People in HR and L&D departments sometimes hear stories about how when someone presents a training budget proposal to the finance department and senior leaders, the executives will sit with their arms crossed and a skeptical look on their faces that makes it clear they believe there’s no way training is going to add value…
The Ken Blanchard Companies Ignite newsletter is a must-read for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals. Highlights from the just published October issue include Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO Leadership, learning, and talent development professionals are sometimes a little nervous talking with chief financial officers. CFOs ask hard questions and want to see demonstrable bottom-line…
Leadership, learning, and talent development professionals are sometimes a little nervous talking with chief financial officers. CFOs ask hard questions and want to see demonstrable bottom-line impact for training initiatives being proposed. It doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, says Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “As gatekeeper of the financials, the…
One of the biggest challenges leadership, learning, and talent development professionals face when they propose a new initiative is convincing their CEO of the financial impact of the proposed initiative. Without a clear sense of the positive financial impact, it’s easy for a leader to dismiss a new proposal as being too disruptive, too expensive,…
Scott Blanchard, principal and EVP at The Ken Blanchard Companies, likes to use the phrase heart of the house to describe the important role middle managers play in an organization. In Blanchard’s experience, if mid-level management is neglected, the result can be heart trouble—a slow moving organization that doesn’t respond well to feedback. Is your…
I recently had an opportunity to sit in on a webinar conducted by Ken Blanchard, Eunice Parisi-Carew, and Jane Ripley, coauthors of the new book Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster. As they talked about the book, the three authors shared five key ingredients for creating a collaborative culture on a team, department,…
Employee engagement is at an important crossroads. After years of conducting engagement surveys, organizations are finding that improving employee engagement is a lot more difficult than measuring it. Surveys have helped organizations to identify areas that need to be addressed, but an inability to “move the needle” when it comes to improving scores has turned…
What’s the bigger challenge—coming up with good plans or executing those plans? That’s the question I was looking to answer when I asked 700 webinar participants what they experienced most often in their organizations. I showed them a 2×2 grid with Plan along one axis and Execution along the other. I asked the participants to…
Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a special complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern). Senior Consulting Partner Carmela Southers will be speaking on the topic of Leading In A Virtual World. The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join…