2001-11-01T00:00:00Z

I had the distinguished honor of attending DCG’s Benchmarking Session on May 14, 2001. To say I was impressed is a gross understatement. Tony Dottino, president of DCG, left a successful career in finance at IBM to follow his passion and create a movement in the business world unlike any other. His pioneering work combines state of the art leadership practices, creative thinking techniques and whole brain thinking that integrates each of these components with a proven financial process analysis to deliver business results. No one out there is doing what Tony does – he is the BrainSmart Leader! The room was filled with nearly fifty leaders from multi-billion dollar companies, all of whom recounted in some form or fashion the success achieved by working with DCG. Each speaker recounted the stories of how innovative thinking, creative leadership and employee involvement resulted in measurable business improvements. It was incredible to hear major business leaders stand and speak about creativity and the power of the brain at work to produce tangible results. Human Resource trainers or leading edge educators typically give such missives, but these speakers were the top leaders in companies such as Con Edison, New York City Transit Authority, JPMorgan – Chase and Jefferson Pilot. One such impressive presentation was made by Rhoda Cutler of JPMorgan-Chase. You may be wondering, ‘What is so astounding about employee opinion survey results?’ After all, any major corporation worth it’s salt conducts them. So what? The distinguishing factor in the successful analysis and subsequent company goals for actions is one of true innovation. Rhoda Cutler, with the expertise of Tony and a band of JPMorgan-Chase Team Champions radically transformed employee opinions into meaningful, specific goals for the company -- those which can be measured because they are clearly defined. They reduced the time to analyze, interpret and develop actions from months, sometimes years in traditional organizations, to a matter of 3 weeks! How did they do it? More importantly, wouldn’t you, as the business leader, want the same? The power lies in using the whole brain -- all of its cortical skills. What does THAT mean? Traditional survey approaches rely on asking employees to state their opinions and then management, sometimes with the help of a select group of employees, try to decipher them so they can later measure improvements. Surveys of this kind, however well intentioned, often leave the receivers with hundreds of questions about what the data really means. ‘What did Joe mean by ‘respect, diversity, or communication?’ The wizardry provided to Rhoda and her team by Tony was Mind Mapping. The Mind Map quickly provided focus to the Managers and Team Champions so they could select the top items to develop an action plan for 2001-2002. The results? Within three weeks the Survey Team presented clear needs to the Executive Managers on which to develop goals in order to improve employee morale. Rhoda Cutler presented the results and focused actions. Her team converged on five critical issues that will be evaluated throughout the next 12 months and then reassessed for improvement using targeted questions to measure improvements. The six critical issues are: Respect, Teamwork, Ethics, Diversity, Integrity, and Worklife. Sound familiar? Maybe, but the difference is that because of Tony’s brilliance and Rhoda’s willingness to be an innovative champion in her own right, each of these words is defined very specifically in terms of meaning, needs, and value potential to productivity in the company. There is no ambiguity at all as to what employees mean when they want to see advancement in these areas. The power of Mind Mapping provided clarity, definition, validation and measures that resulted in the following declarations: Respect: “We promise to be open, be direct, be honest and be polite.” Diversity: “We will adjust to an ever-changing road while holding onto our unchanging principles.” This declaration resulted from a divergent Mind Map which used meaningful terms such as: Geography: on the road, in-house, and telecommuting; Individuality: physical ability, opinions, lifestyle, officer, non-officer, sexual orientation; Personality: serious, humor, playful, aspirations and GIGG (a Dottino metaphor for “Good in-Good Grows!” Smart, isn’t it? No more ambiguity about what employees meant when they responded to the Company Issued Opinion Survey. Clarity reigns. Goals are directed, clear and measurable. Case by case, speaker by speaker, DCG’s work shone. Every single presenter demonstrated measurable business improvements by using the work of DCG and it’s team. True genius at work; in the business world, where time is money; where corporations scurry to retain the world’s top talent, and where increasingly, and rightfully so, employees demand more from work that a paycheck. The power of the brain, combined with leadership, teamwork and process improvements is ready to explode all over the US. These people truly ‘get it!’ § - Rhonda Hess, Hershey Foods

2009-03-12T03:52:14Z

8 I had the distinguished honor of attending DCG’s Benchmarking Session on May 14, 2001. To say I was impressed is a gross understatement. Tony Dottino, president of DCG, left a successful career in finance at IBM to follow his passion and create a movement in the business world unlike any other. His pioneering work combines state of the art leadership practices, creative thinking techniques and whole brain thinking that integrates each of these components with a proven financial process analysis to deliver business results. No one out there is doing what Tony does – he is the BrainSmart Leader!

true A Cut Above The Rest A_Cut_Above_The_Rest

2009-03-24T00:24:00Z