The Work-life Insight
How to Excel in Sales
Sales Training is not always easy, to get an effective outcome from prospecting to close, some simple steps need to be followed. Below are some guidelines that a great sales person needs to follow.
Prospecting: Ideas could come from anywhere. And any good sales funnel needs plenty of prospects. Where do they come from? How do they become a lead?Lead Qualification: Make contact. You have a prospect on the hook, but what is his/her value? How do you qualify them and make a good first impression?
Engage: This is the stage where you must listen, understand, and position your product based on the potential customer's need, and then overcome any objections. Ultimately, it comes down to "what is the potential customer trying to achieve, improve, or avoid? And how are you going to connect your product/service to it?"
Action: Maximize the "yeses" and minimize the "nos." That said, no is not the worst-case scenario – indecision and lack of action can waste time and resources that you could focus instead on a prospect more likely to result in success.
Support: Service, Over-Deliver, and Grow. Great salespeople service their clients well, over-deliver on what they sold, and grow their relationships. It is much easier to re-sell and grow existing clients than it is to sell new ones. Go above and beyond and become a trusted advisor, and you will rarely lose a client.
Evaluate: The best salespeople are constantly evaluating their own performance. How did I do? What can I learn? The best sales organizations figure out how to organize that information and leverage it across their sales team.
If you are interested in joining a class that would help you to perfect the art of communication through a sales process along with some guided tools to get you organized, reach out to our team to learn more about an upcoming sales training that will be hosted in WorkSocial premier training room in Jersey City.
Room Layouts suitable for group training
So you are having a training session or meeting. Have you considered what layout would be best for you?
Have you ever had a meeting in a room that was in a different configuration from your usual format?
Was the meeting more or less effective than normal?
This guide can be used when you ‘book’ or hire a training or meeting room. Remember to state the layout and the number of participants required.
Importance of effective training room layout
Room layout should not just be set by the number of people required, but by the purpose of the event. What is it that you are looking to achieve?
Key factors: – Where is the centre of attention – Do people need to interact with each other? –Do you want people in groups without moving people around?
Lecture Theatre – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages – If room is well designed, excellent visibility
Disadvantages – Poor trainer/ participant contact, Back rows should be elevated, University like
U Shape – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages – Business Like, Trainer can walk into U shape, gaining direct contact with each person
Disadvantages – Formal, Front participants having to look at an angle
Seminar/ Amphitheatre – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages and disadvantages as Lecture theatre
Herring Bone – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages – Space effective for large numbers, All participants are at a good angle to the front, Trainer can walk down spine
Disadvantages – Several participants hidden by others, Reminiscent of school, Encourages dysfunctioning groups, Relatively poor contact
BoardRoom – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages – Good for small groups, can see/ interact with others, can share resources, creates equality
Disadvantages – Difficult for some to ‘see the front’,
Circle or ’round’ – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages – Creates Equality, Good for small groups, can see/ interact with others, can share resources
Disadvantages – Formal, participants having to look at an angle
Cabaret, Gala or Bistro – Training or Meeting Room Layout Style
Advantages – Good for larger numbers, Good for group work, Encourages mixing, Trainer or presenter can circulate
Disadvantages – Some participants will have poor visibility, May encourage lack of attention, Needs multimedia (PA & mic for best effect)
Training or Meeting Room Layout Summary
When you run your meeting or training event, it’s not just room layout that is important, it’s about matching the room layout with the trainers style, the material to be covered and the required outcomes. The room shape and design can make or break an event.
Computer training layouts
Depending on the nature of the room many of the layouts above can be used for PC training. The key thing is having space for people to move. Sitting on one place for extended periods of time is not conducive to learning. We need to “get physical” and move around. Given a choice I prefer boardroom layout.
When setting up rooms for computer training be very aware of light reflections from windows and the ambient temperature and airflow in the room. A room with 8-10 people and computers can get very hot and very stuffy very quickly.
Book WorkSocial’s Specially Designed Training Rooms
Credit:
Post Author: Mike Morrison
Website: https://rapidbi.com/
Anyone can seem cool. Wear the right clothes, drive the right cars, take the right vacations, carefully craft social media updates … Seeming cool is easy. Actually being cool is anything but. I’m not cool. (I’m as average as they come.) But I do know some cool people. Here are some of the things that make them cool.
1. They’ve done awesome things I don’t know about.
Why don’t I know about the awesome things they’ve done? Because they just do them. And if I ever do find out, I’ll find out in person. From a casual conversation. Or even accidentally. But not through social media. Why? Cool people see the experience as the end result — not sharing that experience with as many people as possible.
2. They don’t think work/life balance. They just think life.
Drawing a line in the sand to create an artificial work/life boundary never works. Why? You are your business. Your business is your life, just like your life is your business — which is also true for family, friends, and interests — so there is no separation, because all those things make you who you are. Cool people find ways to include family instead of ways to exclude work. They find ways to include interests, hobbies, passions, and personal values in their professional lives. Because if you can’t, you’re not living. You’re just working.
3. They don’t take pictures of famous people.
Seeing a famous person, even at a distance, is oddly fun. Can’t explain it; it just is. But taking a picture of — or with — that person doesn’t confer any coolness on you. Nor does sharing it with your friends. Besides: Life is not the zoo. So don’t treat other people like it is.
4. They relentlessly seek new experiences.
Novelty seeking — getting bored easily and throwing yourself into new pursuits or activities — is often linked to gambling, drug abuse, attention deficit disorder, and leaping out of perfectly good airplanes without a parachute. But, as Dr. Robert Cloninger says, “Novelty seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age … if you combine adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it’s not all about you, then you get the creativity that benefits society as a whole.”
According to Dr. Cloninger, “To succeed, you want to be able to regulate your impulses while also having the imagination to see what the future would be like if you tried something new.”
Sounds like every cool person I know.
Embrace your inner novelty seeker. You’ll be healthier, you’ll have more friends, you’ll be generally more satisfied with life … and you’ll be a little cooler, too.
5. They do nice things, just because they can.
Richard Branson gave me half of his sandwich. Jimmie Johnson stayed late so I could interview him. Mark Cuban stopped to chat with an intern. Joe Gibbs gave every member of a production crew a signed copy of his book after we filmed an interview. Kirk Hammett hung around to meet Inc. staffers, and then gave me tickets to Metallica’s surprise Webster Hall show.
Most of us are nice, especially when we’re expected to be. Cool people are nice even when no one would expect them to be. Not because they have to. Just because they can.
6. They constantly try to prove something — to themselves.
Many people have a burning desire to prove other people wrong. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a great motivator. (Hi, Michael Jordan.) The coolest people are also motivated by something deeper and more personal. Their drive, commitment, and dedication springs from a desire to prove something to the most important person of all. Themselves.
7. They find happiness in the success of other people.
Every great entrepreneur answers the question, “Can you make the choice that your happiness will come from the success of others?” with a resounding “Yes!” So does every cool person I know. They enjoy personal achievements, but they really enjoy seeing other people succeed.
8. They see money not just as a reward but also as a responsibility.
The coolest wealthy people I know see money as a way to grow their business, to reward and develop employees, to give back to the community … not just as a way to make their own lives better but to improve the lives of other people, too. And they do so without calling attention to themselves — because the true reward is always in the act, not the recognition.
9. They’re entrepreneurs — whether in fact or in spirit.
Success is difficult to achieve no matter what the pursuit. That’s why we all fail sometimes. And when we do, it’s easy to decide events were outside our control. It’s easy to feel depressed and wonder, “Why don’t I ever get the opportunities other people get?” or “Why aren’t my friends more supportive?” or “Why can’t I catch a break?” In short, it’s easy to think: “Why me?”
People with an entrepreneurial mindset ask a different question: “Why not me?”
The coolest people I know don’t assume successful people possess special talents or gifts. They see successful people and think: “That’s awesome — and if she can do that, why not me?” Good question: Why not you? And, most important …
10. They don’t think they’re cool.
Social media makes it easy to do your own public relations. You can blow your own horn, bask in the glow of your insights and accomplishments … With a little time and effort, you can seem larger than life.
Cool people don’t. They know their success is based on hard work, persistence, and execution, but they also recognize that key mentors, great employees, and a huge dose of luck also play a part in their success.
That’s why they’re humble. That’s why they ask questions. That’s why they seek advice. That’s why they recognize and praise others.
They don’t focus on highlighting how far they’ve come — because they’re too busy thinking about how far they still want to go.
Credit:
Post Author: www.inc.com
Website: https://www.inc.com
Many of the negotiation techniques we teach at Black Swan Group are part of a “no” strategy. We discuss ways to make “no” work for you in a negotiation; share tips on how to get buy-in, starting with a “no” ; and offer communication techniques to help create space between “yes” and “no.”
In our everyday lives, we see “no” as a form of rejection. In most situations, “no” signifies an end rather than a beginning. So why do we go out of our way to make “no” our goal in negotiations? Below, we’ve outlined the top reasons why a “no” strategy is the ultimate secret weapon.
Saying “No” Settles The Stomach
Whether or not we acknowledge their power, emotions guide our lives. They dictate our thoughts and perceptions about the world and actively influence our behavior. We are emotional creatures by nature, and the world is an emotional minefield. Surprisingly, saying “yes” to things naturally makes people more anxious than saying “no”.
Our emotional reactions tend to manifest in a physical way, as intense sensations that are both chicken and egg to our thoughts. They surface as butterflies or knots in our stomach, as a twinge or pang in our gut, or as a tightness or pounding in our chest. In fact, negative emotions have a more immediate and lasting effect than positive ones. You can be in a relationship, be very happy, see that person everyday and be very happy and contented. You can also end a relationship and be upset for months and never even see the person. If you have every been in a relationship, ask yourself which of those emotions you felt was more powerful. On a basic level, we all try to get through our day feeling emotionally balanced and in control—and we actively avoid situations that might make us feel the opposite.
Being pushed to say “yes” before we’re ready is one of those situations that feel downright uncomfortable. In a negotiation, asking yes-oriented questions can make your counterpart feel trapped and trigger a negative domino effect. When this happens, our fight-or-flight instincts kick in, and our emotions start to override our reasoning and comprehension faculties.
Oftentimes, we need to say “no” before we’re ready to say “yes.” In new situations, saying “yes” is a concession that magnifies our sense of vulnerability. On the other hand, saying “no” is a convenient means of self-preservation. It doesn’t require any real effort or emotional investment.
When you give someone the ability to say “no” by asking no-oriented questions, you respect their autonomy and preserve their emotional safety net. By awarding them the right to veto, you keep them engaged and nurture trust while still satisfying their need to set boundaries.
“No” Is More Accurate and Informative Than “Yes”
There’s another key reason why asking, “Do you disagree?” is more effective than, “Do you agree?” To avoid conflict (and keep our tummies feeling good), it’s much easier to go along with someone than it is to rock the boat. When you ask yes-oriented questions that you already know the answer to, you give people a one-word escape route that’s difficult to pass up. To satisfy you and move on with their lives, all they need to do is tell you what you want to hear—even if they don’t genuinely agree. In this way, asking yes-oriented questions can inspire counterfeit or tepid deals that don’t hold up during implementation. When you ask someone, “Do you disagree?” you open yourself up to correction, making it possible for them to express their honest opinion without creating conflict.
Asking yes-oriented questions also limits your learning opportunities. In any negotiation, your persuasive abilities are limited to what you know. In order to build trust and influence, you must uncover “known unknowns” (things you know you don’t know going into the negotiation) and “unknown unknowns” (things you don’t know you don’t know until they are revealed). Both types of unknowns will exist in every negotiation—it’s up to you to uncover them.
As a general rule, people love to correct. Yes-oriented questions leave no room to exercise this natural impulse. By giving your counterpart the option to say “no,” you also create space for them to explain why they disagree. Creating this opportunity for explanation will help you understand their core drives and empower you to communicate more effectively
Executing a “No” Strategy
Taking a “no” approach to negotiation can involve more than just no-oriented questions.
Labels are also great tools to use if you’re genuinely unsure of something or if you’re trying to get a handle on the underlying conversation dynamic. Similar to a no-oriented question, a mislabel (when executed with the appropriate tone) invites your counterpart to correct you and expand on what they mean. Once they do so, use another label to demonstrate understanding, followed by a calibrated question to find out more. For example, “It sounds like I missed something. How do we get back on track?”
In addition to learning the right techniques, executing a “no” strategy requires a change in your negotiation mindset. Too often, salespeople and other professionals who negotiate frequently have a “yes” addiction, which flows both ways. In addition to fishing for a “yes,” you are consequently very vulnerable to the counterfeit “yes”—the “yes” that is given just to make you shut your mouth. The negotiator with the “no” strategy will never fall victim to this dynamic. Human beings love to be agreed with and told they are on the right track and wanting approval is in our bones. It’s not an easy shift to put yourself in a place where you are seeking correction or additional thought. However, people don’t come to the negotiation table to tell you how great you are, also a human nature. Which human nature trait do you plan on using to your advantage? To truly implement a “no” strategy, it’s important to channel your emotional intelligence to recognize and correct these habits in your own communication.
For more expert negotiation tips and techniques to use at work, download our latest e-book below.
Go to our Eventbrite page for Tickets
Credit:
Post Author: Brandon Voss
Website: https://blog.blackswanltd.com
New Age Program By WorkSocial Connecting Corporate Trainers and Enterprises
WorkSocial, a minority- and woman-owned coworking and corporate education space in Jersey City, New Jersey, announced new partnerships with globally recognized corporate trainers at their Jersey City location.
As a leader in the sharing / gig economy, WorkSocial continues to disrupt the corporate office landscape by providing services to companies that not only occupy its offices but also its community. In a recent unveiling WorkSocial’s leadership announced a series of training and L&D educational content.
This initiative is a part of the community enrichment effort which allows small companies to train employees in batches, rather than taking an entire team off the clock at one time. In a statement to the press, Natasha Mohan, founder and CEO of WorkSocial said “small businesses and entrepreneurs are the life blood of America. Our country is great and filled with opportunities. My mission in the education space is to bring world class content to the people of New Jersey and specifically Jersey City.”
WorkSocial was started by Natasha’s Mohan who is a residential and commercial real estate veteran.
“When I talk to trainers and companies about my vision of bringing world class corporate education to small businesses the size of the opportunity and impact is not understood. Our research supports that this market is valued at $20 Billion. By applying the sharing model to the platform we have dis-intermediated the buying pattern and exponentially grown the opportunity ten fold.” Its a no brainier. “WorkSocial is the Uber for office space and corporate education, only without the drama and crazy commissions.”
WorkSocial’s corporate training team identifies the best trainers in America. These trainers typically offer their services at premium prices making them accessible only to large companies who have a multi-million dollar training budgets and the ability to take a service line off the clock for two or three days. “A small business cannot afford to pay large dollars and send teams to train. This can put it at a competitive disadvantage. I wanted to change this and did. Our sharing approach not only gives the same opportunity to a small business that has a small team it also makes it affordable. We find ways to subsidize costs”
Confirmed speakers and training in 2019 include the following (https://worksocial.works/events):
- Chris Voss – Negotiation
- Marshal Goldsmith – Stakeholder Centered Coaching
- Thomson Reuters – ONESOURCE Workpapers
- SAP – S4 Hana for Finance (Global Knowledge)
- Alteryx – Certification Class (Renato Baruti author and speaker)
- RPA – Robotics Process Automation using UI Path
- Exponential Organizations – by Peter Diamandis
- SQL BI – Business Intelligence using Microsoft Power BI
The WorkSocial Approach: Abundance in a Scarce Economy
After a trainer schedules their event, WorkSocial issues a major announcement and press release across several marketing platforms, and rolls out an email campaign inviting its members to attend the training event. Their trained sales team also deploys a direct sales campaign, while event planners negotiate discounted hotel rooms for attendees and organize networking dinners. Trainers typically schedule multiple events to maximize their time and investment in Jersey City. As an unexpected bonus, WorkSocial pays for the trainer’s hotel room and basic expenses.
WorkSocial’s corporate training room rental is almost sold-out to capacity for 2019.
Our focus is to bring in the best education in sales training, technology, leadership, risk management, data management, human resources, and entrepreneurship.
Availability for 2020 is also limited, with a fantastic trainer lineup that includes including:
- Greg Wells – Augmenting Humanity Mindset Training
- Blue Prism Robotics
- R and Python for Business
- Find your Why by Simon Sinek
- Sales Training based on a Tony Robbins NLP technique
For more information, contact:
Natasha Mohan
[email protected]
(201) 210-8255
If you or your team is struggling to win deals, navigate a tricky business situation, or communicate effectively, it may be worth your while to enlist expert guidance. A negotiation consultant can help you hone your strategy and guide you through a challenging situation with greater ease, confidence, and dexterity. But how do you know which consultant is best suited to your needs? We’ve outlined five things to keep in mind when choosing a negotiation consultant partner.
1. Identify what problem you’re trying to solve
Before you seek out help, it’s important to identify what you’re struggling with. In other words, what’s the primary problem you’re looking to solve? If you manage a sales team, figure out what part of the sales process is causing the biggest roadblock to success. Is your team having trouble showing value? Setting expectations? Implementing the deals it’s created? If you can pinpoint the root of your problem, you’ll have a better idea of what type of help you need to solve it.
2. Figure out what approach you’re looking for
When it comes to learning negotiation skills, there are three basic teaching approaches: academic, theoretical, and practical. Some consultants will offer an academic approach that focuses on things such as negotiation terms, acronyms, and rigid, linear processes. Although this background information can provide a loose guideline, a purely academic approach doesn’t address how to apply those skills in practice. In other words, you can learn all about game theory—what it is, how it works, what’s involved—but that doesn’t mean you’ll be equipped to deal with real emotions being exhibited by people in contentious life situations.
In order for negotiation coaching to be effective, it needs to address how theories and rules will be translated into practical skills—and how those practical skills will be reinforced to become second nature. This advanced learning is possible only when you incorporate all three approaches. Of course, a three-part approach takes more time, but it also ensures that changes will stick long after the course is over.
Any decent negotiation training seminar is going to give your team a confidence boost. But how long will that feeling last? You may hope that confidence pulls them through the next big challenge, but hope isn’t a viable strategy. Instead, seek out a negotiation consultant who will create a plan for reinforcement and execution.
3. Consider your timeline
It’s easy to memorize information for a short period of time—that’s why cramming the night before a big test can sometimes pay off. However, once that test is over, almost none of what you studied is bound to stick (which is why most of us have trouble recalling world history facts we learned in school). When all is said and done, memorizing information isn’t the same as truly learning it. And there’s no shortcut or workaround to learning—it takes time, repetition, real-world/low stakes practice, and reinforcement.
You’re not going to change how everyone on your team communicates in one eight-hour session. Instead, look for a consultant who is willing to spread things out in order to help you get your money’s worth.
To truly change how you or your team thinks, communicates, and operates in high-stakes negotiations, you need plenty of low-stakes practice under your belt. We recommend a coaching timeline of 12 weeks, in which you can learn new skills, practice those skills in real-world situations, and reconvene after each trial to debrief. This combination of academic, theoretical, and practical learning will help ensure that small successes become long-term trends.
4. Create a plan to ensure long-term success
It’s important to find a partner who’s committed to your success even after you’ve parted ways. In addition to teaching you negotiation skills, coaching you through challenging situations, and giving you opportunities to practice, the right coach will provide a framework for continued growth.
At the Black Swan Group, one of our greatest strengths lies in our ability to simplify communication. When your mind is going a mile a minute, it’s hard to let things go and even harder to focus on the basics. By teaching the foundations of effective communication, we aim to give our clients a more agile framework. Our approach isn’t about following a standard process or technical formula—it’s about using the skills in your toolbox to adapt in the moment. To do that, you need to understand how people approach conflict and know how to communicate in a way that will resonate with the individual.
5. Trust your gut
Effective negotiators know how to make their counterpart feel positive, collaborative, and at ease. If you’re talking to a consultant company and you feel like you’re being given a sales pitch, it’s a clear sign that they’re not good at what they do. As you choose between different options, think of every conversation in your decision-making process as a tryout. Do you feel like they understand your challenges and concerns, or are they giving you canned responses? The best negotiation consultants will know how to practice what they preach.
"Coworking has boomed in the past five years and has grown in popularity, not only among independent workers and startups but also with corporate users as well. As coworking becomes a norm, we expect to see many additives and changes to the co-working space in 2019.
Let’s take a look at a few of the trends we expect to see for coworking in 2019.
Coworking Will Continue to Have an Impact on Commercial Real Estate
Coworking has a major impact on how the commercial real estate industry performs. Coworking operators have delivered a large amount of positive net absorption in major metropolitan markets. Coworking has also encouraged traditional landlords to provide upgrades and increased amenities. Landlords have been investing heavily not only into the structure of the building but also in their communal spaces.
Coworking Spaces Will Expand
Years ago, coworking spaces typically did not exceed 20,000 square feet. In today’s market, it is not rare to see coworking spaces lease over 100,000 square feet, targeting corporations and long-standing businesses. Many large enterprise users like Verizon, Toyota and IBM have realized the benefits of coworking space, proving that outsourced, temporary leasing structures are appealing to companies of all sizes, from corporate users to startups and entrepreneurs.
Increased Focus on Niches
Coworking operators are focusing on niches and finding exponential growth and higher profit margins. By focusing on specific niches, coworking facilities are able to create a community of people that support each other and develop a shared economy. This type of specialization can deliver more access to expertise, industry-specific knowledge and a community of people with similar interests.
Big Corporations are Utilizing Coworking Spaces
Large corporate companies like KPMG, Microsoft, and Toyota are starting to test out using coworking. Some are even looking at funding new co-working ventures. For certain big corporations, entire teams are shifting into coworking offices allowing them better access to education, innovation, and talent with lower initial real estate costs and greater flexibility. According to Recode, companies with more than 1,000 employees now make up 25 percent of WeWork’s annual revenue and WeWork reported that this number increased by 250% in 2017.
Coworking has a Global Reach
Coworking spaces are located in almost every major market in the world. The largest coworking company, IWG, was founded in Belgium but now has a large footprint in the United States. Many other coworking operators have entered markets across the globe, turning this trend into a norm for countries around the world.
Why Coworking Will Remain Popular
As work styles change and new generations enter the workforce, coworking will remain a viable option. Millennials want to work how they want and when they want, which is something coworking spaces can offer. With technology allowing professionals to be more mobile than ever, a traditional office space does not offer the right environment for certain professionals and businesses to be the most productive and efficient. Landlords have even started to partner with coworking operators to include entire floors to attract and retain new tenants.
Credit: http://hsprealestategroup.com
Posted on December 24, 2018
1. Data Blending
Most companies have a lot of data—volumes of it, in fact.
It’s not stored neatly and it’s not all in the same place. If your company is like most, your data is housed on several servers, maybe thousands of miles apart, and comes in a number of different formats, i.e. Microsoft Excel, XML, SAS, .tab, .shp. Some of it may be unstructured data, such as your Twitter feeds, Facebook likes, Google Analytics, and online surveys.
If tasked with bringing all this data together for analytical purposes, you may be wondering exactly how to pull this off.
Here’s the thing: Excel and Access are in over their heads with the level of data. Your IT department can write code, but there is an easier solution that offers a fast and simple way to blend data: Alteryx.
Alteryx was built for data. It’s that simple. It allows the data analyst direct access to the data regardless of its type or source. Alteryx brings data of any type or any level together. This means that it can be joined at both the record and field level. It can even be expanded to include multiple key fields. Alteryx is flexible enough to join data on non-identical fields, as well as incorporate spatial characteristics such as customer points to be combined into your data. Other tools like Fuzzy Matching give users the ability to match two datasets based on non-matching data—typically names and addresses.
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: Why It Matters
Taking agile to scale is major departure from the traditional command-and-control style — and it’s becoming increasingly popular. But you can’t do this halfway. Here’s what to know before you dive in.
With talk of scrums and sprinting, corporate environments are starting to sound a bit more like rugby matches these days. But the terminology, borrowed from the popular English sport, actually refers to an alternative way of managing work: agile.
Kristine Dery, a research scientist with the MIT Center for Information Systems Research who is studying agile at scale, also known as agile management or scaled agile, as it relates to the employee experience, said making the switch represents a major overhaul for any organization.
But, by many measures, it appears to be a more effective way of working in a rapidly-evolving digital environment. Large companies like Spotify, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Riot Games have all adopted the method.
So what is agile, and is it the right fit for your firm? And what should you do to prepare for implementing it?
What is agile?
Agile, first introduced in 2001 in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, started out as a method used in software development that challenged the traditional, linear “waterfall” development model, in which entire projects are pre-planned, then fully built out before they are tested. Agile’s approach offers iterative flexibility, with small parts of projects being built and tested simultaneously.
Taking a more iterative approach makes it easier to keep projects aligned, on track and relevant, and it allows for the release of “minimum viable products” to gather more frequent user feedback from clients earlier in the process. That helps guide the team on what needs to be changed or altered to make the product more successful.
“The traditional method of managing, the waterfall method, which is very inflexible, planned-in-advance, linear, and not iterative at all, wasn’t lending itself at all to the flexibility and the adjustments that were necessary to make great software,” said Carine Simon, a senior lecturer and industry liaison at MIT Sloan, who helped lead a transition to agile at scale at Liberty Mutual Insurance. “[Agile is] iterating with customer feedback, prototypes, and tests, versus taking some requirements and issuing the product maybe a year later, when the customer’s requirements have changed or technology has evolved.”
The idea is to allow the end user to have a clearer view of their requirements for the finished product earlier in the process of creating it, instead of receiving a final product that may not end up looking exactly like what they had anticipated.
“It’s a series of experiments, as opposed to one linear project where you get to the end and find out if it works,” Dery said. “On lots of projects with long timeframes, once you get to the end, the problem has shifted and often you’ll be coming up with a solution that is now removed from the problem.”
What is agile at scale?
Seeing agile’s success in information technology and the growing prevalence of technology throughout business at large, many companies began to ask whether the method’s practices and philosophies could be scaled up to apply with equal success to other projects or even entire business functions, Simon and Dery said.
“[Companies] said ‘Let’s see if we could move projects forward, not necessarily faster, but to get better results out of some of the projects we have, given that just about every project involves technology to some extent. Maybe it’s an opportunity to work differently,’” Dery said.
Simon said companies that adopt agile at scale benefit from breaking down functional silos and pooling the talent from each function into teams. “In the traditional management, you have one leader for each function … but the coordination and collaboration between those functions is often difficult, whereas if you create one team that pools members from each, then the thinking is that the project will be more successful. All projects are going through a similar mode of management.”
During her time at Liberty Mutual, Simon said teams developing customer-facing products began adopting agile methods at scale to redesign the process for onboarding new customers. That required pulling together the various teams involved in parts of the process to bring their perspectives together: the marketing team who designed onboarding collaterals, the call center team whose agents are on the phones with the customers, the finance team who is dealing with the different payment methods.
“It brought a team together with all those perspectives, making them collaboratively work on redesigning the process iteratively to come up with minimum viable products,” Simon said.
The switch, she said, saw the team members empowered to own the product from beginning to end and led to better products.
But adopting agile at scale means more than just plugging a new tool into an existing framework. It requires a paradigm shift at the organizational level, Dery said. “The biggest downfall is not understanding what a vast departure it is, and not investing in the learning and support that’s required to build the environment that enables it to work effectively.”
Learn a new language
Dery said those who plan on applying agile to their organization will need to learn to work within an entirely new methodology that has its own lexicon of terms to describe its workflow.
During the process, known as a “Scrum,” work is assigned to cross-functional teams and divided into “sprints” — the basic unit of progress delineated by a specific timeframe, usually two weeks to a month.
Then, there are “scrum masters” who coordinate the team’s activities, and each day members meet for short “stand-up” or “daily scrum” meetings to provide updates on the prior day’s work, the work planned ahead, and any potential stumbling blocks.
“It’s a way of coming together to make sure those things are addressed. They keep the project moving forward,” Dery said of the stand-ups. Indeed, agile sprints were so-named to evoke a sense of pace.
Development is a trail-and-error, test-and-learn process, Dery said, and the product is rolled out in small pieces at the end of each sprint. Features that still need to be completed are added to a “product backlog,” with the most crucial taking highest priority.
Within a Scrum, team members are typically afforded more autonomy in how they approach tasks and resolve problems in a departure from a command-and-control structure of project management. The concept is that those closest to the work know best how to address issues.
“You’re working on the problem all the time, as opposed to working on the solution,” Dery said. “It’s a different way of thinking and organizing, and it requires a different set of disciplines. You’re constantly assessing where you’re at, what you’re doing, and what you want to deliver.”
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Dery said companies that decide to deploy agile at an organizational scale often find that the difficulty in doing so is much greater than what they had anticipated, especially when it comes to the impact such a shift can have on employees.
“There’s no just ‘dipping your toes in the water,’” she said. “The experiment is going in fully committed to see how this allows you to work differently and build value.”
A traditional, static office design isn’t necessarily the best fit for an agile work environment, she said. They’re much better suited to a more flexible space, with movable furniture and design thinking walls. “You want it visual, for working out loud, to work it out where they are at,” she said.
Since the method requires significant close teamwork, organizations will need to ensure there are adequate video and telecommuting technologies in place for times when all team members can’t be in the same location.
Providing coaching for employees to change their work habits to better align with the agile management style is also crucial to success. “You need to be supporting not just their capabilities, but also helping build the type of work habits more suited to this way of working,” Dery said.
Scrum masters are usually responsible for ensuring that happens, and for attracting the right kind of talent to provide it.
Watch out for these friction points
Agile and waterfall methodologies are so different that they often end up butting heads when a project moves from one to the other, Dery said.
“They’re such very different ways of working,” she said. “If you’ve done one part in agile and then you throw it into waterfall, it’s a very, very different approach. It causes a lot of things to stall or get lost as [the project] is translated from one to the other.”
Dery said it’s still unclear what the best approach may be to head off such areas of friction as companies roll out agile to greater extents.
Simon said giving up the sort of control that agile requires can be threatening to some managers, and any company weighing a shift to the style should identify the functions or departments that lend themselves to it and implement them there first. If it’s successful, the track record of wins can help sway other functions to give it a shot.
Some functions whose processes are very certain and repeatable or governed by outside regulatory or compliance requirements may never need agile management, nor would they necessarily benefit from it, she noted. Even if agile looks great on paper, it won’t work if there’s too much resistance.
“In customer-centric processes where customer input is key, and in that sense it’s quite uncertain or fast-changing, then those would be the types of areas in a firm that lend themselves to agile,” she said. “You need some early wins, picking the top areas of your firm to try agile and get familiar with it, so that managers can get on board.”
Benefits of Renting a Training RoomIt has become very common for small businesses and entrepreneurs to rent an office or a work space for rent, but now many are also beginning to use training rentals. A training space for rent has become the latest trend now that more companies and businesses are realizing the importance of proper training for their employees.
Major Issues with Poor Training-Room Facilities
Training is an essential part of any company that has employees because it ensures that every worker has the skills and knowledge to do an exceptional job. However, many companies do not have their own fully functional training space and are forced to do their training using inadequate environments. Unfortunately, a poor training room can negate many of the benefits of training.Some of the biggest issues with poor training spaces include:
Lack of Necessary Technology
If a training room is not equipped with the right technology (such as video-conferencing systems, projectors, or multimedia displays), you may not be able to give your employees the information they need or train them to the level required.
Poor Conditions
Cramped spaces, excessive noise, and poorly furnished rooms (such as ones without desks, tables, or chairs) can end up being very distracting, thus causing your employees to lose out on much of the learning.
Bad Impression
Poor training rooms can make a bad impression on participants. This is particularly harmful when participants are clients, colleagues, or partners, as opposed to employees. An unprofessional space can quickly sour the experience and cause clients or employees to look elsewhere.
Benefits of a Training Room
With training rooms for rent in Jersey city there is no reason for any company—big or small—to use inadequate spaces. Training rooms for rent have a number of benefits.
Affordable
Commercial spaces are prohibitively expensive to buy. Not only are they pricey, but the costs of purchasing the right technology, furnishings, and equipment for the training space are very high. On the other hand, a training space for rent is a fraction of the cost, offering access to professional training rooms at affordable rates.
Right Infrastructure
Training rooms for rent come with the technology that you need—including projectors, video-conferencing systems, and whiteboards—for effective training and presentations.
Designed for Training
When you rent a training room, you can be assured that you are getting a fully functional space that meets your needs. Training rooms can be rented in large sizes to accommodate many participants, or in reduced sizes for smaller meetings. Furnishings, lighting, and design all adhere to professional standards.
Professional
If you want to make a good impression on clients, you need to use a professional space. Training and seminar rooms are professional environments that will help your small business or startup present a more professional image.
Secondary Services and Amenities
The best training rooms for rent will offer secondary services and amenities, including live receptionist services, administrative help, and access to other areas, such as kitchens or lounges. Look for office space rental companies that can offer you the services you need to conduct the best training possible.
WorkSocial offers mailbox services and virtual offices along with fully-furnished executive office suites and training rooms for rent in Jersey City, NJL
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