Learn and Lead

Seven Survival Skills in Today’s World

Labels: adaptability, agility, Collaboration, communication, critical thinking, curiosity, education, IFC, imagination, knowledge, ReThinking Education, skill, skills, Tom Wagner, will 0 comments

I recently came across International Finance Corporation’s (IFC). It’s “6th International Private Education Conference, Rethinking Education, Shaping the Future, brought together thought leaders and investors in education from around the globe. On April 1-2, 2014 in San Francisco, USA, the delegates discussed how innovation and technology in education delivery and results measurement are giving us new tools for broadening access to quality education for millions of students around the world.”

Their YouTube channel provides you with access to videos of their conference.

The keynote address to the conference was by Tony Wagner. Tony Wagner “currently serves as an Expert In Residence at Harvard University’s new Innovation Lab. Prior to this appointment, Tony was the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, and the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade. His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.”

In this video, Tony makes some very pertinent points. Knowledge today has become commodity, available on every Internet connected device. It is no longer a scarce commodity available only with teachers. Because it was a scarce commodity in the past, it was considered that the more knowledge one had, the more value one had in the market place. Today one doesn’t need a teacher to acquire knowledge. And so how can one add value to the market place?

Knowledge is one leg of the stool, which is easy to acquire. The other two legs are Skill and Will. Skill is about asking the questions, how to acquire new knowledge, how to solve new problems. Will is the motivation to use the knowledge and skill.

In his research with companies on what are they looking for in new hires, Tony discovered that the set of core competencies required are very similar, not just to get a job, but to be a continuous learner and be an active and informed citizen. The seven survival skills in today’s world are:

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Critical Thinking is all about knowing how to ask really good questions, how to ask the right questions, not necessarily get the right answers.
Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence: Teams are no longer led by supervisors. They are led by peers through influence.
Agility and Adaptability: Schools are in complete contrast with this requirement of the world today with their unchanging environment and syllabus.
Initiative and Entrepreneurial-ship: Companies are not looking for employees who set 4-5 goals and meet all of them. They are looking at employees who set 10 stretch goals and succeeds 7-8 out of them.
Effective Oral and Written Communication: The kids can’t write today because they don’t know how to think. They are also not writing with voice, which is putting their passion and perspective in the conversation to be more persuasive.
Accessing and Analyzing Information: We need to teach the students to be able to search the Internet for information.
Curiosity and Imagination

5 Types of People You Should NEVER Negotiate With

Labels: Negotiation, Sales 0 comments

I am starting to follow a lot of sales blogs lately. One interesting blog I am now following is The Sales Hunter by Mark Hunter. In one of his posts he talks about 5 types of people you should never negotiate with. Useful categorization if you are in sales.

According to Mark, the 5 types of people you shouldn't negotiate with are:

1. The person who will take your offer to the decision maker.
2. The overly emotional person.
3. The committee.
4. The low-price champion.
5. The “we can’t give a decision as to when we will buy” person.

I have come across four of the five types of people listed above. I wasn't sure who an overly emotional person is. I haven't come across this type of person.

Read his full post here: 5 Types of People You Should NEVER Negotiate With

Dump the Bullets

Labels: bullet points, powerful presentations, presentation tips 1 comments

Seth Godin shares some useful insights on why bullets don't work in presentation in his post Most presentations aren't bullet proof. He says bullets don't save time and don't make easier to remember things.

Don't miss navigating to the link to his bulletless solution in his earlier post.

I find it so hard to resist using bullets in my presentations, though I must admit the most remembered presentation I made didn't have bullets. There must be some truth to what he says. Interestingly when I blogged about that presentation, I was inspired by Seth at that time too.

Web And Mobility Trends Oct 2008 from Manish Mohan

How Do You React To Customer Feedback?

Labels: Customer, Customer feedback, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction survey, Dealing with customers, managing customer expectations, satisfaction survey, service providers 5 comments

Are you measuring customer satisfaction? Do you ask your customers (external or internal customers) to rate you on a satisfaction survey index? If you do, then how you react to customer interactions before the survey could define feedback your customers give you, or not give you for that matter.

If you rely only on customer satisfaction survey scores, you might be missing out valuable feedback that customers never give you in the surveys. You get feedback at all times from customers, sometimes direct and sometimes indirect. How you react to it defines how customers perceive your service as. If you don't listen to your customers during regular interactions, they are less likely to give you any feedback in customer surveys. They are more likely to stop giving you feedback. Worst, they will tell others about the bad service instead of telling you about it.

I am sure we work very hard to exceed customer expectations. But let's face is, as service providers (internal or external), sometimes we do get irritated at customers. We believe so much in our own service levels that we forget to see if these are still relevant for the customers. How we react to the inputs when a customer does give us some feedback changes the way we will receive feedback in the future. Sometimes inadvertently while responding to a customer feedback, we may put them off by disbelieving their feedback by telling them the unlikeliness of a service failure because of robust processes and systems. Instead of lauding internal processes, all that is really needed is to acknowledge the experience customer might have had.

So when you receive any feedback from your customers, first respond with a simple acknowledgement and apology of the experience. This is usually enough to turn the customer around. Later when you review the situation and identify the cause of customer experience, you can get back the customer with more details. This could even include things where the customer may have been at fault and things that you want the customer to change.

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