4 design tools to meet persona context

In business we constantly design. By design I include that we design meetings, we design strategy, we design communication, we design training, and we design projects and programs.

Some design efforts, such as strategy, business process re-engineering, or talent engagement initiatives, may result in new processes, new standards, or new tasks, but the design goal remains: adoption and utility.

Community persona for organization development

Why do people matter? Because people are the only way organizations, and communities, achieve or sustain anything. To understand people you need to understand what answers they look for.

Clear links from content to the place where action occurs is crucial. To move from selling to solving means a move from your motivation to get it done to another’s motivation to solve a challenge. Persona strategies create marketing goals more effective than traditional advertising.

Buyer persona for organization strategy and development

The technical skills, frameworks, and tools that HR and organization development rely on to understand, communicate, and motivate interventions for people and organizations needs a reboot. A relaunch. A restart. This starts with a peek outside their profession: enter marketing, with a social media twist.

The persona effort, based on the usability and goal-oriented design, is a superior framework to plan, launch, guide, monitor, and manage organization interventions and change management initiatives than many organization development frameworks.

3 performance review politics that always trump merit

Politics trumps those who have shown reliable, merit-based performance.

When rewards are given to those with little merit, but through a host of politics such as cronyism, parochialism, and kleptocracy engagement is sabotagued and have little hope to achieve true engagement.

Merit-based performance would focus on the employee’s behavior that exemplifies excellence or the employee’s behavior that needs attention or improvement. When cronyism, kleptocracy, and parochialism gang up meritocracy has no chance.

Stop giving advice people ignore

At work do you ever say, “let me give you some advice”? If so, do people lean forward with anticipation to hear what you have for advice?

When reviewing a draft ever heard someone tell you, “well, here’s my advice”? If so, do you take a deep breath so as not to lose your cool?

When you gave someone advice was your advice followed? The point of communication: action. Advice alludes to an option, not expected action.

Engagement needs both context and perspective

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet … “, iambic pentameter aside, I appreciate Mr. Shakespeare’s point.

However, when I look at a word that is recently trending in a lot of companies and organizations, a word such as … oh, engagement, it seems to stink of some fetid cesspool, not quite the rose implied.

The value of context relies on engagement. Context without perspective is an allusion. Without context what is said rarely meets what is delivered.

Who knows? Many times not many people do

In a healthy environment, admitting what you don’t know is part of the process to come to a shared understanding.

In an unhealthy environment sticking to a point you think you know, but do not really know, drives people to defend positions from a point of weakness that can easily turn into an indefensible point of embarrassment.

The separation from noise to decision is about want to know and who you know. Here are 8 steps to go from noise to decision.