Mon Dec 05, 2011 at 11:03 AM by Dennis Nicholas While creativity is often seen as an attribute of the privileged few, any kind of person or group can develop themselves to be creative—better still, be able to breed the breakthroughs that kindle the growth and performance of a company. In fact, findings by McKinsey research, indicate that most corporate groups, from experienced C-level managers to customer service representatives, imply that companies can employ simple techniques to enhance creative output of the workers at any level.
The point here is perception, actually according to one of the leading neuroscientists, Gregory Berns of Emory University, confirms it’s basically linked to creativity of human brain. To see things differently, Gregory maintains, we must shower our brains with some things it has never come across. Such novelty is fundamental since the human brain has evolved for proficiency and regularly assumes perceptional shortcuts to save energy. Forcing our brains to re-group information and move outside our usual thinking patterns we would begin to envision truly novel choices and concepts.
In today’s editorial, we’ll dig out a few practical procedures for CEOs or managers to apply in order to stir up deep-seated perceptions and boost creativity— both individually and with their juniors and extensive work groups. Of course, we’ve not invented these individual techniques, but we’ve discovered their joint power to help business breed different ways of taking on perennial issues—a valuable capability for any organization on the prowl for prospective game-changing progress opportunities.
Absorb yourself in
Professing innovators should open up their pre-existing thoughts. Unluckily, human mind is to our surprise skilled at supporting its entrenched ways of seeing the world while separating facts to the contrary. Sure, academic research implies that even when handed with overwhelming evidence, vast majority (including highly-educated ones) just won’t dump their deeply held views.
The remedy is personal experience: having firsthand experiencing and seeing something can stir people up in ways that discussions around meeting room tables can’t. As a result, it’s enormously valuable to begin creativity-building practices or idea building efforts outside the workplace, by constructing personal experiences that openly confront the members’ implicit or explicit views.
We’ve witnessed that by coordinating personal encounters like these, organizations predispose their staff to greater creativity. CEOs who want to begin strengthening group creative-thinking capabilities —or those of their own—we recommend practices such as:
ü The first practice is to have a firsthand experience of a real consumer – going through the process of buying your own services or products— just the same way a real consumer would—and document the experience.
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Tue Nov 29, 2011 at 07:41 AM by Dennis Nicholas
As soon as you assume a role as a senior executive, you’ve undoubtedly acquired a set of skills and proficiencies that makes it possible for you to be efficient in your new job. To help you get to this position, you somehow had mentors and coaches who very much monitored your progress, pushed you to develop your talents, and, when necessary, they confronted you with constructive feedback that you may not have wanted to hear but needed to in order to persist on your upward course.
At this level in one's profession, most of your former colleagues are probably subordinates. Even as you may well be “overseen” by your senior boss or the board of directors, your top level executives most likely no longer directly observe your daily activities. But instead, they’re now forming their opinions based on your presentations in comparatively official settings or on hand-me-down reports coming from your subordinates.
As a result, many heads realize that as they grow to be more senior, they get significantly less coaching and happen to be more vague in relation to their developmental needs and performance. They also become more and more isolated from positive criticism—junior staff don’t want to affront their boss and often believe that positive suggestions are unwanted and imprudent. At this level of their careers, they don’t really focus adequately on building mutually honest subordinate relationships – very critical in getting feedback and making recommendation a lot easier.
Too often though, when these senior managers eventually do get feedback in their end-year evaluations (normally the 360-degree-feedback plan) they’re shocked to be faced up with specific criticisms in relation to their leadership style, interpersonal skills and communication approach. Worse still, wide concerns are often raised about their key tactical decisions, strategy, and working priorities for the company.
The main objective of this editorial is to extract these approaches into a detailed and actionable recommendation. In doing so, we anticipate more awareness of the inclination to become isolated and advice approaches to our executives in getting better feedback, mostly from junior staff, which will help bosses materially develop their performance levels. We will also argue more steps top obtain considerably better strategic guidance regarding your business or organization. By considering these actions, you ought to be able to acquire better ownership of the recommendation process and advance your ability to put together your organization, capabilities, and occupation.
Promote a network of subordinate coaches
According to recommendations, getting recommendations, job feedback, when to give the job recommendations, Executive job searches |
Thu Nov 24, 2011 at 11:16 PM by Contributor Well, you’ve tirelessly been looking for that job opportunity and submitted several applications to different hiring firms, then, one day you wake up and you receive two different calls inviting you for an interview. You think a bit, and you really can’t reach a decision as on which one to pursue. In our careers at some point or another, this kind of dilemma will encounter, so what are the most effective steps to take before making that critical career decision.
When two or more job opportunities come knocking, here are simple most effective steps take prior any decision:
- Brainstorm: The first thing it to sit down and gather all the things that are most significant to you when it comes to your career. For instance, you may gather a list of items that include: The capacity of the company to promote you upward, income, commission arrangement, bonus eligibility, the organization’s culture, the kind of work, and control over particular projects which you’ll be assigned to, company stability, medical coverage, scheduled hours to work per week, projected cost of business travel, etc.
- Prioritize: After you’ve brainstormed, run through the list again and select top 5 items that you find most important to you. Make priority your list of 5 items from the top being the most significant to the last item in the list as least important of your priority.
- Analyze: Arrange two columns alongside your prioritized list, to match each job opportunity. Figure out each item and the degree to which each employment opportunity will endow with /satisfy each main item.
After carrying out this exercise, it normally becomes a lot easier as to which job opportunity better fits most of your listed items, considering you career moves, needs, and wants. Of course this exercise can’t completely lessen your risk of going into a new position; but it will definitely afford more adequate time analyzing every job opportunity so as to make the most clued-up decision possible. Note: most of the things we learn in life usually involve some level of risk.
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Thu Nov 24, 2011 at 03:03 AM by Contributor In a recent study carried out by researchers Joanna Lahey and Emily Johnson, “post-high school training and education, like from a professional training program or a college, are main factors in determining if a woman would secure an interview.”
Unemployment today has risen up to 9% and most of all, women are having difficulty securing a gainful employment, particularly if they are making a re- entry to the workforce subsequent to a long absence. This encouraged researchers Lahey and Johnson to carry out a résumé audit. “The point of this research was to find out which resume attributes are considered significant by potential employers of working-class women coming back to the workforce,” according to the researchers.
According to the study, Lahey and Johnson came up with roughly 8,000 different résumés which they later submitted pairs of résumés that were randomly categorized to 3,996 hiring firms across US. The firms chosen represented a range of industries such as manufacturing, sales, law firms, services and health care. Of course all included entry-level jobs that needed up to at least a year of post-high school education in addition to experience. The researchers observed at the effects of one’s age, vocational training, job-related experience, other non-work related activities and span of gaps in employment history. What they discovered was rather unexpected:
Employment-related experience included on a résumé doesn’t increase the likelihood of an applicant to secure an interview: Although these results were “varied and statistically irrelevant.” Employers showed more interested in education compared to previous employment experience.
Including activities outside of work also doesn’t necessarily increase the possibility of securing an interview: Surprisingly, this seemed to contrast across geographic regions. For instance, “in Massachusetts, volunteerism poises an important positive effect on one’s résumé, while sports is statistically irrelevant. On the contrary, in Florida, sports initiated a positive effect on the possibility of securing an interview, whereas volunteerism has no important effect,” according to the researchers.
Showing a gap in employment history between jobs doesn’t affect any odds an applicant will secure an interview: This finding in reality runs counter to what most résumé coaches advise their clients in relation to employment gaps. Contradictory to what researchers expected would happen, “showing a gap in employment history has nearly no effect on the likelihood an applicant will receive an interview ca |
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