By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist
How can women and minority business owners be most successful?
See yourself as a plus to the business world, not as a liability. We are all minorities operating in the whole, as do professional specialties within the company’s big picture. Through diversity, each element blends and supports others, as does the corporate visioning process. Major public sector contracts require qualified minority subcontractors. Select partners, and show good faith efforts to procure and execute contracts.
Use your diversity position as reason to conduct strategic planning…dealing honestly and forcefully with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. Doing so will put you light years ahead of the complacent others. Thus, you will initiate more partnerships and carve a market niche. Having to “try harder” and be more focused is a blessing in disguise. Those who don’t strategize will fall by the wayside…whatever their place in multicultural diversity.
“Do teambuilding programs work? And, if so, what type of exercises are most effective?” many ask.
If training is thought of as band-aid surgery to fix problems, then it will fail. Managers who have this “fix those people” mindset are, in fact, the ones who need training.
Teambuilding must be part of the corporate vision first, not a series of exercises delegated to trainers.
I conduct executive think tanks first for corporate management. The success of this enables trainers with the “rank-and-file employees” to be optimally successful. Organizations of all sizes must have such a think tank, which delineates future operations, including education and training.
Training is unfairly blamed and scapegoated for pieces of the organizational mosaic that strategic planning and cohesive corporate vision should have addressed early on. Trainers cannot reconstruct organizational structure, nor can other niche consultants.
Companies owe it to themselves to think and plan…before launching piecemeal training programs. After carefully articulating and understanding direction, then training needs (including teambuilding and empowerment) will stand a chance of being successful.
I recommend that teambuilding training be conducted as part of a company’s strategic plan, with top management participating.
Professional development must be offered to every employee, including mentoring for top executives and up-and-coming young people. Education should show decision-makers all phases of the organization and what it takes to succeed and grow, personally and as a team.
Topics recommended to be taught:
- Marketplace factors outside your company, how they can hurt or help your business.
- Generational work ethics and why young people need executive mentoring to “go the distance” in their careers, offering value to the company and profession.
- The value of conducting independent company assessments, other than the “bean counter” approach.
- Workplace literacy. Much of the workforce does not have basic skills, nor reasoning abilities. They embrace technology, rather than ideas and concepts.
- Understanding and celebrating diversity. This is a blessing, not a mandate.
- Accepting and embracing change. Research shows change is 90 percent beneficial. So why do people fight what is best for them?
- What business the company is really in, where it is headed, with what resources/knowledge/skills, and on what timeline?
- Who plays a part in growth…and how (the process known as visioning).
A regular contributor to www.trainingmag.com, Hank Moore has advised 5,000-plus client organizations worldwide (including 100 of the Fortune 500, public sector agencies, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations). He guides companies through growth strategies, visioning, strategic planning, executive leadership development, Futurism, and Big Picture issues that profoundly affect the business climate. Moore conducts company evaluations, creates the big ideas, and anchors the enterprise to its next tier. The Business Tree is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening, and evolving business, while mastering change. His current book is “The Business Tree,” published by Career Press. Moore also speaks at conferences and facilitates corporate retreats on strategy. He has advised two U.S. Presidents and spoken at five Economic Summits. To read his complete biography, visit http://www.hankmoore.com.
