Get certified now to use this powerful business simulation. Certification for product use will be required in 2012. Benefits of certification include: listing on DLI website, access to experienced simulation user group, receiving DLI referrals.

February 16, 2012
431 Spring Garden St, Greensboro, NC 27401

Register Now

Register online, by calling 336-272-9530, or by emailing smetzger@discoverylearning.com.

Cost

$350 pr $300 if registered before January 6

Agenda

• 8:30 AM to 9:00 AM – Breakfast
• 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM – Abbreviated Simulation Run
• 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM – Working Lunch
• 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM – Classroom Facilitation

McGonigal directs games R&D at the Institute for the Future and is devoting her life’s work to harnessing the enormous time,  energy and skills now devoted to gaming (which at its core is problem-solving) and applying them to solving real-world problems. As I clicked one link after another to learn more about this, I found her website, Gameful, and her definition of the word gameful: “It means to have the spirit, or mindset, of a gamer: someone who is optimistic, curious, motivated, and always up for a tough challenge. It’s like the word “playful” — but gamier! Gameful games are games that have a positive impact on our real lives, or on the real world.”

Then I was astounded to find the following video of her compelling presentation to the prestigious TED audience (an organization devoted to spreading good ideas). We’ve included it below because it’s so thought provoking. Here is McGonigal’s goal in her own words: “Instead of providing gamers with better and more immersive alternatives to reality, I want all of us to be become responsible for providing the world with a better and more immersive reality.”

AvoLead professionals are trained to bring transformational change to organizations of all sizes, domestic and global. Call us to discuss ways that we might bring the power principles of gaming into your organization, so the world can be made better by what you offer.

Do you think this is crazy…fascinating…pie in the sky? We’d love to know.

April 21 • 1:00-2:30pm • Live Webinar

additional dial-in information will be distributed 1 week prior to webinar

REGISTER NOW

by calling 336.272.9530 or email smetzger@discoverylearning.com

Discovery Learning, Inc. announces the introduction of a new assessment tool, the Influence Style Indicator™. Designed by Chris Musselwhite, president and CEO of Discovery Learning, Inc. and Tammie Plouffe, managing partner of Innovative Pathways, the Influence Style Indicator measures an individual’s dominant, secondary and underutilized influence styles.

Get certified now to use this new innovative assessment by attending the April 21st online certification workshop.

*Certification or qualification is required for product use. Benefits of certification include: listing on DLI website, access to experienced survey user group, receiving DLI referrals.

Invite a fellow consultant and discover a new tool for your kit at Discovery Learning®

Additional Training in Toronto June 21 — check Discovery Learning website for updates

Also find Discovery Learning, Inc. on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube

Perry Buffet’s very interesting article “Using Influence to Get Things Done” in the February 22, 2011 issue of strategy + business highlights a dilemma often faced by senior management: the need to advocate tough-sell positions in typically collegial small groups such as councils, boards, or committees, where critical decisions are often made informally. Decisions made at this level, even when they have to be passed up the line for approval, can be critical to an organization’s success. “Thus,” concludes Buffet,  “an executive’s ability to influence peers and superiors as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving such issues as strategy, budgets, brand positioning and pricing, and capital investments is a valuable skill — a skill that could be called influential competence.”

Recognizing the critical value of influence competence to the ability of their executive clients to achieve maximum effectiveness, AvoLead professionals trained recently at Discovery Learning, Inc. in Greensboro, NC, to become Influence Style Indicator™ Assessment Consultants by learning to administer and analyze the exciting new Influence Style Indicator™ assessment tool.

The assessment tool helps the client understand the three primary influence orientations and the five main influencing styles, and it identifies his or her own predominant style. Even more important, it offers specific and implementable techniques and suggestions for interacting effectively with others whose predominant influence styles might be different.

Could you benefit from learning how to engage more effectively with your peers to get things done and add more value to your group or organization? Besides individual assessment, the Influence Style Indicator tool can be administered within a group or team to help members understand themselves and how they can work more strategically with their co-workers to accomplish established goals. Call AvoLead for more information.

When has influence competence been important to your career? Leave comments below.

How refreshing and empowering to find a book on contemporary leadership that not only frames relevant issues that organization leaders face by identifying boundaries they are likely to encounter, but it also offers practical solutions to spanning these boundaries based on a decade of real-world research by leadership professionals at the Center for Creative Leadership. I’ll wager that readers of this book will: 1) either already be dealing with many of the issues presented and find the discussions a veritable lifeline or 2) they will instantly recognize situations they have encountered in the past and understand for the first time why they were so intractable and challenging.

The rapidly shifting landscape of corporate and nonprofit leadership creates unique pitfalls as well as opportunities. Research surveys of over 125 senior level executives revealed an appallingly low number who felt they were very effective at knowing how to collaborate effectively across boundaries in their current leadership roles. Five primary boundary types were identified for discussion purposes, though the authors recognized that often they are closely linked:

1. Vertical boundaries between hierarchical levels of the organization
2. Horizontal boundaries between functions
3. Stakeholder boundaries with customers and vendors
4. Demographic boundaries in working with people from diverse groups
5. Geographic boundaries of distance and region

Concluding that boundary spanning practices can turn boundaries into frontiers ripe with untapped potential, the authors explore what these practices might be, providing compelling actual stories/examples to illustrate them, and offering exercises and strategies to implement them in your own situation.

The authors first discuss the boundary management practices of Buffering (Creating Safety) and Reflecting (Fostering Respect). Then they move into practices that forge common ground: Connection (Building Trust) and Mobilizing (Developing Community). Next in the evolution of boundary-spanning are the practices that develop new frontiers: Weaving (Advancing interdependence) and Transforming (Enabling Reinvention).

“Together, these practices combine to create what authors Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason call the Nexus Effect. The Nexus Effect allows groups to be more agile in response to changing markets; be more flexible in devising and deploying cross-functional learning and problem-solving capabilities; work with partners in deeper, more open relationships; empower virtual teams; and create a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive organization that brings out everybody’s best.” (From the Editorial Review in Amazon)

While the challenges described here will be familiar to those who follow leadership trends and practices, I believe the authors have developed and presented what many will find to be an original, useful and implementable approach to thinking about and managing them.

What boundary-spanning practices has YOUR organization used? Please let us know in the comment section below.

The workshop will be held February 14-16, 2011 at the Solutions Center in the Research Triangle, NC (http://www.thesolutioncenter.com/Directions.html).

More Information:

You may already be familiar with or certified in the Conflict Dynamics Profile, a powerful 360 tool for helping clients understand and work effectively with conflict in their lives and organizations.  This workshop is the next generation of applied knowledge of CCD’s solid work in this area.

Integration of ideas: The Course is shaped around Craig Runde and Tim Flanagan’s model of individual conflict competence, and Sherod Miller’s work on communications skills that encourages people to Cool Down, Slow Down and Reflect, and Engage Constructively.

Tools You Can Use: The course introduces practical maps, tools, skills and processes that improve talking and listening skills, help analyze conflict situations and systematically resolve conflicts.  These help participants manage conflict from within the Conflict Competence SkillsZone®, a place where communications is both focused and flowing.

CLICK on this link (2010 12 23_BCCFlier) for a more detailed description of the program this course qualifies you to implement.

The price for those who are certified is $1325; non-certified $1695.  Remember, completion of this workshop will serve as certification for both delivering the training modules and using the Conflict Dynamics Profile tool.

To register, call Patty Viscomi at 727-864-8972.

Questions?  Email Bonnie Wright at bonnie.wright@avolead.com.

We are so grateful to Bonnie Wright for her diligent efforts to bring this important work to our area.  We hope you’ll join us for this learning opportunity to make the investment to add to your leadership tool kit!

“The only constant is change.”

In his fascinating review of the best writing on business strategy[1], Walter Kiechel III guides his readers through the relatively recent history of “Strategy” as a business concept and corporate planning tool. It emerged in the 1960s from a corporate culture in which business leaders “felt themselves largely at the mercy of market forces, with little of the knowledge they would need to truly determine their own future.”

In Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise, first published in 1962 by MIT Press, author Alfred D. Chandler Jr. first established the principle for which he is remembered: “Structure follows strategy” and “A strategy is a response to changes in a business’s environment.”

Kiechel next credits Kenneth R. Andrews, and his 1971 book The Concept of Corporate Strategy, with the definition of Strategy that has driven much modern-day perspective: “the pattern of major objectives, purposes or goals and essential policies and plans for achieving those goals, stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or is to be in and the kind of company it is or is to be.” Andrews went on to include a long list of criteria for evaluating a strategy, many of which have clearly been ignored in light of recent corporate failures. These criteria are now back in the spotlight as bank regulators and corporate watchdogs ask probing questions about sufficiency of available resources, risk versus reward, management communication with those who must implement their strategy, and alignment of values with goals.

The evolution of Strategy continued with Michael E. Porter’s 1980 publication of Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, in which he most famously stated that Strategy involves only three alternatives: 1) Cost leadership; 2) Differentiation; or 3) Niche domination. He warned that companies trying to do all three were doomed.

Backlash to this came from the bestseller In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.. Despite the embarrassment that many of the companies cited by them as “best-run” failed to live up to expectations in the years following the book’s publication, Kiechel reminds us that Peters and Waterman introduced the essential concept that Strategy must include consideration of “human energies and aspirations” as well as “an exercise in numbers and charts.

As business cycles have exposed the strengths and weaknesses of different theories, the temptation to abandon strategic planning as a viable tool is tempting. Kiechel concludes, “Probably the hottest term in discussions these days is adaptive.”

So what is an organization supposed to do? Many leaders say their most formidable challenge is deciding how to guide their organization through iceberg-littered channels and wondering if they’ll ever get back to open seas again. They face unhappy choices and wonder how to scale back for efficiency without stripping their organization of the human and physical assets it needs to grow again when the economy turns around.

AvoLead is the leadership consultancy with the tools to equip leaders facing these and other challenges. Besides having professionals with Change Readiness Gauge^TM certification that enables them to help their clients survive and thrive, AvoLead offers workshops such as Leadership Resilience: Leveraging Your Strength in Turbulent Times. Call us today at (919) 450-8930 to find out how to put our expertise to work for your organization.

Photo credit: Jeu d’échecs en pierre” by Pascal Thauvin, via stock.xchng

We all know this statement from Andrew Carnegie is true:

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision…the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

Your clients’ organizations need PressTime Simulation, Discovery Learning Inc.’s dynamic and engaging simulation that’s now distributed with web-enabled software. The powerful program has garnered worldwide praise for its effectiveness in teaching team leaders and participants how to cut through limiting thoughts and behaviors to achieve common goals more quickly and efficiently.

Certification is required for product use, so your clients need you to step up to the plate and be there for them. You need this certification to round out your credentials. Don’t miss this opportunity coming up in Greensboro, NC, on October 21-22, 2010, to take the first step towards certification. Certified trainers will be listed on the DLI Website, be eligible for DLI referrals, and gain access to an experienced survey user group.

Register by calling 336-272-9530 or email smetzger@discoverylearning.com and ask about subsequent certification steps. The price is only $250, and the experience will be priceless. Invite a fellow trainer and add a new arrow to your quiver of tools.

Click here for more information about PressTime Simulation.

Click here to register now.

For a downloadable brochure, Click HERE.

Don’t miss it!

Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.

Henry Ford

One of Godin’s gifts is taking every-day things and turning them sideways from the way they are usually used to extract more value and function. He’s done this with PowerPoint in a recent blog post called “Really Bad Powerpoint.” It’s worth reading the whole post, but his key points were so simple and so compelling that I thought members of the AvoLead community would find value for themselves and/or their clients:

• He reminds us that in any presentation, we must transfer emotion and sell our topic. “Logic is not enough,” and neither are boring bullet points or cluttered slides with too much information.
• Use cue-cards to capture the essence of what you want to say (i.e., don’t read your slides).
• “Make slides reinforce your words, not repeat them.” He suggests using quality photos to add emotional depth to what you’re saying.
• Create a written “leave-behind” document with details, notes, and references. Tell people up front that you’ll give it to them at the end so they don’t have to write everything down. Then they can concentrate on getting the emotional and intellectual gist of your message without being distracted by writing, and they’ll have something to take home that reinforces what you’ve said.
• Don’t be vague about what you want from your listeners…ask them. Do you want them to take action? Buy something? Sign up for something? Remember something? Be sure to be clear what this is.

Here are Godin’s five rules for a great PowerPoint presentation:

1. Always use fewer than seven words on a slide. He feels VERY strongly about this.
2. Avoid trite graphics – spring for quality stock photos.
3. Forget the transitions (dissolves, spins, etc.) that PowerPoint offers.
4. Use sound effects strategically and pick your own, not the built-in ones.
5. “Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.”

Keep the end goal in mind: an audience that is engaged and interested and will be more likely to remember the core part of your message. Godin loves to buck the status quo and always encourages his readers to be unique. That’s how we become memorable. He knows it’s hard, but his message is, “It’s worth it!”

Never has such a measurement been more important or so critical as we help our client organizations assess and embrace change from so many different directions. Quickly identifying their readiness to manage change can better equip them to survive and thrive.

Get certified now to use this valuable assessment by attending the June 1st workshop. Benefits include listing on DLI’s website, access to experienced survey user group, and DLI referrals. Certification or qualification is required for product use. The $250 package includes an electronic facilitator guide, a PowerPoint presentation, a webinar, a follow-up coaching call, 10 individual assessments, 1 group report, and access to the online assessment center (a $1090 value).

• June 1, 8:30am to noon
• Discovery Learning, Inc., 431 Spring Garden St., Greensboro, NC 27401
• Call 336-272-9530  or Email sgoins@discoverylearning.com to reserve your spot!