When most people hear the phrase “organizational politics,” they react very negatively. They see politics in the workplace as forming clicks and another way to keep those who go against the status quo labeled as an outsider. People also think that it’s a toxic dynamic that allows manipulative behaviors for people to get what they want by stepping on their co-workers' backs. But not every instance of workplace politicking is a selfish maneuver to win.
In his book, Building Great Teams: Charting the Path of Organizational Politics (Book Surge, 2007), U.S. Marine turned business professional and university instructor Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts takes you inside one of the greatest team building organizations in the world – the United States Marine Corps – to examine and discover the strategies that business leaders must be willing to learn, use and employ for building ordinary groups into extraordinary teams; leading the right team of commandos who understand what it takes to win on the business battlefield and defeat workplace politics using warfare as the key to experience a significant win. He defines workplace and office politics as “the path to smart growth…using the power to accelerate the careers of high potential future leaders and teams power in the workplace.” He implies that office politics are not always negative, but offer opportunities for greatness. And while workplace politics aren't necessarily avoidable, people can learn to understand their purpose, find their voice and understand how-to strengthen and build the teams dynamics and interpersonal communications skills – all while managing responsibilities with tact, poise, and polish. The game of politics, when understood how-to use it as a strategic weapon, helps to successfully chart the path of personal and professional growth as the essential task to achieve personal mastery from the results of peak performance. Organizational politics also offers the hidden treasures that allow people to stand-out from the crowd. They learn to demonstrate their ability to navigate the maze of successful team building – a task that is viewed as positive organizational behavior from the individual that is perceived as an extraordinary leader. This is the type of person that others seek to follow and emulate for the greatness they wish to develop for themselves.
Workplace Politics vs. The Battlefield Engagement
Just as in any military engagement, in order to win one must know the rules better than his/her competitor to outsmart them on the battlefield. It also is beneficial to be a part of the right team for controlling the elements of the battlefront. However, some might claim the workplace and the military are very different in many ways. Thinking from this approach causes significant missteps in organizational politics. There are significant issues that are similar in the workplace and on a military battlefield. For starters, the one constant is “people.” Any time that people are involved in a scenario, decision-making must play a role in the ability to win. Using the strategies from the United States Marine Corps, people are responsible for making critical decisions from the highest ranking officer down to the lowest ranking enlisted – and the decision could mean life or death. Well, the same goes for the workplace. People are responsible for making critical decisions that could mean that the organization acquires strategic assets (executive suite decisions) or that a customer is treated in a way that causes them to continue doing business with the organization. Both can be seen as life or death for the organization. As seen with Wachovia bank, a decision from the top level leadership was made to acquire Westgate Financial to boost their mortgage business. When the U.S. mortgage markets and industry imploded during the financial crisis, the organization was effected with incredible implications – it became the beginning of the end for one of the country’s largest banks and people lost careers and more. Similar to the likes of a military battlefield engagement and a series of wrong decisions made by leadership, loss of life was experienced.
But what most people fail to realize is that the workplace is too a battlefield. Business is warfare and those who understand how to navigate the politics always win. Consider the game of chess. Chess can be low-key and quiet, a friendly game between friends. Or it can be explosive and highly competitive, set amid a crowd of observers, where the ultimate winner reaps world-wide accolades. Consider the skill behind the game of chess. It requires well-planned strategy and a great deal of mental acuity and patience, not to mention years of practice to reach an elite status.
These are the same skills required by a great leader, one who has the ability to guide an organization and one who understands the world of workplace politics. On the other hand, while playing a game such as chess, there can only be a single winner where there often can be a more neutral outcome in the world of workplace politics. With the proper skills of negotiation and influence, savvy leadership might be able to create a win-win situation.
The Truth about Politics in the Workplace
Politics will always be part of an organization because people are people. The dynamic relationships of individuals who run a business enterprise play an important part in how the business operates: How the mission map, posture statements, vision, values and organizational culture is forged. And while the average Jane or Joe might feel like they are being run over by co-workers who manipulate the system, bully, gossip, backstab and brown nose to get what they want, there is more to workplace politics than those negative daily encounters. The quintessential aspect of organizational politics is the team. Building great teams’ hits at one of the most discussed topics in business media and the workplace: Organizational Behavior, transformational leadership, organizational renewal and inter-office politics. The day of the individual worker is over, as today’s business arena demands that workers possess the ability to effectively work as team units that consistently produce extraordinary outcomes from their performance. It is a scenario all top leaders and managers knows well: The organization, their people, and their systems all require efficient and effective processes to remain constant in its approach to move quickly toward new and innovative ways of reaching mission-critical objectives.
Good leaders are a thing of the past, as global economies now require more than good – they seek greatness and ordinary just does not fit the bill any longer. They now require the ordinary to be “extraordinary.” The new battlefield in the workplace requires the extraordinary leaders’ understanding of workplace politics and the accompanying landscape to be significant. They can no longer work in the old silos of the past that was developed by the silly political conflicts. No, these extraordinary leaders can no longer exhibit the behaviors that ultimately invite disaster. This is not to say that leaders of the past demonstrated the behaviors that put-up with negative politics that caused disastrous outcomes nor does it imply every good leader has found his/her way to the top of the heap by climbing over the bodies of crushed co-workers. It simply means that leadership understands workplace politics well enough to use them as “strategic weapons” to produce positive returns without the mud slinging and backsliding of unethical and immoral actions.
Understanding how-to chart the path of organizational politics means being able to maneuver using political warfare to enhance the organization's ability to rise to the top of its industry, without leaving one of its warriors lying wounded on the battlefield. It means having a well crafted Battleplan, understanding the players, building positive alliances and coalition of forces, using the art of war as a significant warfighting strategy that all stakeholders understand and buy-in to for winning, and finally, developing a compelling case study for the associates of the organization to understand the comprehensive approach for integrating strategic human capital and team development initiatives into the fold.
Convert Uniqueness into Ultimate Power
The best leaders are the people that understand the nature of warfare in dealing with and overcoming workplace politics. These are the men and women who have a tone on the pulse of the workplace – internal and external – and know what it takes to remain on task “ethically” to lead others into greatness. Here are five important things to know about politically savvy leaders:
° They understand the critical importance of the team associates to be “LeaderShaped” into GREATNESS. They understand the “what” and “how” in developing a GREAT team.
° They make decisive decisions for the benefit of the Future Picture
° They understand the “culture” in the system that the team must influence.
° They know what it take to strategically “execute” and win as a team.
° They know how-to use the “Six Political Signs of Business Leadership” to achieve professional mastery to the people and organization: 1. a clear “Vision” of issues. 2. Understand the “Value” drivers within the team. 3. “Behavioral” influence of leadership to the Future Picture. 4. “Strategy” Modeling (Enterprise Decision Making). 5. Strategic “Execution” (Governance). 6. “Duplication of Protocol” (learnable-teachable methods for future engagements).
Engaging the battlefield that is influenced by workplace politics, for many, may mean asserting their power, pushing and shoving like the elementary school bully until they get what they want. But that's really just the toxic behavior and conduct that eliminates the possibilities for leadership and the organization they influence to win. One of the best ways to lose power is to overtly use it. Instead, the best leaders know that power comes from influence – and influence is subjective to behavior, character and the value system that drives the people responsible for charting the pathway.
In this great read, Pitts also outlines how, in most cases, team leaders never hit their goals – not because they lack talent within the associate ranks, but because they are naïve to the complexities of team dynamics. He outlines the strategic-execution methods that smart leaders understand and use to determine what type of team model best suits their specific environment, what key skills to look for (and which to avoid), and how to coax top performances from everyone starting from day one.
Author Robert Dilenschneider explains in his book, Power and Influence: The Rules Have Changed: True power and influence means accepting responsibility, taking the heat and keeping your word. So even if someone supports the supposition that leadership is just another way of playing political games, it doesn’t necessarily mean this is a bad thing. When properly played, workplace politics can lead to great achievements and outcomes. Pitts believes that extraordinary teams that are great engage politics well. They are LeaderShaped and driven by extraordinary people who make a distinctive impact – they deliver significant and superior performance over a long period of time. There are some striking characteristics of great teams who achieve sustained success within their mission across its life cycle. They experience an increased level of professional mastery in developing and executing as great teams do. These teams have gone through a process; a process that is forged in a furnace of professional development, transformational thinking, and strategic-execution.
Workplace politics, good or evil, are a very real part of the work environment. Whether people subscribe to the belief that leadership is just another way of engaging the political battlefield or not, it is important to keep in mind that as long as there are people working together as great teams do, there will be politics, but the outcomes will be far different from the results of the past. Great teams are the way to successfully engage the battlefield – greatness from the team is how to engage politics well and win it using fair tactics.
For additional information, please email Dpitts@thebisongroup.com.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Front Line Leadership that Builds GREAT Teams
So, a team is what you are hoping to build? But, what kind of team? A team who uses the academic approach to getting things done or one that brings real-world experience to the situation at hand? What criteria, then, do you use for choosing your teammates? Team building programs during the late 80's and throughout the 90's took place in the woods at the height of the now infamous ropes courses. These courses were designed to engage organizational groups in a series of team activities that voluntarily made people face self-imposed limitations while hanging from trees and cables. The next decade lead the way for classroom-based team building sessions that included behavioral profiles and performance assessments, such as the universal language of DISC and its model, along with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
To answer the questions in the opening of this text, we feel that organizations must build and develop the "GREAT" team. Building great teams hits at one of the most discussed topics within business media and the workplace: Organizational Behavior, leadership & process, and inter-office politics. The day of the individual worker is over, as today's corporate arena demands that workers possess the ability to effectively work as team-led associates within an organization. It is a scenario all top leaders and managers knows well: The organization, their people, and their systems all require efficient and effective processes to remain constant in its approach to move quickly toward new and innovative ways of reaching mission-critical objectives. This is a task that is directed by the senior officials within team environments that are lead by great initiatives. They must be committed to draft and manage the right team - a GREAT team - of commandos to lead the effort.
As we look forward to the next generation of team building programs, people will be coming out of the woods, out of the classrooms, and out of the convention centers. The question then is: Where will they be going? The answer; they'll be headed to learning environments with a sensory-rich atmosphere that enhances military training and simulation as the team building practices that increasingly requires experienced quality from the battlefield, in business, and across industry.
In April 2005, the Wharton School of Business students, staff, and sponsors traveled to the U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia to learn what they were really made of. The venture, aptly titled "Learning Leadership and Decision Making Under Uncertainty and Complexity," sought to expose the future business leaders of the world, to the types of training exercises that have produced generations of successful military leaders. While there are obvious differences between battlefield leadership and corporate leadership, there are also many parallels that can be drawn - especially in the constantly evolving business landscape. We could be nimbler in our decision-making. We could be team players, even from the top. We could lead by example. And we could actively train our subordinates to eventually lead us. Sounds like hogwash? Don't forget that the U.S. Marines has a proven track record - 233 years and running. And by the way, this program at the Wharton School of Business lives on today.
Just as in the experiences at the Wharton School, live training continues to evolve from the military training paradigm toward new solutions that prepare warfighters (the title given to associates that are a part of a GREAT team environment) to fight against asymmetric enemies often embedded in civilian populations and organizations. Since 2005, the Bison Group has invested substantially in new live training solutions to counter challenges faced in the business marketplace, specifically Military Operations Counter-IED Devices: Decision-making, collective behaviors, and cultural influences.
However, the heavy financial burden of the U.S. economy, another form of conflict, "Domestic War on Terror (DWOT)," has taken valuable resources away from future planned training and simulation and instead toward extending the life cycle of organizations in trouble. Therefore, industries are being forced to deliver temporary solutions for less instead of future-oriented growth strategies. Future-oriented growth strategies for teams are designed to increase capacity to the individual and organizational system and building GREAT teams using military strategy and tactics that provide proven solutions where people and organizations achieve high levels of performance.
One way of ensuring that GREAT teams are developed for such a task lies in the adoption of “Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams;” a high impact and hands-on curriculum that demonstrates how-to use the “Six Lenses of Innovation” for teams, also known as the “Preemptive Strike” measures: (1) Establish Achievable Aims; challenge deeply-held orthodoxies about who their customers are, how they interact with them, how they define their products or services, how they configure the value chain, and so on; (2) Identify Means; harness emergent trends and discontinuities to substantially change the way things are done in their industry; (3) Ensure Intelligence; leverage core competencies and strategic assets in novel ways to generate new growth; (4) Enforce Security; understand and address deep customer needs that are currently going unmet; (5) Engage the Strike; a deliberate Battleplan used by a strategic and numerically inferior power to head off a situation in which ultimate defeat would be inevitable; and lastly, (6) Flawlessly Execute the Exit Strategy; just as everything has a beginning, all things have an end. Leaders are instructed how-to establish exit points using 32 solution-centric precepts to face fierce challenges in short time frames using the process.
Team building programs, like this Next Generation program, are the start of a team development revolution and your team should follow close by. Don't consider becoming a GREAT team, simply learn to transform into one!
To learn more about Building GREAT teams using Business WARFIGHTING strategies, visit www.thebisongroup.com or email the author at: Dpitts@thebisongroup.com.
To answer the questions in the opening of this text, we feel that organizations must build and develop the "GREAT" team. Building great teams hits at one of the most discussed topics within business media and the workplace: Organizational Behavior, leadership & process, and inter-office politics. The day of the individual worker is over, as today's corporate arena demands that workers possess the ability to effectively work as team-led associates within an organization. It is a scenario all top leaders and managers knows well: The organization, their people, and their systems all require efficient and effective processes to remain constant in its approach to move quickly toward new and innovative ways of reaching mission-critical objectives. This is a task that is directed by the senior officials within team environments that are lead by great initiatives. They must be committed to draft and manage the right team - a GREAT team - of commandos to lead the effort.
As we look forward to the next generation of team building programs, people will be coming out of the woods, out of the classrooms, and out of the convention centers. The question then is: Where will they be going? The answer; they'll be headed to learning environments with a sensory-rich atmosphere that enhances military training and simulation as the team building practices that increasingly requires experienced quality from the battlefield, in business, and across industry.
In April 2005, the Wharton School of Business students, staff, and sponsors traveled to the U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia to learn what they were really made of. The venture, aptly titled "Learning Leadership and Decision Making Under Uncertainty and Complexity," sought to expose the future business leaders of the world, to the types of training exercises that have produced generations of successful military leaders. While there are obvious differences between battlefield leadership and corporate leadership, there are also many parallels that can be drawn - especially in the constantly evolving business landscape. We could be nimbler in our decision-making. We could be team players, even from the top. We could lead by example. And we could actively train our subordinates to eventually lead us. Sounds like hogwash? Don't forget that the U.S. Marines has a proven track record - 233 years and running. And by the way, this program at the Wharton School of Business lives on today.
Just as in the experiences at the Wharton School, live training continues to evolve from the military training paradigm toward new solutions that prepare warfighters (the title given to associates that are a part of a GREAT team environment) to fight against asymmetric enemies often embedded in civilian populations and organizations. Since 2005, the Bison Group has invested substantially in new live training solutions to counter challenges faced in the business marketplace, specifically Military Operations Counter-IED Devices: Decision-making, collective behaviors, and cultural influences.
However, the heavy financial burden of the U.S. economy, another form of conflict, "Domestic War on Terror (DWOT)," has taken valuable resources away from future planned training and simulation and instead toward extending the life cycle of organizations in trouble. Therefore, industries are being forced to deliver temporary solutions for less instead of future-oriented growth strategies. Future-oriented growth strategies for teams are designed to increase capacity to the individual and organizational system and building GREAT teams using military strategy and tactics that provide proven solutions where people and organizations achieve high levels of performance.
One way of ensuring that GREAT teams are developed for such a task lies in the adoption of “Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams;” a high impact and hands-on curriculum that demonstrates how-to use the “Six Lenses of Innovation” for teams, also known as the “Preemptive Strike” measures: (1) Establish Achievable Aims; challenge deeply-held orthodoxies about who their customers are, how they interact with them, how they define their products or services, how they configure the value chain, and so on; (2) Identify Means; harness emergent trends and discontinuities to substantially change the way things are done in their industry; (3) Ensure Intelligence; leverage core competencies and strategic assets in novel ways to generate new growth; (4) Enforce Security; understand and address deep customer needs that are currently going unmet; (5) Engage the Strike; a deliberate Battleplan used by a strategic and numerically inferior power to head off a situation in which ultimate defeat would be inevitable; and lastly, (6) Flawlessly Execute the Exit Strategy; just as everything has a beginning, all things have an end. Leaders are instructed how-to establish exit points using 32 solution-centric precepts to face fierce challenges in short time frames using the process.
Team building programs, like this Next Generation program, are the start of a team development revolution and your team should follow close by. Don't consider becoming a GREAT team, simply learn to transform into one!
To learn more about Building GREAT teams using Business WARFIGHTING strategies, visit www.thebisongroup.com or email the author at: Dpitts@thebisongroup.com.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The “War Room” – When Innovation Intersects Strategy
There are three ways to react to an organizational crisis. One way is to turn your head to ignore the situation and hope that it will fix itself (best of luck!). Another way is to run around in a panic-induced cost-cutting frenzy that could seriously impair the organization’s long-term growth potential and future state. The third and, of course, smartest method is to recognize the impending threat to both your top and bottom line, and quickly adapt the organization’s strategic outlook and business model to the new environmental conditions. So, the question to answer is this: “what are the decision makers within your organization currently doing? Are they connecting the organization’s strategy with its innovative approach to meet a successful Future Picture?” But what if you, as the leader, are having a difficult struggle to influence others to your point of view and get them to rethinking and reinventing the organization’s strategy forward as circumstances and economics rapidly change. If you are experiencing this challenge, here’s some advice to help your people to win the battlefield of transition.
I have continued to state enthusiastically over the last few years that, in a world where the pace of change has gone hypercritical, today’s most important race is the race for transformational leadership and organizational renewal. It is the race to change as fast as the environment is changing around you; the race to influence positive organizational behaviors and the race to reinvent your strategy and your business model before they become obsolete. When the economy is in a state in flux, most organizations tend to postpone their professional development efforts and favor cost cutting as the strategy that will preserve the future. This is a grave mistake that will affect the future of the organization in ways that will likely kill the very spirit the leadership teams are hoping to preserve. Their efforts during the challenging times will only prolong the inevitable; ultimate demise once the current crisis is diminished. The lesson here is this; a successful business model will break almost overnight when the waves of the ocean start crashing against the pillars of the pier if leadership does not remain on a continuous, yet discontinuous approach to train the organization’s greatest asset – the people.
So what exactly is Strategic Organizational Renewal (SOR)?
Organizations undergo change to enhance their productivity. Changes can be effected in several areas of the organization including culture, strategy, mission, teams and organizational structure. SOR is a framework that defines the role, responsibilities, and performance of human capital across the organization and the planning for it must only take place in the organizations “war room.” To explain the war room concept, leadership appoints a specific room that will be specified as the location where the organizations strategy is planned. This location must remain under lock and key to ensure the organization’s intellectual capital offers an uncompromised agenda that influences positive outcomes. SOR is the resulting effect that is birthed from the war room. This is only possible when those appointed to the war room each understands the importance of establishing the organization’s “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) – the principles to achieve professional mastery.
Establishing Principles to Achieve Personal Mastery – People First, then the Organization
You now have before you the opportunity to take the steps that achieve a high level of professional mastery that achieves organizational growth. It requires the adoption of a “code” as a living, breathing organism to each level of the organization. How can people build awareness, use their experiences to implement a new approach to deportment and develop a strategy, which includes resolve and ethical conduct? This is the task that lies before them.
It sounds like the normal work that we all know and do so well. But be cautioned, it is not! When individuals combine the code with rules and regulations, reporting and accountability to force conformity to standards, they will fail – to oppose change by way of fear is not what is required. Rather, achieving professional mastery is a continuous pursuit of ethical behavior that ultimately manifests into a quest of improving the human spirit; to pursue good, to do the right thing in across the workplace. The code says that who ever should adopt it into his/her life, will possess a level of courage – both physically and emotionally – to execute the necessary task that drives performance to exemplify the highest level of personal and professional conviction.
Why establish a code to live by? The answer is simple; establishing a code or set of principles ensures a level of conduct (code of conduct) that extends the life cycle of the organization. This code of conduct is what I have been referencing – the “Memorandum of Understanding.” As a code of conduct, the MOU provides a resource to assist people in their personal development, growth, guidance, and assessment in the leadership of self. The MOU establishes a strict perspective for instructing successful practices, theories, and beliefs that drives people to achieve a successful future (how you intend to conduct yourself into the future for others to emulate).
The Memorandum of Understanding is also designed for people to learn broadly; to inspire the service out of generosity for others; and to prepare them to lead systems courageously into the future. A MOU must encourage a perspective to become firmly grounded in the potential for successful growth using the following constructs:
- The Cardinal Rules
- The Guiding Precepts
- The Forms of Disposition
- The General Orders
- The Strategy Forward – Establishing Professional Mastery
- The Centers of Gravity
The Cardinal Rules. The Cardinal Rules are a set of guidelines that are invaluable for people and organizations to follow while planning and executing at the strategic or tactical level. These rules, once established by the individual(s) or teams are the rules that govern forward movement and must not change.
The Guiding Precepts. The Guiding Precepts are designed to inform people what they should and should not be doing in accordance with executing a well designed strategy to win. They also inform of the reasons “why” an action must occur and the repercussions should the individual and/or organization fail at meeting such a task.
The Forms of Disposition. The Forms of Disposition offer a substantive transformation in “thought” about how people achieve a perspective on things in life. It refers to an orchestrated, systemic and revolutionary new world-view resulting in a “change” of societies, cultures, and marketplaces due to behavioral perspective. This is today often called "systems theory," which sees a web of relationships coalescing to become something greater than the parts. Individuals must be able to look at things from a perspective that they are always changing and evolving into new forms – thinking “out-of-the-box!” We are doomed to a slow death unless radical change occurs in the way we think. Change your way of thinking or die a slow death.
The General Orders. The General Orders are broad, community-wide "need statements,” designed to encompass a variety of related issues in a person’s life or within the life cycle of an organization. These related issues are referred to as “Guiding Objectives,” which are specific items that need to be addressed. The Guiding Strategies (developed to fit current and future circumstance) are the methods identified for addressing the Guiding Objectives, and the Guiding Policies are the specific action steps that are recommended to implement the Guiding Strategies. The General Orders, all eleven of them, offer the ability to explore implications in an open and reflective manner and reinforce each other in providing a coherency and wholeness often lacking in life cycles.
The Strategy Forward – Establishing Professional Mastery. The traditional values are the foundation of the modern day; that was yesterday. Tomorrow, you have an opportunity to create commitment and the needed momentum to establish, publish, share, and teach a different set of life’s code, values, and ethics to journey into the future. After much hard work, you are prepared to develop a strategy to move forward and plan the next steps to target critical successes for winning the Future Picture. What a legacy you will leave when executed with personal and professional bearing for others to follow. This is the way of the future. This is a new chapter!
The Centers of Gravity. Just as time changes, so does the internal and external influence in your life and in the life cycle of an organization. The Centers of Gravity are the dynamics within a process that offer the greatest impact on the overall system when change happens. They offer a high level of “value” and return on your energy “investment.” When combined with the concept of parallel deposits (creating energy from various perspectives in a short period of time), the Centers of Gravity make possible the seemingly impossible task of realizing success in changing paradigms. The Centers of Gravity places significant influence on the five established epicenters of any changing system to receive desired effects: Leadership, Processes, Infrastructure, Population, and Action Units.
In summary, I see the Memorandum of Understanding (once established for the organization), as an opportunity to free up the actions of people as servants, but develop them as encouraged opportunists. It is empowering, it is enabling, and it grounds people in a public way on the fundamentals that they all must share to benefit the organization. There is no ethical malaise. It is important to realize that the new is not a finding from what has been lost. Rather, it is like the journey of the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz in search of a brain (brain power in this context), the tin man in search of a heart, and the lion in search of courage. People’s value system is intact and in most cases, has been during the journey of personal growth. The MOU simply articulates and reaffirms the core value and behavioral perspective that already underlie their personal and professional appearance and conduct to achieve significant growth. And, all of this is stimulated from the affects of the war room; hence, the influences that lead to significant strategic organizational renewal in the end.
The Memorandum of Understanding is designed to help an organization answer four fundamental questions in order to develop and execute an effective strategy forward plan. These questions are:
- Where does the organization want to be in the future?
- What will the organization apply its resources against to achieve the Future Picture?
- How will the organization apply those resources?
- When and under what conditions will the organization exit from their current strategic plan?
It’s the act of dynamically adjusting business models and strategies to the deep changes at work in the external environment. Above all else, this requires innovation and the Memorandum of Understanding definitely offers an innovative perspective to most organizations. In a 2003 article in Harvard Business Review entitled “The Quest for Resilience,” Gary Hamel wrote, “Strategic renewal is creative reconstruction.” It’s all about dissecting the traditional business model and examining it for imaginative ways to reconstruct it to create significant intellectual and emotional thought space for value creation to positively influence the internal and external customers of the organization. This becomes all the more urgent in challenging times, when customer needs and market conditions swiftly and dramatically change.
As in the case of the New Covenant Church of Philadelphia organization, where the senior pastor and Chief Executive Officer Bishop C. Milton Grannum, set aside a specific room on the same floor of the building as his office for directing the organization’s strategic organizational renewal efforts. The organization’s new “war room” had the same critical importance as Winston Churchill’s cabinet war room in London, used to direct military strategy during World War II. Bishop Grannum’s Innovation War Room was a simple, but highly effective device that guided the New Covenant Church of Philadelphia’s appointed leadership team to focus on establishing the strategy forward to reinvent the business model and find bold, new growth opportunities. And, its impact on the organization’s strategies – and, ultimately, its performance – is still being felt today.
Late in the month of November 2008, even in the face of formidable pressures and economic challenges, New Covenant Church of Philadelphia braved the climate and made the decision to bring in yet another trainer, speaker and author Dr. David Ireland from the region only to learn that they were on the right path to extend the organization’s life cycle. The New Covenant Church of Philadelphia continues to be one of the most progressive thinking faith-based organizations in the region.
The reason; the CEO fully understands that the time to input integrated talent management to boost the organization’s human capital is when most organizations are calling on “cost cutting” as its strategy in the face of adverse conditions.
Very few organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, can claim to have a specific innovation war room somewhere on location. But, what every organization can and should do – right now! – is organize a serious, high-level strategy forum (at least call it the “Innovation War Room” where innovation intersects strategy) to begin exercising transformative thinking and rethinking their business from the customer backward.
One of the fundamental questions the leadership team must ask is this: “how do we get the people to buy-into the organization’s new perspective of transformational thinking to experience upward movement in a market where people no longer have financial resources?” And, in a nutshell, it is my perspective that in answering the question, these people should take a look at the slogan of Royal Bank of Scotland: “Less Talk!” “Start engaging the necessary requirements to strategically execute flawlessly to influence the organizations Future Picture.” Innovation powers us out of everything and must be taken seriously as a strategy that wins.
The absolute worst thing any organization can do during the greatest of challenging times is to assume they can go on with “business as usual – and to go along with the status quo.” Instead, they must conduct themselves as great leaders do and get busy working to understand how organizational clients’ (internal and external) priorities may have changed and quickly realign the organizational business model to address their new needs. Reading through a past edition of the Wall Street Journal, most of the advertisements (for luxury watches, exorbitant real estate, and fabulous vacation resorts) looked embarrassingly inappropriate in view of the ongoing national economic crisis that the United States of America has been facing in the past few years and the next years to come.
One ad, from NOKIA, stood out in contrast. The headline: “Can anyone provide cost cutting solutions that work now? My answer is YES. Now, there’s an organization that seems to get it. But wait a minute. Didn’t that headline sound more than a little like Barack Obama? NOKIA seems to have understood the lesson from the past month’s U.S. election between President Elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain: Whether you’re overcoming organizational politics or training people to remain on top in their careers, the winners will be those who recognize that the game has changed, and that “same old stuff” just does not cut it any longer. The world’s processes have changed in ways that the world looks much different than it did a year ago (unemployment is up 47% from 2007 – 2008, home ownership is down 26% and the statistics continue to get grim). The way to make effective decisions require innovative thought and those who miss the opportunity to change will be left behind. The best quote that I teach from fits great here: “If people seek to achieve what they have never had, they MUST be prepared to do what they have never done.”
As a U.S. Marine turned business professional, responsible for leading a dynamic team of specialist into the lion’s belly when the team engages a client who is seeking to overcome business and process challenges, innovation takes precedent as our strategic starting point. Our team defines the importance of the war room, helps to identify its location and then the work begins – in the newly organized Innovation War Room. Without this component added to the mix, there’s no need to start because without it, the potential for failure rises incredibly. As we establish these critical strategy rooms, we teach companies to unpack their business model into five Centers of Gravity: Leadership, Infrastructure, Processes, Populations and Action Units. These five are used to influence positive organizational behavior from the leadership who is responsible for making the decisions to drive momentum: who they serve, what service they provide how they provide it, how they generate revenue and how they differentiate and sustain a strategic advantage.
Then we demonstrate how the Centers of Gravity are used to radically rethink each component using the “Six Lenses of Innovation” – the cutting-edge military-style ideation and methodology, “Battleplan for Preemptive Strike,” outlined in my latest book “Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams.” So, we get the strategy teams to (1) Establish Achievable Aims; challenge deeply-held orthodoxies about who their customers are, how they interact with them, how they define their products or services, how they configure the value chain, and so on; (2) Identify Means; harness emergent trends and discontinuities to substantially change the way things are done in their industry; (3) Ensure Intelligence; leverage core competencies and strategic assets in novel ways to generate new growth; (4) Enforce Security; understand and address deep customer needs that are currently going unmet; (5) Engage the Strike; a deliberate Battleplan used by a strategic and numerically inferior power to head off a situation in which ultimate defeat would be inevitable; and lastly, (6) Flawlessly Execute the Exit Strategy; just as everything has a beginning, all things have an end. Leaders are instructed how-to establish exit points using 32 solution-centric precepts to face fierce challenges in short time frames using the process.
We believe that as organizations begin to reshape their cultures; it’s not hard to recognize how the principles found within the military-style ideation and methodology of the Battleplan for Preemptive Strike apply to the many burning platforms organizations are facing today. Isn’t it time you subjected your own business model to some “creative reconstruction,” aimed at making it better suited to today’s shifting customer needs and new economic realities?
Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts, A United States Marine turned business professional is co-author of Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams (Book Surge Publishing, 2009) and Founder and Chairman of the Bison Group Corporation, a management consulting and training firm. He is the author The Process of LeaderShaping, a cultural transformational program and university course of study and has consulted or presented to numerous leading U.S. and foreign corporations, helping them to realize increased integrated talent management strategies, team building maneuvers, and decision-making skills to compete in today’s highly uncertain business environments. He has also authored four additional publications with his most successful title, The Art of Detachment: Breakthrough Principles to Transformational Leadership (Kendall Hunt, 2007). His works allowed him to be chosen as the technical, military and development specialists by the U.S. film industry to the feature film “Stateside” that released in theaters in May 2004 where he trained and acted onscreen with “A-List” talents Val Kilmer and Jonathan Tucker along with 75 -other actors, teaching them the principles of leadership, team development, and influence for the production. He is now teaching his programs at Temple University.
Published on 12/15/2008
I have continued to state enthusiastically over the last few years that, in a world where the pace of change has gone hypercritical, today’s most important race is the race for transformational leadership and organizational renewal. It is the race to change as fast as the environment is changing around you; the race to influence positive organizational behaviors and the race to reinvent your strategy and your business model before they become obsolete. When the economy is in a state in flux, most organizations tend to postpone their professional development efforts and favor cost cutting as the strategy that will preserve the future. This is a grave mistake that will affect the future of the organization in ways that will likely kill the very spirit the leadership teams are hoping to preserve. Their efforts during the challenging times will only prolong the inevitable; ultimate demise once the current crisis is diminished. The lesson here is this; a successful business model will break almost overnight when the waves of the ocean start crashing against the pillars of the pier if leadership does not remain on a continuous, yet discontinuous approach to train the organization’s greatest asset – the people.
So what exactly is Strategic Organizational Renewal (SOR)?
Organizations undergo change to enhance their productivity. Changes can be effected in several areas of the organization including culture, strategy, mission, teams and organizational structure. SOR is a framework that defines the role, responsibilities, and performance of human capital across the organization and the planning for it must only take place in the organizations “war room.” To explain the war room concept, leadership appoints a specific room that will be specified as the location where the organizations strategy is planned. This location must remain under lock and key to ensure the organization’s intellectual capital offers an uncompromised agenda that influences positive outcomes. SOR is the resulting effect that is birthed from the war room. This is only possible when those appointed to the war room each understands the importance of establishing the organization’s “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) – the principles to achieve professional mastery.
Establishing Principles to Achieve Personal Mastery – People First, then the Organization
You now have before you the opportunity to take the steps that achieve a high level of professional mastery that achieves organizational growth. It requires the adoption of a “code” as a living, breathing organism to each level of the organization. How can people build awareness, use their experiences to implement a new approach to deportment and develop a strategy, which includes resolve and ethical conduct? This is the task that lies before them.
It sounds like the normal work that we all know and do so well. But be cautioned, it is not! When individuals combine the code with rules and regulations, reporting and accountability to force conformity to standards, they will fail – to oppose change by way of fear is not what is required. Rather, achieving professional mastery is a continuous pursuit of ethical behavior that ultimately manifests into a quest of improving the human spirit; to pursue good, to do the right thing in across the workplace. The code says that who ever should adopt it into his/her life, will possess a level of courage – both physically and emotionally – to execute the necessary task that drives performance to exemplify the highest level of personal and professional conviction.
Why establish a code to live by? The answer is simple; establishing a code or set of principles ensures a level of conduct (code of conduct) that extends the life cycle of the organization. This code of conduct is what I have been referencing – the “Memorandum of Understanding.” As a code of conduct, the MOU provides a resource to assist people in their personal development, growth, guidance, and assessment in the leadership of self. The MOU establishes a strict perspective for instructing successful practices, theories, and beliefs that drives people to achieve a successful future (how you intend to conduct yourself into the future for others to emulate).
The Memorandum of Understanding is also designed for people to learn broadly; to inspire the service out of generosity for others; and to prepare them to lead systems courageously into the future. A MOU must encourage a perspective to become firmly grounded in the potential for successful growth using the following constructs:
- The Cardinal Rules
- The Guiding Precepts
- The Forms of Disposition
- The General Orders
- The Strategy Forward – Establishing Professional Mastery
- The Centers of Gravity
The Cardinal Rules. The Cardinal Rules are a set of guidelines that are invaluable for people and organizations to follow while planning and executing at the strategic or tactical level. These rules, once established by the individual(s) or teams are the rules that govern forward movement and must not change.
The Guiding Precepts. The Guiding Precepts are designed to inform people what they should and should not be doing in accordance with executing a well designed strategy to win. They also inform of the reasons “why” an action must occur and the repercussions should the individual and/or organization fail at meeting such a task.
The Forms of Disposition. The Forms of Disposition offer a substantive transformation in “thought” about how people achieve a perspective on things in life. It refers to an orchestrated, systemic and revolutionary new world-view resulting in a “change” of societies, cultures, and marketplaces due to behavioral perspective. This is today often called "systems theory," which sees a web of relationships coalescing to become something greater than the parts. Individuals must be able to look at things from a perspective that they are always changing and evolving into new forms – thinking “out-of-the-box!” We are doomed to a slow death unless radical change occurs in the way we think. Change your way of thinking or die a slow death.
The General Orders. The General Orders are broad, community-wide "need statements,” designed to encompass a variety of related issues in a person’s life or within the life cycle of an organization. These related issues are referred to as “Guiding Objectives,” which are specific items that need to be addressed. The Guiding Strategies (developed to fit current and future circumstance) are the methods identified for addressing the Guiding Objectives, and the Guiding Policies are the specific action steps that are recommended to implement the Guiding Strategies. The General Orders, all eleven of them, offer the ability to explore implications in an open and reflective manner and reinforce each other in providing a coherency and wholeness often lacking in life cycles.
The Strategy Forward – Establishing Professional Mastery. The traditional values are the foundation of the modern day; that was yesterday. Tomorrow, you have an opportunity to create commitment and the needed momentum to establish, publish, share, and teach a different set of life’s code, values, and ethics to journey into the future. After much hard work, you are prepared to develop a strategy to move forward and plan the next steps to target critical successes for winning the Future Picture. What a legacy you will leave when executed with personal and professional bearing for others to follow. This is the way of the future. This is a new chapter!
The Centers of Gravity. Just as time changes, so does the internal and external influence in your life and in the life cycle of an organization. The Centers of Gravity are the dynamics within a process that offer the greatest impact on the overall system when change happens. They offer a high level of “value” and return on your energy “investment.” When combined with the concept of parallel deposits (creating energy from various perspectives in a short period of time), the Centers of Gravity make possible the seemingly impossible task of realizing success in changing paradigms. The Centers of Gravity places significant influence on the five established epicenters of any changing system to receive desired effects: Leadership, Processes, Infrastructure, Population, and Action Units.
In summary, I see the Memorandum of Understanding (once established for the organization), as an opportunity to free up the actions of people as servants, but develop them as encouraged opportunists. It is empowering, it is enabling, and it grounds people in a public way on the fundamentals that they all must share to benefit the organization. There is no ethical malaise. It is important to realize that the new is not a finding from what has been lost. Rather, it is like the journey of the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz in search of a brain (brain power in this context), the tin man in search of a heart, and the lion in search of courage. People’s value system is intact and in most cases, has been during the journey of personal growth. The MOU simply articulates and reaffirms the core value and behavioral perspective that already underlie their personal and professional appearance and conduct to achieve significant growth. And, all of this is stimulated from the affects of the war room; hence, the influences that lead to significant strategic organizational renewal in the end.
The Memorandum of Understanding is designed to help an organization answer four fundamental questions in order to develop and execute an effective strategy forward plan. These questions are:
- Where does the organization want to be in the future?
- What will the organization apply its resources against to achieve the Future Picture?
- How will the organization apply those resources?
- When and under what conditions will the organization exit from their current strategic plan?
It’s the act of dynamically adjusting business models and strategies to the deep changes at work in the external environment. Above all else, this requires innovation and the Memorandum of Understanding definitely offers an innovative perspective to most organizations. In a 2003 article in Harvard Business Review entitled “The Quest for Resilience,” Gary Hamel wrote, “Strategic renewal is creative reconstruction.” It’s all about dissecting the traditional business model and examining it for imaginative ways to reconstruct it to create significant intellectual and emotional thought space for value creation to positively influence the internal and external customers of the organization. This becomes all the more urgent in challenging times, when customer needs and market conditions swiftly and dramatically change.
As in the case of the New Covenant Church of Philadelphia organization, where the senior pastor and Chief Executive Officer Bishop C. Milton Grannum, set aside a specific room on the same floor of the building as his office for directing the organization’s strategic organizational renewal efforts. The organization’s new “war room” had the same critical importance as Winston Churchill’s cabinet war room in London, used to direct military strategy during World War II. Bishop Grannum’s Innovation War Room was a simple, but highly effective device that guided the New Covenant Church of Philadelphia’s appointed leadership team to focus on establishing the strategy forward to reinvent the business model and find bold, new growth opportunities. And, its impact on the organization’s strategies – and, ultimately, its performance – is still being felt today.
Late in the month of November 2008, even in the face of formidable pressures and economic challenges, New Covenant Church of Philadelphia braved the climate and made the decision to bring in yet another trainer, speaker and author Dr. David Ireland from the region only to learn that they were on the right path to extend the organization’s life cycle. The New Covenant Church of Philadelphia continues to be one of the most progressive thinking faith-based organizations in the region.
The reason; the CEO fully understands that the time to input integrated talent management to boost the organization’s human capital is when most organizations are calling on “cost cutting” as its strategy in the face of adverse conditions.
Very few organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, can claim to have a specific innovation war room somewhere on location. But, what every organization can and should do – right now! – is organize a serious, high-level strategy forum (at least call it the “Innovation War Room” where innovation intersects strategy) to begin exercising transformative thinking and rethinking their business from the customer backward.
One of the fundamental questions the leadership team must ask is this: “how do we get the people to buy-into the organization’s new perspective of transformational thinking to experience upward movement in a market where people no longer have financial resources?” And, in a nutshell, it is my perspective that in answering the question, these people should take a look at the slogan of Royal Bank of Scotland: “Less Talk!” “Start engaging the necessary requirements to strategically execute flawlessly to influence the organizations Future Picture.” Innovation powers us out of everything and must be taken seriously as a strategy that wins.
The absolute worst thing any organization can do during the greatest of challenging times is to assume they can go on with “business as usual – and to go along with the status quo.” Instead, they must conduct themselves as great leaders do and get busy working to understand how organizational clients’ (internal and external) priorities may have changed and quickly realign the organizational business model to address their new needs. Reading through a past edition of the Wall Street Journal, most of the advertisements (for luxury watches, exorbitant real estate, and fabulous vacation resorts) looked embarrassingly inappropriate in view of the ongoing national economic crisis that the United States of America has been facing in the past few years and the next years to come.
One ad, from NOKIA, stood out in contrast. The headline: “Can anyone provide cost cutting solutions that work now? My answer is YES. Now, there’s an organization that seems to get it. But wait a minute. Didn’t that headline sound more than a little like Barack Obama? NOKIA seems to have understood the lesson from the past month’s U.S. election between President Elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain: Whether you’re overcoming organizational politics or training people to remain on top in their careers, the winners will be those who recognize that the game has changed, and that “same old stuff” just does not cut it any longer. The world’s processes have changed in ways that the world looks much different than it did a year ago (unemployment is up 47% from 2007 – 2008, home ownership is down 26% and the statistics continue to get grim). The way to make effective decisions require innovative thought and those who miss the opportunity to change will be left behind. The best quote that I teach from fits great here: “If people seek to achieve what they have never had, they MUST be prepared to do what they have never done.”
As a U.S. Marine turned business professional, responsible for leading a dynamic team of specialist into the lion’s belly when the team engages a client who is seeking to overcome business and process challenges, innovation takes precedent as our strategic starting point. Our team defines the importance of the war room, helps to identify its location and then the work begins – in the newly organized Innovation War Room. Without this component added to the mix, there’s no need to start because without it, the potential for failure rises incredibly. As we establish these critical strategy rooms, we teach companies to unpack their business model into five Centers of Gravity: Leadership, Infrastructure, Processes, Populations and Action Units. These five are used to influence positive organizational behavior from the leadership who is responsible for making the decisions to drive momentum: who they serve, what service they provide how they provide it, how they generate revenue and how they differentiate and sustain a strategic advantage.
Then we demonstrate how the Centers of Gravity are used to radically rethink each component using the “Six Lenses of Innovation” – the cutting-edge military-style ideation and methodology, “Battleplan for Preemptive Strike,” outlined in my latest book “Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams.” So, we get the strategy teams to (1) Establish Achievable Aims; challenge deeply-held orthodoxies about who their customers are, how they interact with them, how they define their products or services, how they configure the value chain, and so on; (2) Identify Means; harness emergent trends and discontinuities to substantially change the way things are done in their industry; (3) Ensure Intelligence; leverage core competencies and strategic assets in novel ways to generate new growth; (4) Enforce Security; understand and address deep customer needs that are currently going unmet; (5) Engage the Strike; a deliberate Battleplan used by a strategic and numerically inferior power to head off a situation in which ultimate defeat would be inevitable; and lastly, (6) Flawlessly Execute the Exit Strategy; just as everything has a beginning, all things have an end. Leaders are instructed how-to establish exit points using 32 solution-centric precepts to face fierce challenges in short time frames using the process.
We believe that as organizations begin to reshape their cultures; it’s not hard to recognize how the principles found within the military-style ideation and methodology of the Battleplan for Preemptive Strike apply to the many burning platforms organizations are facing today. Isn’t it time you subjected your own business model to some “creative reconstruction,” aimed at making it better suited to today’s shifting customer needs and new economic realities?
Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts, A United States Marine turned business professional is co-author of Business WARFIGHTING For GREAT Teams (Book Surge Publishing, 2009) and Founder and Chairman of the Bison Group Corporation, a management consulting and training firm. He is the author The Process of LeaderShaping, a cultural transformational program and university course of study and has consulted or presented to numerous leading U.S. and foreign corporations, helping them to realize increased integrated talent management strategies, team building maneuvers, and decision-making skills to compete in today’s highly uncertain business environments. He has also authored four additional publications with his most successful title, The Art of Detachment: Breakthrough Principles to Transformational Leadership (Kendall Hunt, 2007). His works allowed him to be chosen as the technical, military and development specialists by the U.S. film industry to the feature film “Stateside” that released in theaters in May 2004 where he trained and acted onscreen with “A-List” talents Val Kilmer and Jonathan Tucker along with 75 -other actors, teaching them the principles of leadership, team development, and influence for the production. He is now teaching his programs at Temple University.
Published on 12/15/2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Bison Group Appoints Business Development Specialist “Gordon Enterprises” to Head Reseller Recruitment in North America
Philadelphia, PA. – 8 December 2008: The Bison Group ® Corporation, the world leader in military-style executive education and LeaderShaping Applications, today launched its Reseller Partner Program for the North American region. A major objective of the program will be to recruit strategic resellers that provide added value to The Bison Group through their business and executive education expertise, their application focus, and their ability to expand geographic coverage. The Reseller Partner Program combined with Bison’s emotional intelligence, organizational behavior, transformational leadership, performance management assessments, strategic-execution and team building maneuver applications, along with its committed customer base, is expected to accelerate Bison’s success within the executive education space. The Bison Group customers will benefit from the program through accelerated delivery of targeted business training applications and the expertise that each reseller will be able to provide. The new program will lay the platform for Bison to enhance its service offerings to benefit Bison’s resellers worldwide.
Bison’s Reseller Partner Program centers on providing resellers with effective sales and marketing support and online support programs, tools, training and support services needed to ensure their business success. The program delivers value to resellers’ by rewarding them for their commitment with a number of financial incentives for engaging with Bison on joint business opportunities. Resellers will receive program benefits, including marketing development resources for joint lead generation activities, sales training, discounts on developer certification classes and passes to Bison’s Annual User Conferences. In addition, resellers will be able to take advantage of qualified lead opportunities across the multi-disciplined business, university and non-profit sectors, discounts on the published list price of Bison publications and research applications, referral fee bonuses, and access to the Bison Partner Center, a secure portal providing partners with quick access to the latest news, events, sales productivity and marketing collateral, training courses, and product demos for maximizing revenue potential with Bison.
“We view resellers as extremely valuable in maintaining our market leadership in executive education,” said Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts, Founder and Chairman of The Bison Group. “We’re confident that building relationships with resellers in key areas through the Reseller Partner Program will contribute to our success and provide a win-win situation in which Bison, our customer base, and our resellers will flourish.”
The team at Gordon Enterprises, Bison’s newly appointed specialists for North American Operations will spearhead the Reseller Partner Program. Gordon Enterprises has almost 40 years of success in selling strategic and tactical enterprise learning products and services engagements.
“I am excited to build relationships with resellers because they are a key component to the success of Bison’s vision and will be treated as true extensions of The Bison Group’s sales force,” said Denise Headley, Director of Channels for North American Operations at the Gordon Enterprise Corporation. “Resellers will be empowered for success through access to the same programs, sales productivity tools, training, and marketing collateral as we provide for our own sales force. With this formula we are confident that we can leverage the reseller channel to expand Bison’s reach for maximum growth.”
About Bison’s Reseller Partner Program
To learn more about the Reseller Partner program, please visit http://www.thebisongroup.com, or email Dpitts@thebisongroup.com.
About The Bison Group ® Corporation
The Bison Group, a team of U.S. Marines turned business professionals, is a leader in military-style executive education and learning services for business, education, government, faith-based organizations and higher learning institutions. Bison’s consultancy boutique works to improve the clients’ business performance by redesigning how they behave, think, and train their associates using strategies from the U.S. Marine Corps. It is the goal of Bison’s teams to implement the rigor and discipline from its training designs, instruct the global marketplace how-to increase their HumanSigma, and increase performance and integrated talent management’s “best practices” to exceed the outcomes within the Future Picture that lie waiting around the immediate corner.
The Bison Group is dedicated to increasing the richness, interactivity and effectiveness of executive education programming for everyone, everywhere. Bison delivers the next generation Emotional Intelligence platform for both customer and employee-facing applications – and its platform boasts unmatched scalability, high-performance, reliability and security that achieves’ personal and professional mastery. The proven leadership, organizational behavior, strategic-execution, and team building maneuver capabilities and highly collaborative program development architecture provides the needed resources and tools for organizations in any industry to win on every competitive battlefield they engage.
Copyright © 2008 The Bison Group ® Corporation. All rights reserved. Bison’s logo is a registered trademark of The Bison Group Corporation.
Bison’s Reseller Partner Program centers on providing resellers with effective sales and marketing support and online support programs, tools, training and support services needed to ensure their business success. The program delivers value to resellers’ by rewarding them for their commitment with a number of financial incentives for engaging with Bison on joint business opportunities. Resellers will receive program benefits, including marketing development resources for joint lead generation activities, sales training, discounts on developer certification classes and passes to Bison’s Annual User Conferences. In addition, resellers will be able to take advantage of qualified lead opportunities across the multi-disciplined business, university and non-profit sectors, discounts on the published list price of Bison publications and research applications, referral fee bonuses, and access to the Bison Partner Center, a secure portal providing partners with quick access to the latest news, events, sales productivity and marketing collateral, training courses, and product demos for maximizing revenue potential with Bison.
“We view resellers as extremely valuable in maintaining our market leadership in executive education,” said Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts, Founder and Chairman of The Bison Group. “We’re confident that building relationships with resellers in key areas through the Reseller Partner Program will contribute to our success and provide a win-win situation in which Bison, our customer base, and our resellers will flourish.”
The team at Gordon Enterprises, Bison’s newly appointed specialists for North American Operations will spearhead the Reseller Partner Program. Gordon Enterprises has almost 40 years of success in selling strategic and tactical enterprise learning products and services engagements.
“I am excited to build relationships with resellers because they are a key component to the success of Bison’s vision and will be treated as true extensions of The Bison Group’s sales force,” said Denise Headley, Director of Channels for North American Operations at the Gordon Enterprise Corporation. “Resellers will be empowered for success through access to the same programs, sales productivity tools, training, and marketing collateral as we provide for our own sales force. With this formula we are confident that we can leverage the reseller channel to expand Bison’s reach for maximum growth.”
About Bison’s Reseller Partner Program
To learn more about the Reseller Partner program, please visit http://www.thebisongroup.com, or email Dpitts@thebisongroup.com.
About The Bison Group ® Corporation
The Bison Group, a team of U.S. Marines turned business professionals, is a leader in military-style executive education and learning services for business, education, government, faith-based organizations and higher learning institutions. Bison’s consultancy boutique works to improve the clients’ business performance by redesigning how they behave, think, and train their associates using strategies from the U.S. Marine Corps. It is the goal of Bison’s teams to implement the rigor and discipline from its training designs, instruct the global marketplace how-to increase their HumanSigma, and increase performance and integrated talent management’s “best practices” to exceed the outcomes within the Future Picture that lie waiting around the immediate corner.
The Bison Group is dedicated to increasing the richness, interactivity and effectiveness of executive education programming for everyone, everywhere. Bison delivers the next generation Emotional Intelligence platform for both customer and employee-facing applications – and its platform boasts unmatched scalability, high-performance, reliability and security that achieves’ personal and professional mastery. The proven leadership, organizational behavior, strategic-execution, and team building maneuver capabilities and highly collaborative program development architecture provides the needed resources and tools for organizations in any industry to win on every competitive battlefield they engage.
Copyright © 2008 The Bison Group ® Corporation. All rights reserved. Bison’s logo is a registered trademark of The Bison Group Corporation.
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