Milamber Blog

We don’t train people how to become good MD’s or CEO’s and when we do give them the role we don’t really give them the support mechanisms they need to truly maximise their potential.

Having ended up coaching a few MD’s or CEO’s recently I found myself reflecting on the best way to help these individuals when dealing with issues.  

Firstly, you need to recognise their role is lonely. MD’s often don’t have anyone they can confide in to be able to just talk through issues or challenges they are contemplating dealing with. i.e. they can’t talk to staff (because talk turns to gossip) because they might be addressing sensitive issues that are going to make staff jittery.

Secondly, when dealing with working out how to handle these issues or challenges MD’s or CEO’s often just need some space and time to talk through things to see if they have missed something or a chance to reflect or discuss the various options (because there are usually several routes to sorting out an issue). Interestingly, what I have found is just by LISTENING and the other person talking to you that process of communication forces them to formalise their thinking and helps them clarify a plan or strategy or tactic as to how to address the issue or challenge. This process of talking things through helps sanity check what they plan to do, and makes sure they have not missed anything obvious by being in the trees and elevates them to having more of a helicopter view on the situation.

Thirdly, once that initial communication has happened they start to realise where the holes are themselves, or where a plan is ropey and needs further work. And if not you can nudge them to think about areas that need further thought. Plus by being the third party and not in the weeds of the day to day you get a much better helicopter view of what the problem is and the solutions being proposed and can give guidance or direction to help them hone a clearer solution.

REDTRAY hosted for their top clients an ‘Inspiration Day’ at the Park Plaza Hotel, in London, on the 11th May 2010. www.redtray.co.uk  

It was a great honour that they very kindly invited me to speak at the event on the subject of ‘The Power of Media in Business Education’, other speakers included Robin Ryde on his current pet subject, ‘Thought Leadership – Moving Hearts and Minds’.

See previous Milamber Blog on Robin Ryde: http://www.milamberblog.com/robin-ryde-modern-leadership/

For the last few years apart from talking to staff or doing publicity for the company I have been doing a limited amount of public speaking, and I have to say it is thoroughly enjoyable to be doing it again.

Firstly, there is that element of nervousness because some one has trusted you enough to give you a platform to talk about something and the main objective is not to mess it up and make them happy that they did put their trust in you. Then when you do get in front of an audience and start talking you start to get that buzz – especially when you have a free rein to talk about topics that you are passionate about. Personally, I find it is great fun engaging with an audience, making them laugh (with luck), and hopefully giving people some useful insights, so that they  will remember them and hopefully use them in their day to day working lives. And if you do a good job you get some positive and appreciative feedback which is itself rewarding.

Jon Butress, the Marketing Director of Redtray, kindly sent this note after the event, “Thank you for speaking at the REDTRAY Inspirations Day event yesterday.  The feedback from yesterday has been excellent with everyone regarding the day as successful and informative.  Your presentation on Digital Media contributed significantly to the day and we have had many informal comments praising how valuable they found your session.”

Job done.

An e-learning discussion forum reminded me about this issue of storytelling. Let us not forget storytelling has been around for thousands of years, the oral tradition of passing on knowledge from one generation to the next has been successful due to the telling of stories intertwined with messages.

I have always sought to learn from the best, in Judo it was Bryan Jacks, in pole vault it was Sergey Bubka, in football Peter Shilton (I was a centre back or sweeper), and in business from highly successful entrepreneurs or business leaders acting as mentors, and the most powerful lessons I have learnt from any of these experts was when they made a point by telling a story. As I got older I realized that the art of storytelling is a rare commodity and in business storytelling as a tool is really not being used as much as it should. One of the reasons I co-founded Fifty Lessons.

So one of the best business lessons I have heard came from when we filmed Professor Jay Conger, who today is the Henry Kravis Research Chair Professor, at the Kravis Leadership Institute. Professor Conger is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s experts on leadership. He has done extensive research into leadership, boards of directors, organizational change and the training and development of leaders and managers. Professor Conger has been a research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. He has been at  London Business School in the role of Professor of Organizational Behavior. Harvard Business School has also asked him to help redesign its organizational behavior course around leadership issues. Additionally, Professor Conger has been involved in executive education at INSEAD. An accomplished writer, he has written or co-written over 10 books and 100 scholarly articles.

So he advocates that strategic stories in business are powerful tools, told well they deliver recall and remind the audience – your managers – your employees – of the messages you want them to remember when you are not there.

The 6 critical things in crafting a good business story are as follows:

1)      Keep it short 1 to 2 minutes at most.

2)      Don’t have too many characters – 2,3 at most.

3)      Keep it simple – and deliver 1 message at a time.

4)      Tell the story in the present tense as if it is really happening.

5)      Use visual images – a picture tells a thousand words – but link the visual images to your theme or message.

6)      Repeat a phrase or word that reflects the essence of the message.

For over a decade now I have been fascinated by the heated arguments that are sparked around the issue of neuro-linguistic programming or NLP.  These differences are at odds with what NLP is meant to be about. This recurring theme of conflict was highlighted recently and I again wondered why do people get heated about this subject?

In the pub on Good Friday, chatting with friends, who in their professional lives are i) a Consultant Neurologist (the highly qualified medical school consultant), and ii) Change Consultant (works with organisations to help deliver Change programmes) when the subject of NLP comes up………………my interest levels spiked, and I made a bet with myself that this would turn into an interesting debate and was unlikely to have a winner, especially considering the background of my two friends.  

You see I have inevitably found over the years that when the matter of NLP is raised it causes conflict between certain people especially if they have psychotherapy backgrounds versus a psychiatry background. The subject is one I put into the marmite category – you love it or hate it.

If you go onto Wikipedia you get the following definition – Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a controversial approach to psychotherapy and organizational change based on “a model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behaviour and the subjective experiences (esp. patterns of thought) underlying them” and “a system of alternative therapy based on this which seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication, and to change their patterns of mental and emotional behaviour”.

Full article on NeuroLinguistic Programming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

Now if you dig on the discussion page of Wikipedia – this is where the editors who create the definitions have a public debate – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neuro-linguistic_programming you will see that there is a heated debate about definitions, changes, and even conflict of interest issues raised. Not even those that are writing about the subject can avoid getting drawn into the funnel cloud of what often becomes a tornado around this subject.

Again look into the history – Bandler and Grinder are the two co-founders who started talking about NLP in the 1970’s but were still in legal disputes with each other as late as 1996.

So the question that I have tried to understand over the years is why this dynamic tension around NLP. I think there are two main views one is scientific, one is more practical and business orientated. This is a good summary of the arguments amongst the players from a scientific standpoint.

‘The main scientific criticisms of NLP are firstly, critics argue that NLP’s claims for scientific respectability are not based on the scientific method. In response advocates of NLP argue that NLP is a pragmatic discipline, largely interested in what “works” rather than existing theory. Second, there is a lack of empirical research or evidence to support the core aspects of NLP or the claim that NLP is an effective and rapid set of techniques for enhancing psycho-therapeutic practice, interpersonal communication and social influence. One of the originators of NLP, John Grinder, retorts that the meta model was based on his expertise in linguistics and empirical work in collaboration with Richard Bandler in the early 1970s. However, critics maintain that the experimental research that does exist has been overall unsupportive of the central assumptions and core models of NLP, and that it is therefore up to the proponents to back up their models and claims of effectiveness with evidence.’ (Wikipedia 2010).

The issues around NLP became clearer to me when I was listening to a business ‘Change’ story.  As you will see from my synopsis of the story a lot of the themes or principles that NLP tries to address are covered:  

We were filming Lord Sharman and he tells the story of how he had been in charge of the change programme at KPMG. During that time his team had created something called the ‘Hustlers Guide to Change at KPMG’ a short booklet of opinions from KPMG people about what they thought people needed to know to get on in KPMG. As part of that process several contributors suggested that there should be a weekly e-mail that went out to update people on the change programme and to talk through some of their experiences, and to share some of the successes of the program.

This weekly e-mail became a powerful diagnostic tool. What Lord Sharman realized in sending out the weekly e-mail, is that he had created a very useful tool that simply worked out who was interested in the change programme and who was not. You see most of the people opened the e-mail and read it, those that didn’t were not. And once his team checked in with these individuals they were able to identify the passive resistors of the change project, i.e. those that silently sat there and did nothing and because of their silence the most difficult to convince to change. Once they had been identified then you could actively work on them and help them adapt or change.     

Now at no point during this interview does Lord Sharman refer to this process or exercise in the context of NLP. But as I reflected on the scenario he experienced and if you look at the definition of NLP and what Sharman’s overall objectives were this was in fact a good real life case study.

Plus it highlighted another key aspect of what several practitioners of NLP have said to me over the years, which is that the techniques really work and they can effect an individual and help them change.

In the Lord Sharman scenario the e-mail tool begins with starting out as a communications tool but by using the tool in real life some smart people realised that it was in fact an excellent diagnostic tool.

But let us ask this – if these tools or techniques do work – are we really making sure that we are using them properly? Are we teaching the users what effect they can have on their subjects? Are we teaching how to handle things safely and in a proper manner?  

One of the biggest dynamic tensions is that the training on NLP can be anything from 2 days for superficial learning to several months for more in depth understanding. Those that have a superficial knowledge of something don’t really understand its uses or the full influence it can have and therefore do not understand the dangers they and the people they use it on face. This is a source for conflict.

Another tension is ‘Change’ itself – change in people or even more challenging change in an organisation takes time, effort and needs a combination of things to be pulled together to be truly effective. As we evolve through a ‘Change’ process we find some things work for some people and don’t for others, the same is evident in organisational change. So often delivering change needs a combination of things to make it effective, it is not black and white and more grey – again a source for divergent opinions and heated debate.

So going back to the pub and my two friends the only clear outcome between them was they differed in opinion and as such I won my small bet to myself and bought the next round of drinks.

Charlotte Street Hotel was the venue for my meeting with three extremely talented individuals – Adrian Bliss, Benjamin Robbins, and Toby Stubbs.

What are they doing well as they have managed to get Stephen Fry to sell on their behalf why don’t we let him tell you their story….enjoy!

Effectively the trio are the three producers of “Clovis Dardentor” and they are the the creators of the BUYACREDIT.COM project.

The guys started making films together first at primary school, and then at secondary school where their skills developed considerably. Whilst studying Drama, Art and Media (amongst others) they started getting a feel for the different workings of the film industry. Before long, they set up their own small company and began making short films, promotional films, tribute videos and charity promos whilst still in school. Over the two years of running this company, they picked up quite a bit of knowledge.  Ben worked for a short while at TalkBack Thames, Adrian at Pinewood Studios and Toby at Elstree Studios, all whilst still in full time education.

When the trio, or “film-puppies” (as Stephen Fry has affectionately labelled them) found Jules Verne’s forgotten novel “Clovis Dardentor” in the British library they just knew that they had to make it into a film. They loved the story, the characters and almost everything about it.  However, then the penny dropped and they realised that making it would be (almost) impossible. No production company would look at them…no investors would even go near them.  They were still in school.

So when the BUYACREDIT.COM idea came about, things looked a lot more possible. The guys started running their project in school and in and around lessons. 

As producers they adapted Jules Verne’s novel and approached a screenwriter, Lizzie Hopley, to write the screenplay. Since then, they have been pushing tirelessly through the development stages of “Clovis Dardentor” whilst raising awareness of the fundraising project, BUYACREDIT.COM.

Inevitably, their ability to make a good film as teenagers has been heavily questioned by both the press and the public. Understanding this, the trio produced and directed their own short film, “JAM” to prove their wares as film producers and directors. Now that it is complete, they are going full-steam ahead on the development of “Clovis Dardentor” whilst constantly raising awareness of the BUYACREDIT.COM project to raise funds.

“JAM” is a short promotional featurette for “Clovis Dardentor” and the BUYACREDIT.COM project. It is a short film linked to the feature and designed to prove their wares and capabilities.

“JAM” tells the story of the dastardly Mrs Desirandelle (one of the features principle characters) as she desperately tries to win the annual village Jam competition. Inspired by Jules Verne and his original novel, “JAM” stars Annette Badland, Lynda Bellingham, Paul Daniels, Stephen Fry, Patricia Hodge, Debbie McGee, Gary Rhodes, Phillip Schofield and Frank Skinner.

To watch Jam clik here………………

http://www.clovisdardentormovie.com/jam/

I have to say having now met the guys they have secured some great stars who are genuinely  interested in their project. The next challenge is harnessing that to execute the bigger goal of getting the funding to make the ubermovie. They have all the raw elements in place to do that, they need to  keep focused, and put in place a clear plan and if they do that they will get there. 

Frankly, I look forward to seeing Clovis Dardentor. Well done Guys and keep the momentum going!

On the 15th March Jane Bird’s article in the FT carried a line about Milamber Group at the end of the article.

This line was picked up that day by Rhonda Jacobs in the US who in turn sends an e-mail wanting to get Professor Tichy ( www.noeltichy.com ) at the University of Michigan and I on a call to introduce each other.

Noel’s background is fascinating……………………….Dr. Noel M. Tichy is a Professor of Management & Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he is the director of the Global Business Partnership, which for over a decade ran the Global Leadership Program, a 36-company consortium of Japanese, European and North American companies who partnered to develop senior executives and conduct action research on globalization in China, India, Russia and Brazil……………Plus he has several books publishedincluding one with Warren Bennis, so while we were getting a call scheduled I did some networking and it turnsout a great friend of mine Tim Moore is the publisher for one of Noel’s colleagues at the University of Michigan CK Prahlad.

By the end of that week we had our call and found a great deal of alignment and have brought Tim Moore into the loop and are looking into ways to work together.  

It just shows that one small article can be the seed for something much bigger.

We have over the last few weeks run a number of workshops at Ashridge Business School to plan out how to tackle the daunting problem of narrowing down the research we need to do on this project.

For those that attended from Ashridge Business School, PERA, Pearson Education, Redtray, 2SMS, Lifecycle and our team at Milamber – thank you.

We made good progress!

The biggest challenge we have on this project is its scale so we need to work out what is the most important research we must conduct first, which will have the greatest impact.

Ashridge is an amazing place – the perfect location for debate, reflection, and sorting out ideas. Ashridge itself is set within 190 acres of beautifully kept gardens which are also housed within 5,000 acres of National Trust estate.

Ashridge Business School was founded in 1959 and is now ranked number one in the UK for tailored Executive Education in the 2009 FT rankings. However, the estate dates back to the 13^th Century. 

So within these settings we started to contemplate the issues we faced.

Our Project is all about creating a next generation Digital Library – a global repository for learning – and the point of an EC funding project is that in order to develop the solution properly we have to submit a proposal to justify the research we want to and work out how best to do it.

One of the critical issues that we face in building a Digital Library is the Digital Preservation of the content.

We mentioned scale earlier so let us start by understanding the scale of the problem.

Imagine if you will education or learning content from all over the world being housed in a library. We can imagine and visualise a library of books because most of us will have seen one. But now add to this an archive of digital images, pictures, video’s, short texts or whole documents, programs, assessments, simulations, games, audio, in multiple languages and much more.

Imagine if you could upload content to the library from your own organisation – how much knowledge based content or education based content does an organisation like Microsoft or IBM house itself?

Or what happens if with current technology you can upload to the library your own personal content – your notes on lecturers, your lessons on business or life.

Now imagine hundreds of thousands of organisations uploading their learning content and/or literally millions of people inputting their own learning be it in text, audio, or video formats into this library.

You start to understand the problem of scale.

So just housing this content creates lots of problems.

We have to catalogue the library and create links and tags so that people can easily find what they need when they most want it.

We have to find ways to navigate through vast amounts of content to get the right content for you when you need it, in the right format.

We have to preserve the content because digital content is dynamic it evolves and that opens up another can of worms.

Besser’s 5 Problems

Howard Besser Professor of Cinema Studies and Director of New York University’s Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program (MIAP), as well as being Senior Scientist for Digital Library Initiatives for NYU’s Library sums up the key issues facing preserving digital assets or content into 5 key areas:

a) The viewing problem – Digital content needs technology to view them. But technology evolves so fast (software/hardware/formats) – will the technology be around in say 20 years when you want to view the data.

Who remembers Cine Film, or Betamax video tapes?

Another example that is around today is web video content. Video can be housed in different formats. The most popular are; Windows Media Player, Quick Time, and Flash. So what happens if one person edits the Flash version of a piece of content and another person edits, with different cuts, the Windows Media Player version. Two different derivative pieces of content have now been created out of the one original. Ten years from now will all three pieces of content still be around so we can see how the edits have changed from the original?

b) The Scrambling Problem – Content is compressed or scrambled to assist in storage or to protect the intellectual property in the content. The algorithms that do the compressing or scrambling, again change over time or are no longer supported. So for example if the company that produced the algorithm or software to scramble goes bust the content can not be unscrambled or uncompressed and you can’t read or access the content and if you do so by ‘unwrapping it yourself’ you could legally be breaking copyright laws by doing so.

c) The Inter-Relation problem – Digital information or content is often linked to other items. If links are not maintained, then the core information is incorrect, incomplete, or does not make sense. Example – where a document links to a web page that has died.

d) The Custodial Problem – who looks after the digital document? Do we allocate librarians to do this? And if a change is made to a document do we need to keep versions of the subsequent documents.

e) The Translation Problem – several issues here, if software is used to interpret content and software changes version to version, could the content be changed, and how meaningful are the changes. What about translating from languages – different people interpret different meanings in words, and as we translate the meanings change and are these minor or material changes?

Context

Aside from these 5 issues Besser alludes to another major problem in the preservation of digital content. It is the context of that content and because digital content is dynamic and easily changed, it evolves so fast that we easily loose the original meaning and the original context through its evolution. The more people that touch or edit the content the faster we lose control.

For example if you have a group of people in a circle and one person starts by whispering a phrase to the person next to them, and they pass on what they have heard to the next person, and you go round the group from person to person in the same way – you never get the same phrase at the start as you do by the time you finish. In fact the differences in meaning by the end can be hilarious hence it is played as a children’s game.

Over the years we have used oral traditions to pass on stories, or knowledge from one generation to the next. Elders would seek out protégé’s to pass on parables, or stories entwined with meaning or holding knowledge. The Elder would make sure that by repetition and oversight the protégé learnt the oral history accurately to pass on the communities wisdom. It was and still is considered an honour and a mark of responsibility to be given this knowledge.

If you think about it. The passing on of knowledge in this way is in itself an important process to which parameters must be adhered to show respect for being given that responsibility. In this way the culture surrounding this process has created a framework for preserving the authenticity of the content or stories being passed on.

Our challenge is we must do the same in the digital world.    

Royalties and who owns what?

In today’s world someone usually owns the underlying content – it might be an individual, a media house, a company or an organisation. For example if you buy a book several people or companies get paid for your use of that content in the case of the book – the Author, the Agent, the Publisher, and the Distributor.

So to start with we have to find a way to track the ownership of the underlying content. That can be reasonably simple if it is a simple item like a book, but it gets more complicated when we start to take apart content and begin to mix and match content together to create hybrid products of multiple pieces of different types of content which we can do when they become digital in structure.

In the digital world when we break down a content asset into objects e.g. an object may be a single chapter out of a book, or a case study or perhaps a short video. We have to keep track of where that content object came from and how much we are using and who owns that content because if we are going to make money out of that object we will have to pay the underlying owner a Royalty.

Because digital content is dynamic and can change by the use of authoring tools so easily we find our selves with new content derivatives made up of several objects of content – we call these complex content objects. We can take a chapter of a book, a video and a case study and together we have created a new complex object – what we call a “Nugget”. Again if you think about it several parties could have contributed content to create that nugget and our system or digital library has to track who owns what so that if we make money out of that content or nugget we can pay Royalties back to the owners.

Effect of Communities on the Growth of the Library.

The corporate world is made up of Large Enterprises (LEs), which can have thousands of employees and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which can be extremely small in the number of employees they have.

LEs commonly access learning and training content from Learning Management Systems, the Internet and Intranets. Such content is protected by a number of security layers and firewalls. Access to the content and how it can be used is usually protected by HR and IT departments.

User-generated content such as content produced through video uploading and sharing, blogging and writing articles, image and link sharing is difficult due to the stringent access control. Therefore, it is difficult to add additional digital content by users to content already existing within large corporations.

SMEs, in contrast to LEs, not only access most of the digital content they need via the Internet using laptops and computers, but also mobile devices. Furthermore, due to the smaller sizes of SMEs, and the lack of departmental control mechanisms, it is easier for users to create user-generated content in order to produce value added information.

These differences in ability create digital content which can be explained further with an example;  a lesson on how to hire someone for work. In a LE, a lesson may consist of a text-based web page, a video on the procedure and a simulation that takes you through a role play of the process. No additional user-generated content can be added easily. In a SME, a similar lesson may contain no text, a video and simulation but additional multimedia elements, such as other videos and simulations of users who have carried out similar tasks, and steps of the process written up in a blog.

The impact of these differences is that the evolution of digital content differs. In a LE, the process of creating, archiving and using digital content remains more static and standardised, as opposed to SMEs, whose content has more derivatives in nature and evolves at a faster rate. As digital objects in SMEs evolve quicker, their complexity also increases. Further, as the objects evolve and further derivatives are created, the context changes.  The context can change in terms of meaning and usage.

Take a video tutorial about how to fire someone at work. The video contains some audio in it. If a small part of this audio is extracted from the video and used for a different lesson on how to reinstate an employee who has been through a redundancy process (but did not end up being made redundant), then this would change the meaning of the audio clip and change the reason for its use.

If we think about Large Enterprises (LE’s) and Small to Medium Enterprises (SME’s) as two different Communities or Eco-systems .

a)      LE’s act as ‘controlled gated communities’ with Objects being delivered to Groups or often Mass Audiences (e.g. different employees of the NHS).

b)      SME’s act as ‘uncontrolled non-gated’ Communities of Individuals with Objects being delivered to niche audiences – acting as Crowds (all the individuals at the Berlin Wall when it fell).

In LE’s, HR, IT, and Legal departments, act as gates. So content objects in this eco-system have to be processed so that they are ‘cleared’ and ‘standardized’ but this takes time to go through this process. So derivatives do not evolve as quickly. Also a single user is creating derivatives for mass audiences i.e. large groups audiences. The context of a message or brand in the object is therefore much more controlled.  

SME’s will be much more active in ‘mashing’ objects (combining objects) together to create new derivatives, users will also add their own content much more prolifically, so creating diversity from the original objects context. So here we have multiple single users creating new derivative objects.  These will move quickly, flow further away from the original context and change meaning – e.g. the game of people in a Group whispering a message to each other described earlier. This effect when influenced by a crowd of individuals and mixed with multiple sources of user generated content – creates multiple embedded structures that need to be tracked and put in context. Plus we need an understanding of how the core original object is being transformed away from its original purpose or meaning.

Research already being carried out.

As part of our own research we have been linking up with the leading Academics across Europe to find out what is the ‘State of the Art’ on current thinking in relating to Digital Preservation.

For example the EC recently funded a project called CASPAR:

CASPAR – Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval – is an integrated project co-financed by the European Union within the Sixth Framework Program Support (Sixth Framework Program – Priority IST-2005-2.5.10 ” Access to and preservation of cultural and scientific resources “).

http://www.utc.fr/caspar/wiki/pmwiki.php

There are other Projects that we have been looking into InterPARES, PLANET etc.

In our discussions with these leading Academics we have been looking at how the current ‘State of the Art’ in Digital Preservation will be evolved further by our work. And as we did so it became clear that our next generation Digital Library is pushing the envelope in what is the current ‘State of the Art’ and it became evident that we are moving Digital Preservation into unknown territories. It is therefore, critical that we focus and define what are the next set of ‘Research’ questions that need to be answered for us to have the greatest impact not just for our own project but for the advancement of other European companies and organizations that are going to need to preserve digital content.

If you have ever had the joy of haggling with the wise old men in the souk’s (marketplace) of the middle east over a Persian rug or kelim - you will begin to appreciate the true art of selling. So for me when I meet a rare ‘Master’ in the art of selling it is pure pleasure. Watching the skill of the craft being handled by one so deftly is a joy and last week I had the pleasure of meeting up with Mark Savinson, CEO of Accredit a true virtuoso in the world of sales.

The challenge these days is that there are few real ‘Masters’ of sales who have the technical know-how married with the gift of the gab to teach these rare skills to our up and coming sales people and more importantly our sales managers. Why our sales managers – let’s face it – our sales mangers mentor and teach our apprentice sales people and if we have proficient, skilled sales mangers then the fundamental skills of selling are passed on sagely to our sales people. But if our sales managers are inept then they will cause chaos in our sales people and create habits that in some cases can never be broken so that is why it is imperative that we invest time and effort in developing our sales managers proficiently.  

Mark started Accredit in May 2007 to focus on providing tools to effectively evaluate sales people and their managers, and work with organisations to use these tools to embed a coaching culture within Sales Management – especially the sales manager.

Mark has built Accredit with a solid reputation of delivering pragmatic solutions which help organisations identify and address skill, process or knowledge gaps in sales people and making them better.

Already Accredit has assessed over 1500 sales people who sell into FTSE 100 companies, UK SMBs and European mid-market and large enterprises and helped them improve their game.

Mark has created a range of tools and self-learning modules that help sales managers identify how effectively their people run sales calls & meetings and then a tool kit to coach these sales managers to become even more effective and generate more revenue and margin. Mark gave me access to his latest tool www.esquaredm.com and I had a play.

One of the lessons I have always tried to pass on to my sales people, and the managers that I am mentoring is the need to focus on the important not the urgent. So I opened up the coaching materials and here I find a tutorial on this very subject. I have to say it was excellent, visual, succinct, and elucidated the lesson thoroughly so you could understand the importance of the important simply – excuse the very bad pun!

This type of coaching material is enhanced by Accredit’s philosophy of building sustainability into our sales managers. What do we mean by that? Well if you think about it to remove the peak and trough syndrome in most novice sales people you have to embed in them disciplines, processes and practices that create positive behaviors that generate consistent results. It’s like the training and conditioning of athletes that creates muscle memory. So when the 110m hurdler is released from the blocks by the gun and skims over the first hurdle it is second nature to them because they have practiced and practiced and practiced.

So what Accredit has done is create focused programmes around sales accreditation for new products and solutions. This includes creating “sales ready” messages for example designed to get the initial meeting going, to then give guidance on how to run the meeting, to support via accreditation the sales people on their ability to effectively sell the product/solution on an ongoing basis.

Now if you meet Mark face to face you will instantly recognise a man who has a stage presence, he is a commanding orator. He has a reputation of being an outspoken evangelist on sales issues, and he is publically encouraging sales people to take personal responsibility for their own personal development, as opposed to relying on training courses supplied by their companies. When you hear Mark speak he has that knack to be able to deliver a story, with an addictive comic streak, and delivers his lessons with true artistry in his punch lines that only a Master can do.

What I also like about Mark is his belief that selling is a simple process – which any Master will tell you it is – and that the only people who benefit from overly-complex sales methodologies are consultants promoting the high priced methodologies. You can access Mark’s candid views on how to keep selling simple on his blog http://www.esquaredm.com/blog.asp

Enjoy!

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC – 531 BC)

Now that we have got the Industrial Partner consortium together for the EC funding  project Kevin Jauncey and I  have been mulling over alternative ways to fund the building of Milamber Digital -  this next generation digital library and community site .  And the quote by Lao-tzu got us thinking of an alternative method to get this project up and running.

The idea is simple and based on the old library subscription model where you became a member of a library and pay a small joining fee – those fees go to buy books etc. So in our context the question we want to answer is this – can we galvanise enough networking power to get a community of people to subscribe to a Founder Membership programme and therefore secure enough resources to get the digital library off the ground.

We tested the idea with about 50 people and from the feedback figure we should be charging £500 to five hundred people as a joining fee (including 2 years membership subscription).  If we can achieve this goal of recruting 500 members then we will get the initial funding in place to launch the start of this next generation digital library and the various community services we have planned for our  members.

We then plan to launch a whole range of services and membership packages to small and large companies, business schools, organisations, to make the business sustainable on a long term basis.

Anyway, if you want to find out more, about Milamber Digital Founder Membership programme or better still help us recruit the 500 Founder Members  then click here www.milamberdigital.com for more information.