Welcome to the latest issue of CONNECTIONS - practical and effective performance improvement news and ideas from Odin Management Consulting.

Some great feedback about our first issue has encouraged us to find many more practical tips for busy managers who want to improve the performance of their department, division or business.

This month in CONNECTIONS:

We look at the challenges created by the critical shortage of Talent in Australia, and how you can position your business to find the Talent you need to continue to grow.

We look at mentoring as an essential part of the leadership development process, and give some tips on how to improve internal communications.

We also discuss Podcasts as a new way of finding a competitive edge with inspiration and information from business experts and leaders from around the world.

With your help CONNECTIONS will continue to develop into a useful resource for you and your team. We're always looking for feedback and ideas so if you have any suggestions please email them to us here at CONNECTIONS.

Regards, from all of us here,

The Odin Team
www.odin.com.au

People and Performance

Managing the Talent Shortage

How is your company dealing with the Talent Shortage?

A lack of candidates, lengthy hiring times and lower quality recruits are all symptomatic of the Talent shortage, and it is set to get worse. Over the next 5 years an estimated 4 million people aged 60-65 will retire from the workforce. If your company is growing and has a need for experienced staff, a plan to deal with the changing employee landscape will be critical.

Firstly, consider your organisation’s internal situation:

• What is the average time to hire?
  
  
• How satisfied are your line managers with their hiring decisions?
  
  
• What percentage of your staff are likely to leave in the next 2 – 3 years and what gaps will they leave?
  
  
• How many new hires are through external hiring or through acquisition?
  
  
• What are the critical and at – risk roles?
  
  
• What were the results of the last engagement survey and how effectively is your organisation dealing with the identified issues?

Many companies are finding traditional recruitment strategies are becoming less effective, with more roles remaining unfilled.

What impact are these lengthy vacancies having on your business ?

Odin provides a Talent Mapping service designed to identify critical talent in advance of hiring needs. In some cases contact with potential employees can last for over a year before an offer is made. In this market successful and timely hiring is reliant on effectively knowledge of your potential candidate market, planned in advance. The age of reactive recruitment is diminishing.

If you are concerned about the risk to your business that the Talent Shortage can create, and how Odin can help you manage that risk and attract the Talent you need to grow, contact Odin on 1300 856 346.

Top

Employee Development

Mentoring Future Leaders

Most great business leaders have been influenced by mentors who provided guidance, advice and feedback at critical stages of their careers, and almost always credit their mentors with playing an important role in their development as leaders.

Effective mentoring can add an important new dimension to your leadership development program and accelerate the development of high-potential employees, resulting in better leaders and a much stronger, more robust organisation.

We often see informal mentoring taking place in companies where ‘the boss’ acts as a mentor by providing an example to junior managers. For mentoring to add real value to a career, however, it needs to be adopted as a formal part of the employee’s development program, with specific objectives and timelines established at the outset.

Five tips for helping an employee find a mentor:

Defining how the relationship should work can help both the mentor and your employee. For example, how often should they meet? What types of things should they discuss? What are the rules for confidentiality

Have you identified the leaders your business will need as it grows, and started working through a formal leadership development and mentoring plan? To learn more about how to transform your management group into a high-performance leadership team contact an Odin Consultant on 1300 856 346.

Top

Managing Change

Communication matters!

When we conduct an Engagement survey Communication is often an area where organisations rate poorly. Some of the questions that we ask are:

Some Tips for Improving Communication in your Organisation

• Make it count - leaders must set the highest standard and measure themselves on how well they communicate. Let everyone know how important that it is to you and the organisation generally.
  
  
• Be candid - when having face to face communications listen carefully and have the courage to be honest.
  
  
• Ask and answer challenging questions - reward and thank people who behave in this way.
  
  
• Create the right environment - allow information to flow in all directions and release any blockages as quickly as possible. Communication is everyones responsibility and requires constant effort and refinement. Don’t “shoot the messenger”
  
  
• Too much is not 'too much' - particularly during times of change, you cannot overdo it.
  
  
• Listen, listen and listen - know what’s happening, encourage feedback.

The most important words in the English language when managing change

5 most important words - 'I am proud of you!'

4 most important words - 'What is your opinion?'

3 most important words - 'If you please'

2 most important words - 'Thank you'

1 most important word - 'You'

If you would like to learn more about how Odin works with its clients to manage change through challenging times contact an Odin Consultant on 1300 856 346.

Top

Personal Development

What we’re listening to....

A great tip for using non-productive time more productively is to listen to ‘Podcasts’ as a source information and inspiration.

While you’re sitting in traffic or working out at the gym Podcasts can provide interesting new business ideas and inspirational success stories in a convenient format designed to provide easy (and free!) access to a wide range of information and opinions.

Over the past few months we’ve been listening to Podcasts on a range of interesting topics that provide some different perspectives on the challenges facing our clients and business in general.

Some of our favourites include:

• Harvard Business IdeaCast: This Podcast from the publishers of the Harvard Business Review features the latest thinking on a wide range of business topics. Some recent Podcasts have included themes that are very relevant to today’s business environment, such as ‘Talent Management’ and ‘Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders?’.
  
  One of our favourite features of the Harvard Business Ideacast is the opportunity to listen to challenging and thought-provoking new ideas from expert speakers from business and the Harvard Business School.
  
  
• The SalesRoundup Podcast: The SalesRoundup Podcast aims to deliver useful information to IT sales professionals and their management teams. Recent themes include ‘Sales Territory Management and Planning’ and ‘Selling in a Down Economy’.
  
  Delivered in a unique and very informal style the SalesRoundup Podcast provides sales people and their managers the means to learn new sales skills or brush up on old ones at their convenience, even while driving, in short 40 minute segments each week.
  
  
• Ted Talks: Promoted as ‘Ideas worth Spreading’ Ted conferences bring together thought leaders from around the world to present their ideas. Presented as short videos (most are 18-20 minutes) these talks cover a wide range of social, scientific and business topics.
  
  Recent talks have given us the opportunity to learn from the founders of Amazon and Google, and to see some very thought-provoking presentations from scientists and social commentators from around the world.
  

These Podcasts are all free and are easy to find, download and share via the internet. If you find something interesting you can either:

• listen to (or watch it) on your computer, or
  
  
• copy it to your iPod so you can listen to it in what would otherwise be unproductive time in the car or while you’re travelling.

To learn more about Podcasts (and other innovative learning and development tools) or to share your favourite Podcast why not drop us a line here at Odin?

Top