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Isn’t it enough that I told them?

Talent Management May 24, 2010

Does your organization communicate or inform. Does your leader invite conversation at the table?  Does your leader offer an environment of dialogue? If the answer is no, how does that affect organization motivation throughout all levels? Do your project leaders and project sponsors sit around the table and audit the failed implementations with comments like [...]

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Talent score report brought to you by your credit agency

Talent Management May 23, 2010

How’s your credit score? Perhaps I could ask another way, how accurate is your credit score? Perhaps another way, how accurate is your credit score in assessing your talent, management, or leadership potential? According to Equifax, their internal assessments “directly aligns human resources to overall organization goals” and you can read about it here:  Talent [...]

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John Siemiatkoski, Development Manager at ALS Association, Massachusetts Chapter

Impact May 21, 2010

“The Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition (MassBike) has promoted a bicycle-friendly environment and encourages bicycling for fun, fitness and transportation since 1979.  Since I became President of MassBike, I have sought ways to develop the organization’s structure, capacity and effectiveness, so that we can truly achieve our mission. “Toby was recommended to me to help MassBike build [...]

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Larry Coates, PMP, CSM Programmer & Analyst Leader, Department of Transportation

Impact May 20, 2010

“I am a Co-Chair of the Cambridge Round Table group, a part of the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Mass Bay Chapter. We have utilized Toby as a speaker for our meetings in the past and he is scheduled for future meetings as well. “Over the past year I have had the privilege of getting to [...]

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Jane Stachowiak, Director, Student Wellness & Health Promotion-LiveWell, Berklee College of Music

Impact May 20, 2010

Working with Toby Elwin in 2009 I was fortunate to reverse the role of mentor/mentee.  The mentor (me) received great advice and help from someone I have been mentoring over the past two decades. Toby Elwin played a major role at Berklee College of Music in transforming its student 8-page print newspaper into an electronic [...]

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All hail the solution to the micromanager

Organization Behavior May 19, 2010

How to handle the micromanager? Raise your hand if you love working for a micromanager? Are you a micromanager, you can raise your hand if you are, no one else knows. Micromanagers grind work to a halt. If there is no confidence in work getting done, the fish rots from the head down: the management [...]

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Sam Thompson, Vice President, Progress Partners

Impact May 19, 2010

“Toby regularly demonstrates a noble ability to think on his feet when offered the challenge. He has a sound ability to quickly ramp up with a team, conceptualize process, communicate the options back to the room, and then provide actionable dialogue. “When a business or team becomes out of sync with it’s market, customers or [...]

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-17

Odds & Sods May 17, 2010

Family Flight: It appears that families, not just the young and skilled, have been moving away fr… http://bit.ly/aqpXb1 via CreativeClass # Demdex raises $6M to build publishers’ audience data: Demdex, a company that compiles a “behavioral… http://bit.ly/bMjlAN via VentureBeat # Tim Armstrong's Chief of Staff to Lead Marketing at AOL: NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — AOL [...]

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Sales, finance, and human resources, only room for 2 at the table

Portfolio Planning April 30, 2010

There are really on 3 swim lanes, or functions, in business. Every business function is subordinated to either; sales, finance, or human resources. How can HR possibly have any impact when business is all about sales, brining in the money and finance making the best use of the money?

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The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy (round 2)

Talent Management April 23, 2010

The NFL draft reveals all things wrong with talent acquisition and recruiting. Looking at how the an NFL team drafts provides terrific insight into what you and your company can improve upon. I wrote in the last blog, The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy round 1, a sample list of the assessments an [...]

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The NFL draft and your company recruiting strategy

Talent Management April 21, 2010

There is little doubt each National Football League (NFL) team spends an extraordinary amount of resources preparing to draft their number 1 pick. An NFL team’s number one pick is intended to be the team’s future star and this year the NFL draft has changed their format to glorify the first round draft even more. [...]

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Human capital assessments – the symptom or the disease

Organization Behavior April 14, 2010

The drive to evaluate operations and to contain costs is mistakenly applied as an operational issue across the board.  Too often human capital assessments are lumped into the systems theory world of process and become a technical asset for management’s diagnostic view for cuts.  The result becomes an assessment or evaluation process that is really [...]

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Tips to turn your blog into a pod(cast) into revenue

Marketing April 7, 2010

Tired of trying to reach a critical mass with your blogs? Tired of sitting in front of the blank compute screen trying to channel your Ernest Hemingway?  What about podcasting?  Podcasting is one great alternative to reach millions. “Podcasting?” You say?  ”To reach more people than my written blog?” You say?  It is true.  And [...]

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Change management bottom up or top down

Organization Behavior April 4, 2010

Classic change theory: leadership drives change; leadership must be committed for change to work. Seems to make sense, but in reality leadership is irrelevant. The organization’s ability to change is dictated by the operational units and employees, not leadership. The reality: culture eats strategy for lunch. Your workers dictate change and strategy. Leadership doesn’t drive [...]

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How to launch and manage your social media identity – the slides

Marketing April 1, 2010

Last Thursday night I gave a presentation to the Massachusetts Bay Organization Development Learning Group on how to grab hold of the marketing world that’s spinning around us and get a tangible handle on how to launch and manage a social media identity. Both the deck presentation and some recommended resources are available above and below. [...]

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Human capital portfolio management and simple math

Portfolio Planning March 23, 2010

A venture’s viability really comes down to a bet on a team to deliver.  It is the interpersonal process where venture performance is most impacted. Modern portfolio theory allows investors to maximize return and minimize risk.  The goal is to estimate both the expected risks and returns, as measured statistically, as an accumulation of investments.  Why [...]

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Innovation Boston and Budapest, or Dirty Water and the Blue Danube

Portfolio Planning March 19, 2010

13 years offers a great opportunity to revisit most relationships.  At first blush, Boston and Budapest seem to have little to share or offer each in a study on innovation.  However, both share unique innovation environments that reveal themselves upon further review. I am a Boston native and, after my undergraduate degree from Berklee College of Music, Boston [...]

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Risk is an unnecessary (p)art of the deal

Portfolio Planning March 4, 2010

To identify where risk is a real part of the investment deal you will commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people.  When it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs, but most investment firms focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on [...]

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Pavel Khizhnyak, Asia Marketing Director, Forex Club

Impact March 1, 2010

“Toby is a solid business development and human capacity resource. Toby is easy to work with and has an upbeat personality. As such, he was an effective and supportive colleague, with great listening, interpersonal, and multicultural skills (international experience in Hungary and China as two, very challenging work environments). “I do not hesitate to recommend [...]

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Googled again: cost of culture is innovation

Talent Management February 18, 2010

What, really, is the cost of culture? Is culture tangible to business bottom line or is culture an intangible behavioral science term only useful for dissertations? Culture, innovation, values, diversity, opinion. Related? Perhaps to each other, but related to the bottom line? I read a recent blog on Fistful of Talent had me revisit diversity’s [...]

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Googled: the cost of culture

Talent Management February 15, 2010

What does culture really costs a company? Is it worth investing in culture or passively letting culture form, also known as luck-based leadership? What is the cost of culture, in profit or loss? I found this one company a great example: Maternity leave: 5 months full salary Paternity leave: 7 weeks full salary Plus new [...]

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