An Alternative Engagement Layer

Hi, Everyone!

Following our most recent discussion about the “Engagement Rings” layer of the ChangeGrid, I received an email from Steve Snyder proposing an alternative scheme.  Here’s his idea:

An Alternative for our Consideration

And here is the current layer:

What do you think??  I’d love to discuss this on next week’s ChangeWorks Forum or Gold Team Call.  I’ll check with Steve to see which of those he’s planning to attend and schedule it accordingly.

-T-

Puzzler: States VS Energies

Hi, Everyone!

Here’s a preview of the topic we will be discussing on the January 17th ChangeWorks Forum call. I wanted to get everyone thinking well in advance so we can have a great discussion.

What’s the relationship between the Response States and the Energies? How do we combine the ChangeGrid with traditional personality types? Which rules which — tension level or personality? Does this result in confusion or clarity?

During the discussion, we’ll take a look at the following 4 diagrams, proposing different relationships between the layers. What do you think each of these diagrams adds to our collective understanding of human behavior?

(Click on the diagrams to open them in a larger size.)

Please plan to join us two weeks from now when we will, hopefully, solve this puzzler!

-T-

DO THIS NOW: A Special ChangeGrid

Hi, Everyone!

I’ve prepared a special ChangeWorks group profile for all of you to take — the “2011 ChangeWorks Personal Success Plan.”  I think it will give you some very valuable insights into the year ahead — and what you may need to focus on to turn 2011 into the best year of your business so far.

“2011 ChangeWorks Personal Success Plan”

PLEASE fill it out immediately — I’d like to show the first batch of results on this Thursday’s Gold Team webinar — and for those of you going on our upcoming cruise, I’m also planning to take the ChangeGrids with me to debrief them on board.

-T-

2011 ChangeWorks Requirements

Hi, Everyone!

In preparation for Thursday’s Gold Team webinar, I’ve prepared the following brief overview of the changes we’re rolling out for NEW ChangeWorks professionals beginning January 1st, 2011.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE CHANGES DO NOT APPLY TO NEWLY-ENROLLED CHANGEWORKS STUDENTS AND CURRENT PROFESSIONALS AS OF DECEMBER 31, 2010.

We will provide all the missing details on the call, but wanted to give you this information to stimulate your thinking.

2011 ChangeWorks Professional Overview

The Big Changes —

For students enrolling AFTER December 31st, 2010 —

• The development plan has been formalized.
• The curriculum has been expanded and standardized.
• The tuition has been increased to $2500.
• Basic, Bronze and Silver team options have been eliminated.
• Gold Team is mandatory.
• A 12-month commitment is mandatory.
• Gold Team fee has been increased to $250 monthly.
• There is a worldwide limit of 500 Gold Team members.
• Candidates must meet a set of requirements to be eligible for enrollment.

For students enrolling BEFORE January 1st, 2011 —

• The development plan has been formalized.
• The curriculum has been expanded and standardized.
• The tuition has NOT been increased. (Still $795/$1,495)
• Basic, Bronze and Silver team options are still available.
• Gold Team is NOT mandatory.
• A 12-month commitment is NOT mandatory. (6 months for Gold Team)
• Gold Team fee is still $199 monthly.
• There is a worldwide limit of 500 Gold Team members.
• Enrollment is OPEN.

________________________

Key Success Indicators —

Over the course of the past 3 years and 250 students, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to succeed as a ChangeWorks Professional. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of 15 Key Success Indicators and require candidates to meet a minimum of 10:

1) Ideal candidates operate full-time, year-round practices.
2) Ideal candidates operate practices focused on providing services to organizations and/or key executives within organizations.
3) Ideal candidates are well positioned to secure large organizational clients.
4) Ideal candidates count themselves among the brightest and best in the industry.
5) Ideal candidates are strong in both intellect and intuition — the concrete and the abstract.
6) Ideal candidates have 10 or more years of combined business and independent professional experience.
7) Ideal candidates have strong academic and industrial credentials.
8) Ideal candidates have a proven track record of success and currently bill at least $100K annually.
9) Ideal candidates are success-driven and highly money-motivated.
10) Ideal candidates are skilled writers.
11) Ideal candidates have strong existing marketing presences.
12) Ideal candidates are committed to completing the Professional Development Plan.
13) Ideal candidates are nominated by current ChangeWorks Professionals.
14) Ideal candidates have the ability to invest in themselves and their businesses without pain.
15) Ideal candidates are technologically savvy.

________________________

ChangeWorks Professional Development Plan —

Phase 1: ChangeWorks Essentials
Prerequisite: None
Format: 90-minute private webinars, one per week for four consecutive weeks
Fee: Included in Core Tuition

Phase 2: ChangeWorks Practitioner
Prerequisite: ChangeWorks:Essentials
Format: 2-hour group webinars, one per week for six consecutive weeks
Fee: Included in Core Tuition

Phase 3: ChangeWorks Master Practitioner
Prerequisite: ChangeWorks Practitioner
Format: 3-Day Live Retreat
Fee: Included in Core Tuition

Phase 4: Certified ChangeWorks Master Practitioner
Prerequisite: ChangeWorks Master Practitioner
Format: Written and Practical Examinations
Fee: Included in Core Tuition

Phase 5: Certified ChangeWorks Trainer — OPTIONAL
Pre-Requisite: Certified ChangeWorks Master Practitioner
Format: 3-Day Live Retreat
Fee: $2500

________________________

Core Tuition, System Usage & Support Fees —

OPTION 1 — $2,500 (Core Tuition) plus $250 per month (System Usage & Support Fee) for 12 months beginning after the ChangeWorks Essentials program ends. Renews at $250 per month starting month 14.

OR Save $1000 and 20% on the Usage and Support Fee forever:

OPTION 2 — $4,500 for the complete package, paid in 3 monthly installments of $1,500. Renews at $200 per month starting month 14.

We’d love to have your input on these changes, so please plan to join in on the call.  Follow this link to regiser:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/204233363

-T-

Santa Completed a ChangeGrid!!!

Hi, Everyone!

Denny Stockdale, a ChangeWorks Professional in Minneapolis, has just completed a ChangeGrid with Santa Claus! You’d think Santa would be much further OutGrid with all that he has to accomplish, but the ChangeGrid shows he’s just taking it all in stride and going with the flow.  Here’s the result:

And if you want to know how Denny happens to know Santa, here’s a couple of pictures of Denny himself:

We’ll take a closer look at Santa’s ChangeGrid on Monday’s ChangeWorks Forum call —

-T-

ChangeWorks Forum Discussion Diagrams

Hi, Everyone!

For the past few weeks, we’ve been discussing several layers of the ChangeGrid that usually don’t get top billing. We’ve created some diagrams to show where we’re at in our discussions and encourage all of you to print them out, look them over and plan to join us on next week’s call.

Radial Trends on the ChangeGrid

Combining Tetralogies on the ChangeGrid

Myers-Briggs and Keirsey on the ChangeGrid

Also, on this week’s call, I asked everyone to visit the website of Kathy Kolbe to explore the Kolbe A Index in preparation for next week’s Forum call. While there is no “Map of Humanity” we can easily overlay on the ChangeGrid, it would be very interesting to see if the scales provided for each of the four dimensions resonate. Here’s a glimpse into the model — just click on it to visit the website:

 

A Glimpse into the Kolbe A Index

Please plan to join us on next week’s call!

-T-

2010 ChangeWorks Study Update

Hi, Everyone!

We’ve just compiled the data we’ve collected so far in our 2010 ChangeWorks Study.  Of the professionals who have participated in the study to date, 89 self-identified as COACHES, 57 as TRAINERS and 48 as CONSULTANTS.

Question #1 focused on the ACCURACY of the ChangeGrid. Our goal was that 80% would Agree or Agree Strongly — and the results greatly exceed our goal with 100% of the participants across all disciplines attesting to the accuracy of the ChangeGrid.

Question #2 explored how VALUABLE the participants found the insights offered by the ChangeGrid. Our goal was that 80% would Agree or Agree Strongly — and the result far exceeds that at 99%.

Question #3 asked participants to share how valuable they think their clients would find the ChangeGrid. Again, our goal was that at least 80% would Agree or Agree Strongly — and we beat our goal by a huge margin.  While the differences are very small indeed, I find it interesting (disturbing, actually) that professionals found the ChangeGrid more valuable for themselves than for their clients.

Question #4 is designed to reveal the practical value of the ChangeGrid.  Again, we’re way above the 80% goal we had set, but I feel like I need to do a follow-up survey to figure out the difference between VALUABLE and USEFUL, particularly since the scores for Valuable are a bit stronger.

Question #5 was included in the study to satisfy a personal curiosity — does the ChangeGrid open a respondent’s eyes to new insights and understanding or does it simply confirm and clarify what they already knew … or BOTH? Our goal in this query was that 50% would Agree or Agree Strongly — but, as it turns out, we still would have met and exceeded our goal had it been set at 80%.  Bottom line for me is that I don’t believe the ChangeGrid ALWAYS reveals new information, so I’ve never set that as an expectation. That being said, I’m thrilled that so many people find the ChangeGrid Eye-Opening.

Question #6 asked the professionals to predict how eye-opening their clients would find the ChangeGrid — and their answers are VERY different from their personal assessments by a significant margin. Across all disciplines, the prediction is greater than the professionals’ ratings with the biggest difference reported by Consultants, who predicted a 15 point increase for their clients.

Finally, Question #7 asked whether the ChangeGrid affirmed what the respondent suspected was going on with them, and it does in a grand way, easily exceeding our goal of 80% in the combined Agree and Agree Strongly ratings.

So now, with nearly 200 professionals weighing in, I think it’s fair to say that the ChangeGrid is ACCURATE, VALUABLE, and USEFUL and will both AFFIRM what a client thinks about their situations and OPEN THEIR EYES to even more — and that’s all WONDERFUL things to share with your prospective clients.

We’ll talk more about the results on Monday’s ChangeWorks Forum call, so please plan to join in!

-T-

Crafting Activity Lists for Campaigns

Hi, Everyone!

Building on what I said in the “Crafting the Perfect Activity List” posting I made here last week, I’d like to add 10 additional considerations when building an activity list for groups or other campaigns.

13) Know what you’re hunting for before you begin. Group profiles and campaigns are generally developed with a specific motive in mind. Be clear what that objective is before you start crafting activities and scrutinize each activity to ensure that it is revealing the sort of information you want most.

14) Be mindful of the respondent’s current level of understanding. Don’t use terms that the respondent isn’t familiar with, like labels and phrases a student would understand AFTER completing a training program, but not BEFORE.

15) Use the Description feature! Clarity is KEY in a group profile since it is essential that all respondents interpret an activity the same way. Provide as detailed a description as possible to ensure that the respondents know exactly what the activity means.

16) Watch out for “respondent fatigue.” When an activity list is created for a single individual, you can include as many activities as you would like since ALL of them were chosen by or specifically for that client. On the other hand, in a group profile or campaign situation, the activity list was created by an outsider — and that means that each respondent may or may not resonate with each of the activities.  It takes a lot more energy to answer questions about something you may not care all that much about, so to prevent respondent fatigue, keep your activity list tight.

17) Decide if order matters in your list. Sometimes, it’s good to list activities in a natural chronological order or group them according to some criterion. Other times, there’s merit in keeping the list jumbled a bit.

18) Build your activity lists and descriptions in Word. It’s much easier to edit, rearrange and share activity lists if you build them and maintain them as Word documents.  Once you’re happy with the list, just cut and paste them into the online ChangeWorks System.

19) If time allows, have the activity list reviewed by a member of the target group. Obviously, this is a good way to verify that your activity names and descriptions make sense to the respondents and are interpreted in the way you intended.

20) While you’re at it, have the activity list reviewed by your peers. That’s one of many things we do on the ChangeWorks Forum calls, so take full advantage of the opportunity to run your list by other ChangeWorks professionals before you deploy it.  Better to get feedback in advance than constructive criticism after it’s been launched!

21) Use UpGrid verbs in marketing campaigns. Remember that prospects plotting UpGrid are more likely to engage your services, so choose UpGrid situations and language when building activity lists for marketing purposes. This is the ONLY application where we suggest you deliberately attempt to “steer” the respondent’s thoughts.

22) Consider using rejected activities for intake profiles. As you build an activity list for group or campaign purposes, you’ll probably create far more activities than you will end up using. DON’T throw the rejects away — save them for a more in-depth intake profile.

What other suggestions would you make to help others create great activity lists?

-T-

NEW Expo Demonstration ChangeGrid

Hi, Everyone!

Here’s a new piece of ChangeGrid artwork — a 24″ x 36″ placard designed for live demonstrations of ChangeGrid readings, such as trade shows or small presentations.  The resolution of the file in the little graphic shown below is NOT suitable for reproduction — we’ll be uploading the “official” artwork to the CCP homepage on Monday.

2011 ChangeWorks Trade Show Demonstration ChangeGrid

The artwork can be printed out, mounted on foamcore and laminated OR printed out on paper and inserted into a poster frame with either a glass or plastic front.  You can then use dry erase markers to plot a booth visitor’s activities, read their ChangeGrid, wipe off their data and do it again for another visitor.  Shags Shagrin used a similar version at a recent trade show and thought it was a great tool.

Let me know what you think!

-T-

ChangeWorks Trade Show Banner

Hi, Everyone!

We’ve just ordered a banner for an upcoming event — the Charlotte ASTD Day of Learning. I’m one of the presenters and we’re also hosting a trade show table promoting the ChangeWorks System. The banner 48″ by 80″ and retracts into a very portable and easy-to-ship-and-setup spool thingy.

Here’s what it looks like:

If any of you would like to use it for an event you’re showing at, please let us know.

-T-