Continuous Learning Archives - Page 2 of 3

The 4 Properties of Effective Business Experiments

Experiments Aren’t Just for Scientists, Use This Proven Tool to Improve Your Offerings

By Dr. Evans Baiya

Any business that is looking to launch new offerings, improve processes and solutions, or simply grow should be running experiments. There is an effective way to conduct experiments, and there are many not-so-effective ways. Throughout my career I have been on both sides of that fence—once running hundreds of experiments in an attempt to prove that the product my team had created was right, when other experiments were telling us it was not.

Paddle Toward Your Vision

By Jalene Case,

Our responsibilities can toss us around like we’re rafting through white-water rapids without a paddle. Our direction feels like it’s utterly controlled by the river. This is how it can feel when we don’t have a clear vision and goals guiding us to where we want to go.

I knew where I was heading and how I was going to get there before the pandemic hit. And then, for a while there, it felt like I was on a wild river without a paddle! To stick with this metaphor…now I see my path forward and have paddles in-hand to take me where I want to go. Here’s what my route looked like.

Creating Better Learning Experiences During COVID

By Ron Price,

These are such interesting times! Of course, when we look at the human challenges and suffering, we hope it is a “once in a century” period of turmoil. I often think about the stages of grief and how we have all been forced to embrace new realities. The first stage in the grieving process is denial, which many of us probably experienced from mid-March to mid-April. Because so little was understood about Covid-19 at that time, many of us hoped for a short period of “shelter in place” to be followed by a quick return to normalcy. As a result, most consulting, facilitating, training, and coaching programs were put on hold.

Focus on Value-Creating Investments

By Dr. Evans Baiya

One of the challenges for growing a company is knowing exactly where to focus your investment, time and resources. When you introduce a new value (innovation) to the market, there are many processes you must have in place such as sales, marketing, delivery, and of course financial processes. These all require investment in the form of money, people, effort and research.

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is to try to invest in all of these processes right away. Remember, to invest in an operational system requires a lot of resources. It takes up the leader’s time. This is time you should be spending on delivering increased value to customers. It is impossible for an entrepreneur to do everything early on, so the tendency is to have a bulky budget and to hire people to help you do all these things. This leads to a variety of issues: getting into early debt, promising features to potential customers that you cannot deliver, even getting paid but losing money. This can be a fundamental problem.

When to Emulate and When to Originate

By Jalene Case

In school, we’re always told never to copy a fellow student’s work. That’s cheating! It’s a forbidden, punishable, no-no. But as you move through life, you may find that there are times when imitation can be a valuable technique, especially when you’re in the process of learning a new skill. However, you’ll soon find that to reach the next level of success, you must move from emulation to developing your own expertise.

After 35 years of working for other companies, I decided to go out on my own almost two years ago. As I built my business, I earned several certifications, received challenge and support from my coach, and was inspired by many people along the way.

I’ve been climbing a steep learning curve. Recently, I hit a plateau. After taking stock of where I had been and where I envisioned going, I saw the next mountain to climb. It was time to stop emulating the people and programs I had learned from, and start refining my own voice and style.
Read More

Why Changing the Culture Helps Businesses Innovate

By David Quinlan

If there is one takeaway from my journey into the world of innovation, it’s that truly successful innovation requires courage and the willingness to let go of uncertainty.

Welcome back to the Innovators Academy – a behind-the-scenes, unscripted backstory of what it means to be innovative and how an organization like Better Business Bureau can make it happen. For the past month our cohort had two jobs – ideate and identify waste.

And by waste, I mean duplicated processes, inefficiencies and bottlenecks – the processes that plague instead of propel good intentions. For our team of innovators, waste was surprisingly not hard to find, and the solutions on how to correct them came pouring in.

The Direct Pathway to Your Future

In this video, president and founder of Communication Works, Inc., and The Complete Leader faculty member Mindy Bortness shares her thoughts on the importance of tomorrow’s leaders embracing continuous learning as both a personal and an organizational value in order to create a culture of growth and competitiveness.

Learning Something New Every Day (Continuous Learning Series Ep. 2)

Host Dale Dixon and Ron Price continue their discussion of Continuous Learning today, talking about the assessment available at thecompleteleader.org to evaluate your leadership capacity for continuous learning. Ron suggests ways to combat the feeling that you don’t have enough time for continuos learning, and the benefits of a goal-setting session around the competency. He summarizes the two-podcast series with five questions to help you create a continuous learning plan that you can accomplish. Email ron@price-associates.com for a copy of the five questions. Links to products Ron is using: Muse (amzn.to/2EY1eVl), Revolutioner (revolutioner.com).

Just Keep Learning (Continuous Learning Series Ep. 1)

Today host Dale Dixon and executive coach Ron Price discuss the importance of Continuous Learning as a leader. Ron talks about how leaders can use learning to become more impactful and to surf the waves of change. He lays out the PhD approach to Continuous Learning and offers steps to create a learning strategy that works for you.

Continuous Learning: Creating a Strategic Learning Plan

While individuals need to be continuous learners to succeed, entire organizations must also embrace this skill. Tomorrow’s leaders – the people who will establish an organization’s culture – must embrace continuous learning as both a personal and an organizational value. Watch this two-minute video with Ron Price to find out more about continuous learning.

123

OUR THINKING