Mariette Edwards has gathered a great deal of knowledge in her 15 years as an executive coach. For Mariette, the question was not, “What do I have to work with?” but a question of how to put all this knowledge to work to grow her business.

“I’ve created a vast amount of intellectual property over the past 15 years,” said Mariette, owner of Star Maker Enterprises . “And while I was doing this, I stayed in the background. I knew it was time for me to step out from behind the curtain and get in front of a broader audience.”

Enter WOW! transformations and the consulting company’s Optimize Your Expertise™, a process that helps a business owner capitalize on her expertise through the creation of customized programs and presentations designed to position her as a thought leader.

Working with WOW!’s principal Nettie Nitzberg, Mariette sifted through 15 years of experience to come up with two marketable products — a book and a workshop.

“I put everything I had in front of Nettie,” Mariette said. “She helped me see what was related, and how my materials worked together. WOW! transformations helped me optimize my expertise by serving as my filter — what wasn’t important was washed away, and what was important stayed to work for me in a new way.”

Mariette’s 15 years of intellectual property has now taken the shape of a new book, “The Creative Curse: Why Creativity is Not Enough,” and a companion workshop that takes her “Pitching for Buy-In™” program to a whole new level.

“WOW! transformations puts a frame around your objectives, and helps to organize your materials into a logical flow,” Mariette said. “The result is a transformation into something much more valuable and marketable.”

Do you want to learn more about Optimizing Your Exertise? Join WOW! transformations principal Nettie Nitzberg on Sept. 15 from 6 p.m.-8 p.m. for a workshop at ROAM Atlanta, 5815 Windward Parkway, Suite 302, Alpharetta, GA 30004. Cost is $15. Click here to register. (Note: This is part of ROAM’s Women Entrepreneurs series; both men and women are welcome to attend.)

In a recent Atlanta Journal Constitution article “Vineyard Tours Take From Grape To Glass” (http://www.ajc.com/travel/vineyard-tours-take-visitors-594726.html) by Michelle Locke, Clay Mauritson, winemaker at Mauritson Winery, says, “I just see a huge benefit to getting people in the vineyard and showing them how the wine is made.” The article goes on to explain that vineyard managers are realizing it takes more to sell wine – there is an entire process that needs to happen to educate the end-user. 

Mauriston Winery has developed walking tours that put the consumer in the field to see firsthand how the wine-making process works, feels and smells.  From a learning perspective, the winery has incorporated a variety of training approaches to appeal to its customers. “It’s a passive education,” says Mauritson. “When they notice those things, what they’re really doing is the essence of viticulture. You’re not shoving it down their throat with hoity-toity wine talk, you’re really letting them find out.”

Other vinters are using similar approaches to connect to and educate customers. They say great wine is made in the vineyard. Now some vintners are inviting guests to check that out through walking tours aimed at giving the real dirt on winemaking.

A shaky economy may have kept many employees tied to their jobs, but with recovery comes opportunity. What are you doing now to keep your best employees committed to your company instead of looking for a better offer?

An Aug. 13 article from Bloomberg Businessweek says, “Employee engagement will play a critical role for organizations actively looking to gain competitive advantage in both short- and long-term time horizons.”

Citing recent employee engagement research from the Corporate Executive Board, the article drops a number that should make business owners a bit nervous: Less than one quarter of employees (23 percent) exhibited a high level of “intent to stay,” a leading measure of turnover, in the second quarter of 2010.

The Corporate Executive Board is a for-profit, publicly traded firm that provides best practices research and analysis to business executives and professionals worldwide. The extensive employee engagement study also found that the employees most committed to their organizations put forth 57 percent more effort and are 87 percent less likely to leave their company than employees who consider themselves disengaged.

The hidden cost of turnover can cripple a company. What are you doing proactively to keep your employees engaged and satisfied?

Click here to learn how WOW! transformations beyondboarding™ program can help prepare your company for recovery.

As our kids return to school and begin their process of building skills and developing knowledge and expertise, we should ask ourselves a simple questions: Why not do the same thing?

As business owners and leaders we need to turn our knowledge and expertise into opportunities to raise our profile, grow our business and position ourselves as industry experts.  Now is a great time to begin.  

But how?

Optimize your expertise through branded programs and presentations designed to raise your professional profile by capitalizing on your expertise and positioning yourself as an industry thought leader. 

There are many ways to do this:

• Develop a “Lunch-and-Learn” program to train prospects, clients or colleagues on a subject you love.
• Design a dynamic and interactive conference presentation to position your industry expertise.
• Create new and exciting marketing materials to send to prospects.
• Develop continuing education learning modules (CPE’s or CLE’s).
• Repurpose an existing presentation into a webinar.

With all of these, you will use the knowledge, skills and expertise you have to set yourself apart and raise your professional profile.  You will also get recognition in your industry, grow your business and create new products and services to generate revenue.

Take the WOW! Inventory Assessment to identify ways to get more from the ideas, materials, content or knowledge you have and turn it into money and assets. Knowledge is Power!

My husband Jed is not a vegetarian but he does eat tofu on occasion. I’ve never developed a taste for it and the first few times he cooked it I questioned his taste. He often seeks low-fat, low-cholesterol alternatives to meat products as a small step towards keeping his cholesterol under control. I’ve loved some of the tofu-based items he’s brought home, and hated others.

When sitting down to write this week’s blog, I thought about last night’s tofu dinner and realized tofu and learning design actually share a number of characteristics. 

Tofu is often overlooked and misunderstood when people see it in the grocery store. If they even know what it is, they may assume that it’s not right for them, that it’s for “those people” — the vegetarians — and has no place in their diet.

Learning design and development is often viewed that way. Many people assume they’re natural communicators. They know their issues, topic content, products and services so well that they think putting together a PowerPoint, a workbook and some notes can turn their ideas into any classroom course, a conference presentation or a seminar. That may work occasionally, but it takes more if you are trying to create a sophisticated program or presentation that optimizes your subject matter expertise,

Learning design is really a misunderstood skill.

Tofu takes on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked with. The same goes, generally, for learning design. Many people ask me if I’ve ever created courses for this industry or that industry or ask if I’m subject matter expert on one topic or another. I’ve worked in sales training, customer service, healthcare, financial services, and with marketing/public relations agencies and professional service firms, to name a few.

The great thing about smart learning design and development, as well as a competent designer, is that we incorporate design methodologies that are versatile and can be applied to any industry, topic or process. Knowing how to use the methodologies combined with the right materials preparation, skills and subject matter expertise makes it possible to create an instructionally sound program or presentation in any industry or for any topic – and helps the individual or organization to position and optimize their expertise.

If you’ve never considered using a consulting partner like WOW! transformations, why not? We can help you turn your intellectual capital — ideas, knowledge and expertise — into intellectual property — products, services or systems — that will enhance the value of your organization, increase revenue and move your business to the next level.

Our goal is to help you create intellectual assets that will help you:

• Turn what you know into new revenue streams
• Enhance your business development initiatives
• Think strategically about how to use the knowledge and expertise you have to grow your business
• Strengthen and develop your employees and company culture
• Raise your professional profile by capitalizing on your expertise

Do what you will with tofu, but isn’t it time to give WOW! transformations a try?

But as the recession ebbs and the recovery strengthens, the best and brightest are becoming more restless.  Payback time is coming. 

A worldwide survey by the Corporate Executive Board (CEO) found that:

• 30 percent of the high-potential employees surveyed planned to change employers within a year.
• 21 percent said they were highly “disengaged” at their current job.  That’s up from 7 percent in 2006.

What are you doing to keep your employees engaged and invested in your company’s success? That’s where WOW! transformations can help.

According to Conrad Schmidt, executive director of the CEO, high-potential employees want more clarity in their role and career path.  That means they want to know exactly how they fit into the organization and what their options are for career development.  What’s more, they want to be recognized for their contributions.

Schmidt outlined several steps every company could take immediately:

• “Start by having a frank discussion that clarifies their roles, where the company is going and how it plans to invest in them.  Ambiguity is an engagement killer, so good communications is essential.”
• Find inventive ways to recognize top performers and future leaders.  Higher pay isn’t always the answer, even if it is an option.  As important, according to Schmidt, is giving high-potential people more access to senior executives and critical projects.

What else can employers do to retain their key employees?  Karen Steadman, president of Leadership Futures, an Atlanta consulting firm, suggests that different generations have different reason for changing jobs.  Older workers may be looking for greater stability or benefits, while Generation X employees may be looking for opportunities to build skills while doing meaningful work.  Everyone, it can be assumed, is looking for greater work/life balance and recognition for their hard work during hard times.

Career development and mobility must become a primary concern for employers, not just ambitious employees. Preparing people for their next job is a smart way to keep employees engaged throughout their lifetime of service to your company. At WOW! transformations, we work with companies to create customized employee development programs that do just that – beyondboarding™ (a strategic approach to employee and organizational growth and development) could be the answer to engaged and satisfied employees and a “wow” organization!

Source: “It’s Time for Companies to Reengage Their Best Talent” by Laura Raines, July 1, 2010, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Turn your attention to your employees. No, they are not causing the pain — inadequate training and development of key employees are the likely culprits.

Some companies do a fairly good job with onboarding — the process of assimilating new employees into the organization with the tools, knowledge and information they need to be successful and productive from the start of employment. Others may be successful at preboarding — the assessment of what the company needs before a hire is made.

But few create a company initiative that goes beyond the basics and truly embraces an employee from pre-hire to exit strategy.

That’s where WOW! transformations beyondboarding™ comes in — it’s a comprehensive  approach that goes beyond preboarding and onboarding to establish a company culture that supports organizational growth and increased profits.

WOW! transformations recently hosted a group of business leaders to explore the idea of beyondboarding™.  The group included business owners, management consultants, human resource and organizational development practitioners, executive coaches, lawyers and marketing professionals.

“Most companies don’t know what their solution is — they just have pain,” said Stephanie Williams, president of Ignite Marketing. “Beyondboarding™ is a value proposition to a company. It’s a holistic view: What is the cost benefit of getting the right people in the right positions — and beyond that, how can they then grow into a leadership position and truly contribute to the company?”

Beyondboarding™ takes a strategic approach to three key areas: Developing the skills of an employee, creating a connection between the employee and the success of the company and positioning the organization for sustained growth.

While most onboarding programs end within the first few months on the job, beyondboarding™ strategies continue throughout employment employment.  Beyondboarding’s™ holistic approach provides employees a sense of ownership and belonging that results in pride in their work and as a result, increased customer satisfaction and company growth. With beyondboarding™, a company can:

• Reduce employee turnover
• Benefit from engaged leadership
• Reach higher levels of employee satisfaction
• Sustain an environment focused on learning and development
• Attract a highly qualified talent pool

WOW! transformations’ beyondboarding is the bridge that supports an employee throughout her lifetime of service at your company.

In the June 17 blog by Mary Adams, The Central Importance of Human Capital, she says, “Knowledge in an organization begins and ends with people. The knowledge and experience that employees bring to their work is probably the greatest driver of an organization’s success. What employees know helps to build an organization as well as to preserve, maintain and improve it.”

At WOW! transformations, we absolutely agree.  Where would an organization be without employees’ knowledge of functions, systems, information and their ability to translate, share and train? Most companies do a poor job of capturing the knowledge that lives within the organization. It’s a tremendous loss when employees leave, creating gaps in internal knowledge necessary to develop and sustain products, services and systems.

Mary Adams put it this way, “… your people are part of your productive capacity, now more so than ever. Because the future of your company depends on what you know rather than what you own. And what you know as an organization is intimately tied to the knowledge and experience of the people in your organization.”

Capture and preserve the knowledge before it walks out the door!

The following article by Workforce Management contributing editor Garry Kranz (based in Richmond, VA, editors@workforce.com), is about companies who are doing an outstanding job of onboarding employees. At WOW! transformations, our concept of beyondboarding(tm)  includes:

• preboarding, assessing the needs of the organization or team, and going through the selection and hiring process.
• onboarding, which begins the moment the employee is offered a job.
•  beyondboarding, which includes people, culture and processes that embrace an employee throughout her lifetime of service at the company.

Here’s how two companies — Booz Allen Hamilton and Vestas Wind Systems — start training new employees in culture and processes well before their first day on the job, taking the idea of onboarding to a new level. 

Training That Starts Before the Job Begins

Workforce Management Online, July 2009
While some organizations struggle with layoffs, or at best freeze their hiring plans, others are hiring in considerable numbers, and want their new workers to be steeped in company culture, processes and community from day one — maybe even sooner.

One such organization is consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which is set to add 5,000 jobs by the close of 2009. That’s in addition to a similar number of new workers brought on board last year. All told, Booz Allen’s workforce should top 20,000 people this year, with most of them based in the U.S.

That rapid hiring pace necessitates a new approach to training. Eighteen months ago, Booz Allen began an overhaul of its onboarding processes. It begins delivering training and developmental tools to new employees the moment they accept a job offer, rather than waiting for their first official day at work. It is a process Booz Allen executives refer to as “preboarding.”

During preboarding, new recruits are directed to an internal Web portal to access job information, “early learning” activities and company information, including the company’s 15 business lines and messages from senior executives. It’s also an opportunity for newcomers to begin making professional connections with their Booz Allen colleagues.

The prehire learning exercises set the stage for a first year of filled with mentoring, coaching and peer support. The purpose is straightforward: By the time new employees sit through a required weeklong orientation session, they typically are familiar enough with their new roles to make meaningful contributions immediately.

“Preboarding is all about getting someone engaged and excited about being here, prior to their actually showing up for their first day,” says Aimee George Leary, who is the McLean, Virginia-based consulting company’s director of learning and development.

Vestas Wind Systems is experiencing similarly stunning employment growth. The company, which is based in Randers, Denmark, hired more than 5,000 people in 2008 to meet anticipated demand for its turbines and integrated wind technology systems, swelling its total employment to nearly 23,000 worldwide.

Although most of its employees are in Europe, Vestas is also in the midst of a recruiting binge in the United States. Vestas, which has its U.S. headquarters in Portland, Oregon, had a U.S. workforce of nearly 1,900 people in 2008. Nearly three times as many employees could be on board in 2010, including a horde of technical professionals to support a growing U.S. presence that includes a new factory near Denver and research centers in Boston and Houston.

The resulting “people and culture tsunami” is prompting Vestas to take a more comprehensive approach to training and development, says Helle Bay, the company’s senior vice president of business performance and operations.

Simply hiring people and training them as they came on board—an approach that worked fine when Vestas was a firm of a few hundred people—is proving to be unsustainable.

 “We had to focus on our people and our culture: finding out what’s good for them and walking the walk” to help them grow professionally, Bay says.

Booz Allen and Vestas are anomalies against a backdrop of seemingly endless layoffs and shrinking training budgets. Both companies’ surging employment is traced, at least in part, to unprecedented levels of anticipated federal spending.

Steady growth in tough times

 With $4 billion in annual revenue, Booz Allen’s growth isn’t really a surprise. Its consultants provide technical expertise in areas ranging from systems integration and intelligence gathering to leadership development and change management. Many employees have backgrounds in the military or defense and national security and were recruited to consult on information assurance, cyber-security and other sophisticated challenges.

Fueled by the U.S. government’s war on terror, the company has been expanding nearly the entire decade. New business seems all but assured. Private contractors, many of them small businesses with limited staff, are seeking advice on how they could snag a chunk of federal stimulus money, underscoring Booz Allen’s need for people with high-level skills.

The company hires analysts to provide advice and technical and professional services to numerous federal agencies. “And what else is the government doing now but trying to solve tons of problems?” says Lee Ann Timreck, a Booz Allen principal who is helping to redesign new-employee training.

Booz Allen chose the preboarding approach to help new employees ease into their work environment. Introductory videos include greetings from senior leaders and a broad overview of Booz Allen’s customers, service lines and corporate philosophies. The breadth of the material couldn’t effectively be delivered in just a weeklong orientation session.

 “Previously we just had a one-week training program and that was it. We just trained people on the [functional] skills they needed to be successful, which meant they would go to a client site and maybe not have all the information they need,” George Leary says.

Another new learning tool for new employees is Hello.bah.com, Booz Allen’s internal social network. Embedded within it are user-created wikis, blogs and community forums that enable employees to exchange information about customer projects more immediately. The site serves two main functions: to foster collaboration among Booz Allen’s widely dispersed workforce, and to help new employees build their own personal networks with other employees in the company.

 “There’s no value to us in hiring a bunch of people and having them leave in a year” because they aren’t satisfied with the company, Timreck says. “Also, as we get more widely dispersed, it’s really critical to have these social tools.”

There’s more to the strategy than technology, however. The personal aspect is equally important, with new employees paired almost immediately with a “peer sponsor,” typically a Booz Allen veteran who helps them learn the ropes. Within their first six months, employees also are matched with a mentor, while managers face stricter accountability for helping their employees grow professionally. Personal development plans are a standard item for new employees, and are usually in place within six months. The process is being accelerated with the rollout of preboarding. Upon completion of a week of orientation, new employees are encouraged to begin drafting a career plan.As part of a leadership development campaign launched last year, Booz Allen introduced a series of information and development tools for its 2,500 frontline managers, the people who play a more formal role than in employees’ professional development.

In turn, a new tool called the Leadership Quality Index enables employees to provide anonymous 360-degree feedback on their managers’ performance. The input is being gathered and evaluated as part of each manager’s annual performance review.

Managers at first resisted the new program, thinking it would prove to be just another item on their to-do list. In time, however, they have come to embrace it as a tool to help them accomplish objectives they already have to meet, Timreck says.

Now, feedback from frontline managers “is helping to ensure the process of coaching and developing employees runs smoothly,” Timreck says.

Booz Allen also sought to reduce “classroom size,” winnowing the number of employees under each manager’s supervision. The ideal number of employees is now between 15 and 25, rather than dozens, as was previously the case.

Finally, Booz Allen provides intensive interactive training when employees move into new and very different organizational roles.

Kristine Rohls, a seven-year veteran at Booz Allen, advanced in February to the position of principal in the company’s strategy and organization division. That’s a step up from her previous position as senior associate. She acknowledges being apprehensive about a “principal immersion” workshop that all new senior leaders are required to take within six months of their promotion.

 “I thought, ‘Gosh, I don’t have a week to sit and listen to lectures,’ but it wasn’t like that at all,” Rohls says.

The session forces people to work collaboratively and learn the art of persuasion. Actors are hired to simulate the role of clients. Principals have to overcome objections and sell Booz Allen to the would-be “customer.” That includes being able to respond to unexpected comments such as “I heard Booz Allen is nothing but a bunch of old, rich white guys.”

The immersion course also teaches collaboration. Co-workers are given the task of assembling proposal requests for new businesses and persuading a panel of actual Booz Allen partners to pursue the approach they are presenting.

 “As a new principal, it’s designed to get me thinking as a business owner. I’m no longer responsible just for my capability area—now I represent the firm,” Rohls says.

Wind-blown training

Like Booz Allen Hamilton, Vestas’ business is booming. The company says it has installed nearly 40,000 wind turbines worldwide, including 10,000 in the United States. In a recent financial statement, Vestas’ executives predicted that 2009 sales will jump at least 20 percent, topping $10 billion. Revenue is expected from several long-term contracts that Vestas signed last year with electricity utilities in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

That rosy revenue projection also is fueled by unprecedented federal spending in the United States. The U.S. stimulus package includes plans to make money available for developing renewable energy sources. In addition, a proposed new federal energy plan seeks to curb toxic emissions, creating more opportunities for alternative energy sources such as wind.

Adding huge numbers of employees poses a number of challenges, says Peter Christiansen, who joined Vestas in 2007 as manager of learning design and implementation. While hiring the right people is crucial, it is equally important to make sure they get up to speed quickly.

Christiansen last year instituted an “induction program” that tests the mettle of employees, whose average tenure is about two years. The star of these animated sessions is “Mr. Butler,” a highly demanding customer with a stream of questions about how and why Vestas is different from its competitors. Employees are thrust into the role of explaining products and services to Mr. Butler, whose facial expressions are enough to let them know if the answer is satisfactory or not.

Known as “One Vestas,” the induction training is mandatory for all employees. It consists of five hours of total training, which employees can do all at once or in smaller chunks. It serves two functions: to develop a culture in which employees make learning a priority, and to help Vestas document the strategic value of learning, Christiansen says.

“Failure is not an option,” Christiansen says, quoting Vestas’ mission statement.

The induction program is part of a broader attempt within Vestas to capture and analyze various employee data. Chief among them is data that shows a correlation between an employee’s job satisfaction, customer loyalty and financial results. The fact-based approach gives top leaders at Vestas a glimpse into strengths and weakness within the workforce, thus providing a rationale for continued training investments, Bay says.

 In addition, Vestas is consolidating to one learning management platform that is used to develop job competencies, streamline performance reviews and create a “people development dialogue” with employees. Managers are expected to initiate performance discussions on goals and achievements with their employees two times a year.

The endgame of training is to zero in on highly technical employees who are good candidates for leadership at Vestas, Bay says.

Everyone is talking about innovation and we at WOW! transformations believe you must be innovative and think ‘outside the box.’ We use this approach when helping businesses and business leaders turn their intellectual capital — ideas, knowledge and expertise — into intellectual property — products, services or systems — that will enhance the value of their organization, increase revenue and move their business to the next level. 

This recent Chic Tip from Elizabeth Gordon of the Flourishing Business supports our beliefs and we wanted to share it with our readers.  Enjoy – Nettie Nitzberg, principal

“Ongoing business success requires continuous innovation.  A one hit wonder product or service, will not a flourishing business make.   

Similarly your core service can be leveraged to greater profitability when you add on upsells and cross sells to compliment and supplement.  

Your other big profit center as you grow is operational efficiencies – doing more for less in less time. 

New product and service development and operational process improvements all require a creative or innovative mind – one that is able to see beyond what is – to what could be. 

But seeing the vision isn’t enough, you’ve also got to be able to turn it into reality.  

Use these Chic Tips to awaken the chic innovator within you: 

• Realize that innovation occurs at all levels with an organization.  Ideas come from everyone, not just from the top down, in fact some of the best ideas often come from the bottom.  Give line employees the ability to voice ideas. 
• Innovative people are not afraid of those who disagree with them. They actively seek out people who think differently than them. 
• Quantity first, quality second.  Don’t try to hit a home run with every single idea.  Have a lot of ideas and realize that only a small percentage of those ideas will actually work/ be reasonable /get executed and come to fruition.  If you have 100 ideas, and 1 or 2 work, be thrilled. Get used to constantly innovating and generating a lot of ideas, then whittle them down to a few that are the best/biggest impact. 
• Yes, it’s hard being different, yet that’s what innovation is all about.  Women need to feel OK and be comfortable with taking risks when they’ve been socialized by society, company culture and everyone around them not to fail, to fit in and to follow the system.  Release these old expectation and find the courage to speak up and say something different.  
• Nurture your innovative spirit by finding a support system that helps you think outside the box on a regular basis.” 

About Elizabeth Gordon:  Elizabeth Gordon is the Business Advisor among Female Entrepreneurs of Elevated Success. President of Flourishing Business and author of bestselling book The Chic Entrepreneur: Put Your Business in Higher Heels, Elizabeth helps women rise to new heights in business, power and success. Her Chic Tips email publication goes out weekly to over 8,000 subscribers around the world. If you are ready to take your business to the next level, sign up for your f.r.e.e. subscription here: http://chicentrepreneur.com 

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