Tip of The Month

A new year represents new possibilities.  Many companies have already conducted or will complete a strategic planning session for 2014.  When looking forward, it's valuable to reflect on what's been successful and what can be improved.  What were your "Lessons Learned" in 2013 and what do you want to create in 2014?

Here's a case study of how you can shake up your industry to create better business for your company:

Last week I facilitated a Project Management workshop for RAM Enterprise's top leaders.  Since they had less than 10 people attending, I suggested that they invite a few of their customers (a mining company) to the class and share the cost, which they did. 

What happened as a result was amazing!

After we set clear ground rules to ensure confidentiality, both RAM as the contractor and their customer were able to learn together and apply new tools and techniques to their joint projects. 

Here's what participants said on their evaluation forms:

• "Tiffany did a great job of mixing up teaching styles, tones, and activities offering great learning opportunities.  The RAM and our company's involvement were amazing."
• "I liked the interaction, breaking into teams and groups to work on solving problems."
• "I appreciated the overall pace of the course and getting to work in groups on real projects."

This was a special opportunity that yielded many benefits including a new understanding of each other's perspectives, mutual respect for the commitment of each party, and a common language to work together for improvement of project success.

It's impossible to measure the goodwill and relationship value that RAM Enterprise generated by making this decision to involve their customers in their learning and continual improvement process.

The proof of this successful experience is that the RAM's customer recommended this same model for all its "strategic partners" and referred Ready2ACT as the training provider.

We have successfully worked with over 700 companies in the last 10 years and rarely have any of them shown the insight, courage, and wisdom to pursue joint classes.  Has your company been playing it "safe" by learning on its own and not discussing challenges with customers?  What could you gain by doing things differently in 2014?

If the time is right, we're here to help.