About: SBR

Focused attention is today’s greatest commodity and brain science teaches us a brilliant way to harness it.

When you observe people watching a presentation, do you notice how some periodically check their cellphone? They might believe that they are master multi-taskers who can simultaneously listen and read, but this is a fallacy.

Why? The brain is a sequential processor, and can only fully focus on one thing at a time.*

In a world where everyone is expected to juggle each facet of their life simultaneously, our limited ability as people is overlooked. While technology has changed the way we handle almost every task in our daily lives, allowing us to do more, we are still human and must give our undivided attention to something in order to fully grasp the information.

Whether you’re on the executive management team sharing ideas that need to gain company-wide traction or a sales executive whose entire job rests on connecting with others to boost business, you rely on presentations to convey your message. Great presentations can inspire people to consider new ideas or your company’s product/solution. In the end, this is especially the goal of all salespeople; to move companies and people into action.

DON’T FOLLOW THE HERD

Many of us learned how to present from watching others. If you had great role models or training, chances are your presentations are good.

Or maybe you had the misfortune of learning by watching your colleagues use PowerPoint as a teleprompter so they could remember what to say next. If you fall into the latter group, this is for you.

Brain science reveals how to deliver compelling presentations that help your ideas, complex products, or services capture the attention of your audience. The best presenters make you forget that it’s a formal event. They have a conversational tone that effortlessly keeps you engaged. It makes you want to listen, not feel like you have to.

We gathered some brain facts from Dr. John Medina, Developmental Molecular Biologist, who authored a book back in 2008 called Brain Rules. Highlighted below are a few tips you can use right now to turn your next presentation into your best presentation.

“PEOPLE DON’T PAY ATTENTION TO BORING THINGS” *

Listening to an inventory of facts during a presentation is boring and does little to captivate people. No matter your topic, your goal should be to tell your audience a story. This is how the brain is hardwired to receive information, so if you can utilize this approach, your delivery will be far more impactful.

Until robots take over the world and sell to each other, we need to remember that humans are emotional beings. Combining the information with emotion is more moving and memorable than simply laying out the facts one by one.

One way we found to take dense, complicated content and make it more engaging is by using a storytelling matrix we created years ago to develop sales presentations for one of our healthcare clients. Now we use it all the time.

We place the audience at the center of the storyline, talk about the obstacles they’re grappling with, and show how our client’s products or services solve their particular challenges. This method forces you to create presentations that are all about your colleagues, clients or prospects.

If you want to learn more about the merits of storytelling, read Paul J. Zak’s article in the Harvard Business Review, Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling. 

THE SIMPLER THE BETTER

Keep the slides simple and free of clutter so the audience can visually grasp the concept in a just few seconds. Remember, people cannot read and listen to you at the same time.

When your slides display data, words, and images, it forces the brain to absorb and process lots of information at once. Force-feeding a ton of facts leads to mental fatigue and a desire to do something easier, like checking the cellphone.

A way to remediate this issue is by first reviewing or reading what you’re visually showing the audience and then emphasizing your point if needed.

YOUR TEN MINUTES ARE UP

Dr. Medina enlightened us about the importance of the 10-minute rule. Essentially, our attention span is short. At each ten-minute interval, you need to do something to buy the audience’s attention for another ten minutes.

Review your presentation to see if at the ten-minute mark you can switch things up by sharing a relevant story or video.

REHEARSE AND REPEAT

Skilled presenters speak so effortlessly that it is easy to forget how much work goes into presenting.

Think of Steve Jobs. It is rumored that he practiced upwards of 80 hours in advance of delivering his legendary presentations. To sound natural takes practice and lots of it.

However, if you struggle to memorize your presentation, you are not alone! You’ll be glad to learn about a memory enhancement technique called the Memory Palace (Simonides’ method of Loci).

The general premise of the Loci method is to convert what you need to remember into outrageous visual images and associate them with a space you are familiar with, like your home or office. When you mentally walk through your memory space, you will recall the images you need to remember.

If you hear a piece of information, you’ll remember 10% three days later. Add a picture, and you’ll remember 65% of it.   Brain Rules

An entire book, Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by Jason Foer, is dedicated to teaching this method. It demonstrates how to memorize anything from a person’s name to a lengthy presentation.

If you use this technique, you will experience firsthand how visuals help cement your memories. This is the same reason why it is so helpful to include visuals in your presentations: they make your message and solution unforgettable.

Well, our ten minutes are almost up. If you find yourself needing assistance to convert a pile of facts into a powerful presentation, or coaching (1 to 100 people) to perfect the company’s corporate message, send us an email (TellMeMore@ConsultSBR.com).

HELPFUL RESOURCES:

1. * John J. Medina, Brain Rules
2.   Jason Foer’s TED Talk

Photo Credit: Alex Litvin on Unsplash

In conversation with Sharon Roberts, it is easy to be captivated by her story. The trajectory of her professional life and the impact made by each stop on her journey explains the basis for the specific methodology SBR uses to help clients tackle challenges in the way of their growth and profitability.

With SBR entering its 17^thyear, a look back at Sharon’s career gives insight into how those experiences provide a roadmap to anyone looking for advice on how to build an organization or confidently launch a project.

Foreshadowing began early in her career at Dun & Bradstreet’s (D&B) entrepreneurial, call center start-up division. They garnered an impressive client list: AT&T, Avis, IBM, and even the US Postal Service. D&B offered the perfect training ground to acquire foundational knowledge and experience in managing people, tracking data, streamlining processes, successfully selling, and techniques for consistently providing exceptional service to clients.

SPEED GIVE YOU A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

After working in a variety of roles with increasing responsibility, she was offered her dream job at Oxford Health Plans when the company was in its infancy. It was the ideal innovation incubator where thinking outside the box was de riguer. Sales leaders were pushed to uncover all the possible ways to meet aggressive sales goals while making sure to anticipate and satisfy customer needs.

“Speed gives you a competitive advantage,” was an oft-heard Oxford motto. The idea was to hire highly skilled individuals who could first plan on a “blank piece of paper”, and then swiftly implement.

This approach illustrates how real-time course correction allows for rapid, reality-based adjustments; the way a pilot navigates a plane. In other words, never waste precious time lamenting over every possible issue in advance. Instead, begin implementing as soon as possible and adjust accordingly.

Not only will you unveil innovative ideas while in action, but you can gain a tremendous competitive advantage. Take Amazon for example; they began by selling books out of a garage, but as popularity increased they didn’t think slow or small. Instead, they took advantage of their momentum and eventually grew into one of the most powerful companies on the planet because they didn’t wait to change. They saw opportunities and profited from them.

HOW TO LOSE $450,000

One specific experience that shaped the way SBR approaches consulting engagements came when Oxford had to acquire a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage inside and field sales data (and connect with the customer service system). Sharon was part of the team that would create the Request for Proposal (RFP), research the available options, and make final recommendations.

The search team sought out big-name consulting firms as a way to guarantee a successful implementation. When pitches were made to Oxford, they came from each firm’s elite team, implying it would be the seasoned veterans of the selected team who would take control of lead the project.

Sadly, the elite team that made the initial pitch was never to be seen again. After plunking down approximately $450K, the firm they contracted sent in a team of very smart, VERY green college graduates all hailing from well-known target schools. Once they reviewed the system requirements, they would devote hours to program what they thought would meet business needs. But, they never observed any of the sales teams in action.

Although the assigned team of twenty-somethings were very polite, well-groomed, and impeccably mannered, their charm did not translate into results. Months later, the first CRM investment (the equivalent of approximately $750K today) never got off the ground. Sunk costs. The next consulting engagement with another firm suffered a similar fate, and the company lost money again in both the consulting costs and forgone business that would have been retained had there been an adequate CRM system in place.

A FORMULA THAT GUARANTEES SUCCESS

Living through these events and hearing horror stories from colleagues and clients made us determined to create core guidelines and principles that guarantee SBR can always deliver on our promise. Adopt these methods and principles for your next project launch. They really work. Just ask our clients.

1. Observe and Ask. Instead of asking employees what they do and how they do it, use an observational method (SBR uses Rapid Ethnography) to help expose the root cause of growth stumbling blocks. Why? To quote Margaret Meade, a cultural anthropologist, “What people say, what people do, and what they say they do, are entirely different things.” Chalk this up to human nature.
2. Consider Company Culture. Appreciate the organization’s culture so that recommendations will work within the company’s real-world context, not some conceptual organization.
3. Respect Best Practices. Understand best practices, but make recommendations that will work for the organization, not an idealized version of the company. Sometimes best practices can be costly, time-consuming to implement, and not necessary for transformative results to occur.
4. Remember, Everything Looks Good On Paper. Create and document the plan. Share it with stakeholders. Start implementing and continue course-correcting as you move along (the iterative process). You will not only gain a competitive advantage but also come up with innovative solutions along the way.
5. Watch for Human Roadblocks. Work with employees throughout the organization to navigate through the various roadblocks that can be created often by well-meaning employees for a variety of reasons. Remember, everyone is doing the best they can- even when it does not appear that way.

Anyone who has ever gone to the grocery store knows this scenario well: you turn the corner of the breakfast foods aisle and find yourself confronted with hundreds of different types of cereal. Cheerios alone have over eleven different flavor options (not even considering size variations!), including original, honey nut, honey nut medley crunch, apple cinnamon, banana nut, frosted, chocolate, multi-grain, multi-grain peanut butter, Dulce de Leche, and cinnamon burst. For the average shopper, so many products on a shelf are bound to trigger a headache unless they walk in knowing precisely what they need.

IS MORE REALLY BETTER?

In 2000, researchers Sheena Iyengar & Mark Lepper set out to explore the belief that the more options we have, the better. In a series of experiments conducted in both field and laboratory settings, they found that individuals are more likely to purchase a product (specifically jam) when offered a limited array of 6 choices, rather than a wide array of 30 choices. Moreover, the participants reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections when their choices were limited. Think long-term customer retention.

According to a psychology professor and author of “The Paradox of Choice” (HarperCollins, 2003) Barry Collins, an abundance of options can cause a buyer to experience decision paralysis and not make a decision at all. Or they might make a rash decision based on what is easiest to evaluate, rather than what is important and necessary, triggering buyer’s remorse.

FOUR MAIN PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISMS UNDERLYING “THE PARADOX OF CHOICE”.

1. Regret: The concept of post-decisional regret states that feeling regret increases with the number of options that we have to turn down. We assume a personal responsibility for making a bad choice and find it easier to replay in our minds what may have occurred had we chosen another option.
2. Opportunity Costs: When making a decision, we are inherently suffering an opportunity cost for not choosing the options we left behind. Our brain requires that we produce reasons why we didn’t go with each of the other options, causing psychological stress.
3. Expectations: As the number of choices increase, so do our expectations to find the perfect option. With higher expectations, we subject ourselves to higher levels of disappointment.
4. Social Comparison: With more options, we are more likely to compare what we have with what others, theoretically, could have, therefore increasing our likelihood of simply comparing ourselves to others.

Barry Collins argues that having some choice is good, as it allows people to recognize their preferences and choose on their own volition. However, when too many choices are introduced, psychological satisfaction with that choice can go in the opposite direction. This also pertains to the people behind the purchasing decisions made for companies. At SBR, we were interested in applying this knowledge in a practical way to help our clients increase sales and drive revenue.

TOO MANY CHOICES CAN RESULT IN LOWER SALES.

This excerpt from Barry Collin’s TED Talk reveals the impact that too many choices can have on sales:

“A colleague of mine got access to investment records from Vanguard, the gigantic mutual fund company of about a million employees and about 2,000 different workplaces. And what she found is that for every 10 mutual funds the employer offered, the rate of participation went down two percent. You offer 50 funds — 10 percent fewer employees participate than if you only offer five. Why? Because with 50 funds to choose from, it’s so damn hard to decide which fund to choose, that you’ll just put it off until tomorrow. And then tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and of course tomorrow never comes. Understand that not only does this mean that people are going to have to eat dog food when they retire because they don’t have enough money to put away, it also means that making the decision is so hard that they pass up significant matching money from the employer. By not participating, they are passing up as much as $5,000 a year from the employer, who would happily match their contribution.”

YOUR SALES TEAM CAN ELIMINATE DECISION PARALYSIS.

Salespeople can mitigate challenges caused by an excessive number of options. How? They can target this psychological process by identifying customer’s preferences and present them with a narrower selection from which they may choose. Rather than “product dumping,” and simply listing all of the features of a variety of products, a sales person must narrow the set of options, and present them in a digestible way.

Naturally, they must first determine what the customer’s needs are (by asking directional questions) and then recommend the product(s) that fit their specific requirements. To further ease the decision-making process, storytelling techniques can be used to help the customer imagine how this product will improve their life or their company.

With a smaller selection of defined options, the buying experience will be less psychologically taxing, and more profitable for the organization. Not only will the customer be more satisfied with your company, but also with themselves for coming to a conclusion seemingly on their own. Win-win. Click here to learn how SBR has catapulted sales performance and results for our clients.

If you run a sales operation, you know and love the challenge of devising plans to achieve a business goal in the midst of numerous competing factors. While some people shy away from being in the “hot seat”, exceptional sales leaders welcome it.

Those who work in healthcare know all too well the intensity of the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP). Close to 50% of the annual sales are obtained in about 8 weeks.

Many healthcare sales and marketing executives spend the better part of the 1st and 2nd quarter reviewing data, analyzing losses and gains. They pull together actuarial, underwriting, legal and other teams across departments to understand the market conditions and health of the products before building sales and marketing strategies. Plus, they need to develop retention plans to maintain their current membership.

To add to the pressure, products are approved by government agencies only a few weeks ahead of the selling window. So the company doesn’t know the competitive landscape until the last moment. Few industries grapple with this level of variable factors as the healthcare industry does.

Combating Declining Sales. 

Given these inherent complexities, it raises the question: how can we consistently boost sales results when consulting with our healthcare clients who face these challenges annually? Here is where course correction has made all the difference.

Some years back, a client engaged us to help their organization reverse a four-year trend of declining sales and repeatedly failing to meet their goal. Using rapid ethnography, we were able to identify the largest barriers and how to correct them.

We had less than 120 days until the start of AEP to make massive changes in practically every corner of the operation. Once AEP started, we vigilantly analyzed daily sales data. Midway through we knew that while the numbers were trending higher than in previous years, at the current rate we would not meet the sales goal. Unacceptable!

Consider Blowing Up Your Plans.

Enter the 11th-hour-course correction. We took a calculated chance that was inspired by how people shop. During the holidays when most supermarkets are closed, there is always one store that remains open. With no other available option, consumers will flock to that store. Applying this to healthcare, we recommended having the contact center remain open until Midnight for the last few days of AEP. During those hours the competitors would be sleeping. Literally!

The result? It worked. In the final three days of AEP, the phone lines were jammed well into 1:00 AM. The extended hours equaled one additional business day, allowing the client to exceed their sales goal for the first time in years. Years later, this technique is commonplace.

While companies may spend months planning for the future, if devised strategies and tactics are not heading in the right direction, you might need to blow up your well-conceived plan. Sure, taking a risk to course correct at the 11th takes some nerve, but in the end, it may be well worth it.

In a 2004 study, researchers assigned participants to consume a snack – either chocolate or prune juice. Half of the participants consumed the snack immediately, while the others had to wait 30 minutes before consuming. Those who ate chocolate enjoyed the product more when they had to wait 30 minutes before tasting it, while those who drank prune juice disliked it even more when they had to wait.

This teaches us an important lesson about emotion – for a positive experience, a delay will increase enjoyment. However, for more negative experiences it is better to, as Nike says “Just Do It” because a delay will intensify the negative emotions when you finally get around to doing it.

In health insurance, it is rare to find someone who equates the annual hunt for adequate health insurance coverage to eating a delicious piece of rich dark chocolate. We know that consumers frequently wait until the final days of AEP (Annual Enrollment Period) to select a health plan. Can health care professionals leverage this knowledge about delays to help members feel more satisfied with their decision at the end of AEP?

Health insurance carriers want prospects and members to have a positive AEP experience – increasing retention and satisfaction. Frequently viewed as a negative experience, putting off a healthcare purchase will surely guarantee an even more extreme response. Health carriers can remedy this by encouraging consumers to sign up early – get the process over with!

The key to successfully changing attitudes about AEP is communication. Reach out to prospects and members early on. Communicate that being an “early bird” will allow for a painless process, guaranteed to be satisfying because your team will support them along the way. While some of the regulations limit offering incentives, you can market the psychological benefit, a value in and of itself. Although members may not recognize the immediate advantages of avoiding delay, they are sure to look back on the selection process more favorably than they would have if they procrastinated.

Does your marketing and sales communication encourage prospects and members to complete the AEP plan selection process early, while emphasizing the ease of purchase? Use your next marketing campaign to inspire consumers to avoid delaying…another way to help boost member satisfaction.

All summer we’ve been geeking out on the latest season of HBO’s Silicon Valley. This week’s episode highlights a challenge companies face when looking to simplify their products, sales, and communications. For the unconverted and for the purposes of this conversation: Silicon Valley is about Pied Piper, a file compression algorithm that’s supposed to dramatically free-up storage space without compromising quality.

In this week’s episode, “Daily Active Users”, the guys at Pied Piper have tested their platform with a select group of betas and finally released the app to the public. Although it’s the talk of the town and gaining a high volume of downloads, users aren’t returning on a daily basis to actually use the app. That daily use metric is what determines corporate growth and profitability.

CEO Richard Hendricks has a focus group to figure out why people aren’t using Pied Piper. And the answer is clear. The platform is too complicated and ahead of its time for the average user to appreciate. Hendricks is enraged – he tested a beta version with his friends (other engineers) and got near universal praise. When asked why he only sent the beta to other engineers, Hendricks explains to his VC pal:

I wanted to give it to people who would understand what I’m trying to do, so I could get useful feedback. And with all due respect, I gave it to you – the one person without a computing background – and you said it felt ‘engineered’.

Then the lightbulb moment occurs when he realizes they wanted to market their product to Average Joe, but they never actually tested it with him. And herein lies the brilliance of Silicon Valley. Art imitating business.

We come to the very real question of consumer value during all points of the product development and distribution lifecycle. If you want a “normal” person to understand your product, or how your services work, or why their life will be dramatically improved, don’t just circulate feedback around the internal organization. The audience community can provide a better glimpse into actual market response.

For the most part, technology and CPG companies know this to be true. But others – like financial services, healthcare, and insurance – really struggle to bridge the gap between insider admiration and consumer approval.

Multitasking has been under scientific scrutiny since the 1960’s. Diverse and web-centric channels for work and play have questioned the brain’s ability to do more than one thing at a time. MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller explains that, “When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.”

There is no better proof that multitasking – or, rather, the attempt to multitask – is alive and well than the contact center industry. If you spend any time peering over the cubicles of call center agents, moving between two or more computer screens, jotting down notes, and plugging digits into their calculator, you have to wonder, what’s all the fuss about? They seem to be multitasking whizzes! (Side note: In one Rapid Ethnographic study of a call center, SBR found that agents migrated between an average of two computer screens and seven different windows during a single call!)

When production value is prized above salesmanship or consumer engagement, the most effective call center agents have to become adept at managing multiple activities in quick succession. The problem is that most companies want call center agents to engage with consumers. The skills required to do so are inherently at odds with mechanical dexterity. You can easily determine whether agents are more focused on the computer than the consumer by the amount of “dead air” during a call. Such is the dilemma for the modern call center.

One big issue is that when people try to multitask, they make more mistakes. Worse yet, when agents switch between different activities, they could be losing the very skills needed to sell and/or support consumers. Researchers at the UK’s University of Sussex found that frequent multitaskers had less brain density in the areas that control cognition and emotional resilience. Sure, an agent might do okay for the first few minutes of their day, but they will soon get burned-out and bummed-out, lose focus, interest and overall job satisfaction. What to do?

• Experience the agent environment firsthand. Automation can help, but should be built with and for the agent. Too often call center tools are created in a vacuum, often by technical geniuses that know little about or invest no time in appreciating the day-to-day work of a call center agent. An intimate understanding of the job starts with an immersive assessment (our method of choice is Rapid Ethnography) to get an inside look into the agent’s environment. At this point it’s possible to design technological solutions that can do more of the heavy lifting, so agents can focus on the caller.
• Measure the impact of multitasking on performance. The attempt to multitask is a big time-waster. If you gauge the average amount of time wasted in searching around for information while on the phone you can quickly track the cost associated with multitasking, not to mention the impact it has on the consumer experience.
• Give agents a chance to recharge. Psychology says that there is a limit to optimal performance and we all have a set point at which all goes south. The best breathers engage the creative part of our brains. If you have or manage a call center, consider a break station that includes games such as pool tables, adult coloring books (all the rage) and other “toys” that help agents switch gears. Even if you can’t set aside a large dedicated space, give agents portable care packages that they can take to the cafeteria.

The modern call center is a motley environment where human-centered communication, technological agility, and product knowledge converge to form the “ideal” agent. But humans are limited and for long-term agent retention and satisfaction, consider how you can create an ecosystem where performance is based on realistic factors. Folks on the receiving end of the call will thank you and so will your bottom line.

Anyone who has spent time around kids knows that the incessant “Why” query is applied to just about everything. But asking “Why” isn’t just a way to annoy adults. It’s their natural inclination to better understand the world around them using storytelling, a form of communication hardwired in our brains.

Sanden Totten is co-creator of a new podcast, “Brains On!”, which has kids asking their most burning questions about culture, science, art and the like. Totten came upon the idea that kids can be the perfect journalistic tool by observing the way adults responded to them.

On WNYC’s “The Takeaway”, Totten mentioned that scientists spoke differently when talking to adults vs. kids. For example, when explaining El Niño to an adult, scientists might say,“Part of the ocean that we call ‘Niño 3.4’ heats up two degrees above average…”

But when kids asked the scientists the very same question, they turned up their storytelling mojo: “El Niño is basically a weather phenomenon that happens when part of the ocean gets really hot and it messes with all of the wind patterns and sends storms to places they normally wouldn’t be.” Bingo! By giving the microphone to kids, the great questions about the world were not only put within their storytelling context, adult comprehension was boosted as well.

For over a decade now, SBR has helped complex product organizations (like health insurance and financial services) create marketing communications that better reach their consumer audiences. During this time we have tested numerous communications against standard industry barometers like health literacy, which measures a person’s ability to read and understand health-related information. But simply writing communications at a certain grade level doesn’t mean that they are compelling.

When you’re selling something as banal as light fixtures or as complex as health insurance, creativity is often replaced with a product description. Instead of product dumping or feature selling (listing product features one by one), use stories to add both an emotive component to common products and help consumers understand how a product could support them. For example, instead of listing the features of a health insurance plan (deductibles, copays, premiums) create a story about how the consumer will use the product: “When you go to your local pharmacy, you’ll show your membership card to the pharmacist, pay the prescription copay of $10, and then you’ll be on your way.”

You can also use kids to test the relative persuasiveness of your marketing speak. If they can understand it and are maybe even intrigued by it, chances are your adult consumers will as well.

Honoring Valentine’s Day is our chance to say how much we ❤ and appreciate our clients, colleagues and friends. We are not alone. With people in the U.S. spending some $18.9 billion on chocolates, extravagant arrangements and the standard Hallmark card, Valentine’s Day is no joke for businesses big and small. Team SBR dug up some interesting factoids about this holiday to consider what it says about consumer behavior and corporate response.

Artificial Affection

A startling 15% of women will send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day. Which begs the question, why do we care so much about what other people think? In research, we call this “social desirability bias,” the tendency to report more favorably than your behavior or belief actually suggest. This is one reason why we opt to pair survey research with observational qualitative methods like ethnography to marry what people say they do with what they actually do.

Move Over, Friendsgiving
In Finland Valentine’s Day is called Ystävänpäivä, meaning “Friend’s Day” where they celebrate friends more than significant others. It’s with this sentiment that SBR celebrates as well because building engagement in employees is vital for both our clients and within our own company. A Gallop poll found that workplace friendships could improve employee satisfaction by as much as 50%, noting that camaraderie means more than just lunchtime pal-chats. Creating a workforce built upon communal goals, active participation and a broader sense of purpose are integral to this friendship model.

We Just Love Procrastinating
Procrastination plagues the best of us and we reported on how businesses can embrace the human tendency to delay in order to boost sales and better communicate with consumers. It turns out that people procrastinate even for positive things like Valentine’s Day, with nearly half (47%) of men waiting until February 13th or 14th to shop. The relative risk is pretty low when it comes to a box of chocolates (depending on the relative wrath of your significant other). But when you pair procrastination with higher impact items like health insurance, the risk is much greater.

So there you have it. Whether you feel the need to feign love, celebrate friends with the Finns or simply love to procrastinate, we think dedicating an entire day to amour is so worth it.

“Mad Men” came to a close last May but we still find ourselves referencing the series whenever we think about business life in the days of yore. The show had a revolving door of characters that seemed to require a lung or liver transplant as much as new business accounts. But when it comes to its portrayal of the business world, and specifically, the business worker, we ask ourselves: How much has really changed over the past few decades?

We decided to pose this question to Dr. Stephen Byrum, Ph.D., CEO of The Byrum Consulting Group and foremost expert on the Hartman Value Profile. Dr. Byrum has been using the Hartman Value Profile since the 1960s, happened to study under its creator Dr. Hartman and consults for educational institutions, corporations and startups. But before we delve into the details of our conversation, it’s important to mention the basic tenets of the tool. (If you are new to the Hartman Value Profile, you may want to check out an earlier post about the assessment, how it works and why we keep introducing it to clients.) 

In simplest terms, the Hartman Value Profile measures a person’s value judgment on three different dimensions: (1) Systemic or “big picture” judgment; (2) Intrinsic or people judgment; and, (3) Extrinsic or task-based judgment. It analyzes the inextricable correlation between a person’s innate personal attributes and their ability to apply those characteristics to the workplace.

Dr. Byrum helped provide clarity on the moving dynamics of worker culture over the past few decades from thousands of Hartman Value Profile test results fielded in nearly every major industry:

• “Mad Men” era favored leaders with excellent people skills. Decades ago companies put a premium on leaders that had high Intrinsic scores (good judgment when it comes to people). Just think of how much time Roger Sterling and Pete Campbell spent schmoozing clients. “If you went into the agency in Mad Men”, Dr. Byrum explained, “Everything was so very dependent on people being able to be socially acute and establish really good social relationships.” But this social IQ doesn’t necessarily lead to the next big invention. “That emphasis on social skills made people individually successful”, Dr. Byrum cautions, “But was not something that contributed to a person’s ability to predict what the next horizon was going to be.”

• The best leaders connect the dots. What Dr. Byrum knows from administering the Hartman Value Profile is that great leaders actually have consistently high Systemic scores. Meaning, they can scope out a situation and forecast the bigger implication. Strong leaders often have an uncanny ability to piece together seemingly unrelated items to achieve an overall goal. Some of the best leaders we know take time to investigate a challenge and predict implications of their decisions on the whole of the company, not just themselves or their direct reports. They work for the betterment of the brand and the business, and consider consumer engagement an absolute necessity, not just a catchphrase.

• Companies wanted rank-and-file workers with high task management skills; today they expect it from everyone. Companies often sought out employees that had the grit and dedication to complete a specified set of tasks. “In the late 1960s through the 1980s,” Dr. Byrum recalled, “Powerful Extrinsic abilities would carry you through the day if you were in an area that involved a lot of process and tact”. This same trend applies today and is arguably a bigger requirement of everyone in business. It makes sense when we consider that there are fewer people expected to accomplish more work in less time. One of the problems is that being a strong producer of work can cost us in other areas, “Oftentimes is at the expense of social skills and Intrinsic abilities”. Our brains have trouble contemplating implications, seeing big picture dynamics and coming up with creative solutions when we are so overloaded with to-do lists. We look for ways to be better producers but we’re not skilling ourselves for leadership roles and other innovative tracks.

• Between the 1960s and 2015, stress has increased precipitously in every industry and at every level. In the closing scene of “Mad Men”, the fictional McCann Erickson agency created the groundbreaking Coca-Cola “Hilltop” advertisement following a serene shot of Don Draper meditating. The focus on the search for deeper meaning and balance is perhaps one of necessity today. The Hartman Value Profile looks both at an individual’s work-side and self-side judgments, as well as the balance between the two. Dr. Byrum has analyzed thousands of results and witnessed a notable dip in people’s self-side scores across the board. In short, we have become more off-balance and more stressed in our personal lives. About 80% of people have lower self-side scores than work-side scores today, compared to about 60% with the same lack of balance in the 1970s. Dr. Byrum suggests that if we dropped Don Draper in 2015, his life and transgressions would not be that much of a shocker today because our lives are so out of balance: “I think if you went back to that period, most people’s lives were not like that. But if you come forward to present-day, you have large numbers of people whose personal lives have gotten as troublesome to the point where I don’t think Don Draper’s character would be much of an aberration in my neighborhood today.”

It is difficult, if not impossible, to keep your personal life from spilling over into your work life. The fact that our personal lives have become more stressed means that our work performance has been impacted as well. Consider the Harvard Business Review’s recent take on the impact of long work hours: chronic overwork diminishes productivity in the long term. The fact that the article mentions an 80-hour workweek is very telling of the dramatic shift towards work-side dominance.

Team SBR periodically takes the Hartman Value Profile to identify movement between the three dimensions of judgment. We love when the results show greater equilibrium amongst the three dimensions (System / Extrinsic / Intrinsic). It is usually a welcome sign that getting a good night’s sleep, taking an extra Yoga class and respecting our own personal time actually makes us better stewards of success for ourselves and our clients.

To learn more about Dr. Byrum, visit Judgment Index and the Robert S. Hartman Institute. 

A movie that probes the human condition using the customer service industry as a loose backdrop? Why not! This week, Team SBR went to see Anomalisa, a stop-motion animation film from writer/director Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Anomalisa is about Michael Stone, a middle-aged customer service guru who travels to Cincinnati to give the keynote at a regional conference. To be sure, this isn’t a movie about customer service. But it made us wonder why Kaufman would use it as the context to push the events forward? It turns out that he spent some time in his early career working in customer service, so he probably knew just enough to get himself into trouble.

In the movie, Stone is set to speak about his book, whose title (How May I Help You Help Them?) is as nonspecific as his techniques (“Look for what is special about each individual” / “The customer is an individual just like you” / “Smile…it doesn’t cost anything”). People gush about how Stone’s book helped them increase productivity by 90%, so he has an audience.

When you consider what this film is really about – the banality of existence and references to a delusion in which all people are thought to be the exact same person – then customer service might be the perfect choice. Customer service is an ordinary, all-purpose trade that everyone engages on a daily basis. In some way, we are all supplying service or receiving it, whether from the grocer, call center agent or barista.

In Anomalisa those in customer service roles are shown performing routine characterizations of what it means to be on the help line, from the front desk clerk’s fixed expression to the bellhop’s incessant speak about the weather. After all, they are puppets. It takes a lot of work to produce a single frame in stop-motion animation, so we know that there was a deliberate decision to create each movement and expression.

When you are in the business of creating a reliable degree of service, you want consistency, but not at the expense of humanity. While it surely was not Kaufman’s ambition to do so, Anomalisa gently reminds us to break from the norm and bring a dose of personality back into the business of caring for the consumer. This also means, as we recently reported, slaying generic openings like, “How are you today?” If you are a Kaufman fan or just like when films scratch your cranium, Anomalisa is really worth a watch.

There are a number of creations from the 1980s that we would prefer to keep locked in the antiquity closet (shoulder pads and side ponytails come to mind). But our heart still sings for a simple video game brought to the U.S. in 1984: Tetris. Something about stacking those mini-blocks into cubed corners keeps us hypnotized for hours.

The simplicity of Tetris is actually based on a more complex phenomenon from human psychology. Scientists have found that the game can help in numerous ways, everything from keeping you on a diet to helping with cognitive capacity (which in turn impacts learning and development). But we were curious about Tetris’ scientific suggestions when it comes to breaking through procrastination plateaus.

The answer lies in something called the Zeigarnik Effect. In the 1930s, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed that waiters remembered customers’ orders until the moment they delivered their food and drinks. Conversely, they forgot the orders once delivery was complete. This observation and the studies that followed concluded that humans have an unconscious need to finish what we start. Our brain basically hangs onto the information until it’s completed.

Tetris plays off the Zeigarnik Effect by creating an inherently unending pursuit. Its addictive nature has to do with the simple fact that there is a constant delivery of new blocks, increasing in speed, feeding our unresolved need to stack them. Whether or not we are aware of it, the re-feeding of blocks keeps us attuned and engaged, what one psychologist called, a “World of perpetual uncompleted tasks”. In the most simple terms, tasks stay in our minds until complete.

From a productivity standpoint, this is great news. We are much more likely to move towards work resolution just by getting started rather than contemplating when and how we will begin. This shows that getting started is not just half the battle, it is the battle. Our mental demand for conclusion will do the work to move us towards resolution.

Consider for a moment walking into your office on a Monday morning and opening up your to-do list for the day. You read through your list, feeling a little less confident than when you walked in a few minutes before. So much to do! Where to begin?

Instead of becoming stalled in a formidable list of tasks, taking on just one at a time will more likely help you complete your tasks. What’s more, just getting started with one small task (e.g. respond to an email, return a call to a colleague, etc.) can help you work through the broader list as a whole.

If you are stuck in procrastination hell and feel like you cannot get out, open Tetris to retrain your neurons towards enhanced performance. Just watch the clock so you don’t squander the entire day trying to beat your highest score.

I once heard a statistic that humans fear public speaking above death. In his standup routine, Jerry Seinfeld once said, “This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” While I can’t relate to that extreme level of fear, I usually have a mental handbag of hypotheticals that nag me in the days and hours before having to speak in public. What if my heel catches and I fall on stage? What if my voice quivers and my hands visibly shake? What if I say something stupid?

It was exactly two weeks before I was scheduled to deliver a presentation at the annual gala for the Professional Association for Consumer Engagement (PACE). Smack dab in the middle of Times Square (well 30 floors above it in the Thomson Reuters Building) I would show how corporations can use the social science technique of ethnography to meet sales and customer service goals. A phalanx of SBR strategists had worked in the weeks prior to design an audience-centered storyline and visual presentation. Now the work was on me to deliver it.

There was one, big problem though. My memory is abysmal. And it’s not just memorizing business presentations that are impaired; I regularly forget names, movies, even family members that I rarely see! I knew this subject matter very well, but memorizing it would force me to stay on-point instead of meandering and potentially boring the audience.

In my search for a pragmatic approach to help transform an unreliable memory into something more dependable I landed on Joshua Foer’s game-changing Ted Talk. Foer showed how he went from science journalist covering the U.S. Memory Championship to eventually winning the competition by mastering the memory techniques he studied.

I picked up Foer’s book, Moonwalking With Einstein, which revealed these techniques, specifically, Simonides’ method of loci (sometimes called the “memory palace” method). The science is surprisingly simple: our brains are better wired to store pictures than words and numbers. Using the memory palace, the person associates concepts with spatial images, and later recalls each item by mentally walking through their memory space.

Through Moonwalking with Einstein I learned that our brains are particularly well equipped to stockpile the ludicrous, so the raunchier and more absurd the mental pictures, the better. I began by converting each slide into preposterous pictures associated with a physical place in my house, starting sequentially with my front door, then moving right into my living room, further on into my kitchen, and so on.

For example, one of the initial topic points I planned to cover was Procter & Gamble’s design of the Swiffer, based upon using the ethnographic technique to observe people cleaning their kitchen floors. In my memory palace, I pictured a hunky man wearing just an apron as he showed a group of women a Swiffer prototype while they sat around my kitchen table. It was just absurd enough to remain in my memory today.

With a 45-minute presentation you might ask how easy it could be to place the necessary pictures into outrageous visuals? Answer: quite easy. In fact, when my mind desperately wanted to revert to rote memorization that it had tried (and failed) to use in the past, I ended up elongating my practice time significantly.

As this was the first time I had employed the technique, I was fairly nervous on the day of the presentation. But all went well. In fact, my mind effortlessly seemed to move from slide to slide, carefully plucking visuals from my cerebral chambers and allowing me to deliver the information with ease. If I ever meet Foer I will hug and kiss him the way you would someone who you are indebted to forever.

The great philosopher Cicero reminds us that, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” On November 26th, nationwide we will gobble 51,150,000 turkeys and devour 2.4 billion sweet potatoes. As we’re digging in, we have abundant reasons to be grateful: the opportunity to collaborate with many talented people, super smart colleagues, and the company of a dynamic team. But above all, amazing clients like ours make the job worth doing and top our list.

May you also be in great company and savor delicious eats.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Team SBR

As Thoreau tells us, “It is not enough to be busy…the question is: What are we busy about?” Lately we have been busy on our clients’ most active season leading up to the end of the year when sales outcomes can make or break their goals for the next year. For our health insurance clients locked in the middle of their Annual Enrollment Period (AEP), October through December is game time. Not really fun “game time”, more keep your nose to the grindstone and get the job done time.

While we all love accomplishing tasks, sometimes crossing items off of our Basecamp list becomes too much of the focus. If you are anything like us, you even add completed to-dos just to get the satisfaction of crossing them off.

Studies continue to suggest that it is not good to be busy all the time. In fact, it’s bad: “Constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras who led a study on how taking mental breaks improves performance in the long run.

Athletes live by this rule. Any coach worth their weight will tell you that recovery time is invaluable for performance. So why is it that businesses still value busy above break time?

We’re intent on breaking this trend at SBR.

Not All Breaks Are Created Equal
It turns out that what we do during our downtime is just as important if we want those breaks to have a meaningful impact on performance. Exercise, meditation and naps have all been shown to produce optimal outcomes.

Sharon enjoying Shuffleboard

Researchers studying brains through fMRI scans confirm that the areas associated with problem-solving are actually highly active when we are daydreaming. This was once a shocker to us because we believed that only rigorous, focused attention led to results. But after years of working on simplifying complexity, we have seen some of our brainiest innovations come about during non-work time.

Sharon, our fearless founder and leader, believes some of her best ideas come in the shower. In fact, it was in this very locale that she came up with an idea to extend the call center hours until midnight (while our client’s competitors were closed) to maximize on a condensed shopping period. This was a simple, albeit profitable, concept that helped one client significantly increase membership.

Whenever we feel stuck we immediately try to switch venues or activities. In the adjacent picture you can see Sharon enjoying a game of Shuffleboard, a perfect diversion during the workday.

Taking breaks and doing something relaxing has undoubtedly improved our happiness at work.

SBR’s Break List
In our office, we have a growing list of possible breaks to get a mental reboot. So without further adieu, here is our list of short-but-sweet breaks that you can enjoy too…

• Take a walk at Todd’s Point
 (lucky us, our office is near the water)
• The office coloring books always need some attention!
• Grab a coffee and a magazine at Espresso Neat
• Whip out the yoga mat or head over to Kaia Yoga, our neighborhood studio
• Plug in your headphones and head over to the SBR Soundtrack on Spotify 
• When in doubt, step away from the computer and catch up with your co-workers (they’re pretty cool people)!

If you’ve been in the call center business for more than two minutes you know that the word “scripting” is about as detested as background noise. For the most part we understand why: leaders worry that their agents will sound like mindless, monotonous robots.

While this fear is real, it doesn’t mean that the problem is scripting itself. In fact, let’s just throw out the word scripting altogether and instead focus on crafting compelling communication guides. The latter equips agents with a clear path to engage callers and ultimately focus their attention on sales or customer service (or both). A successful call guide actually makes for a more natural conversation, especially when the product or service is complex. A powerful guide will allow for individual agent personalities to shine.

This is not just lip service. In call centers that lacked a call guide, we’ve been able to increase sales by 5% to 27% simply through streamlined communication guides and associated training.

So you want to make your agents better? Here are five things you can do right now to boost your call center communications. You can pick and choose from this list but instituting all five will give you the most bang for your buck.

1. Create a Callflow

Organization isn’t just relegated to your closets. When it comes to drafting call guides, creating a callflow and outline is
the first step. This will also help cut down on call time if that is your goal.

Brainstorming callflow for a complex service product

Let’s take the example of health insurance sales. A prospect calls the Health Insurer to get help selecting a health insurance plan. This is a high stakes decision and they want an expert to help. The agent needs to take charge and get from point A to B so that the caller’s needs are uncovered in a way that leads to the ideal plan for them. By deconstructing the flow of a call in advance, you can be sure that key topics are attended to in a logical fashion. Otherwise the agent can go on making extraneous comments or worse yet miss key information.

With pen and pencil, identify your callflow for a general sales opportunity. In the adjacent snapshot you can see our Communications Specialist brainstorming the big picture guide for a complex product sale.

A call guide can be written verbatim for more junior staff or when you are launching a new product. Bullet points will achieve the same goal for more expert and seasoned agents.

2. Design the Right Questions

Asking questions is a foundational sales method simply because it works. Frankly, most people like to talk about themselves and asking them questions will make them feel part of the process.

Big word of caution here: in a call center environment you want to ask closed-ended questions (as opposed to open-ended ones). For example, asking someone, “What are you looking for in a health insurance plan?” is far too general and can lead to responses like, “Free, 100% coverage” rather than a realistic fielding of the person’s needs. Closed-ended sales questions include:

• About how much are you comfortable spending on PRODUCT TYPE?
• Are you planning on using this PRODUCT TYPE mostly for home or the office?
• Thinking about the year ahead, about how often do you think you’ll be visiting your doctor? (Health insurance sales)

All of these questions will lead to a response that helps the agent vet the products available. We’ve built algorithms for our clients to automate this process and it makes the Q&A process that much easier for both agent and caller.

3. Slay the Opening, “How are you today?”

This is SBR’s biggest pet peeve. Asking, “How are you today?” is one of the first things agents say over the phone. Managers like to fight us on this one so if you’re a Doubting Thomas here’s why…

Asking “How are you today?” is perfectly fine during in-person exchanges and can work quite well in field sales when one can gauge the situation through body language, energy and the like. But over the phone this phrase often stifles the exchange. The caller feels the need to synthesize their day, or, even worse, complain. Either way, it impacts time.

Instead, acknowledge the caller and move to find out how the agent can assist. After all, that is the reason for the call. Don’t get us wrong; there is nothing better than a smart, kind, warm agent who is interested in helping the caller.  But asking, “How are you today?” lies flat when, “How can I assist you today?” is really what people want to hear.

4. Cope with Legalese

Sometimes your Legal team mandates certain clauses in order to meet adherence requirements. Fighting with lawyers is usually a lost cause so we typically concede. But when faced with long, complex legalese, break up the content with pauses to the caller:

• “Do you have any questions before I continue?”
• “Do you have any questions about the information that I’ve just covered?”

This prepares the caller for any clarifying points and the next phase of heavy content.

5. Test & Then Test Again

Expert agents are an invaluable resource. Involve some of your top agents in testing the call guide. Some are excellent at crafting the ideal communication. They can help work out the kinks and test the most natural sounding call guides.

We like to test calls with the top agents while the content is still in development. Once we feel pretty secure with the call guides, we then move to middle-level agents to be sure that the guides are scalable to the entire agent-force.

A final suggestion on lawyers: Because of our many years in the complex product arena we are accustomed to the requirement that the legal staff must approve the call guides. If this is the case in your organization, we find that engaging the legal team in the process and educating them on how call centers work either by having them sit with agents or monitor calls is worth the time and effort.

One Final Thought…

If you institute just one of these activities your call guides will invariably improve. Do all five and you should see a boost in productivity across the agent pool. Of course there will be those bellicose agents who will rant and rave about having to follow a call guide. When their call monitoring, quality and sales all improve, they will thank you.

Anyone in the business knows that call center management is a demanding (if not a thankless) profession. Irregular call patterns could require immediate staffing changes, one-off questions can stifle a manager’s work for hours and industry alerts (like the first year launch of the Affordable Care Act) can put the queue in backlog. In short, something can happen every minute that moves the operation from calm to chaotic.

With all of these demands it’s a tall order to review operations from the consumer’s perspective. The good news is that it’s also relatively easy, quick and cheap to assess an inbound contact center operation. Contact center experts can ramble on for hours about shrinkage, AHT, ACDs, WFM and a litany of other acronyms, but ultimately a critical performance indicator is the exchange between the agent and caller. To get a real “inside look” into this exchange (beyond random call monitoring which is usually relegated to quality control), it’s important for those responsible to assume the position of the consumer.

We have recommended this exercise to countless individuals, from c-suite executives to directors and sales and marketing managers. People are consistently astounded by what they experience when they take on the consumer’s role. SBR’s Lead Ethnographer who helped design our rapid ethnography studies created a methodology for secret shopping contact center operations. The exercise itself is simple and just takes some planning to determine the areas to assess in an inbound call center environment.

Here are four areas we typically include when evaluating call centers via the secret shopping method:

1. Interactive Voice Response (IVR): IVR messaging and call-flows are important to lead a caller to the appropriate agent according to any number of factors, such as line of business or experience level. Ideally, a consumer-centric IVR is meant to efficiently direct calls and simplify the caller experience from the point of call entry. A well-designed IVR should also minimize caller confusion and “bouncing around” between different agents. As the consumer, identify how easy it is to arrive at your desired destination (the right agent). Did you get “bounced around” or reach an agent without making too many selections?

2. Agent Scripting/Communication: It’s not always clear whether an agent is actually using a call guide but we know from years in the business that some form of a “guide” or “scripting” is needed to keep agents on track. Tested call guides/scripting can also enhance performance because agents are operating off the same language and a proven sales approach. Identify how well the agent communicates: are they clear and concise, delivering logical information that most people could follow or do they use illogical descriptions and clumsy filler terms (“like”, “um”, “yea”)? Did the call follow a systematic path to get you the information you need or take illogical paths? Was the agent able to help you arrive at your desired destination or did you hang up frustrated?

3. The Human Factor: Sure, product knowledge is critical to performance but sincerity, kindness and interest in supporting the caller are just as important. These factors and others are considered “soft skills”. Think about what it feels like when an agent opens the call in a lackluster tone asking, “How can I help you today? The agent might be following the prescribed training or scripting but failing to emit the necessary kindness and enthusiasm. When calling, determine whether the agent was warm and professional, showed a willingness to help, was knowledgeable about the products/services and gave you the information you were seeking.

4. System Interface: Many call center agents operate off of multiple monitors and applications (two monitors is not unusual and we’ve witnessed agents access up to 15+ applications during a single exchange). There is a direct impact between the number of applications, screens and competing locations needed to find information and an agent’s ability to assist callers. For example, “dead air” (long pauses in communications) can occur while an agent searches for information. There are techniques to keep the conversation flowing but this can also extend talk time. As the consumer, take note of breaks in the conversation, how long it takes the agent to locate information you request and overall call time. You can greatly surmise whether system overload exists with just a little calculation of hold and waiting patterns. 

Over the years SBR has developed a variety of methods for clients to put themselves in the shoes of their customers. Even the busiest executive has had their eyes opened by this exercise. Click here to learn more about maximizing contact center operations.

Companies frequently use new hire assessments as a way to predict a candidate’s potential performance. Over the years we have come across many assessments, from behavioral to personality and IQ tests. But most have missed the mark when it comes to making the inextricable correlation between a person’s innate behaviors, persona or intelligence level and their ability to apply those characteristics to the workplace. For example, being seen as a “nice” person can be a great thing, but there are many “nice” people that struggle to produce work in a timely fashion, to collaborate with their colleagues or to work under mutable conditions. A good assessment tool has to bridge the gap between who we think we are and how we really act.

Several years ago we were introduced to the Hartman Value Profile assessment which looks at a person’s value judgments as an indicator of how they will perform at work. The assessment helps to answer questions like, “When faced with a challenge, will this individual collapse under pressure or determine creative ways to approach it,” “Can this individual generate results amongst cross-functional teams,” and “Does this individual have a tendency to look at long-term implications of their decisions or only focus on what’s directly in front of them?” What makes the Hartman Value Profile different

1. It’s not a personality or psychological test. The Hartman Value Profile measures a person’s ability to judge situations and act upon those judgments. As employers of the ethnographic method (the study of culture) we know firsthand that an individual’s personality is only a piece of the puzzle, oftentimes grounded in their response to a particular environment.

2. It is based on science. Dr. Robert Hartman, Ph.D., created the Hartman Value Profile and was nominated for the 1973 Nobel Prize (the year Henry Kissinger was awarded). Dr. Hartman used mathematics to measure how our value system defined our behavior, ability to work with others and how we make decisions.

3. The “big wigs” use it. We hate to name drop, and as a point of reference, we don’t believe that high profile associations always equate to value. But in this case we can understand why the Hartman Value Profile has been used by different governments and institutions like Yale, Harvard and Pentagon, to name a few.

Judgment is a fairly new term for businesses interested in an empirical performance assessment (as we mentioned it’s not nearly as common as personality or IQ tests). As it turns out, judgments, and our ability to make good ones, might be the next frontier for HR. Take the example of teaching a child how to properly cross a busy intersection. You’ll show them to take notice of road signs, changing lights and to look both ways before stepping onto the road. Eventually, you hope they grow up to be watchful adults that heeded your instructions. But someone who doesn’t display the common indicators for common sense might choose to text on their phone as soon as they see the “Walk” sign without looking for remaining traffic in the intersection. (Spend a weekday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan and you’ll observe these text-walkers firsthand.) The very same judgment indicators that show common sense in life spill over into work behavior as well.

Over the past seven years we have introduced the Hartman Value Profile to dozens of clients with uniquely high rates of success. When it comes to building stronger collaboration amongst teams or matching a person’s skills and experience with how they will function in a particular role, we believe it is the best tool out there. Recently we helped a software client vet candidates for a B2B field sales representative position and the client mentioned how happy she was that we introduced them to the Hartman Value Profile (they now use it to staff all of their positions). Another client said that he is constantly astounded at how accurate the test is, so much so that he thinks the consultant who analyzed the results and provided insights into his team’s performance must be a part-time psychic.

This brings us to a final note on assessment tools. When it comes to using any empirical test, it’s critical to balance the results with an employee’s experience, background, interview and any other factors in the hiring process to score the right people.

To learn more about the Hartman Value Profile, contact us at info@consultsbr.com.

As a company constantly on the move, SBR relishes every opportunity to visit San Francisco – and what trip to the Bay Area would be complete without wine tasting in Napa Valley? Boasting over 400 vineyards with onsite tasting, you need knowledgeable friends or Yelp to help sift through all the options. Flora Springs was recommended by an uber generous client who shipped us a bottle of his top pick, a pricey Rennie Reserve. He insisted we book their wine tour (in his estimation, the best in the Valley).

Lady Luck paired us up with Scott, Flora Spring’s expert host, for the two-hour tasting. Scott showed us that grapes often produce better wine during years of drought and struggle because they are forced to concentrate their flavors. Sure the grapes are smaller but the resulting concentrated flavor produces some exceptional wine. Who knew grapes were so smart!

That got us thinking. When faced with a significant challenge, we can recoil in fear and frustration or be the grape that struggles to produce something brilliant. In corporations, times of duress can often separate the consummate professionals from the rest of the pack. Consider the old adage, “Pressure makes diamonds”. The greatest work, ideas, and streams of creativity and innovation can come in the face of adversity and trial.

Moving about from one meeting to another leaves little to no time to put your next great idea into action. From a business prospective, our rigorous schedules make time for reflection and inspiration seem near impossible. Challenges like meeting sales goals or gaining market share, improving customer service ratings or engaging new audiences with minimal marketing dollars abound and must be solved.

SBR uses various methods to help cultivate this healthy tension and focused attention without the risk of bringing the operation to its knees. Interested in learning more about our strategic approach? Contact us and we can discuss the steps the SBR team takes to embrace a challenge and create exceptional results.