What do cream of celery soup, potato chip tuna casserole, and broiled grapefruit have in common? Believe it or not, they were all listed as some of the most popular dishes to serve — in the 1950s.  The question is how do these items align with the interests and tastes of today’s customer? Let’s apply that same lens to your L/D offerings. Many companies are still serving up training content in the same way they did in the 1950s – expensive week long offsite session, instruction led lectures, and best of all big three ring binders. Does this learning approach align to the interests and tastes of your customers? I spoke about serving up bite sized learning at today’s Twin Cities SHRM Conference (#TCHRA.org) and we discussed understanding your customers’ palates, expanding your learning menu, and setting up a test kitchen.

Understanding your customers’ palates. I am a journalism major and remember that there was a time when breaking news came from newspapers.  Today it is comical to think that breaking news could be 24 hours old. But newspapers still play an important role in the world news. They bring the research and interview expertise and have the space to cover topics in depth. They are also still a viable source of news- a Pew Research study in 2016 found that 36% of U.S. adults got election news from a print newspaper. But papers don’t have the timeliness, flexibility, or portability to serve all the demands of today’s consumer. I would argue that the same is true of classroom leadership programs. These trainings can be incredibly valuable and give learners time to go deep on critical topics. But the reality is this approach alone doesn’t have the timeliness, flexibility, or portability to serve all the demands of busy leaders.  News now comes from a variety of mediums. I encourage you to think about how you can supplement your in-person training content with leader led discussions, short video clips, and/or other formats.

Expanding Your Learning Menu. When we talk about learning we often talk about the 70/20/10 model: that seventy percent of learning should be on the job, 20% should come from mentors, and 10% should come from classroom learning. The reality in many organizations is that 90% of IDPs focus on signing up for a class. So while we work on balancing our overall portfolio, how can we expand our menu of learning offerings? The good news is there are a lot of great resources out there.  Get Abstracts  summarizes thousands of business books. The Lean In website has a library of expert speakers.  Ted Talks is a website full of “ideas worth spreading.” The provided Ted Talk link is to a particular talk by Ramsey Musallam and three rules to spark learning. His talk is on chemistry- but his points can be applied to any topic. When presenting a topic, remind yourself of the following:

1. Curiosity comes first. You can tell your audience or you can engage and inspire your audience- design for discussion.
2. Embrace the mess. We spend a lot of time talking about theory but not enough time talking about what really happens when you try to put it into practice. Engage your audience to tell you their real experiences, fears, and successes when putting concepts into practice.
3. Practice reflection. Help your learners reflect as they go, so they can see that each step forward- and step backward- is all part of the learning journey. Encourage them to journal, or set up check-in calls with a partner to keep the learning alive.

Set up a test kitchen. Here are two great ways to move your learning approach into a test kitchen. One is to use a flipped classroom approach to your content.  Traditional classrooms have lectures during the day, and homework at night. A flipped classroom asks kids to absorb the learning through online content, then uses the classroom time to talk about questions, insights and applications.  Think about how much more your classroom can be if you aren’t focused on pushing out content, but rather building on the team’s collective learning and understanding. Another non-traditional learning approach is an unconference.  Most conferences are built around pre-selected topics and speakers. At an unconference the attendees decide that morning what gets covered. Let’s say, for example, you wanted to cover the topic of interviewing with your managers.  This time, instead of preparing content you would kick off the session by asking the audience questions like, “What do you want to know about interviewing?”

“Where are you getting stuck in the interview process?”

“What have you learned that we would all benefit from knowing about interviewing?”

You may get responses like, “I want to understand more about unconscious bias.”

“I’m getting stuck assessing both technical and leadership skills.”

“I have finally figured out the best way to prepare for my interviews.”

Voila. You now have today’s topics. Scary? Maybe. But memorable, engaging, and an item I would encourage you to at least rotate on your learning menu.

According to the 2013 Corporate Learning fact book, U.S. businesses spend more than $60 billion a year in employee development. I don’t think we can afford for that to be spent on potato chip tuna casserole. So go back into the kitchen and whip up some new approaches to learning that reflect your customers’ palates, expand your learning menu, and push you to test some new ideas.

“Go big or go home” is a common rallying cry in sports and in business. This mentality inspires recruiters to find the talent needle in the haystack. It also fuels a recruiting industry that offers executive search, website optimization, and selection tools to help you go big to find top talent. Getting the right talent in the door is a critical part of building your talent pipeline and should be a big focus. But what happens after you go big and get home? What is your strategy to re-recruit and “go big” to retain your current employees? I was asked to speak on this topic at the Recruit, Retrain, and Retain seminar held this week in Minneapolis. I believe we need to recruit and re-recruit employees to retain them.The good news is the same pillars of recruiting- understanding the need, scouting talent, and closing the deal – also support retention.

Understanding the Need. Recruiters and hiring managers spend a lot of time distilling organization needs when they open a requisition. What would a home run candidate look like? What do we need on the field to win?  How can this hire make our team stronger? Most companies have developed some kind of intake process to define the need. However few have applied that same approach to their current employees. You can re-recruit your employees by understanding their needs. Tell your employees how glad you are that they are here – and now you want to know where you want to go. What would a home run career look like? What role can take you to the next base? What skills can make you more competitive? How can we play to your strengths?

Scouting Talent. We invest a lot of time and money to find great people. In sports and business, scouts hit the field to assess prospects’ skills, mental toughness, experience, and team fit.  If we are lucky we find the future phenom while we work for each hire to deepen our bench. But what about the talent already in our bullpen? You can re–recruit your employees by scouting internal talent. Expect managers to be coaches. Spend time in the batting cages to improve employees’ tactical skills so they can make key plays. Let employees tryout for different positions on your team. Think of your early career employees as your farm team – and your job as providing them the experience and training so they can move on to a higher level at a given point.

Closing the Deal.  The payoff comes once we get the candidate to sign on the bottom line. Great prospects often have multiple offers, so we work hard to sell the organization, make a competitive offer, and close our top picks. Just like the pros, it is important that we don’t lose sight of our internal line up while we wine and dine our future stars. Employees are free agents and can entertain offers from other teams as they decide if they want to renew, renegotiate, or resign from their current employment contract. You can re-recruit your employees by closing a new deal. Ask employees about their short term and long term goals. What kind of position and playing time do they want? Give feedback on how to get to those goals and commit to coaching them along the way.  Your current employees know your business and know your customer – the best deal is to help take the current bench from good to great.

Recruiting and retention are often viewed as opposite ends of the talent field. But good coaches realize we need to focus on our full roster to win. In the words of Vince Lombardi, winning means you are willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else – to both recruit and retain your employees.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” I love this quote from the movie Ferris Bueller.  It rings true for me in my personal and professional life. I am a planner- I like to know what I have coming up and what needs to get done. I am also a strategist – what are we working towards and what will we need when we get there?  Both of these are useful skills that we often emphasize in leadership.  Unfortunately in today’s busy world we often overemphasize our lists and our plans and forget to focus on the present. In a world that is constantly buzzing, flashing, and tweeting, being present is a real challenge. It is hard to be mindful when your mind is full.  Here is why mindfulness matters to business and three steps you can take to move yourself and your team forward.

Jon Zabat-Zinn is an internationally recognized leader in mindfulness and meditation. He defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally.” Imagine if your leaders spent one less hour doing email and instead, paid attention – on purpose and non-judgementally-  to feedback from their team.  What if when leaders met with customers, they were in the present moment. They could be listening to the question the customer wants to solve, instead of presenting a pre-prepared answer. Mindfulness is the essence of connection – it means showing the other person that you value their time, ideas, and your relationship. No business that plans to stay in business can be too busy for that.  So how do we break our current pattern? Here are some ideas:

(1) Find out what you are missing. Review recent customer data and employee engagement feedback. Ask your top talent and top customers how well your leaders listen to their feedback, respond to their needs, and understand their priorities. It doesn’t need to be a science project – a sample size will give you some valuable insights to start with.

(2) Stop. Look. Listen. Help your leaders reprogram their approach and their day.  Have them look at their calendar and discuss their findings. Encourage them to stop triple booking themselves- help them set up a reasonable schedule. Ask them to look at where their time is being spent. Help them break their week down into time spent on tasks (emails, PowerPoints), meetings, team development, customer engagement, and personal development. Ask how they would ideally like to be spending their time and help them look for ways to make those changes. Listen to their frustration when they tell you they can’t do it all and agree with them.  Give them permission to set a new paradigm where getting it all done is not the goal – the goal is responding to your employee/customer insights.

(3) Highlight successes and failures. Mindfulness is hard work. Share tips, tricks, and resources. Recognize managers who have set up best practices. Ask leaders – especially senior leaders- to share when they fall back into their old ways and what they missed as a result. New behaviors stick when they are reinforced and practiced.  Remeasure your customer and employee feedback in a few months and assess the impact. Ask your leaders if they feel more focused on, more responsive to, and more connected with their customers and their teams.

Investing in mindfulness can pay dividends in the form of increased employee and customer engagement. So go ahead- put the phone down and email away- stop and look around. You don’t want to miss it.