Recruit, Inspire & Retain Newsletter -- Training Systems, Inc.

In honor of February 2: Inspire Your Employees to Excellence Day, we’ll do a series of articles showcasing what organizations are doing to create that INSPIRATIONAL ENVIRONMENT. Read every month & copy – plagiarism is the highest form of flattery:

FORRESTER RESEARCH INC.

"I went to a dinner party recently where we played a parlor game," George Colony explains. "Everyone at the table was asked to choose one word to describe himself. I chose 'fun.' That choice might rub some people the wrong way, but I find that I've got to have fun at whatever I'm doing or my level of effectiveness goes down. I adore working. I'd pay to do what I do __ but I don't want to spend my whole life working. I love the other parts of my life too. I often remind people that the Declaration of Independence entitles us to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I've heard that Thomas Jefferson originally wanted it to read life, liberty, and the pursuit of wealth. But there has to be more to life than money."

How would you like to work for a guy like that?
Colony, is the chairman and CEO of Forrester Research Inc., one of the largest and perhaps the most-respected Internet research firms. Founded in 1983, the company's revenues have increased at a compounded rate of 52% since it went public in 1996. In its short but happy life, the company has played a significant role in shaping the strategies of hundreds of new-economy ventures as well as traditional companies that are now seeking to compete on the Internet. But I went to visit Forrester not to understand its business, but because I was interested in its reputation as a place where people loved to work. Specifically, I was curious about how a young, hard-charging, rapidly growing company could demand such high performance from its employees, still treat them humanely, and inspire their loyalty.

What makes Forrester distinctive, I discovered, is the culture that Colony and his team have managed to build. The company doesn't have especially progressive work-life programs, and they don't pay higher salaries or offer significantly stronger benefits than those of their competitors. More subtly, what Forrester does is address people's needs on multiple levels, but recognizing their complexity. The result is a company that feels both driven and laid-back, informal but highly focused, individualistic and collaborative. Call their approach post-conventional.

1.	No One, Including Colony, Has a Separate Office.
	Back in the early 1990s, everyone had an office, although there was one central room for computers. "That room was where we had the most fun," Colony explains. When Forrester launched its first Internet-research venture in 1994, Colony suggested forming a "pod" of 8 or 10 core people who would work together in one large room. "Everyone screamed," he remembers. "They would only agree to the idea if I joined them, and no one believed that I would leave my plush office. One day I came in, put all of my stuff in boxes, and moved into the pod. That new environment lit the company on fire. We shared our tears and our fears, and at the end of the year, we danced on our desks to celebrate our success." If you want to talk to Colony or to any other top executive, you just walk up to his or her desk. "It creates a much higher bandwidth of communication, and it helps people form relationships faster," Colony argues. As Mary Modahl, vice president of marketing, puts it: "Credit is usually unfairly distributed in companies. The guys with the big offices are seen as the only ones responsible for the successes. By taking away the physical expressions of authority, people can speak up and be valued equally." But while Forrester's culture encourages people to voice their opinions, decisions are not made by consensus, and people are clearly rewarded for their accomplishments. "Individual achievement is very important here," says Modahl. "So is personal accountability." Each employee sets goals quarterly and receives four performance reviews a year. Forrester also gives out plenty of awards. For example, a prize goes to the person who has the highest impact on the company as determined by a vote of all the employees. Self-confidence is valued more than self-promotion at Forrester. "You need ego as fuel to give a speech in front of 3,000 industry people or to have your research read by 50,000 clients," says Colony. "At the same time, we've found that the creative process here is collaborative. Feedback is very hard-hitting and critical. Your skin has to be thick, so it's best to check your ego at the door."
2.	Embrace Change and Preserve the Core
	Forrester captures this paradox in something that it calls "proactive destruction." The notion is that companies must be willing to anticipate demand and to change rapidly, without sacrificing the core mission and values. "We're destroying and building at the same time," says Colony. "On one hand, we want to keep our core culture sacred and constant. On the other, if you are not a catalyst for change in this company, you probably won't last long. It may look chaotic to outsiders, but we're doing all of this in a very planned way with a long-term outlook." Last year, for example, Forrester completely transformed its business model, changing the way that it delivered its current product to clients--moving largely into an electronic format--and introducing a series of new products. Despite all the tumult, the company not only managed to increase revenues from $61 million to $87 million compared to 1998, but also grew net profit from $7.5 million to $11 million. Forrester struggles to balance short-term and long-term visions. "You can't just burn people out," says Modahl. "What we're trying to say is that when you have a high priority, sprint as fast as you can. When it's not urgent or critical, take a pause." Colony is even more direct: "Clients pay us for our thinking. The more balanced your life is and the more diverse your interests are, the better your thinking will be. If you work 20 hours a day, your product will be crap."
3.	Get Big, Stay Small
	Inspired by his prep-school headmaster who knew every student by name, Colony did the same with every Forrester employee until recently. This year, however, the company will hire 300 new employees, and open two new research offices. While Colony can no longer keep up, he still makes it a high priority to get to know people one-on-one. The first week that Mariko Zapf, came to work at a mid-level job at Forrester last year, she unexpectedly found herself sitting next to Colony on a bus ride to a company outing. "He introduced himself as George," Zapf says, "and for the next hour he just asked me questions about my family, what movies I liked, what books I read. I was blown away." For Colony, the challenge is to maintain a sense of humanness and intimacy in the sort of large company that he has long avoided joining. "The pods are one way that we mitigate size," he says. "It's like being in a squad of 8 or 10 people in the military. You get so that you're willing to die for the guy next to you." Colony is also determined to keep the scale of Forrester's new research offices modest. "In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes that the human brain is wired to have no more than 150 relationships," Colony says. "That feels about right to me. It's probably not coincidental that we've designed each of our new research offices to have no more than 150 employees."
4.	Break the Rules, Win the Game
	Forrester is known internally as the land of the mavericks. "We want people who think in counterintuitive ways," Colony explains. "When I see someone who has done something unusual," says Modahl, "it suggests that she can think independently, isn't following a script in life, and won't be afraid to go against the pack. Three times out of 10 she'll be wrong, but that's okay as long as she's done the work." If Colony is a visionary, he is also a pragmatist. He understands that the old rules don't work in the new economy and that the retention of valued employees is the key growth engine for today's companies. Forrester's turnover is under 20% -- unusually low in the dotcom world. "If we keep people for at least five or six years it's a big win for us," Colony says. "We're living in a world where every employee is a free agent. People can get money anywhere. Jobs are everywhere. Why do people stay in any one place? It comes down to a company's environment.
Adapted from Fast Company Magazine,* 12/04*

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●	*301 Ways to Have Fun @ Work*, by Dave Hemsath & Leslie Yerkes

●	*Managing to Have Fun*, by Matt Weinstein

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TRAIN SO THEY’LL LEARN

Learning & Training: The Year Ahead

Jack and Jill went up a hill,
to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
and Jill came tumbling after.

Ron Zamir, Allen Communications Learning Services, says: You may be wondering what nursery rhymes have to do with trends in learning and training. The fact is most of us in our industry misuse or even abuse trends. For the past five years, we have been bombarded with predictions and proclamations of new technology we should be implementing. As in the case of Jack and Jill, we are responsive and run up that hill to fetch a pail of water, or as the case may be, ROI, LMS, LCMS, or e-learning. We invest; we integrate; we change our ways, all the time hoping we won’t come tumbling down like poor Jack.

So, let's keep our "crowns" whole by focusing on 3 trends that have evolved over the past few years for our company and, we believe, for all:

1.	Changing Learner and the Quality of Training
	When asked to identify quality learning, I always ask people to remember good teachers they had in college or even high school. When were you engaged? When did you feel you were getting positive guidance out of a learning experience? It will come as no surprise that humor, relevance, interaction, and clarity of message are crucial in a learning experience. Yet while some things may stay constant, our learners are changing. According to the Municipal Research & Services Center in Seattle, "For the first time in history, there will be four generations in the work force. In the next 20 years women and minorities will make up over two-thirds of the workforce." There are many, many, many implications for training. Let’s just take 1, the newest generation hitting the workforce. They want a more flexible workplace and may prefer flexibility to higher salary. The use of gaming in training or "Nintendo meets Macromedia" is not that far in the future. While you might consider your 13 year old a serious gamer, the term "serious games" refers to using videogames for more than just entertainment. In fact, groups in the videogame industry, academics and business are pushing gaming into fields like advertising, advocacy, health, public policy and, of course, training and education. Trainers need to face a reality that distributing Adobe Acrobat files and recorded PowerPoint presentations won't cut it with the new crop of young learners. "Videogames can be a powerful way to instill real-world skills," says Geoffrey James in Business 2.0. "The U.S. Marine Corps has used Doom to teach battlefield tactics, and a recent survey revealed that doctors who play videogames made 37% fewer mistakes during laparoscopic surgery. It's no great leap, then, to conclude that the tools that make better soldiers and surgeons might also make better corporate staff." To address the rising number of women and minorities the workplace, content has to be at the very least gender agnostic and in many cases bilingual.
2.	The Effects of Technology and the Distributing of Learning
	Chances are you've already Googled today. As a means to an end, technology has made information accessible. When developing our training programs, our ability to distribute the content to the learner at their point of need is crucial. John Hubbell in December's *Chief Learning Officer* magazine says, "The performance needs of today and tomorrow require a more dynamic approach to pushing content to workers and making the connections available in real time to help employees find what they need to perform optimally." The good news is that technology is both accessible to our learners and much cheaper. Software prices for Dreamweaver and Flash are in the hundreds to low thousands of dollars, and pricing for other designing & developing have decreased. In addition to training, we believe in the next three years, more organizations will add Electronic Performance Support Systems, allowing staff to access content when faced with a challenge on the job.
3.	Organization Restructuring and the Demands of Training Departments
	The structure of training departments across industries is still extremely varied. While some organizations house training in a corporate HR function, many attach training to the line units in sales, operations, organization leadership, etc. The trend as we encounter it is much more powerful than the latest fad of organization restructuring. The lines between training, marketing and product development are blurring. In addition to training our employees, we’re doing more & more training of our customers. The main driver behind the blur of these traditional corporate lines is the growth of training ROI analysis. Leaders in training organizations are looking more and more for ways to assure the vitality of their organizations. According to the "ASTD 2004 State of the Industry Report," award-winning training organizations have this in common: Measurement and demonstration of efficiency and effectiveness of the learning function Alignment of learning with business needs and individual employee competency needs From 2001-2004, organizations were in a retrench mode. Training did its part to save or cut costs by using technology to reduce travel and turn expensive classrooms into e_learning modules. In 2005, we’re looking for yet more ways to be efficient & effective. How can training help an organization raise revenue and profitability? What business strategies is my organization undertaking this year? If you can answer this question, you have the basis for your training strategy going forward.
Adapted from Learning & Training Innovations* Magazine 1/05*

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●	*Ten Steps to Determining the Return on Your Training Investment* (worksheets to help you through the ROI process & ensure a positive return), by TRAINING SYSTEMS, INC.

●	*Digital Game Based Learning*, by Marc Prensky, to buy, email books@trainingsys.com

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RETAIN THE BEST

Chaplains — An Appealing Workplace Benefit

On almost any day of the week, Chris Hobgood can be found strolling the halls of the headquarters of HomeBanc Mortgage in Atlanta, chatting up employees in his low-key way. He asks them about their families, their work, then listens intently to their answers. "If you ever need anything," he usually says, "please let me know."

Hobgood might seem like a hands-on manager, but he's not even an employee of HomeBanc. There are an estimated 4,000 chaplains tending employee flocks nationwide, and their ranks are growing. Chaplains can be found at firms as diverse as Summit Electric in Albuquerque, N.M., snack food maker Herr Foods in Nottingham, Pa., and Texas-based poultry processor Pilgrim's Pride. "People spend the majority of their working lives here," says HomeBanc CEO Patrick Flood. "And I believe that if we recognize their needs and try to create a climate that makes them better people, the byproduct will be better, happier, and more productive associates."

For rent. Some companies hire their own chaplains. But many, like Hobgood, are employed on a contract basis. Two of the largest providers of employee chaplains are Dallas-based Marketplace Chaplains USA, with 1,600 chaplains counseling employees of 254 companies in 38 states, and Corporate Chaplains of America in Raleigh, N.C., which has 75 chaplains on its payroll ministering to some 300 firms. "We recognized that we needed to try to deal with our employees as whole employees--bodies, mind, and soul," says Lauren Steele, vice president of corporate affairs at Coca-Cola. "It's been enthusiastically embraced by our employees, primarily because it's completely nonintrusive."

Typically, chaplains visit the workplace once or twice a week and are generally on call 24-7 for emergencies. Whether it's a suit and tie when visiting HomeBanc or jeans and work boots at Pilgrim's Pride, the clerics leave their religious garb at home and dress to blend in with staffers. They also make hospital visits, offer premarital counseling, and officiate at weddings and funerals. The chaplains are asked to keep track of the number of people they see but are never asked to disclose the content of the consultations. "Recently, we had an employee who was so upset about a conflict with his supervisor he was in tears, but we couldn't get at what was going on," says Dave Butters, human resources manager at the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Marshville, N.C. "The next day, I saw the employee talking to one of the chaplains. Later that day, he was smiling and gave me a big thumbs up. I don't know what happened, but it was obviously something good."

While the vast majority of corporate chaplains are Christian, they’re also Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist clergy. Sometimes, the chaplain services run into skepticism prompted by fears that they would act more as missionaries than as counselors. The services say they've been able to assuage most of those doubts by assuring companies that employees would not be pressured to participate. And the chaplain services say the increased emphasis on spirituality in the workplace post-9/11 has also helped quell misgivings. "We are there as caregivers, not as a representative of any denomination," says Gil Stricklin, the former Army chaplain who founded Marketplace Chaplains in 1984. "My personal faith motivates me, but I don't use it to religiously harass anyone in any way."

Adapted from U.S. News & World Report, 1/05 article, “Hey, Reverend, Let’s Do Lunch”

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●	*Faith & Work: Do They Mix?*, by Os Hillman

●	*A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America: A Hard Look @ Spirituality, Religion & Values in the Workplace*, by by Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth Denton

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Recruit, Inspire & Retain

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Chaplains — An Appealing Workplace Benefit