Consultants – 

Needing CPE Credits?

“Why can’t everyone be normal like me?“

Tuesday / May 15th

11:00 am – 12:00 Noon

We’ve all heard the saying “it takes all kinds”.  Yet we get frustrated when dealing with people who don’t think, act and communicate like we do.  At this webinar, we’ll discuss the DISC model of behaviors and help you:

• Understand your own behavior style
  
• Determine the DISC style of your “problem person”
  
• Develop strategies to improve your relationships

“Time is Money – use your time wisely“

Thursday / May 24th

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Time is a perishable commodity.  If you don’t use it, you lose it.  At this webinar you’ll learn about:

• Why we waste time
  
• The biggest time wasters
  
• How to take control so that others don’t rob you of valuable time

Remember that DARTON University offers webinars at no charge as part of our commitment to professional development.

Fast and Easy Registration!

Webinar class sizes are limited and are available to all DARTON consultants on a “first come, first served” basis. Registration closes 48 hours prior to each webinar event.

To register, please send an email to careers@dartongroup.com.

Be sure to include the date and name of the webinar in your email.

Today the DARTON GROUP team is participating in one of our very favorite events of the year…Classroom Central’s “Color a Brighter Future” annual philanthropic fundraising luncheon.

Not familiar with Classroom Central?

Let us introduce you to this unique and wonderful organization.  Classroom Central gives students living in poverty the school supplies they need to succeed in the classroom.  This creative charity operates a free school supplies store serving teachers across the greater Charlotte region.

However, Classroom Central does more than provide school supplies. The organization truly helps to create a world of endless possibilities for students.

Make a Difference & Change a Life Today!

Please take 5 minutes to learn more about the mission of Classroom Central and the actions this great group takes to change the lives of students.

Join us today making a personal or corporate donation (Classroom Central welcomes both monetary donations as well as donations of school supplies) by clicking here.

Consultants –

“Stress Busters”

Wednesday / April 25th 

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm Eastern

At this webinar you’ll learn:

• How stress affects your performance
• How your “sense of control” affects your stress level
• How to set boundaries to reduce stress
• Three simple things you can do today to manage your stress

“Would I work for me?”

Thursday / April 26th

11:00 am – 12:00 Noon

At this popular “repeat” webinar you’ll learn:

• What employees want from their managers
• Why accountability is the glue that holds a team together
• The most important skill a manager can have

Remember that DARTON University offers webinars at no charge as part of our commitment to professional development.

Fast and Easy Registration!

Webinar class sizes are limited and are available to all DARTON consultants on a “first come, first served” basis. Registration closes 48 hours prior to each webinar event.

To register, please send an email to careers@dartongroup.com.

Be sure to include the date and name of the webinar in your email.

Rochelle Rivas, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, DARTON GROUP

We are celebrating here at DARTON GROUP!!!

Why?

The Mecklenburg Times in Charlotte has announced its fourth “50 Most Influential Women” class. The newspaper spotlights the most influential women in business, government, education and the nonprofit sector.

And our very own Rochelle Rivas (co-founder and Managing Partner) has been named among the 2012 group of most influential women!

We’ll be celebrating Rochelle’s success, and that of her fellow honorees, at an awards dinner on the evening of May 4 at the Marriott Center City in Uptown Charlotte.

Congrats to Rochelle and the rest of the 2012 class of “50 Most Influential Women”!

How have you improved your skills in 2012?

We are passionate believers that every professional should dedicate time throughout the year to tend to their career and improve their skills.  In the crazy, busy world in which we all live and work, it is all too common to find, at the end of the calendar year, that you didn’t invest in yourself – or your career.

We invite all DARTON GROUP consultants to take the opportunity in 2012 to invest in your career, on a minimum of a quarterly basis, through professional development activities.  We aim to make this investment as easy and time efficient as possible by delivering high-quality, cost-free webinars monthly through DARTON University.

Take advantage of the following 3 webinars remaining in the first quarter of 2012:

March 22nd    4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
“How to have those difficult conversations”
Whether you’re managing people, dealing with clients, or talking to your significant other or family, sometimes unpleasant topics must be discussed.  At this session, you’ll learn 
          * How to stop avoiding the unavoidable
          * How to embrace the third-party perspective
          * Why you might not know what you think you know
          * How to end the conversation for a better outcome 

March 27th    4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
“Cross-selling–it’s good for your clients”
Many consultants struggle with the idea of selling, even to their existing clients.  But your clients need other services you provide, and they benefit from learning about them.  At this session, you’ll learn
           * How to uncover your clients’ needs
           * How to focus on benefits rather than services
           * Why not cross-selling can cause you to lose clients – forever!

March 29th    11:00 – Noon
“Silence is Golden!”
We live in a noisy society. Breaks in conversation are often seen as uncomfortable.We’ve forgotten the value of being quiet.  At this webinar, we’ll discuss
           * When silence can help you make a stronger point
           * How silence can improve relationships
           * Where appreciating silence can help you close deals
           * Why silence really is golden!

Fast and Easy Registration!

Webinar class sizes are limited and are available to all DARTON consultants on a “first come, first served” basis. Registration closes 48 hours prior to each webinar event.

To register, please send an email to careers@dartongroup.com.

Be sure to include the date and name of the webinar in your email.

Questions?

Call DARTON at 704+525+9378

Consultants –

Tuesday / February 28th 

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm Eastern

At this webinar you’ll learn:

• Why we tend to “over promise”
• How to minimize surprises
• The importance of the “wrap-up” message

Remember that DARTON University offers webinars at no charge as part of our commitment to professional development.

Fast and Easy Registration!

Webinar class sizes are limited and are available to all DARTON consultants on a “first come, first served” basis. Registration closes 48 hours prior to each webinar event.

To register, please send an email to careers@dartongroup.com.

Be sure to include the date and name of the webinar in your email.

Questions?

Call DARTON at 704+525+9378

There is no question that LinkedIn continues to grow its influence as the preeminent social networking sites for professionals.  Accordingly, the DARTON GROUP team suggests that you take the following 2 steps today to optimize your experience in using LinkedIn:

1. Ensure that your LinkedIn Profile is 100% completed.  Most professionals would never dream of handing out an incomplete business card or a resume that is only 80% completed.  Like your business card and resume, your LinkedIn Profile reflects your professionalism.  Don’t show the business world anything less than a 100% completed profile on LinkedIn.  As an added incentive, LinkedIn claims that members with completed profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn.
2. Visit DARTON GROUP’s page on LinkedIn and “Follow” us.  DARTON GROUP is extremely active on LinkedIn and we are exceptionally networked in the greater Charlotte region.  We invite you to keep informed and tap into our large, and ever-growing, network.  Click here.

Click here and “Like” DARTON GROUP on Facebook!

For those interested in exploring career opportunities with Chiquita, you will want to know that Chiquita has partnered with Charlotte Works  (a non-profit group that provides local connections to jobs and training, and works with economic development agencies to ensure that expanding and relocating businesses can connect with qualified employees) to conduct pre-screening for the following job types:

• Finance and Administration
• Customer Service
• Administrative Support

Charlotte Works has created a web site with Chiquita Brands to announce their partnership and to provide details of an upcoming, “by invitation only” event.  Click here to visit.

Management with Metrics: Understanding the Balanced Scorecard

Management with Metrics can be overwhelming to an organization if it is implemented with no regard to that organization’s change management history, culture and readiness. That being said, the starting point for Management with Metrics (as well as any organized approach to making change happen to enhance the customer experience and impact the profit of an organization) is actually having a customer strategy.  Every design session that we have been a part of that introduces Management with Metrics principals begins with a clear understanding of how Management with Metrics fits in the business model objectives and customer strategy of that given company. Balanced scorecard planning is one of the key ways that leaders of an organization can define and document their customer strategy regardless if they choose to utilize the Management with Metrics methodology to execute the strategy.

A new approach to strategic management was developed in the early 1990′s by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton. They named this system the ‘balanced scorecard’.  Recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, the balanced scorecard approach provides a clear prescription as to what companies should measure in order to ‘balance’ the financial perspective.

The balanced scorecard is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback around both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. When fully deployed, the balanced scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve center of an enterprise.

Kaplan and Norton describe the innovation of the balanced scorecard as follows:

“The balanced scorecard retains traditional financial measures. But financial measures tell the story of past events, an adequate story for industrial age companies for which investments in long-term capabilities and customer relationships were not critical for success. These financial measures are inadequate, however, for guiding and evaluating the journey that information age companies must make to create future value through investment in customers, suppliers, employees, processes, technology, and innovation.”

The balanced scorecard methodology builds on some key concepts of previous management ideas such as Total Quality Management (TQM), including customer-defined quality, continuous improvement, employee empowerment, and — primarily — measurement-based management and feedback.

Loosely translated, a balanced scorecard can be seen as a “compass” for running a business. It signifies the setting of direction and alignment of resources to long range goals, and is the output of a strategic planning process.  At the same time, it utilizes “key performance indicators” to run day-to-day operations.  Together, key metrics and a customer strategy combine in a balanced scorecard that helps us set direction and manage for results. As an example, the balanced scorecard plan for a bank will be built in a synergistic and dynamic fashion along with the customer/marketing strategy and business/profitability strategy with each deliverable being tied together along the way.

Balanced scorecard planning is a process used to formulate and execute breakthrough strategy to achieve long-term customer, associate and shareholder goals.  The balanced scorecard suggests that an organization be viewed from three perspectives, and to develop metrics, collect data and analyze it relative to each of these perspectives: the balanced scorecard plan documents an organization’s strategy; 12-month performance plan and specific metrics throughout the organization’s processes that align the performance plan to the strategy.

This format provides a simple, comprehensive and focused three-page document:

• Page 1: the organization’s breakthrough 3-5 year goals and strategies for customer, associate and shareholder satisfaction
• Page 2: the concrete performance plan for the next 12 months
• Page 3: the “balanced scorecard” which describes the specific measures and performance commitments that track progress to the 3-5 year goals

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. So metrics must be developed based on the priorities of the strategic plan, which provides the key business drivers and criteria for metrics that managers most desire to watch. Processes are then designed to collect information relevant to these metrics and reduce it to numerical form for storage, display, and analysis. Decision makers examine the outcomes of various measured processes and strategies and track the results to guide the company and provide feedback.

So the value of metrics is in their ability to provide a factual basis for defining:

• Strategic feedback to show the present status of the organization from many perspectives for decision makers
• Diagnostic feedback into various processes to guide improvements on a continuous basis
• Trends in performance over time as the metrics are tracked
• Feedback around the measurement methods themselves, and which metrics should be tracked
• Quantitative inputs to forecasting methods and models for decision support systems

Finally, managing with metrics is also key for the project manager in how a project is selected and how its success is determined during the execution of the project and a given project has been implemented into the day to day operations of the process. Here are some themes to consider when doing a project in a culture that utilizes a balanced scorecard and values management with metrics:

• Key projects should tie to your balanced scorecard plan
• Business case must demonstrate how the potential project results will drive one of more of the Level 1 key metrics. (use financial analysis to help with this)
• Do not use “cost avoidance” as a legitimate reason to undertake a project Projects should clearly demonstrate net income savings, productivity improvement, or customer delight
• Using metrics methodology above, develop a measurement plan to be included in the project business case
• Hold executive level project reviews at least monthly to go over progress toward targets
• Focus review presentation on the measurable progress and make sure they are financially “blessed” before hand
• Audit performances to metrics for three quarters after project close to ensure repeatability and control
• Declare a win and move on