Featured Recommended Reading

Good to Great

Jim Collins. HarperBusiness 2001, Hardcover, 300 pages, $11.25

Click here for the complete Recommended Reading List

Business Owner Tools

• Biz Whiz Success Program – Assess your business and play the game with us in our Biz Whiz Tele class series.
• Marketing Plans – use this easy to use format to think through your business development plan. See our podcast for a recording of the 4 session class.
• Simple Business Plan-  Use this format to create a simple easy to use business plan
• Business Evaluation Calculator- neat calculator to determine the worth of your business
• Exit Strategies: How to evaluate your company – What is your exit strategy?
• Top seven reasons smart business owners have an organizational chart
• Job Titles- use  as a cheat sheet for the instructions given in Top seven reasons to have an organizational chart.
• Job Profile – Who is missing in your business? This tool helps you clarify what you need and want. This should be done before writing a job description and before each hire.

Management Tools

• Daily Accountability – Sales- Creating a new behavior is simply a matter of creating a new habit and new structure for that habit. Changing your behavior is not about will power!
• Sales & Marketing Actions -  Accountability and tracking
• Am I coach-able? We have found that the issue is usually one of two things; either we are thinking too much and not in action or we are doing too much and not thinking.
• Environment of Accountability – Does your environment support accountability? What could be missing?
• 4 Steps to Finding the Right Coach for You- Read about how to find a great coach
• Values Assessment – Identifying your personal values is an important part of a successful career plan. In this context, the word “value” refers to how you feel about the work itself and the contribution it makes to society. Most people who pursue work that is congruent with their values feel satisfied and successful in their careers

Assessments

Thomas International DISC - is a self-administered behavioral assessment tool.  The questionnaire assesses an individual’s behavioral style in the work environment.  There is no right or wrong profile.  It simply reflects your natural behavioral style, which is the way you are most comfortable behaving at work. How can the DISC Behavioral Assessment be used? Create self-awareness, Succession planning,Training and Development, Shortening the Learning Curve, Hiring, Flexing sales style for maximum impact on the client. See order form here. 

Target Training PIAV -  Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values™ assessment measures your responses in each of the six attitudes.What is it that motivates you to take action? What is the source of your desire to become involved in certain activities—or to avoid them? The computerized report shows each of the six attitudes compared to a recently validated national average. You are provided with information on the WHY of your actions which, with application, can positively impact your life. See order form here.

Emotional Intelligence Assessment  (EQI) -  EQ/EI (Emotional Quotient) assesses one’s ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thoughts, to understand emotions and emotional meaning and to reflectively regulate emotions in ways that promote emotional and intellectual growth.The rules for work are changing. We’re being judged by a new yardstick; not just by how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how well we handle ourselves and others. The new measure takes for granted that we have enough intellectual/cognitive ability and technical know-how to do our jobs, it focuses instead on personal qualities such as initiative and empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness which are emotional/behavioral competencies. Our level of emotional intelligence is not fixed genetically, it is largely learned and continues to grow and develop as we go through life and learn from our experiences. See order form here.

Thomas 360 report for leaders or sales people. Single sourced feedback is rarely comprehensive enough to be regarded as robust and of good quality. Where staff are regarded as empowered to do their own jobs and interact effectively with others, managers are regarded as a ‘coach’ to help and guide staff to obtain high levels of performance.360 degree feedback is becoming increasingly popular in linking good quality feedback with maintaining and improving performance forming an essential part of personal development. The purpose of 360 degree feedback is to take feedback one step further and to involve a variety of people in the process. See order form here.

TST- The purpose of the Thomas TST is to provide an indication of the ability of the individual to respond positively to training and coaching. The score has been described in technical publications as a measure of Fluid Intelligence. The higher the score, the better the individual is likely to be at performing mental tasks accurately and quickly.The TST maintains all the positive attributes of traditional aptitude and IQ assessments. However, unlike their traditional counterparts, the TST has been devised from the knowledge of what makes mental tasks difficult. This allows for the continuous construction of test items of fixed difficulty. Where as IQ is an education-based indicator, the TST has been developed specifically for the workplace. Please call our office 512-989-2230 to discuss how you can learn to proctor this assessment or how we can do it for you. The TST has to be given in person and all though the report is computerized the test must be proctored.

Behavioral Assessment – See order form here

Listen to Alicia give tips on setting goals