Mona looked more rested. I didn't fully realize until later, how calm  and engaged she was as she cut my hair this time. 

It's a new year so I asked her what she's focused on in 2008.  It was as though she were reading my mind, she shared exactly what I'd been feeling and thinking:

"I've decided to set up my schedule so I can spend more time with each of my customers.  I want to do a better job of connecting with you.  In 2008 I'm focused on adding more value every time I work with someone.   This year is my year to connect more with others and to be more at ease in everything I do at work and at home."

Mona and I are similar because we both tend to load our schedules with projects, challenges and new clients, getting caught up in all the busyness.  Sometimes we fall short of our real vision for our personal and professional lives.  

I've known for some time that my real vision, my life's purpose, is to create a world of employees and people who wake up eager.  That's the main reason  I started Priceless four years ago.  

I also that I know that I can't give what I don't have, and that if I want to be in-sync with my purpose I must be the change I want to see in the world.  So like my hairdresser I'm focused on creating a schedule that ensures that I'm engaged and eager in every area of my business and personal life. 

Within Priceless I want to add more value to my clients.  One of the ways I'd like to do that is by sharing relevant, leading-edge workplace learning resources, strategies and tools through this newsletter.

Please keep me posted on how you're doing.  I appreciate our association and I look forward to co-creating with you this year and beyond. 

  With Appreciation,

Suzie Price,  Managing Principal

Many of you use our survey platform system (see 20/20 Insight Demo) to conduct 360 feedback surveys, exit interviews, employee opinion surveys and customer satisfaction surveys.  Did you know you can use it to measure and report return on investment (ROI) metrics around development programs to the CEO and other leaders in your organization?

                Here's how it works:

Step 1)  Pre-development survey/diagnostic: Use our survey engine to generate performance improvement data by setting up a survey that consists of questions that describe the behaviors taught in training.  You gather feedback from the participants' boss, coworkers and others - all online with less than 15 minutes of administration time.

The results are shared prior to class with each training participant.  This helps participants set quantifiable, behavior-based performance improvement goals.  People come to training motivated! 

Step 2) Post-development survey/diagnostic:   

Run the same online survey six to nine months after training. Using a simple ROI formula (which I will share with you in the next newsletter or email me if you need it now). Scores are then easily compared. Improved scores will confirm improved performance.  If there's no improvement you can objectively meet with the training participant, manager and trainer to determine next steps.

For continued feedback and measures of performance improvement, repeat the assessment at the twelve-month and eighteen-month marks.

This simple common sense, reinforcement strategy, along with our low-cost UNLIMITED USAGE LICENSES found in our survey software, helps people stay motivated to use the skills taught in the classroom.  AND gives you the data you need to report ROI figures and results. 

In my next newsletter I share the ROI formula you can use with this data to calculate performance improvement.

I've had a framed Einstein portrait and quote in my office for many years.  I love how he embraces independent thinking and imagination. 

He reminds me daily to balance my quest for knowledge with my talent for creativity, imagination and visualization, here's Einstein:                 

      The Genius of Imagination: "Imagination is more important than knowledge, knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world.  To see with one's own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one has seen and felt in a trim sentence, or  even  in a cunningly wrought word - is that not glamorous?  When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.  There is no doubt that a single thought has the power to change the world."