The Focus Group
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Pete Tosh, Founder
The Focus Group provides a full range of consulting and training services within four core business areas: 
  • Strategic Planning
  • Enhancing Leadership Effectiveness
  • Improving Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
  • Implementing Strategic HR Initiatives

If you'd like more information about our training and consulting services, please get in touch for an initial free consultation. 

 

About Our Services

A Lesson We Can Learn from the NFL Draft
             
Organizations have their performance limited when ill-suited managers fail to create team environments focused on employee accountability & engagement. The question is why does this happen so frequently? Why do organizations select these people to be managers?
 
Often they were front line employees who were top performers, the most technically qualified and/or had the most tenure. Are they the players we should be drafting into such an important position? This selection approach, while expedient, negatively impacts productivity, quality, employee engagement & profitability. And when an organization makes a poor managerial pick, there's often not an inexpensive fix.
 
NFL teams - because of the dollars involved - exert significant efforts to insure that they are drafting college players who have the talents they need by:

  • defining the specific talents required of each position
  • evaluating hours of film of the player's college game performance
  • having the players of interest perform specific skills assessment exercises on their college campuses & at the NFL combine
  • conducting in-depth interviews with the player as well as his coaches, teammates & others who have known him over the years

The skills needed to be a top performing analyst, quality technician, salesperson or machine operator are not the competencies required to successfully lead a team of employees. Managers should be selected based on their ability to lead others in achieving organizational goals & strategies - not on their performance as an individual contributors. Since many organizations struggle with getting it right, selecting the appropriate people to be your managers could well be a significant competitive advantage.
 
Managers have great influence over employee morale, turnover, productivity, quality & employee innovation. But Gallup has found that as little as 10% of the population possess the talents needed to be effective managers - with another 20% having the potential that will need to be developed through coaching & training. Research shows that a significant percentage of the employees who have resigned did so to get away from a poor manager - employees join organizations & leave managers.

It's highly probable that organizations often fail to achieve their full capabilities because:

  • few employees have the talents needed to become effective managers
  • organizations frequently select managers based on factors other than managerial talent
  • only 30% of the non supervisory employees in the U.S. are engaged & managers account for 70% of the degree of employee engagement

Managerial & leadership skill assessments provide a systematic, valid & reliable means of matching a managerial candidate's talents to a database of successful managers. Taking the time upfront to identify the managerial talents required, interviewing & assessing candidates' managerial competencies is a far more effective & less expensive approach than trying to train managers who lack managerial potential.
 
Your decisions in selecting members of your managerial team are every bit as important as the draft decisions NFL teams make - you too have a lot of money involved in your selections.
 


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For More Information
Please give The Focus Group a call if you'd like more information about our services.  There's no risk. The initial consultation is free! Here's our contact information:

 

The Focus Group
577 Mulberry St, Suite 710
Macon, Georgia  31201
478-746-6891
petetosh@thefocusgroup.biz