Rocket’s Cilla McKay will be judging at this years’ UK Customer Experience Awards on 17th October. Now on its 4th year, the awards recognise the superior delivery of an exceptional customer experience across private and public sectors.

There are 12 different industry categories to choose from, as well as 8 discipline specific categories and Professional and Team of the Year, giving you the opportunity to enter multiple categories. Find out more here>>

Service excellence is now generally recognised as the important differentiator in business and commerce today and Rocket is proud to support this valuable event. Find out how we’re supporting others to deliver service excellence.

We’re delighted that our Certified Coach Program, designed and delivered, for Emirates NBD has been selected to receive an American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) Excellence in Practice citation in their Coaching and Mentoring category.

The ASTD Board of Directors will honor the recipients at an awards ceremony during the 2013 ASTD International Conference and Exposition in Dallas, Texas.

We’re extremely proud of this accomplishment. ASTD, who received 150 entries for the 2012 Excellence in Practice program, recognises exemplary practices in workplace learning and development. Awards are being presented for proven practices that meet a demonstrated need, have appropriate design values, are aligned with other performance improvement initiatives, and deliver clear and measurable results for their organisation. Citations are being presented for practices from which much can be learned, but which have not yet reached the award level.

Rocket are continuing our excellence in coaching, running an ILM Level 5 Coaching & Mentoring programme this June. Find out more>>

Culture is an integral part of every society. But what is it?
- It is a learned pattern of behaviour and ways in which a person lives his or her life.
- Culture is essential for the existence of a society, because it binds people together.
- In the explicit sense of the term, culture constitutes the music, food, arts and literature of a society.
- These are only the products of culture followed by the society and cannot be defined as culture

Culture is something that a person learns from his family and surroundings, and is not ingrained in him from birth. It does not have any biological connection because even if a person is brought up in a culture different from that in which he was born, he imbibes the culture of the society where he grows up. It is also not a hidden fact that some people feel the need to follow the beliefs and traditions of their own culture, even though they might be not subscribing to certain ideologies within.

Culture is a complex tool which every individual has to learn to survive in a society. It is the means through which people interact with others in the society. It acts in a subconscious way and whatever we see and perceive, seems to be normal and natural. Sometimes, other societies and people seem to be a little odd because they have a different culture from ours. We must remember that every society has a distinct culture that forms the backbone of the society. Culture does not remain stagnant; on the other hand it is evolving constantly and is in fact somewhat influenced by the other cultures and societies.

Every society has a different culture, where people share a specific language, traditions, behaviours, perceptions and beliefs.

Culture gives people an identity which makes them unique and different from people of other cultures.

Customers now demand more value for their money than before the recession, given that their pockets are now much tighter. So what role can empathy play in encouraging customers to buy more – including higher value offerings?
Without a doubt, the need to connect properly with the customer is paramount and particularly during a recession. Companies have stopped what they consider to be unnecessary and analysing customer satisfaction metrics, and now they are coming out of the recession they are looking at something they can work with. These tend to be more experiential measures, and empathy shows itself to be a more reliable metric. From the customer’s perspective there is a need to develop trust, and without the ability to empathise they tend to revert to the more traditional comparators of price and convenience. They don’t understand why they do it.

Corporates are a little bit like koala bears. They look good initially, but they are tricky so-and-so’s! They think that if they say something, customers will believe them; but customers believe them by the way they do things and not what they say. It has to come from the heart. With the lack of emotional attachment customers have now decided that they don’t want relationships with financial services organisations and they’re becoming very savvy. This means that companies are going to have to work even harder to gain their trust and ultimately their wallet.

Good empathy helps you build a good relationship – that much is obvious. But what of the impact? Well, people in healthy relationships are much more forgiving and they will stay with companies. There is an emotional stake that compels us to remain loyal. Failure to create empathetic relationships means that customers are much more easily tempted by better offers, looking at price and convenience. Without that emotional stake, why not shop around?

As humans, our preference is always to buy based on our emotions. People just don’t know how to articulate them in a meaningful way. They will happily go to a shop like John Lewis rather than Currys to buy the same washing machine without even looking at the price. Why? We could talk about John Lewis as a “strong brand”, but what does that actually mean? It means the customer trusts the brand, and trust is a hard thing to come by.

We know that empathy correlates to profit. Personally I find it difficult to understand why a company would put in a series of measures that have no positive outcome or deliverables. We have seen a move for Financial Directors to be more involved in the decision-making on metrics and they are insisting on provable metrics that provide return on investment.

Empathy is a skill and not an emotion, and it can be trained and engaged just like any other skills. First of all it has to be properly understood. Sympathy is an emotion, empathy is a skill. If you drive past an accident on the motorway you don’t say, “Ah, poor people…” You screw up your face as if you yourself were in the accident. When you try to feed a young child by spoon it’s almost impossible not to open your mouth when you need them to open their mouth – these are examples of natural empathy. We all have it, but not everyone uses it effectively.

Next time, we’ll look at some of the reasons why companies are now using empathy as a measurement tool.

The Rocket Masterclass in Strategic Planning is an expertly facilitated learning environment, providing departmental managers with the skills they need to prepare for 2013.

Rocket Masterclasses are fast-paced, energetic and focused on achieving personal outcomes for all attendees. We also ensure that there is access to a range of tools that will bring specific organisational benefits.

By the end of this day you will be confident in differentiating strategic  from business planning and will recognise the importance of analysis. You will also be aware of a range of tools and techniques. You will be able to implement your own plan including clear focus for 30/ 60/ 90 day plan and will be clear about how you will monitor and evaluate it.

Find out more

The Justice and Community Safety Sector is facing change on an unprecedented scale, driven by the current economic climate and the Government’s drive to reduce costs across public services whilst improving service delivery.

The current economic climate across the UK and the impact of the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review combined with a drive for modernisation across public services is creating a time of unprecedented change. This ‘perfect storm’ created by reducing resources and increasing expectations is leading many organisations, particularly those in the public sector, to critically review each and every aspect of what they do as they strive to deliver ‘more for less’. We believe that this WEFO funded programme adds real value by working with organisations to help them deliver ‘better for less’.

Maintaining the morale and motivation of people against a backdrop of recruitment freezes, redundancies and reviews of terms and conditions is extremely challenging. First line and middle managers bear much of the brunt of this as they will are responsible for leading and implementing the changes required to deliver the new ways of working. It is therefore vital that they have the skills and confidence to engage people, maintain motivation, challenge poor performance and work across traditional organisational boundaries.

Keeping employees motivated and engaged, in the drive towards modern and efficient ways of working in the face of reduced resources and considerable uncertainty will require the development of a wide range of leadership and management skills. The development of leadership in first line and middle managers in particular will be essential to empower everyone to identify their own solutions to any problems along the way and instill a sense of ‘we can do this’ across the sector. In this way, everyone will play their part in shaping the future of Justice and Community Safety across Wales.

The requirement for this programme is based on the action proposals detailed in the February 2010 report on “Employment & Skills within the Justice Sector in Wales” published by Skills for Justice. This detail was further developed following employer surveys, consultation and engagement, to identify the skills-sets required for “citizen-focussed service delivery” and the development of management skills.

Weathering the ‘Perfect Storm’

Skills for Justice has worked with employers to identify the skills needed to deliver quality seamless “citizen-focussed service delivery”, and have developed this programme to support the following objectives, 1. Enhancing individuals’ performance and contribution, 2. Increasing efficiency and productivity, whilst embedding excellent management practice of the workforce). The programme consists of:

• Collaboration in the Justice and Community Safety Sector – the Core programme
• Driving change through Action Learning Set Facilitation
• Environmental Sustainability for Organisations in the Community Safety and Justice Sector
• Managing Resources in the Community Safety and Justice Sector
• Equality and Diversity for Managers in the Justice and Community Safety Sector
• A Manager’s “Lean” Toolkit for the Justice and Community Safety Sector

Simon Leckie, lets us in on the details of the most powerful leadership development solution that few businesses seem to know about…

If there was a way to solve workplace problems that had so far defied all attempts to resolve them, would you want to know more?

If there was a way to draw on the experience of other managers and gain new ideas and perspectives, would your ears prick up?

If there was a way to develop your leadership and management skills so that you and those around you were completely exhilarated to be at work, would you want to find out more?

Let’s be honest – of course you would. No sound-minded person would say “no”. We all have problems. If there’s anyone reading who did say ‘no’ then seek professional help quickly, you’re probably in denial!

So here’s the secret: it’s called action learning. Hey, keep reading; don’t let the name put you off. It’s a highly practical and proven approach to solving problems and developing leadership skills; what’s more, most businesses haven’t switched on to it yet. Why it’s still such a secret is beyond me because I’ve seen firsthand just how powerful it is.

Action learning has more impact than any other form of leadership development, and here’s the really crazy part – it costs next to nothing to do.

• It treats you, the person taking part, as having the expertise and, with guidance from others, helps you figure out the answers for yourself.
• With support and development, you and your people can facilitate action learning for yourselves.
• You choose what you want to work on. Each person in the group will have their own work issue to resolve and their own personal development goals, so there’s no ‘one size fits all’ development programme or rigid workshop by workshop agenda.

Action learning takes the simple idea that you learn best by doing, and provides a structured approach to help you work with others to generate ideas. Typically, a group of people get together, each person talks about something they are trying to ‘fix’ and – through the support and challenge of the other group members – comes up with their own ideas on how to fix their problem. Each person then goes away, takes action and sees what happens. Everybody then meets up again to review where they’re at and generate more ideas. It’s simple really, but it’s incredibly effective!

We can help you gain the understanding and skills to facilitate action learning. After that, all you will need is a room, a flipchart and people who really want to improve their daily working lives.

You may be wondering why – if it’s that simple – you would need any input from us. Well, in order for action learning to reach its full potential, there are some key things you need to know about as a facilitator:

• Ethical views, beliefs, attitudes, values, language and authority in a facilitation role.
• Creating the necessary, safe and confidential conditions for engaging in effective action learning.
• The importance of agreeing the expectations, processes and boundaries of action learning with all participants.
• Identifying potential barriers in the organisation and developing strategies for overcoming them.

Once you have had a taste of action learning, you will be amazed at where it will take you!