Work Session #1 -  Grasping the Energy Advantage

Understand it, focus on it and exploit it for mutual advantage

• Our predictions point to a dire warning for organizations: if you are not effective at making a meaningful contribution to society, consumers will not support you and employees will not work for you.

• The events underlying our predictions clearly show that a shift of power from business to consumers, and from management to employees, is well underway. What is not so clear is exactly what consumers and employees are likely to do with their greater power. However, there are seven individual and corporate energies that are rising. Together, these seven energies give us a broad hint as to what we can expect: a growing desire for more meaning to life, and a resultant demand that there must be more meaning to work-life.

• Some people might view the seven energies rising and the power shifts as threats to management and organizational success.  We believe that these changes present clear opportunities for achieving greater organizational effectiveness and ongoing success. The outcome for you and your organization simply depends on what you do next, for future outcomes are influenced by individual choice.

Format

The work session follows our SHURE™ Success Cycle format – understanding, commitment, action and learning:

1. First, we attempt to improve your understanding by presenting a concept or key information.

2. Next, we engage you in discussion and argument until everyone is in agreement as to what is relevant and what applies to your organization.

3. Then we help you determine what you must act on and how to execute.

4. And lastly, we help you identify what was learnt in the process and how to ensure that you and your colleagues continue to learn from what you will be implementing.

The process can be summarized as follows: presentation (understanding), discussion (commitment), decision-making (action), evaluation (learning).

Purpose and Benefits

1. To ensure that you understand the forces that drive the current changes. Uncertainty about the future most often results in inaction or ineffective action. But uncertainty is related to your incomplete understanding of the process of change. Increasing your understanding, specifically of predetermined events and key uncertainties, will help to reduce your uncertainty and make you and your organization more effective.

2. To secure your commitment to create your future. There is no way in which uncertainty can be eliminated and desired outcomes guaranteed. However, tomorrow’s outcomes are influenced by the decisions and actions you take today. As always, the quality of your decisions and actions matter. But so does a commitment to the future, for historic effectiveness is worthless.

3. To prepare you to act effectively. A better understanding and a willingness to commit will result in two important benefits. Firstly, you will cope better with future developments, including the unexpected. Secondly, and we think more important, you will have the courage and the knowledge to preempt and influence the forces of change, wherever possible.

4. To identify critical success factors. These are factors which will help you learn about the forces within your organization that drive internal change, or react to external change. Through monitoring these factors, you will learn how to reduce uncertainty and how to use this knowledge to become more effective.

CEO, senior managers, executives and directors. Our work sessions are designed to equip and empower you and your people to make your organization more effective, and hence more successful. This means that participants are normally those people who make strategic decisions and who influence the behaviors and actions of others.

But organizational effectiveness depends on everybody in your organization, not on a select few: everybody must understand, must be committed, must act and must learn. This is why we will always recommend that others in your organization, such as middle managers, also be exposed to elements of our work sessions.

The cost of the work session takes into account factors such as the number of participants, the planned duration of the session, level of customization, the desired outcome and the status of the organization (e.g. profit or non-profit).

For more information on Work Session #1, please contact James McIntosh on

direct line: (804) 754-0195

email: jhm@vspinc.biz

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