote teams: Use web cams

•  An inexpensive web cam can be tied to your Instant Messenger. It is a great way to humanize people who are just names on a "cc" list.

We're currently re-working how we market our employment law email service

Social Media Marketing

Legal-Island has been studying social media marketing closely this week and have gleaned 5 important key points to remember:

1.  Power Shift - Social media empowers the customers and the network 
2. It's Social - Marketing as a conversation is a two-way dialogue. New 'mindsets' are required to be successful in social media
3. It's a Revolution - A fundamental and revolutionary change in online behaviour, expectations and in the online customer experience 
4. Declining Effectiveness - the traditional approaches to sales and marketing are not as effective as before
5. The End of Business as Usual -  We need new 'mindsets', new business approaches and new performance measures. It's not all about being a broadcast medium. It's about listening to and engaging with customers, partners and community.


As always we're busy devising more employment law seminars

Good to Great

One of my colleagues told me about a great book he read, it's called, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. He took five key learning points from it:

1.     Pursue the big 3 traits. Good-to-great companies move ahead of their competitors by pursuing only those projects that have three traits;

        a.     What drives profitability for their     business model

        b.     What they can be ‘best in the world’ at

        c.     What their people are deeply passionate about

2.     Stick to what you’re good at – The Hedgehog Concept. Good-to-great companies are those that consistently stick to doing what they do best and avoid getting distracted into new fields of business that are away from their core competencies.

3.     Good is the enemy of great. This is one of the reasons why so little becomes great, but ultimately good companies can become great companies if they push themselves and don’t settle for great.

4.     Do not get side-tracked on non-core ideas. Instead, good-to-great companies set their goals and strategies based on understanding what lies within their Hedgehog Concept and ignoring everything that does not.

5.     Creating a good-to-great company takes time and is an iterative process rather than a blinding flash of inspiration. To guide this process, many use a ‘Business Council’ approach to gain the depth of understanding required to come up with a unique differentiating Hedgehog Concept.

We're currently busy marketing our seminar rooms for Northern Ireland

Diversity Management Workshop

A colleague of mine attended a Diversity Management workshop delivered by Tanya Kennedy at Legal-Island's training centre and took from it the following five key learning points :

• Jane Elliot’s “A Class divided” is a superb video that shows just how easily people can fall into prejudice and the ugly consequences. See here
• Zappos has some great core values worth examining including :

1. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Deliver WOW Through Service
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

• Pret a Manager have simple core values  : passionate about food; passionate about people; passionate about success
• No-one is born prejudiced. It’s a learnt process. We can unlearn it.
• Are we all age obsessed? I think we are…

We're currently busy marketing our interview rooms for Northern Ireland

Andy Bounds's Sales Seminar

6 key learning points from Andy Bounds's Sales Seminar in London, 26th of April:

1. The aim of the marketing brochure is to cause something to happen.

2. Money is never a money issue but a priority issue. We need to help customers give us priority.

3. Success, not perfection is what selling is all about.

4. People buy because they are interested in your value proposition not your unique proposition.

5. You need an incentive on Facebook for customers to like you. For example, to receive 5 top tips a day, join us on Facebook.

6. Facts tell, stories sell. A good selling technique is what is known as the "BO" technique. Where 'B' stands for Benefits and 'O' stands for Options. Give them a choice of 'Yeses' rather than a 'Yes-No' option.

We're currently busy marketing our Training Centre for Northern Ireland

Active Listening

A colleague of mine listened to an audio cd this morning by Peter Thompson called ‘The best kept secrets of the world’s great communicators’ – the following is a summary of one chapter on ‘Active Listening.’ These are the points that he noted from the session:  

Listen actively when there is high emotion or the possibility of misunderstanding, when the person is important to you, or when you need the information they have. The better you listen and respond to others, the better they will listen and respond to you. The more attention you pay when someone else is talking, the more attention they will pay when you are talking. The following are ways to listen actively:

1.       Think of listening based on the ratio of having two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio. Listen twice as much as you speak.

2.       Maintain eye contact. It shows others that you are paying attention.

3.       Make notes. This will reinforce your memory. It is advisable to ask permission first in some situations. That permission is seldom refused. If you wish to take a tape recording, it is vital to ask permission.

4.       Allow people to finish their own sentences no matter how enthusiastically you want to jump into the conversation. Doing so will indicate respect for what the person is saying.

5.       Get all the information that is available within a conversation so you will not jump to any false conclusions. Wait for the end of the sentence or end of the conversation to be sure this conversation is unique from any other that may sound similar to you.

6.       Respond so the other person knows you are listening. Your response may be “Yes” or “I see” or merely nodding your head. Any of these will do.

7.       Be accepting rather than judgmental so you can truly hear the message being given. Different accents, catch phrases, speeds of speech, and cultural generalizations can get in the way of hearing the actual message.

8.       Ask questions when you do not understand something that was said. This goes a long way to building strong communication.

9.       Ask core questions. That is typically a series of “why” questions that go deeper into a particular subject to gain the greatest understanding of a situation. Start with broad information and continue seeking more specific responses.

10.   Pause before replying. Pausing will add power to what you say. It indicates you are giving a considered response, that you thought about it, that it is not just some answer you offer every time this question comes up.

11.   Use the Rapid Repeat Method to improve your listening skills and concentration abilities. Do this by simply repeating, silently in your mind, what is being said a fraction of a second later. This holds your concentration and improves your recall of what was said.

It's hard going sometimes in the employment law field. We still feel we're organising the best employment law seminars around.

IoD Annual Convention 2012

Last week, one of my colleagues attended the IoD Annual Convention here in London. It was really helpful and she was able to gather a number of key points: 

1.       From speaker Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, it’s not all about Return On Investment but Return On Involvement. Get the staff fully involved and the return will be much much greater.

2.       Again from Kevin Roberts: “inspire rather than inform”, specifically on the company website. Customers want to be inspired by what they see, not bored by informative text. Think about what your webpage looks like and revise to inspire customers.

3.       Passion drives success. It’s not all about the talent you have for something, it’s the passion and the drive you have which will ultimately lead to your success (BackleyBlack – Steve Backley and Roger Black)

4.       “Success is a decision not a gift” (BackleyBlack)

5.       How to make the most out of your LinkedIn Profile (from Ariel Eckstein presentation, MD of EMEA, LinkedIn. Complete your profile – importantly add a photo – it makes it more personal to those connecting with you. Only connect to those who you will actually do business with. Treat your Linkedin connections like your phone book. Would you phone the people on your LinkedIn connection?

At the moment we’re all working hard on our big event coming up soon. This is the Data Protection in the Work Place Conference.

Latest Training Event

Last week, one of my colleagues attended a seminar in Belfast and took a number of Key Learning points from this event, both from a personal perspective and company perspective:

1.       When I was registered I was then immediately greeted by another hoster who showed me round to the main area and then introduced me to a Employers in Childcare colleague (who has been assigned to me by the colour of spot on my name badge). Learning: I felt well looked after and although I wasn't too keen on being given a coloured spot on my name badge I did think the idea was good.

2.       In terms of event management – the event was held in the Ramada Shawsbridge, registration took place at the lobby area at the top of the stairs – much more user friendly I thought compared to where we normally register for AR – learning: consider moving registration for this year

3.       Title of event was slightly misleading, my expectations were not met in terms of how the event had been billed – learning: be sure to cover what you are promising in the title

4.       Event was free although if you didn’t turn up or couldn’t send a replacement you were charged £50 cancellation/ no show fee. Thought this was a good way of ensuring all delegates will turn up

5.        Most if not all the questions from the floor were directed at Maxine Orr on her presentation on sickness leave and annual leave. 

At the moment we’re all working hard on our big event coming up soon. This is the Annual Update on Payroll Matters Conference.

Risk Audits

Two days ago, one of my colleagues attended the last of three breakfast seminars run by the IOD on risk audits.

He took the following learning points from the seminar :  

*  Learn and Employ Dos and Don'ts 
* Good risk data supports good risk decision taking
* Quantify risks in accordance with your company risk appetite and tolerance
* MindManager is good for producing spider diagrams plotting risk
* Mario Andretti the champion racing driver said "if you're in full control you're not going fast enough"



At the moment we’re all working hard on our big event coming up soon. This is the Understanding TUPE Conference.