Agents for Performance Improvement
and Organizational Learning

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What Keeps You Awake at Night?

AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER, every organization faces an uncertain environment, financial constraints, and increased competition. In response to these challenges, we are all exhorted to be better, faster, and more flexible. To survive in today’s demanding markets, we must adopt innovative approaches to management and operations.

But how should you approach the development of crucial new competencies? Where will you begin? Perhaps you’ve already launched a ‘change’ program or two, but find enthusiasm waning and progress stalled. It’s not easy to design, implement, and sustain broad-based performance improvements and these problems occur in many organizations:

• Current deadlines and expectations prompt the question: Are we doing things right? But how often do we ask: Are we doing the right things? Scant attention is paid to measuring and evaluating the outcomes of our efforts, and to creating the internal capability to act on future opportunities.

• A carefully crafted mission statement has failed to inspire commitment. Framed copies of the statement hang on office walls, yet its meaning and implications are not universally understood. The related ‘service vision’ has not been translated into a consistent action plan or necessary shifts in behavior.

• A succession of unconnected, even incompatible, new programs have been rolled out and later abandoned. They have led to nothing more than mass inoculation against future initiatives.

Scenarios such as these are familiar to most managers today. Yet organizations can, and do, achieve significant improvements in their processes, service delivery, and culture, with high-yielding results. Ensuring that your systems drive quality, productivity, and value is a goal within your reach.

For more information, please contact Tom Gardner or Gerry Shaw by e-mail or by phone at 781-453-6903.

This month's featured resource:

Millennials Go To College

Neil Howe and William Strauss

LifeCourse, 2003

While attending the Council of Independent Colleges meeting in January, I was privileged to listen to Neil Howe discuss the newest generation of teenagers those younger. He and his partner, William Strauss, have labeled them “Millennials” and their research shows great changes on the horizon. We will see it first on the college campus and then, after 2004, in the workplace. When Tom and I deliver workshops on topics such as customer service, we stress that you must know your customers. This book helps you do this.

Howe and Strauss have written about the Millennials before and that work may be the subject of a resource at another time. This month, however, we have chosen to feature their newest work, “Millennials Go To College.” It is very interesting and filled with insights and recommendations regarding how colleges should recruit this generation and implications as to how they will impact the workplace in a few years. We think it is worth owning and recommend it to all of you.

You can purchase copies of the authors’ older works by clicking below on our partner, Amazon.com. For this particular work, you can go to their website  to purchase the book or call them at 800-637-2449.

To read a short summary of the book, and learn about your students or customers, click on the Resources tab on this page. 

As always, please send us your comments and/or suggestions for future summaries.