Consulting Services
The Business Center provides practical consulting assistance in areas dealing with organization change and the creation of high-performance work systems. We help leaders, staff, and design teams in planning, developing, and implementing new ways of working. Our high quality consulting and training expertise enables you to find success, avoid hidden obstacles, and optimize the contributions of employees at all levels.
The Business Center will help your firm function more effectively through our special consulting services. Our unique expertise can help your organization in the following areas (click tab for more info).
We help you develop systems and understanding that enable your people to do their work better. We assist managers, supervisors, and first-line workers so they all can achieve better performance.
We do not try to be all things to all companies. Instead, we focus on a niche of subjects we believe offer special value to organizations. We will refer you to other resources if we do not feel we can give you the service you require.
Skill-Based Pay
Skill-based pay is a method of paying employees for their ability to perform a variety of functions. It is fundamentally different from job-based pay that stresses paying for only one position. We provide guidance in the development of skill-based pay programs for first-line workers. Most of these systems are used with production and maintenance workers in factory settings. Certain office and professional jobs may also use this form of pay. We will help you determine if skill-based pay can be useful to your firm. Our special, one day, assessment visit will give you our impressions of your potential to use SBP. If you wish to develop SBP, we will help determine progression paths and wage structures and provide guidance to your staff on the training, evaluation, and administration materials they need to develop. We believe your own staff knows your work the best and we use their talents to create your system. We provide the expertise on the structure and techniques that make SBP unique. You'll love our practical insight based on our international experience designing SBP systems. You can get a preview of what we have to offer by purchasing our book, Skill-Based Pay: Design and Implementation.
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Open-Book Management
Organizations choosing to implement the open-book management (OBM) model will benefit from The Business Center’s help turning theory into practice. While the OBM model is relatively straightforward, its practice requires understanding how to integrate the five elements involved: leadership, education, information, involvement, and rewards. Leaders of firms adopting OBM will gain from our experience in both the fields of business education and organization development. We can help you arrange an integrated sequence of programs and changes to link OBM elements together. That integration ensures you capture the full synergy of a systematic approach. Our book, Open-Book Management, Your EZ Intro to OBM, contains a unique "opportunity matrix" showing some of the linkages that are possible. Our basic business education program, BIZ WIZ®, provides the essential foundation to begin open-book management. Let The Business Center supply the coaching you need to successfully transform your organization with OBM.
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Team Systems
Many companies have adopted employee teams as a means to improve performance. Teams are much trickier to establish and operate than first meets the eye. Our experience in team system design and team member training can help you avoid the many potholes on the road to team success. We can help you decide if teams are appropriate to your work and organization. We can recommend the structure of teams, their leadership roles, and communication mechanisms to link teams together. We can also assist with the training that is essential for team members to perform effectively in their new roles. Teamwork is one thing, being a team is something else entirely. Our seminar, Journey to Excellence, is a unique combination of the theory and practice of creating high-involvement workplaces.
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Scanlon Systems
"Scanlon Plans" have been successfully used by a variety of public and private companies for many decades. Our combination of experience in organization design and business literacy makes our approach to Scanlon Systems unique. A Scanlon System developed with The Business Center is more than just a gainsharing formula. We work through all levels of your company to help you design a system that integrates your leadership vision with employee education and involvement. The result is improved business performance. Incorporated into your Scanlon System will be a reward sharing element designed to meet the needs of your company. We don’t impose a standard solution on your organization. We can also help you link with The Scanlon Plan Associates (SPA), a network of firms sharing their experiences with the Scanlon principles. (SPA has selected our BIZ WIZ® Universal business education program for use by their member firms.)
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New Plant Start-ups
Our expertise on designing the work and organization structure for your new plant can be invaluable. It's easy to cast organizational design mistakes in concrete when building a new plant. We can help you avoid costly people-related errors in work design, hiring, communications, training, evaluation, and compensation. We focus on the people side of a new plant start-up with a view to integrating it with the technology. Our book, Start-up! A Guide to Getting Off on the Right Foot, is an invaluable aid to your start-up effort.
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Organization Development
There are many ways to help organizations improve their performances that do not fit neatly into a single category. We can help you begin your journey to excellence and help you arrive at your future.
Change often begins with the need for a top manager to talk with someone outside the organization about his or her vision for the future. The next step is creating a forum for discussion of that vision with other leaders. This leads to refining the mission and roles of leaders in the future organization. Next comes identifying necessary systems changes and marshaling the resources of the organization to move in the desired direction. Providing training for new skills and behaviors occurs as the organization progresses. Tracking progress and measuring results help complete the cycle of growth.
This evolutionary process of change is one with which we are very familiar. We can help you work through the strategy and tactics necessary to move your organization forward. Whether you are driven by inspiration or desperation, we can help with the perspiration of developing your organization.
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THE BUSINESS CENTER
