Key Ideas:

• Organizations have evolved and new type of work is required

• Productivity is an important concept across the organization

• It’s interdependent with performance and profitability

• Its interconnected to strategy and how a firm competes

• Productivity is a measure for knowledge work

The purpose of this site is to help you gain:

1. A solid grasp of key concepts of productivity

2. An overview of productivity and management theory

3. An understanding of the impact of productivity on growth and results

4. an overview of the modern theory of sales execution (teams vs. individuals)

5. Ways to model productivity, performance, and production

Additional Information:

• These modules are informed by recent advances in areas such the rise of self-directed teams, agile methods, design thinking, and complexity theory

• The implication to sales organizations provides a definition of what it means to have a "high performing team"

• No previous experience or exposure is required before reviewing this content.

People & leaders are the leverage

Work teams are the backbone of contemporary work life. Executive teams run corporations. Project teams create new products and services. Matrix teams help develop everything from pharmaceuticals to the delivery of services in consulting firms and charitable agencies. Marketing and sales teams deliver products and services to customers. High-performing teams are essential to the way most organizations organize and carry out their work, resulting in superior performance, which translates into a significant competitive advantage. Team leaders are essential to executing your vision for your business and in setting the tone for your staff. Effective team leaders ensure that team morale remains high and that workers are motivated to perform well.

Team Performance cannot be achieved by mandate

Success today requires a depth of knowledge, a range of skills, and an ability to execute regardless of the complexities or chaos of the environment. Shifting performance in role will not come from a mandate. Performance comes from the in-field application of practical frameworks, applied and supported with the right tools, facilitator-led and online learning, and developed through a disciplined but dynamic coaching approach.

It's a process and a journey

There are three essential journeys that people need to undertake to ensure sustainable sales growth. The first journey is their personal development journey, as each person needs to develop and grow in their individual areas of development, and at their pace. The second journey in their team-based journey. This journey includes setting up a cadence of planning and execution with clear priorities, and tracking of progress through the use of just-in-time learning and frameworks for execution in the role. The third journey is the functional journey, and the role they play in contributing to results on the function in which they operate.

The Insight

• Teams, not org charts, are the new organizational construct that leaders must support and organize their capabilities and the contribution of their people around to add the right value.

Watch the video to learn why:

• It’s important to think of the workplace in terms of the value created in multiple ways. Company, function, team, and individual

• Understanding the value of each component is important to understanding the work environment

• The work environment today is converging. Digital, analog, perspectives, and data

• Organizations have a default “way of working” across their function, team, and individuals

• Functions called divisions are most often organized to support products

• The value of teaming is often hidden in or between divisions and departments

• Cross functional work is difficult because managers only “see” the part that matters to their function

• Teaming is where the knowledge production happens, however, organizations still reinforce departmental measures, processes, and reporting – creating silos

The Insight:

• Activity and Impact create two completely different results.
  

Watch the video to learn why:

• Much of what we know about work stems from our understanding of the agrarian and industrial age

• The new world of work requires a new type of value contribution from people and from teams

• Definitions of workplace, worker, and work contribution matter\

• Professions and “certifications” often reinforce siloed production approaches and “harden” people to new perspectives

• There is an evolution under way: What It means to be “productive”

• Activity and impact are not the same thing

• Activities aren’t necessarily value if they aren’t tied to results. Impact provides the credibility to today’s knowledge worker.

The Insight:

• Teams (not individuals) are the “production unit” of the organization

• Coordination and collaboration create two completely different impacts on productivity.

Watch the video to also learn why:

• As a manager/leader you can define your own collaboration and contribution requirements and objectives

• People are important and many of the trends of today focus on people and how well they do (or don’t) contribute

• Teams hold much of the knowledge & insight inside your company, while people have much of the wisdom (knowledge over time)

• Individuals are responsible for the contribution

• Collaboration improves productivity on the team.

• Great companies have great collaboration ( teams-work)

• There are 5 types of collaboration

• Great companies help individuals contribute (teamwork)

The Insight:

• Individual performance is required for team results. However, much of what influences a person's behaviors lies “under the water line" and you can't see it. It’s important to have an approach to engage people what what you observe, so you can provide developmental feedback through coaching to help them be successful.

Watch the video to also learn why:

• Improving results and improving performance are the same thing

• People are critical. Their performance drives the results of the team

• Valuable behaviors link goals to results to help simplify the enablement and management focus

• Team leaders are responsible for team performance

• Behaviors must be observed in order to be coached

• Many team leaders / managers have never inventoried all the specific accomplishments required to achieve results

• Measure performance with the SNAP=R approach

The Insight

The number of individual accomplishments per day is critical to the results of the team. To improve productivity, team leaders can improve collaboration among the team(s). To gain visibility into the accomplishments per day, team leaders can focus on the goals of the team and actions taken along the way and coach individual team members to make the right contributions (focused on translating goals –into- results)

Watch the video to also learn why:

• The interactions between people is critical to actions of a team

• People contribute to teams

• People understand their goals, take action, and accomplish the right outputs and deliverables to achieve results

• Accomplish help teams make progress towards results

The Insight:

• For the most part perceived contribution of sales managers has largely been subjective. Therefore, the quantifiable impact of sales managers has been misunderstood, assumed or simply defined as “coaching”.

Watch the video to also learn why:

• Salespeople communicate your company’s value through sales conversations

• Sales managers help the salespeople be more successful by helping them be more productive

• Sales managers are often not trained on the methods, tools, process, or approaches necessary to consistently engage and coach their salespeople

• Sales is in a period of rapid change. Today’s companies have more buyer decision makers than ever—sales managers are critical to unclogging sales pipelines

• Sales managers are “force multipliers”. Helping them be successful, helps them be successful with their team. This creates more trust and commitment from both managers and reps, and ensures that each team can respond to market conditions

• Sales managers can help ensure the business is maintaining visibility on accounts and customers through tier focus on capturing/producing value

• Sales managers are accountable for executing the sales strategy, to get the number, through their people, by driving client value