An Overview of Customized Training, Assessment and Course Development

Prepared by David Snyder, CEO Snyder, Inc.,
and Dr. Myra White, PhD. CEO Work Intelligence

Aligning Team Selection and Development Goals with Organizational Vision

Everything we do is tied to helping you achieve successful outcomes for your most important business goals. Our experts have proven track records in helping organizations to achieve Rapid Alignment of Teams with Business Strategy.

We not only help you to identify top performers—we also help you to define and track what team members need to do in the next 1 to 2 years to achieve these business strategies.

“In the Research Triangle Park and beyond, there is an epidemic raging. Too many employees possess an unbelievable sense of entitlement and are only in it for themselves. . . . Many organizations simply do not know how to create a shared vision and hold people accountable to it, even their own managers. Too often, they hire anyone who comes along with the right credentials, not giving a second thought to character. This has created a state of relentless chaos and turnover that has to be addressed, or forward progress is impossible.”

A Research Triangle Park CEO

Critical Questions

• Are your teams underperforming because they lack commitment to your vision?
• Are you having trouble identifying the right talent for your teams?
• Is constant turnover undercutting the performance of your teams?
• Are your managers struggling to get their teams to deliver on-time quality products?

In addressing these issues Snyder, Inc. has formed an alliance with Work Intelligence of Boston (led by Dr. Myra S. White) to help companies build sustainable high-performance teams where everyone pulls in the same direction.

What makes our program different?

Our team of experts:

• Uses a customized competency-based approach tailored to the performance issues your company faces.
• Has the expertise to effectively address the special issues present in bio-tech and high-tech companies.
• Base their recommendations and interventions on a scientific competency-based analysis that pinpoints team problems.
• Helps you develop programs to attract and retain the talent that you need to build teams that will execute your strategy.
• Teach managers competency-based tools that allow them to bring out the best in their teams.
• Provide employees with customized coaching and training.

Why Competency-Based Management Tools?

• To effectively leverage the talent on your teams, you need to identify individual differences.
  • Individual team members are not all motivated by the same incentives.
  • Individual team members have different strengths.
  • Individual team members have different character traits.
  • Individual team members have different aspirations and attitudes.
  • Individual team members have different values.

To effectively manage your teams and get everyone pulling in the same direction, you must understand these individual differences and then use them to design interventions that elevate team performance.

Building a Blended Team of Unique Individuals

The analysis of competencies is critical to effectively exploiting individual differences. High performing team members and managers in all jobs, especially in the high-technology and biotech industries, possess a predictable and measurable blend of:

• Personality traits
• Motivations
• Character traits
• Skills
• Leadership traits
• Attitudes and aspirations

These traits—or job-related competencies— predict how well they will perform in specific jobs, how well they will work in teams, and how well they will manage. Combined with an analysis of cultural fit, these traits also help predict how much commitment the team member will give to the organization. In this light, two points are critical:

• You should not use a cookie-cutter approach to hiring.
• It is important to create a team of unique individuals with complementary talents, strengths and skill sets.

Why Our Help Is Important:

Many companies today, especially those in the high-technology world, are facing the same challenges as they seek to obtain the highest levels of productivity, teamwork, hiring effectiveness, management effectiveness and retention.

• Without validated, industry-specific assessment and hiring tools, it is difficult to hire the types of individuals who will make the greatest contribution to the organization and who will genuinely care about the goals of the company.
• Without scientific analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of teams, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is causing less-than-desired levels of productivity and teamwork.
• Without building competency-based assessment and training programs for the organization it is almost impossible to help individuals develop the soft and hard skills necessary for maximum job performance and career advancement.
• Without implementing competency-based management assessment, development and training programs, it is also difficult to ascertain how inadequate management skills may be negatively impacting morale, planning, implementation, business strategy and productivity.

High-Impact Team-Building

Through our experiences in the creation of stronger teams, we have solidified the following skills:

• We know how to interview employees in disjointed or misaligned departments, and what tools and questions to use to assess their level of job-fit, commitment, purpose etc.  We also know how to assess their complaints and morale issues.  
• We know how to hold team meetings that allow management and employee issues to be addressed openly, and create an agenda for increased cooperation, all based on transparency, mutual accountability and commitment.
• We know how to create a platform for the team to create goals and vision together--not just lip service, but real, meaningful, accountability-driven goals.
• We know how to get management and the team to create measures of accountability together.
• We know how to select top performers and coach lower performers to a higher level.
• We know how to build stronger teams and organizations.
• We know how to assess, track and measure the ROI of all of the above.

Summary of Benefits:

Using validated selection and development tools, our experts can provide highly customized solutions to enable organizations to reach the following goals:

• Develop measurable targets for hiring success and business strategy outcome success.
• Set clear expectations for job definitions and expectations for performance and improvement across the organization.
• Identify the future potential of star employees and link that to increased business potential.
• Identify group developmental needs and develop training programs or interventions to address those needs.
• Increase current workforce effectiveness and job-readiness of existing hires.
• Prepare the workforce for future needs.
• Improve employee retention and satisfaction.

Team biographies:

David Snyder

Author of the critically acclaimed book, How To Mind Read Your Customers, David Snyder works with clients nationwide in the implementation of employee assessment, development and selection across many industries. His specialty is management assessment and team alignment. David has also worked the CEO and senior management of a national staffing and human resources corporation to create enhanced recruiting and selection tools, services, and business strategies. He is certified in organizational competency modeling and assessment with a leading industrial psychology firm. How to Mind Read Your Customers, Mr. Snyder’s first book, was listed among the best books of the year by Sales and Marketing Management Magazine in the year of its publication (2001) and has gone into translation. His next book, How to Hire a Champion (forthcoming, December 2007) outlines the character traits of high performing individuals, and shows how corporations can use best practices in selection and development to find top performers and keep them. Mr. Snyder holds a graduate degree in psychology from Harvard, where he participated in research conducted on brain waves and emotion at the Mind/Body Medical Institute of Harvard Medical School and is named as a coauthor on findings published in The Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience. The Mind/Body Medical Institute is one of the most distinguished institutes in the world for the study of stress and human behavior.

Dr. Myra S. White

Dr. White holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard, and law degree from Harvard Law School. She also holds a masters degree in electrical and computer engineering from Northwestern University. She teaches psychology and organizational development at Harvard and also teaches at Harvard Medical School. An expert on competency assessment, Dr. White was mentored and trained at Harvard University by Professor David McClelland, the father/originator of workplace competency assessment. As a software engineer consultant. she has designed and developed complex software systems, including computer/machine interface, data system conversions and the reengineering of administrative processes. As co-founder of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. she provided computerized instructional evaluation services and received a 5000% return on equity. She holds a patent in Intelligent Control with Hierarchical Stacked Neural Networks, and is the author of Follow the Yellow Brick Road: A Harvard Psychologists Guide to Becoming a Superstar, which analyzes the character traits and competencies of high-performering individuals. As a management consultant, she has provided expert advice on organizational design, competency-based hiring, motivation and performance management, and has conducted motivation and peak performance workshops and workplace assessments of organizational climate, administrative processes, management practices and attitudes towards diversity. She has also developed computer-based marketing and sales training programs for Fortune 500 companies.