But, why should we stop there?  Aquire is implementing some great creative usage in the 9 box to help solve many business and talent-driven decisions.  I bet you would love to see performance rating on one axis and the scale of salary or raise % within a 9 box.  It allows people to fall directly into the 9 box and you can see the outliers during your bonus planning.  It is very powerful.

Another use of the traditional potential by performance 9 box view is during bonus assignments and raise awards. This has increased management’s satisfaction with the compensation process.  The managers feel better about the fairness and the distribution of funds, when they can visualize the value distribution of their key players.

A workforce analyst is diagnosing risk for retirement pain points by reviewing age by tenure on the matrix.  When you need to see comparative details to a group of people, the visualization of the distribution is very powerful and makes the data very easy to understand.

The 9-box is powerful and its power is magnified when you can compare, side by side, the individuals in any area of the 9 box or select individuals.  Multiply the power again when you can transfer the visualization of the 9 box content in a color coded map in the org chart.  NOW, you have the power to see the applicable information in the context of the hierarchy structure of the organization and the information has real meaning.

Your planning is stronger.  Your decision making is more confident.  Your processes have a reduction in risk, when you can really see the information you need in an impactful view.  So to really deliver value to your management, I ask…What’s in your 9-box?

Cheers,

Lois

Lately, there has been a lot of talk  about how the recruiting department is a critical location to focus your brand and culture training.  But what about your purchasing department?  Are they damaging your brand?  Here are a few examples of bad corporate citizenship displayed by purchasing departments recently.  They seriously tarnish their corporate reputation.

1. A company marketing their green practices sent a paper based 24 page RFP and requested the responses to be returned paper based – 4 copies, only to be accepted by overnight courier style delivery. (not very environmentally friendly as a whole)
2. A ‘communication’ company’s purchasing department failed to acknowledge receipt or respond to emails,voicemails and requests for information when their Purchase Orders were incomplete.
3. An accounts payable person at a company on the Bloomberg ‘Best Places To Work’ list recently referred to the ‘idiots I work for that can’t fill out their paperwork’, during a collections call.
4. Many companies during the evaluation process of a product:

• Play head games with the sales reps
• String the vendor on after they know the vendor is not the vendor of choice, often to apply price pressure to another vendor
• Stay vague about their requirements, which doesn’t allow the vendor to really solve their problem
• Write an RFP for a vendor pre-destined to get the bid, yet waste huge amounts of money and time for the other vendors trying to get the business
• Change the pricing the user agreed to, once the purchasing agent gets their hands on the deal (they are often measured by the discounts they are able to secure)

The list could actually go on and on.  So often, I hear about great relationships during a selling process, only to hear about abysmal experiences with the purchasing department of the company.  I once saw a seminar title by a huge consultancy, Torturing Your Vendors with an RFP, for Fun and Profit.  Was it tongue in cheek?

If your mission statement and value propositions are designed for fairness, integrity, customer service or anything that deals with humanity and interactions, I encourage you to mystery shop your purchasing department.  Are they living up to the well-manicured brand image your call centers, sales people and executives are trained to uphold?  Remind them that often your vendors are your customers too, and they are watching.  They are assessing the true character of your organization through these interactions.  Trust me – many of these interactions are not pretty.  This could be a real test of HR’s ability to influence the image of the company, by assessing and influencing improvements of these people in your company.

Cheers,

Lois

What do you really do well that is repeatable?

What process have you implemented that became well adopted by choice?

If you changed to a new department – which processes would you take with you and adapt to the new job?

If you, individually or as a team, use processes that work well and can be adapted for others, or already have been adapted for others to use, you likely have a Best Practice on your hands. In an earlier blog, as an example of a best practice, I shared one of our internal procedures when we prepare for a new hire and need to create a job description.

When you go to a conference, are you looking for new ways of doing things? People often seek out what others are doing so that they don’t have to invent a process themselves. This is good for productivity. Think about the things you do well, and be prepared to share them. I have a friend who works at GE. He told me networking is very difficult because everyone assumes that GE has a better way of doing a process and they ask him for his templates or checklists, etc. He is willing to share where it’s appropriate, that is not his challenge. His challenge is the reluctance of others to share their best practices with him. He said they get all flustered and say – “I am sure it is not as good as yours” – and they will seldom follow through with delivery of the goods. This is not fair to my friend, who works hard to be helpful to so many people. It also means there are not near enough people giving themselves adequate credit for their own good processes.

Aquire invented the best practice of building your organizational charts from your existing HR data. We invented the best practice of putting those org charts online for the entire enterprise to see them. Our customers are FULL of best practices. I have experienced the joy in seeing companies develop new ways to promote employees from within the organization, which fires up the engagement with their employees. I have seen our customers do incredible integration of merged workforces by distributing the efforts logically and collaboratively, and communicating the changes in a world class way that kept the stress of the merger to a minimum.

I encourage you to look at your work. What do you or team do so well that you wouldn’t change – even if you had the opportunity and money to do so? Label it as a Best Practice. Be proud of it and teach others about it. Consider how others might adapt it to their own work and give them the idea. Think about the quality and increased productivity we could all experience if we share our best practices. I’d really like to hear from you about business processes you use as best practices, or if you’re looking for some help on developing best practices.

Cheers,
Lois