During the past few years, Advantexe has been involved in the design, development, and delivery of Coaching simulations to tens of thousands of people and process leaders. All of the simulations have a goal of providing participants with the opportunity to learn by doing as they practice having coaching conversations based on various coaching models. 

Before starting a project where we are delivering a coaching simulation, we have a serious conversation with the client about making sure they aren’t developing skills that coach for failure. It is a provocative approach, but one that our clients truly appreciate. Here’s why… 

There is a fundamental problem with most coaching frameworks and the way the organizations embrace them. Typically, the first step of coaching is setting goals and objectives and then having a dialogue about how to best achieve them. The fundamental problem is that most organizations aren’t providing the basic business acumen skillsneeded by every employee to understand their own business strategy and the financial skills to measure their success.

As the dust settles on J&J’s recent separation of their fast-moving consumer healthcare products business, there is increased momentum and pressure for other big pharmaceutical companies to re-think their business portfolios.

I am 100% certain it will be a topic of discussion in many of our upcoming business acumen programs and several of our pharmaceutical business simulations actually allow participants to spin out product lines and entire businesses to see the impact strategically and financially.

There is a new phenomenon sweeping the corporate landscape. Companies are reassigning workers to new roles and leaving it up to them to figure out what to do next. It works like this; one day, you get an email that your current job role has been eliminated, but you haven’t been fired. You have a new role, most likely a hybrid role of doing 100% of two other jobs that have been vacant or are important enough to shift resources toward. These changes leave managers and employees confused, angry, and checked out.

Welcome to the concept of “Quiet Cutting.” This concept is an offshoot of the “Quiet Quitting” movement where workers quit their companies and hang around long enough to get paid a good salary while they find a new job which only lasts for 9-12 months until they silent quit again or they are terminated for poor performance.

Quiet cutting effectively allows companies to cut jobs, trim costs, and reorganize without actually laying off workers.

Forbes Magazine has been keeping a running list of all the companies that have been doing restructurings (including layoffs) during the year and it includes IBM, Adobe, BioGen, Salesforce.com, and many others.

Most retailers and many consumer-packaged goods companies are struggling in the post-pandemic economy and the “new” new normal of consumer spending. Like most things in business, there are many theories and lots of opinions about why.

At Advantexe, we are continually doing research on all things business acumen and business leadership to better serve our clients. As August 2023 comes to a close, there are several important facts about the economy that are undisputed:

I was very open with our creative team who is responsible for designing and building our new leadership simulations when they told me a client asked us to design, develop, and deliver a new simulation called, “Delivering Effective Presentations.”

I shared with them my perspective that the presentation skills space was a very crowded field and that anybody who has ever given a presentation can claim to be an expert trainer. I challenged them to name a major innovation that has disrupted the industry since PowerPoint replaced the overhead projector and I pressed them about what is new and innovative in giving effective presentations. Based on their answers and the incredibly strong simulation they created, I am publicly acknowledging how little I actually knew about the art and science of giving effective presentations.