Richard Maher
Pres. & CEO at Adaptive Human Capital, LLC.
Specialized change management consulting tools and services to serve both the public and private sectors.
- Change Management Strategies: Techniques for effective organizational transitions
- Agile Leadership Development: Cultivating adaptive leaders for modern challenges
- Resilience Training Methods: Building personal and team resilience skills
- Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Enhancing leadership through emotional awareness
- Sector Strategies in Workforce Development: Implementing successful workforce initiatives nationally.
Meet the mentor
TALK SHOW VIDEOS
Tricky Workplace Situation Handled
- Stay balanced, focused and calm. Be nimble enough to adjust to changes in the business environment and recognize that changes are part of the journey.
- 1. Remember that success is being right more often than we're wrong. We don't need to find the perfect answer before making a decision to move forward. 2. Use a T chart - list the pros and cons. Sometimes writing your thoughts down on paper brings clarity and helps get to the right answer. 3. Listen to our team and gather insights from others in decision-making.
- Bill Gates is someone it is hard to not respect. He was smart, persistent and creative in his pursuits and now is giving back to society in any number of ways.
- 7 of 10 maybe. I could be more decisive (I can tend to over-analyze at times. I could also be less agreeable. Sometimes, making tough decisions that can impact on others is very difficult for me - despite being required some times.
- Listen actively and allow the customer to finish their full statement/question before responding. Don't attempt to predict the problem ... let them state it fully.
- Frustrated and not valued.
- Don't interrupt and don't assume you know the problem. Let the customer speak and be present to "hear" what they are saying.
- By listening actively we allow the customer to fully address the issue from their perspective. They feel valued and "heard," and we get a better understanding of the real issue/problem they need help with.
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- I've done a great deal of customer care training and sales training in my career. I teach a process we called L-A-P (listen, acknowledge and probe). Agents should actively listen, acknowledge by re-stating what we think the issue is, and then ask follow up questions (as necessary) to clearly understand the issue and present a solution (or route the customer properly for a resolution).
- Trend forecasting is a complex but useful method of using actual, historical quantitative data - plotted over time - to predict possible future trends.
- As a leader I consistently talk about our reputation of being a "thought leader" and being first to market with innovations in service delivery. I emphasize how our past track record has built a successful brand and how important it is for us to always be the first to bring new ideas and technologies to our customer's attention. Our management team is very aware of this as a part of our culture and values new ideas and disruptive approaches to making us better, faster and more innovative on the part of what we do for our clients. We have a standing Innovation Lab that allows for dedicated time for folks to bring up new ideas for product and/or service innovations and to find opportunities to pilot new ideas. We use Human Centered Design principles in our ideation and development process.
- Well at AHC we offer an online assessment product that offers an assessment of individual resilience. Using a design thinking approach, such a product might be enhanced to be done online (even on a smart phone) and be supported by an app that would link the results to coaching and skill development training -- making the value of the assessment results much more meaningful for folks and more easily engaged with.
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- I have so many stories of how we have used systems and design thinking to innovate and drive business growth. They include seeing the growth in training need in the cable industry when high speed cable modems were first deployed in the US and designing the industry's first online learning academy for cable TV personnel as a solution. Also, bringing the first online community to the US government when budgets for travel were being cut after the great recession. We used trends data and analysis to help leaders in Newton, Iowa re-skill their local workforce after Maytag was sold and closed all their local factories and re-tool those factories to manufacture wind turbines (which they now sell globally). I might also use the sample of a simulation I used called "The Futures Game" which asks folks to consider trends data and global events to plan for the future of a region in the Australian Outback. These real-life examples and success stories, I believe, would energize others and hel
- It is customer-focused, so it keeps our solutions focused on customer needs (rather than the way things have always been done). It is responsive and quick -- providing ways to move from ideas, to prototype and testing without over-analysis. It is proven -- a methodology that has gained wide-scale acceptance across any number of different industries.
- One way would be to make outreach to Joanne and to other past and current hotel customers, and do some research works about their feelings per the current service. By researching with multiple customers (past and present) they would gain a sense of the types of problems customers have been experiencing and how they felt about the current registration process. With a problem statement in hand, hotel teams could ideate solutions, prototype and test them to find solutions that would be customer-focused and would delight customers.
- First, I'd share my experience teaching Design Thinking to users at the US Departments of Education and Labor, as well as in the Nation's Job Corps network.. I think making someone aware of other users validates both my expertise and the validity of design thinking itself. I believe I'd run through the steps and compare it to other/older methods (such and process mapping) to illustrate its relative strengths and then try to work through an example -- such as how a hospital might make an imaging center more welcoming for young children. Quickly illustrating the process of ideation might energize the individual to want to learn more, so I could offer them links to more detailed online learning as a follow up.
- We were very focused on trying to increase our diversity as we grew our Firm. We consciously reviewed out networks, job descriptions and more to ensure we were recruiting in places to get a more diverse hiring pool and promoted actively to have our leadership team more representative of the population in general. As a small team were were NOT as diverse as we wanted to be so we worked hard to improve as we grew and increased our head count.
- We actively looked to hire folks of color and made it known that our goal was to increase our diversity. We promoted woman and people of color to leadership to model the behaviors we spoke of. We reviewed our ads and job descriptions to filter out unintended language that might not appeal to targeted groups. We also made sure that all our marketing and our website used images that showed our diversity and modeled diverse work groups with images.
- Well, my experience might not be the best here honestly, but it might be "real" and useful to share. I was once told by a customer that we were "too white." This was an executive and loyal customer of the firm -- even a friend. I took that feedback very hard and went home determined to fix it. We had the chance to grow very dramatically (in part due to contracts from this friendly executive) and I was determined that we improve our diversity and be much more mindful of having new and different voices on our team. I think that story, which is admittedly not flattering, is one that some folks might relate to. We were fortunate that we had a loyal customer who was willing to share their view and continue to work with us as we took that feedback and actively moved to improve our performance. Today, the firm is widely diverse and more successful than ever -- including with that client.
- Well, Sandy is reframing ... taking the situation and starting with an open-mind to finding a solution.
- I think being too busy -- having too many tasks and draws on my time makes it hard to think creatively. That can be managed through better time management and being more effective with saying "no" to requests for my time from others. Also, I don't always think of myself as a highly "creative type" -- yet I can be really good at finding creative solutions to complex problems. So, re-framing my beliefs to have a more positive view of my capabilities would allow me to think more creatively more easily.
- I think I would emphasize my own story ... my own "natural view" of myself as not overly creative -- but then share stories of where creative ideas I advanced had large scale impact in my work. In other words, I would "model" tips I've used such as the SOS process (Situation, Objective, Strategy) and brainstorming with a group that I have found both energizing and successful in my experience. I might also do some research and find some expert videos or articles from trusted sources as additional learning materials.
