Issue Resolution and Prevention Specialists
Blog Layout
Don't Train.....Do This Instead!
No one ever says it out loud, but we all know it's true: most training seminars on their own are pretty much useless. You might be shocked to hear that coming from a company focused on talent development, but how many times have you seen people attend training but then never put what they "learned" into practice to improve their work? It happens far too often. Companies bring in training in hopes of effecting culture change, and they are routinely disappointed.
There are two necessary elements to making learning stick and positively changing behaviors for the long run: practice with feedback, and expectation-setting. Sadly, these essential aspects of culture change are frequently ignored.
First, training seminars should always be accompanied by exercises, and even better, putting the new skills to use in real-world situations under the guidance of a mentor or coach. To reinforce learning, students must synthesize using the new skills - but practice without feedback is a recipe for developing (and reinforcing) bad habits. Practice under the direction of an expert is essential to mastery. (In a related post back on Sept. 12th, we elaborated on the quote "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." (which, incidentally, we misattributed to Confucius -- in fact, the quote is from a different Chinese philosopher, Xunzi, and a more faithful translation is "Those who heard of something know better than those who never heard of it. Those who have seen it know better than those who only heard of it. And those who've practiced know better than those who saw it.". Thanks to our friend @Guanshi Li for the correction.))
Second, management plays an essential role in embedding learning from training into regular practice. Managers must become familiar with the skills and tools being taught, and then consistently ask for evidence of their use for the months and years following the training event. Fail to do this and you’ve wasted your training budget. Until the best practice taught at the training becomes the standard practice used day-in-day-out, you won’t see a penny of ROI from your training expense.
At CÆDENCE, facilitating your success is our only job. We work hands-on with your team to help you tackle your toughest project management, new product development, issue resolution, and quality challenges. We also want to ensure your problems don't recur – we develop teams and systems using skills workshops combined with expert mentoring to accelerate your team’s performance to excellence. We partner with your management team and provide the tools and support required to help them engrain skills into the company culture.
Why are ideas cheap? Supply and demand – there are lots of ideas out there – everyone fancies themself an innovator, the supply far outstrips the demand. BUT, coming up with a good idea is only 1% of the success of a business. The hard part remains….
Why does execution matter more? Once an idea is created, there are hundreds of steps needed to turn it into a viable product backed by a viable business model. Driving rigor at speed through the product development, marketing and sales, pre-launch, and production ramp processes is what will make your business successful.
If you've got a favorite way of communicating (perhaps by text, email, or in-person) that you use most of the time, you are undermining the effectiveness of your communication! If you've ever been frustrated that your team or manager isn't taking action on what you've told them must be done – this post & infographic is for you.
Not all modes of communication are created equal. The way you communicate should be selected based on 3 situational factors: who you're communicating with, the gravity of your message, the outcome you're trying to achieve. Choosing the the mode appropriate to your purpose will greatly enhance the impact of your messaging. Choosing the wrong mode can undermine what you're trying to accomplish by communicating.
CAEDENCE has developed a novel improvement to overcome the communication-based shortfalls in existing methods. Applicable to all structured problem-solving approaches, Visual 8D™ enables teams to execute the familiar problem-solving steps (with no additional effort), while capturing plans and progress in easy-to-follow diagrams. Visual 8D™ puts teams in the position of providing answers to management and customer questions before being asked, resulting in improved control of the situation and minimizing time wasted on extraneous actions.
Danger is lurking around every corner in a new product development / new product introduction project. Avoidable risks wind up blindsiding teams, always at the worst possible moment. Risks blow up into problems because teams misjudge their nature and origin, and lack the right tools and processes to effectively identify, assess, and mitigate them. Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction
There are dozens of tools for reducing risk in new product development and introduction. We know because we've used them to successfully launch dozens of new products in highly demanding industries like automotive and aerospace. Let CAEDENCE show you a few of our favorite tools that you can use immediately to dramatically reduce the chances of disaster on your next NPD/NPI project.
Risk is inherent in new product development and introduction. Regardless of your personal risk tolerance, it's critical to understand that unmanaged risk could ruin your business. We're not saying "don't take risks". We're saying "take risks with your eyes open". Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction.
Many risks in NPD & NPI are visible. New process steps that must be implemented with caution and back-up plans. Unique product features that are challenging to accomplish. But there are other risks lurking. Things that can derail your project before you even realize. A bit nervous now? You should be! But, don't worry. Let CAEDENCE introduce you to a systematic approach and toolkit for managing and reducing risk in new product development and introduction.
Successful new product development and introduction projects require carefully balancing dozens of critical parameters, any one of which could sink the ship. At the end of the day, each of those dozens of NPD/NPI success measures relates to an aspect of just 4 main stakeholder care-abouts: Launch timing, Project budget, Product margin performance, Quality / delivery (customer experience). Learn the systematic method to reduce risks in your new product developments.
CAEDENCE has decoded decades of business experience to reveal the intuition and practices of top performing teams and individuals to radically accelerate people and teams toward excellence. We know the theory, but we've also lived everything we teach and honed best practices for decades. This arms us with tons of real-world examples to engage students and clarify techniques. We often help clients out of crisis situations, but our passion is preventing crises from occurring in the first place. This means (a) establishing robust systems, (b) empowering leaders, and (c) upskilling teams.
We challenge our problem solving classes to play “20 questions” – can we guess a randomly selected word using just 20 yes/no questions? Engineers often say it’s impossible. But, 99 out of 100 times, we find the word! How? There’s no magic: what’s on display is the power of binary decision making, what we call “splitting the dictionary”. And you can apply it to all sorts of real-world problem-solving scenarios. “Splitting the dictionary” is a problem scoping technique of asking the right questions to eliminate as many incorrect possibilities as you can, thus focusing your root cause search in the right area. Effective scoping is key to efficient problem-solving. Once the problem is clearly defined, think of the root cause as a needle in a haystack. Before you start examining hay, first ask “Am I on the right farm?”, then, “Which haystack should I search?”, then “Which portion of the chosen haystack is most likely to contain the needle?” Scoping out the possibilities with a simple tool or test can radically acc
Copyright © 2021 - 2024 CAEDENCE Consulting LLC, All Rights Reserved.
