The SHRM 2010 Conference feedback is in!

CSI's Shane Yount Delivered a MEGA session presentation on Legacy Leadership and recieves very high marks!

Mr. Yount gave a presentation on his latest book "Leaving Your Leadership Legacy: A Focus on Authenticity, Adaptability, and Sustainability." Shane's presentation discussed redefining personal leadership development and promised a coveted experience for any leader at any level desiring to leave a positive and lasting imprint upon their organizations, and more importantly their people. The session was titled "The Trilogies of Legacy Leadership: Moving from the 3Ps to the 3Cs."

In a letter, Shane received from Michelle Dolieslager, Program Manager - Conference Programming, she provided seven full pages of comments and quotes from the participants. With over 600 participant feedback forms collected, Shane scored very high marks on a scale of one to five, five being the highest.

On "Quality of information presented" Shane scored a 4.81, while the average speaker scored a 4.35. On "Applicability to my professional development" Shane scored a 4.63, while the average score for all SHRM speakers was a 4.30.

Some of the participant comments included the following:

"By far the best presentation and speaker I've seen."

"Made me realize how much I take on and that should be owned and executed by my staff."

"...gave us a practical approach for addressing the issues."

"Shane was totally awesome - presentation was completely relevant to today's management - totally hit home!"

"Humorous and Enjoyable! Thank you for communicating complex thoughts in simple terms"

"Wow! Truly transformational! I am most anxious to return to work with the new philosophy."

"Shane's energy and examples were great! I'm very excited to read his book."

"Great content, useful info, relevant to me."

"...useful, made me think, and validated my leadership/accountability approach."

"Compelling information delivered in a humorous presentation that definitely connected with me. Great!"

"Excellent! I will really use this to improve my business."

"..lots of useful information to take with me and put into action."

"Wow! Excellent session! Value added and can immediately begin to implement with my organization."

"Wish there was more time for this session."

"Please repeat this session next year!"

I'm speaking at National SHRM in San Deigo - 2010 SHRM

Here's the news about my opportunity to speak at the 2010 National SHRM Conference...

Shane Yount, Principal for Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), will speak at the Society for Human Resource Management's 62nd Annual Conference & Exposition in San Diego. Shane will speak on Tuesday, June 29th. His MEGA session begins at 10:45 AM with the topic of "The Trilogies of Legacy Leadership: Moving from the 3Ps to the 3Cs." He will be speaking in Room 6 CDEF.

Shane is a popular and energetic public speaker. He offers several public accountability workshops, leadership workshops, a scorecard workshops each year. Visit the CSI website at www.competitive-solutions.net for more information on upcoming workshops, events and webinars.

Shane works with several nationally-known, highly successful organizations, such as the US Army, Michelin Tire, Harley-Davidson, Revlon, Genentech, Boar's Head, and several others.

CSI's consultants have been chosen to speak at many conferences around North America in 2010 and 2011. You can see the calendar of upcoming speaking engagements and download selected slides shows at www.competitive-solutions.net.

Injecting Your Employees with a Sense of Urgency

Injecting Your Employees with a Sense of Urgency
Urgency. What is it? What comes to mind for most people is an emergency situation often accompanied by a feeling of panic. A sense of urgency – not urgency associated with an emergency situation, but the urgency needed to drive daily business results is essential for sustained success. In other words, urgency means "getting it done and doing it on time."

Unfortunately, urgency is often a key ingredient missing from many organizations. Injecting a sense of urgency into your team is one of your greatest challenges as a leader. If your team is lacking a sense of urgency surrounding day-to-day activities, consider utilizing the following tips:

Communication - Communicate routinely and consistently. Keeping employees informed is critical to keeping them engaged in the business. With timely and relevant information employees will feel a greater sense of urgency to get more done.

Look Ahead - Integrate discussions of business performance into your routine meetings. It is not enough to simply post business results. Leaders should discuss the results and then move forward by shaping the discussion on the next set of milestones. Keeping a forward-looking view of goals makes daily work feel more relevant and fosters that sense of urgency needed to hit those goals.

Make a Connection - Connect employees to the business. When sharing high level information and/or business results, link these results to how the team impacts them. Without this link, the information will likely be meaningless.

Take Action - Drive a sense of collective accountability. Do not assume complete responsibility for performance. Hold team members accountable for team performance and for fulfilling job responsibilities. Require your employees to develop corrective action plans for performance metrics that are not meeting goals. Remember, they know more about what they do than anyone. Hold them accountable for using this knowledge to help the business.

Share Results with Others - Provide opportunities for your team to present business results to other teams. Sharing this responsibility encourages teams to better understand their performance and the steps they are taking to improve.

Provide Support - Promptly respond to questions, concerns, and problems elevated to you. Clearly communicate timeframes for follow-up and consistently request status updates within these timeframes.

Set Expectations - Clearly define and communicate behavioral expectations. These behavioral expectations will guide people towards the behaviors needed for successful operation.

Give a Thumbs Up - Recognize individuals and teams that respond with urgency. Providing recognition encourages the behavior to happen again. You can take it a step further by inviting the employee to a brief meeting with your boss and provide even more recognition. Public pats on the back go a long way toward sustaining the proper behaviors.

What do you think? How else can you inject a healthy sense of urgency into every day work? Please contribute to the discussion with your own thoughts and feedback. I’ll be happy to post your comments and suggestions.

I spoke yesterday at the 2010 ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement in St. Louis

from May 25, 2010

CSI's Shane Yount speaks today at the 2010 ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement in St. Louis

Shane Yount, Principal for Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), speaks today at the 2010 ASQ World Conference in St. Louis. The topic of Shane's session is "Leaving Your Leadership Legacy."

Shane is a popular and energetic public speaker. He offers several public accountability workshops, leadership workshops, a scorecard workshops each year. Visit the CSI website at www.competitive-solutions.net for more information on upcoming workshops, events and webinars.

Shane works with several nationally-known, highly successful organizations, such as the US Army, Michelin Tire, Harley-Davidson, Revlon, Genentech, Boar's Head, and several others.

CSI's consultants have been chosen to speak at many conferences around North America in 2010. You can see the calendar of upcoming speaking engagements and download selected slides shows at www.competitive-solutions.net.

I'll be speaking TWICE at Southwest SHRM in October

News from my company website...

Shane Yount, Principal for Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), has been selected to speak at the 69th Annual HR Southwest Conference, October 10 - 13, 2010, in Fort Worth, TX. Shane will speak on Monday, October 11th and Tuesday October 12th. The topic of Shane's presentation on Monday is "Leadership GPS – Growth, Performance, Sustainment." The topic of Shane's presentation on Tuesday is "Man vs. Wild: Taming the Scorecard Beast."

Shane works with several nationally-known, highly successful organizations, such as the US Army, Michelin Tire, Harley-Davidson, Revlon, Genentech, Boar's Head, and several others.

Shane is a popular and energetic public speaker. He offers several public accountability workshops, leadership workshops, a scorecard workshops each year. Visit the CSI website at www.competitive-solutions.net for more information on upcoming workshops, events and webinars.

CSI's consultants have been chosen to speak at numerous conferences around North America in 2010. You can see the calendar of upcoming speaking engagements and download selected slides shows at www.competitive-solutions.net.

I speak today at the 95th Annual ISM Conference in San Diego

CSI's Shane Yount speaks today at the 95th Annual ISM Conference in San Diego

Shane Yount, Principal for Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), speaks today at the 95th Annual International Supply Management Conference in San Diego. Shane's session begins at 9:00 AM with the topic of "Scorecards: The Key to Accountability."

I spoke at the SHRM 2010 Staffing Management Conference & Exposition in Orlando, Florida

CSI's Shane Yount speaks at the SHRM 2010 Staffing Management Conference & Exposition in Orlando, Florida

Shane Yount, Principal for Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), speaks at the SHRM 2010 Staffing Management Conference & Exposition in Orlando, Florida. Shane speaks today, April 27th, 2010, at 3:30 p.m. until 4:45 p.m. The topic of Shane's presentation is "Have you Reached a Performance Plateau? How World Class Companies are Sustaining Operational Excellence."

Shane works with several nationally-known, highly successful organizations, such as the US Army, Michelin Tire, Harely-Davidson, Revlon, Genentech, Boar's Head, and several others.

Shane is a popular and energetic public speaker. He offers several public accountability workshops, leadership workshops, a scorecard workshops each year. Visit the CSI website at www.competitive-solutions.net for more information on upcoming workshops, events and webinars.

CSI's consultants have been chosen to speak at numerous conferences around North America in 2010. You can see the calendar of upcoming speaking engagements and download selected slides shows at www.competitive-solutions.net.

2010 APICS Conference in Nashville

News from my company website...

CSI's Shane Yount selected to speak at APICS 2010 in Nashville, TN

Shane Yount, Principal for Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), has been selected to speak at the 2010 APICS International Conference & Expo, October 17-19, 2010, in Nashville, TN. The topic of Shane's presentation is "Extreme Leadership Makeovers – Training to Drive Sustainable Business Processes."

Shane is a popular and energetic public speaker. He offers several public accountability workshops, leadership workshops, a scorecard workshops each year. Visit the CSI website at www.competitive-solutions.net for more information on upcoming workshops, events and webinars.

CSI's consultants have been chosen to speak at numerous conferences around North America in 2010. You can see the calendar of upcoming speaking engagements and download selected slides shows at www.competitive-solutions.net.

Social Media really works!

This year I have been putting more daily effort into social media solutions, such as Twitter and LinkedIn. It's going well and I've got to admit that I did not envision it being so effective when I first got started. I'm glad to announce that I am "tweeting" more, getting more followers, connecting with more people on LinkedIn, and finding new and creative ways to announce what's happening at CSI and with our PBL ScoreCard software.

Other than Twitter and LinkedIn, what do you find effective for keeping in contact with all your friends, co-workers, and other professional contacts?

Measuring Your Training Effectiveness

One of the most crucial components of a training program is often overlooked - a method to audit training implementation. All too frequently, organizations implement a training plan without a clear definition of the results they require from the training, or the appropriate means to achieve the results.

Without a plan, training efforts often yield no results or unintended results leadership was not expecting. By knowing what is expected of the training and the appropriate measures to gauge effectiveness, leadership has the ability to objectively analyze all results and modify their training plan as necessary.

To circumvent this difficulty, leadership must first determine their current state and their desired future state. Leadership must then define the specific skills that are necessary to achieve their desired state. Finally, leadership must determine the outcomes they expect to see as a result of training. While this may seem like a great deal to accomplish before the training actually begins, it is in fact these steps that will go the farthest in ensuring the highest possible return on training investment.

Based on the training 'pre-work' information, leadership has the tools to develop and implement an effective training plan. Some components of an effective training plan include: training outcomes, standard operating procedures, and an audit process to create an environment of continuous improvement and accountability for training implementation. When establishing an audit process, leadership must develop a schedule that determines the frequency of training process audits, a corrective action plan development for skill deficiencies, as well as recognition system for skill proficiency. By employing a process of audit, follow-up, and re-audit, the skill acquisition and implementation become a part of the culture, rather than a typical 'program of the month' initiative.

-article from "Living Your Leadership Legacy" Newsletter
by Competitive Solutions, Inc.

Competitive Solutions, Inc.(CSI) is a leadership training and consulting company that specializes in helping organizations improve communication, develop meaningful business scorecards, create accountability at all levels and set behavioral expectations using a business alignment system called Process Based Leadership.®

CSI Invites You to Tour One of the Most Successful Organizations in Good Times or Bad: Harley-Davidson

The Harley-Davidson Motor Company has long held the image of challenging stereotypes and the status quo.

This is more than an advertising image to Harley-Davidson. It is the foundation of how they run the business. On April 23rd this U.S. based motorcycle manufacturer will open their doors for a private tour of the facility. This is a rare opportunity to see successful business-focused work groups in action. This plant also has the unique distinction of being the only Harley-Davidson facility to produce an entire motorcycle, the groundbreaking VRSCA V-Rod®.

Harley-Davidson’s success is based on a joint partnership between the company and two unions. This partnership extends throughout the facility – all areas and all levels and all 900+ employees. This is a true high performance group-based operation with full participation of all employees focusing on bottom-line business results and improvement. Employee work groups meet regularly to discuss production targets and develop action plans to address issues. The three primary benefits they have achieved as a result of their group structure are:
• Full involvement by all employees in the business and its success
• Business accountability at all levels of the organization
• Decisions are made at the point closest to issues by those involved

In conjunction with this tour, Competitive Solutions, Inc. will conduct a Process Based Leadership® workshop on April 21st-22nd. The workshop will focus on structured processes that concentrate on improving the bottom-line business results using non-negotiable processes to drive communication, trust and accountability. Discover accountability techniques, performance management systems, case studies and break-out sessions in this dynamic workshop. Not only will you be able to benchmark your organization against Harley-Davidson, you will also learn the steps your organization needs to take to operate with focus, urgency and accountability. You will learn about the importance of each of these steps and see how Harley-Davidson has used them to drive business success.

Full Agenda & Registration Form
Call (800) 246-8694 to get signed up today!

The cost for the Harley-Davidson Workshop and Tour is $1,595 per person. This includes breakfasts, lunches, materials, and transportation to and from Harley-Davidson.

CSI's consultants lead several public workshops across North America each year. You can also see the calendar of upcoming speaking engagements or download selected slides shows at www.competitive-solutions.net.