SUMMER 
2014

ISSUE 
No. 21

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PresidentsMessagePRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Simulations, Soccer, and Cities

Welcome to summer 2014! I'll be brief as you might be reading this on vacation (as I'm writing it on vacation!).

Using simulations to teach leadership competencies like Strategic Thinking, Financial Acumen, and Business Thinking in a full business context has been a staple of OSI's service offerings for over a decade now. OSI has helped produce a number of custom simulations including global hospitality and restaurant organizations, sports and fitness apparel manufacturers, domestic service providers, and paper and packaging companies. We typically organize simulation workshops in a 3-5 day format with 2 or 3 teams independently leading and managing a business over a strategic time period of five to seven years. Earlier this year, Starwood Hotels and Resorts challenged us to assist in presenting our newest hotel simulation, Inovva, to an annual meeting in Orlando, FL of their select service property general managers. Collaborating with Dr. Matt Mayberry of Wholeworks Consulting, the project involved organizing twenty-six teams of 7-12 GMs and Sales Directors from properties around the Americas to simultaneously lead a struggling property back to benchmark levels of financial performance, brand standards, employee engagement, and guest satisfaction scores. The logistics were daunting, but the week was a success and we now wish we had invited the Guinness organization to put us in the record books for most simultaneous simulations ever conducted in a one week period! Starwood described the week in this YouTube video (click here) and you can experience the simulated brand in the Inovva Sizzle Reel (click here).

This year also brought us the World Cup in Brazil and maybe the tipping point for soccer enthusiasm in the USA? Judging by the US television ratings (even with the US team being eliminated in the round of 16), we may have finally embraced "the beautiful game" like the rest of the world! Our friend, colleague, and Hudson coach, Winsor Jenkins, has written a book using soccer as an allegory for global business leadership: The Collaborator - Discover Soccer as a Metaphor for Global Business Leadership. In his book, Winsor notes that soccer coaches (unlike American football coaches) are restricted in their ability to manage their teams minute to minute once the game has started. Soccer teams must be more self-directed, and coaching much more about preparation and transfer of competence. You can preview his book, and order copies from Winsor's website: www.winsorjenkins.com.

Finally, this summer produced another OSI milestone: the City of Medford, Oregon became the first municipality to license the OSI Polaris® competency model for use in integrating the city's talent management systems. The public sector in the form of U.S. agencies, states, and universities, has long recognized the value of Polaris®, but this represents our first city license. Working with Wendi Brown and Carl Crown of Wendi Brown Creative, we'll be helping City of Medford customize and apply Polaris® this fall.

Enjoy the rest of the summer and we'll see you in the fall!


AnnouncementsANNOUNCEMENTS
OSI Launches Polaris® 4.0

OSI is pleased to announce the official release of our latest competency model content: the Polaris® 4.0 series. This new iteration reflects our most recent research conducted in the past five years with dozens of high performing leaders, managers, and professionals across a number of successful brands. We also included the collective wisdom of our extensive network by doing a reality check with our most seasoned coaches, consultants, and clients. Our update confirmed that the fundamentals of leadership, management, and professional competence are persistent, but did result in several minor changes to the basic model to reflect some nuances we found in how competence really drives results. In addition to updating the Polaris® Competency Model, we have also updated and upgraded the Polaris® Development Guide and Proficiency Continuums to reflect our research and to add more productive ways to acquire needed knowledge and skill. Version 4.0 also includes a highlighted subset of Polaris® competencies (The Big Six) that have been found to predict exceptional performance in front line leadership roles. Polaris® 4.0 is the freshest model on the market, and represents over 33 years of cumulative OSI experience in selecting and developing top talent in top brands. The Polaris® 4.0 universal model can serve as the foundation for talent management systems by providing valid criteria and an integrating language across talent management applications. As research has shown, anything short of this common language sub-optimizes all organizational talent selection, development, and appraisal systems as managers struggle with competing criteria for interviewing, training, and providing performance feedback. Please visit our new website for more information.
OSI 30 Years
At Organization Systems International, we are celebrating over 30 years of quality, service, and innovation. We deliver client success with a high-performance approach designed to enhance occupational relationships, improve operational efficiency, and sustain customer relationships.
OSI CLIENTS INCLUDE

American Greetings
Blizzard Entertainment
Bowling Green State University
Dow Corning Corp.
Fleetwood
GE Capital
Insurance Company of the West
Limited Brands
Nike, Inc.
Northwest Pipe
Portland State University
Schneider Trucking Company
ServiceMaster
Siemens
Skinit
Standard Insurance Company
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
State Auto Insurance
The Walt Disney Company
Wendy's International Inc.
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