Listen to Business Execution Radio Episode 71:

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Robert Craven is former CEO of two high-growth, entrepreneurial companies. After taking these organizations from concept to reality, Robert was inspired to create Scale Passion, a company focused on helping entrepreneurs build companies. Robert shares challenges entrepreneurs must overcome to grow businesses beyond a certain size. Some of the biggest challenges are not a function of the business, but are based on an entrepreneur’s ability to understand and manage his/her own goals and beliefs.

Think you have what it takes to be a highly successful entrepreneur? Test your assumptions by listening to Robert Craven – this week on Business Execution Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 67:

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Laura Pratt, Manager of People for Elevations Credit Union shares experiences creating and deploying an integrated set of competency models to align different talent management practices across the company. She tells how what started out as a project focused primarily on integrating staffing, performance management, and succession planning has led to major changes in how employees see their careers and how managers make decisions about talent. By using competences to more accurately defining and measuring what “good” performance looks like, Elevations Credit Union is seeing significant improvements in engagement, development, and placement of organizational talent.

Learn about the challenges and benefits associated with creating a competency based organization. Listen to Laura Pratt, this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 65:

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Patrick Casseday, Manager of Training & Development for Schneider Electric describes how they leveraged 360 surveys to increase sales performance among independent distributors. Schneider Electric was faced with the challenge of relying on the sales performance of individuals who are not formally part of the company. To address this challenge they created a set of tools that allowed distributors to assess and develop the capabilities of individual sales people. Although the solution initially met resistance, the clear impact it has on the bottom line led several distribution companies to now make its use mandatory.

Gain insight into how to improve the performance of the people who sell your products, even if you do not formally manage them – this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 63:

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Jacqueline Moyse, Head of Organisational Development for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group discusses challenges of maintaining a distinctive and common brand of customer across hotels operating in multiple countries and cultures. Focusing on a key theme of “humility”, Mandarin Oriental invests considerable resources into ensuring leaders fully understand and embrace the unique nature of service that drives Mandarin Oriental’s successful reputation within the hospitality industry.

Learn how Mandarin Oriental has applied concepts rooted in Asian leadership and service practices across diverse cultures ranging from London to Las Vegas – this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 62:

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Vince Racioppo, Talent Management expert for Aldridge Electric discusses methods for identifying and developing critical competencies that drive success in pivotal organizational roles. Faced with a growing shortage of highly influential project managers, Aldridge Electric analyzed these pivotal jobs to determine what differentiated the successful performers. This information was used to create a development program to systematically build competencies of less experienced staff to accelerate their ability to take on high impact project manager responsibilities.

Learn how to polish those talent “diamonds in the rough” and turn them into precious high performers – this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 60:

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Jennifer Pierce, Vice President of Talent Management and Sandra Murray-Leduc, National Success and Performance Manager for Hudson’s Bay Company discuss talent management challenges and successes they have experienced working in one of the oldest continually operating companies in the world. Jennifer and Sandra discuss how Hudson’s Bay Company leverages its frontline workforce as a source of future leadership talent. They explain how the necessity to save costs led to decentralizing succession management in a way that actually led to larger and better quality pools of high potential leadership candidates.

Learn state of the art succession management ideas from a company with over 300 years of talent management experience by listening to Jennifer Pierce and Sandra Murray-Leduc – this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 56:

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Susan Burns, Chief Talent Strategist at Talent Synchronicity explains how staffing and recruiting functions are changing to create more adaptive and sustainable workforce strategies. The rate of change in business is rendering more static, position based workforce planning and staffing models obsolete. Susan discusses how this is changing the nature of recruiting from “filling positions” to “maintaining candidate relationships”. This includes relationships with both external candidates and existing employees who are looking to advance their careers.

Learn what someone who has long been on the forefront of employment branding and staffing is forecasting for the coming years. Start building your relationship with the future of talent management: this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 55:

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Nigel Bristow, President and Founder of Targeted Learning shares insights gained from his 20+ year career helping companies maximize the performance of knowledge workers. Nigel shares five key stages of knowledge work: acquiring, applying, creating, sharing, and leveraging knowledge. He discusses the role each stage plays in workforce productivity and the challenges and unique issues associated with moving from one stage to another.

Whether you are a knowledge worker, manage knowledge workers, or just wish you had more knowledge, you will benefit from Nigel’s insights on knowledge work: this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 49:

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Tess Reinhard, Director of Organizational Capability for CDW discusses methods to maximize the productivity and engagement of technology employees. CDW is a multibillion dollar technology company with a workforce largely comprised of recent college graduates with strong technical skills. Tess shares techniques CDW uses to develop mentoring relationships between these relatively new employees and more tenured company experts. She also discusses some of the benefits, challenges, and realities associated with managing a workforce filled with “generation Y” workers.

If you want to maximize the performance of ambitious, technology savvy, but relatively inexperienced employees then get some ideas from someone who has done it. Listen to Tess Reinhard this week on People Performance Radio.

Listen to People Performance Radio Episode 43:

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Steve Venokur, Managing Partner of People Sciences, has over 20 years of experience developing skills management systems for large corporations in a range of industries. Steve explains what skills management is and why it is critical to maintaining a steady supply of qualified talent to support business needs. Steve explains the differences between skills that define “what you know” and competencies that describe “how you use it”. The labor shortage is not a shortage of people, it is a shortage of people who possess the knowledge and expertise required to perform critical business tasks. This shortage continues in many industries and functions despite the current economic landscape.

Competencies don’t matter if employees don’t have the technical skills needed to perform the work to begin with. Make sure you have the skills to pay the bills, this week on People Performance Radio.