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Off Road Driving : Effective Team Building Activity

cThe procedure that was started particularly for the fresher’s in any company is now attempting the attention of the senior most employees as well because of the complete productiveness that can be acquired by a single session. However thither is overmuch skepticism regarding team building amongst the employees firms that are resorting to team building operations and tactics are known to be always highly working. In this article we shall be looking into one of the most common form of action that has been widely accomplished worldwide.

We will be discussing about off road driving. Off road driving is boasted to be much reveled by men and vehicles which employ all wheel drive or a 4×4 is commonly used for the function. So what is the difference between a normal jeep and a 4×4 jeep? In the average jeep the power from the engine will be rendered to the front wheels or the back wheels. But in the case of all wheel drives or 4×4 the power from the engine will be issued to all the wheels which is one of the most important demands of a off roading vehicle.

The vehicles are normally wide than the established ones so it is better to exercise care while driving one. The driver will not be left alone in this team building workout; the vehicle will be occupied so that the others will be able to assist the driver in successfully navigating over the obstacles that may be present in front of the vehicle. Since everyone has to cooperate and function unitedly to make it to the other side team building can be efficaciously accomplished applying this activity.

The terrain over which the vehicle will be forced will of course be difficult mountings and slimy washed roads with very much of twists and curves. Extreme attention as well as caution must be applied while managing the vehicle. One bad turn and the driver will be setting in danger their lives as well the lives of others in the vehicle. Nonetheless hey do not worry thither will be appropriate safety standards in order and nothing bad will happen in such team building events. An instructor will always be present in the vehicle and in umpteen events he also will be taking independent control of the vehicle at all the times.

Many of the most stunning locations will be visited during such off road driving actions. Commonly there are 2 types of terrains that are used for this action. They are either human made tricky terrains and natural terrains. If the squad is doing 4×4 off roading for the foremost time they will be given admission to the man made obstacle track only. But knowledgeable drivers can don the natural obstacles. The vehicle will be capable to hold about eight individuals and turns can be had while driving up the terrain. The rates are ordinarily calculated on hourly basis.

About the writer:  Curious about team building with 4×4 offroad driving as the core concept? Checkout irelandxtreme.ie for further details.

Making Empowerment Work

Some BPM consultants propose that processes are the most important corporate asset. I disagree because a process is an abstract entity that produces no value. Value is defined by human interaction in the real world. While abstract processes promise to make that human interaction more controllable they ignore human nature and workplace psychology much as socialism and communism do. These are idealistic concepts that fail in the real world of individual human agents. People are at their best when they feel that their contribution is valued as an individual. Therefore the idea of empowerment making people responsible for their work has been around for some time.

Why you would want to empower employees?

Empowerment is often misunderstood as authority for decisionmaking for everyone. Some tries at empowerment have failed to show the hoped for results because they followed the idea that all people are the same. The most important element of empowerment is the realization that people are different. Not clever and dumb or lazy and hardworking but just people in the wrong place.

I go with the 80/20 Pareto rule. 20 of people are responsible for 80 of results. But one can not fire the other 80 of people as the remaining would again structure the same. It means that only 20 of people have the interest and capability to take responsibility. I see them as process owners PO who can be given goals to chase. 20 is actually enough as the ideal team size is ten which provides one teamleader and one assistant/standin per team. The other eight rather want to be part of and even feel better when they are empowered as a team. If a person is unhappy as team member he may be a PO candidate in the wrong team or have some other issues with job/private life relationships. If a team fails on goals the PO may be the problem.

So who manages the POs? At best two percent of people are natural motivators people leaders creative gurus and entrepreneurs. Ten process owners with a hundred people report to the 2 motivators/entrepreneur ME types. Voil there is your LEAN organization with the executive in the third line that ten MEs report to. It indicates that businesses get much harder to manage over a 1000 people and that I find confirmed by my own experience as well as Schuhmachers Small is beautiful. Size is not everything.

Empowerment requires two important elements: firstpeople coaching and second business and processtransparency. Calling for a coach is not an admittance of failure and sending in a coach is not punishment but a support action. The 2 MEs can be coaches or use additional coaches who should ideally have grown from the business itself.

Transparency is best achieved by a collaborative process support infrastructure certainly not your runofthemill BPM/SOA software. Transparency enables monitoring of business goal achievement of each team to verify if goals are set sensibly and well understood. There are no flows for the process of a PO but Role Activity Diagrams are practical to show PO relationships. POs are empowered to question goals and can decide to change the way their goals are achieved. All structureal changes are agreed upon by the pre and post linked POs with the ME in attendance.

What is needed to empower people in a processowning business?

1. Forget flowcharts: Starting with a process flow focus puts process improvements into a meta level. This is the main reason that I am against flowcharting processes. It adds bureaucracy and reduces the agility of the responsible process owner.
2. Define the process owners: Utilize RAD role activity diagrams to model the structure of process owners for all processes that you need to improve. Map out through which realworld deliverables they serve each other.
3. Customer service goals: The goal achievement customer satisfaction optimization loop must be responsibility of that process owner. A normal flowchart can not redesign and optimize itself.
4. Realtime business data: The process owner needs realtime business data to measure his goal achievement and the authority to execute towards those goals. IT is essential for that to add the transparency that the PO and the executive needs.
5. Define realworld entities only: Real world entities to be delivered to a customer according to cost and quality goals are plausible. Process flow is abstract and not understood.
6. States Events Rules: Real world entities that have plausible states and are linked together with rules create plausible process states and can be easily improved by adding new entities new rules and new actors without redesign.
7. Do not fragment process execution: Most BPM analyst and consultants propose that you need multiple bestofbreed BPM products to cover all process needs. That is utterly ignorant! Picalculushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picalculusproves that a network model of connected entities can map any flow logic. Structured 10 Dynamic 80 and AdHoc processes 10 can all be handled in one system.
   
8. Service and Support processes are the same: Deliverables in all process types are achievable with the same state/event/rule model. Using an adaptible process model reduces the nedd for support metaprocesses such as change management dramatically. The functional change management of the processes must be part of the process platform and executable by the process owners.

A Process Definition for Empowerment:

The executive defines a business strategy and architecture by assigning processes.

• Process owners networked in Role Activity Diagrams
• Process goals

The PO uses that to define how to execute:

• Customer
• real world deliverable entities properties state relationship
• deliverables used from other processes
• global game rules and local process rules
• process states
• role based presentation

IT and business necessities:

• role/policy authorization model
• entity data linkage to backend apps
• reporting transparency and hierarchy
• auditing and archiving

Conclusion:

So why would empowerment work better than stick and carrot known as reward and punishment or strict quality monitoring? Each action in an empowered organization drives productivity forward while rigidly planned organizations hierarchically or not waste bureaucratic energy on analysis and designs policing procedures and reward/punishment systems. Not only that but each controlling or monitoring action and each reward will cause counterproductive forces in the organization. When I was a salesman in IBM the sales commission system caused a lot of distortion of what was sold to the customer and sales always used it to their advantage.

Today most IT solutions either use pre and hardcoded processes that are then enforced. Employees have to execute standardized processes to reduce cost for an abstract statistically classified customer. IT is seen mostly as a people and cost reduction tool by automating and industrializing.

The missed opportunity is however that it could also be used for a new kind of architectured collaboration Web2.0 for business entities that truly enables empowerment. IT would suddenly not be an expense but turn the business into a new kind of organization with unheard of dynamics.

About the writer:  Max J. Pucher is the founder and current Chief Architect of ISIS Papyrus Software a globally operating company that specializes in Artificial Intelligence for business process and communication. He has written several books frequently speaks and writes on IT and holds several patents.

Loan Officer Success – Making Mega Bucks With Mortgage Leads

In your marketing efforts you want to be getting new business from multiple avenues. One efficient method is purchasing mortgage leads from reputable leads companies.

Loan officers working in the real estate business whether they are with a mortgage company or working independently can benefit equally for the following reasons:

Leads provide the right clientsUseful clients maximize the commission and sales.Mortgage company is highly benefitedIncome increases profits and competitive edge

A lead service gets a loan officer started by prequalifying prospects and delivering those prospects to the agent. These prospects are ideal because their service while being a numbers game does require interested parties. Instead of cold calling or carpetbombing an area with direct mailers the agents are put into contact with people who are already looking for what they have to offer.

Leads can play a huge role in paving the way to success by generating a quantity of prospects that are already quality. Loan officers who understand their business know that the more people they see the greater their chances are of making sales. The chance for making sales is increased even further when the prospects are actually interested in the mortgage deals and loan options.

By diversifying the mortgage investment to include a lead service; loan officers can dramatically increase their opportunities to close a sale. While the odds favor sales when using a lead service the loan officer still needs to speak to the prospect and close the deal. By recognizing that buyers may be shopping their loan needs for a number of reasons the loan officer must demonstrate knowledge of the mortgage property as well as generous people skills.

Focusing their target market to clients that are already deeply interested in buying properties will limit the amount of time that might otherwise be wasted spent chasing the wrong prospects. When a loan officer goes after the wrong group of clients they not only face discouragement but also frustration and a loss of time they can never afford to waste. While there are no magic cures to finding the perfect sale a mortgage lead service maximizes the opportunity.

Higher income gives the loan officer a competitive edge. A mortgage company loan officer can improve their leverage and position within a corporation. This gives them the opportunity to gain promotion within their corporation. No matter which mortgage firm a loan officer is working for a lead service will provide him with the best business opportunity to maximize not only his commissions but also his time.

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;About Commercial Capital LLC
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