Competitive Advantage Is What Your People Want to Do, Not What They Know

Does your company do a great job of delivering knowledge and skills, the technical skills that your people need to do their jobs? Yet, you still see behaviors that are contrary to your current strategic plan to departmental goals?

The 21st century is truly an age of change especially within the training as well as organizational development departments. No longer is just learning acceptable. On the job behaviors must consistently demonstrate exceptional performance.

In the 20th century, the common question to be answered was: Do my employees know what they need to do to accomplish their jobs? Training and development then focused on filling the gaps between what the employee knew and what the employee needed to know. This solution worked well for the labor intensive economy of the last 70 years.

With the arrival of incredible technology the need for labor intensive skills was greatly diminished as evidence by the decline in manufacturing positions. The question that needs to be answered in today's highly competitive global market is: Do my employees want to do what they need to do?

For behaviors are merely a demonstration of existing attitudes and habits within individuals. Changing behaviors requires changing attitudes. Yes, poor attitudes or negative attitudes can be changed provided the individuals sees the value in changing or what some call What's in it for me (WIIFM) When this change happens, then the organization experiences wants in it for us or WIIFU.

People change for only two reasons:

• To avoid the pain
• To secure the gain

Using a process that understands the motivation for changing behaviors helps to ensure sustainability thus avoiding the quick fix experienced by many organizations. Quick fix: We sent them to training, behaviors changed for a short time and then old, unacceptable behaviors (bad attitudes) return.

To successfully accomplish this change requires embracing 3 paradigms:

• Goals - a proven goal setting and goal achievement process that builds the WIIFM leading to the WIFFU
• Attitudes - a proven process that works with people who lack the tools necessary for changing attitudes which are simply speaking habits of thought
• Self Leadership Skills - strong interpersonal skills or people skills are necessary in a knowledge economy especially given the increase number of interactions from email to face to face meetings

Organizations that switch from the old paradigm of labor intensive to the new paradigm of thinking intensive have been proven to earn four times as much revenue per employee. To make this happen, requires a change in the education and training by shifting away from technical skills to redeveloping behaviors.

Yes, this is a challenge, but a worthy one if you truly want to out think and outlast your competition in the 21s century global marketplace.

If securing a competitive advantage is important to you, then you may find the free Leadership Audit at http://www.processspecialist.com/od.htm of interest.

Customer loyalty is another strategic advantage. Receive your downloadable Customer Loyalty Audit at http://www.processspecialist.com/customer-loyalty.htm

Please feel free to contact me, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Your Chief People Officer and Business Coach, who works with individuals and organizations that are tired of not being where they want to be and truly want more for their businesses and their selves. 219.508.2859

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