Drops of Rain - March 5th, 2008

Drops of Rain

A Newsletter From The Rainmaker Group

March 5th, 2008

Hello Friend!

March has finally arrived and with it comes the promise of spring not far away. For many the month of March also brings with it the excitement of the NCAA college basketball tournament - AKA March Madness.

The "Big Dance" can easily become the bane of a manager's existence during the month of March as one can't help but worry about productivity as conversations about college basketball are frequent and remnants of tournament brackets gone awry are found discarded in the trash.

In our lead article we offer some suggestions for managing March Madness in your organization and improving employee morale in the process.

Our second article examines the effect that leaders have on their organization's culture. Often times leaders fail to recognize the impact of their actions on the culture of their team, department, or organization and cause undesirable cultural changes in the process.

We've also got a QBQ! Personal Accountability QuickNote from John Miller as well as a great article on cultural change by Jim Collins as part of our Featured Guru series.

Power quote:

"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

-John Maxwell

In This Issue

Embracing March Madness and Improving Employee Morale

What Kind of Culture are your Leaders Creating?

Featured Guru - Jim Collins

QBQ! Personal Accountability QuickNote - Living Like Larry

Embracing March Madness and Improving Employee Morale

It's that special time of the year for college basketball fans. That's right, get out your brackets it's March Madness once again. Offices and workplaces around the country will be abuzz with the latest news and information about the big tournament.

All this excitement and time spent following the "Big Dance" can have a considerable impact on organizational productivity - a 3.5 billion dollar loss of it according to recent studies.

Before you send out that scathing email detailing the negative impact March Madness can have on productivity you should know that embracing the "Big Dance" brings with it considerable benefits that can outweigh the potential for lost productivity.

Events such as March Madness have an amazing ability to encourage camaraderie, forge new friendships, and greatly increase the level of morale in your organization.

Click here to learn how March Madness can be leveraged to improve employee morale in your organization

What Kind of Culture are your Leaders Creating?

The culture of an organization, department, or team is largely determined by the leaders within that unit.

This can have great advantages when leveraged properly. However, when the leaders of a team or organization are unaware of the impact they have on their culture it can result in serious cultural damage.

I'll share a personal example of the negative impact that managers can unwittingly have on their organization's culture and offer some suggestions to prevent this unwanted cultural erosion from taking place.

Click here to read on...

Featured Guru - Jim Collins

Jim Collins is the author of one of the most influential business books in the past decade, Good to Great - Why some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't.

Collins has written a large number of articles over the past 15 years and this week we'd like to feature an article by Collins on one of our favorite topics -- cultural change -- that serves as a good follow up to the article from our last newsletter about taking cultural transformation too far.

In his article Collins discusses the importance of an organization's mission and core values to its identity and offers some suggestions for determining what elements of an organization's culture must not be tampered with when undergoing change.

Read Jim Collins' article here...

QBQ! Personal Accountability QuickNote - Living Like Larry

This week's QBQ! story comes from a most unlikely place - the TSA security checkpoint line at a major airport. At this particular airport, a TSA agent named Larry "raised the bar" when it came to keeping customers happy who had been delayed on their flights home. This is a great story of the QBQ! in action! Read on...

Creating a culture of Personal Accountability should be a top priority for all organizations. Team members who think and practice Personal Accountability can bring about incredible changes for an organization. The blame game disappears, morale increases, and customer experiences are enhanced all thanks to the power of Personal Accountability.

The Rainmaker Group is proud to offer powerful day long QBQ! workshops instilling the power of Personal Accountability into teams and organizations across the country. For more information about these workshops or to purchase John Miller's books, QBQ! and Flipping the Switch Visit our website at: http://www.personalaccountabilityatwork.com

John Miller is author of QBQ! The Question Behind The Question, the authoritative guide to practicing Personal Accountability.

Important questions for you:

Is your organization living up to its full potential?

Is high turnover hurting your bottom line?

Do your team members create the powerful experiences your customers deserve?

Do team members have difficulty effectively communicating with others?

Bring The Rainmaker Group in to your organization and start realizing your organization's full potential. Together, we deliver powerful and motivating keynote speeches, design customized training programs and workshops, help identify barriers to communication, and much more. We don't sell training out of the box, but rather insist on customizing it to your needs! For more info, send an e-mail to info@therainmakergroupinc.com

Or call 1-866-988-7246

About us:

The Rainmaker Group is a People Maximization and Development group located in Bismarck, ND. Our mission is to help those we serve make their difference in the world.

We hope you found this newsletter interesting and informative. If you like what you read, please give us a shout, we'd love to hear from you!

"If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade."

- Tom Peters

Sincerely,

All of us here at The Rainmaker Group

1-866-988-7246

info@therainmakergroupinc.com

http://www.therainmakergroupinc.com

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