4 Ways to Cultivate Talent in Your Teams

AT&T helps millions of customers connect with entertainment, mobile, high-speed Internet, and voice services.

Employing nearly 300,000 people worldwide, AT&T is committed to both hiring and shaping talent. AT&T University, an executive-taught leadership development program in the company’s Dallas headquarters, trains emerging leaders through in-house and satellite campuses across the U.S.

But AT&T needs more than just training; it needs innovation. So, in partnership with Georgia Tech and Udacity, Inc., AT&T created the first-ever Online Master of Science in Computer Science degree and self-paced, fast-track technical credentials called Nanodegrees across web and mobile development, data analytics, and tech entrepreneurship.

“We can’t depend on just hiring and the traditional educational system as sources for retooling or finding new talent,” said corporate communications manager Marty Richter. “We’re focused on aligning company leaders to strategic business innovation and results, skilling and re-skilling our 280,000 employees and inspiring a culture of continuous learning.”

Great managers are organized, courageous, and encouraging. But to maximize the team potential, they need another critical skill: finding and developing talent.

Strategy, Soft Skills, and Coaching

The ability to see and unlock talent is crucial to running a top-notch team.

But growing talent is not always easy. It may fly in the face of traditional hiring practices or may require you to go against your gut when evaluating current employees.

As you look to maximize the impact of your team, here are four steps to consider:

1. Plan Strategically

While individual employees are often asked where they see themselves in five years, few leaders project how they’d like to build their team in that same time-frame.

Most leaders are good at recognizing potential, but they rarely think ahead on long-term staffing. If you know the areas of your organization that need the most help, focus efforts on strategic long-term staffing to make it happen.

What skills, abilities, or experiences will your next employees need? Dream it today so you can hire it tomorrow!

2. Focus on Soft Skills, Not Expertise

Did you know that the World Economic Forum predicts 65% of today’s jobs will no longer exist in 15 years?

Often when people look for talent (either in or outside our company), they put too much emphasis on performance or expertise. But since we can’t know what tomorrow’s challenges will be, the most important skills aren’t technical abilities. Emotional intelligence, a passion for learning, and the ability to relate with others are essential traits for future success.

3. Develop Talent Through Coaching

Good managers are invested coaches.

No matter how skilled your team is, continually look for ways to help them grow. This may mean offering on-going training opportunities, mentorships, or “baby steps” toward leadership. Do your leaders delegate parts of their job to younger professionals so people can learn side-by-side? Hands-on leadership training can increase employee engagement while infusing passion into your organizational DNA.

4. Evaluate as You Go

Often managers are the cap that reduces growth and creativity.

Does this sound like you? If so, why?

Perhaps you’re not sharing the load or challenging team members to grow. Provide employees with tools to assess professional goals and offer critical feedback to address poor performance or new responsibilities. Meet with other managers to assess progress regarding developing talent. And keep the dialogue flowing about business strategies and people’s individual roles within this vision.

Become the Chief Talent Agent

Great managers are also great talent agents.

The most important factor in your company's future is your ability to recognize and develop potential. No other factor will make such a significant impact in shaping high performing teams!

Tackle Big-Picture Projects Using a Cost-Benefit Analysis

Start at the bottom.

That’s what legendary basketball coach John Wooden did every year. Wooden did not start with layups or defensive strategy – he started with shoelaces.

Coach Wooden, who won 10 championships in 12 years with U.C.L.A., had a reputation for fortifying the fundamentals before moving forward. Before his athletes played, they had to practice pulling up their socks, leaving no loose flaps in the sneakers, and pull laces tight to avoid ankle sprains.

 “He didn’t want blisters,” said former player Rich Levin. “I mean, that’s not a serious illness, but you could miss a game or two.”

Whether you’re a new business owner or a seasoned veteran, sometimes we all need to start at the bottom.

Have you refreshed the fundamentals of your business plan lately? Managing finances is essential to success, and one tool of the trade is a cost-benefit analysis. Whether you’re considering a new venture or weighing a staffing decision, a cost-benefit analysis can help you decide which projects to tackle and what resources are needed.

The Basics of a Cost-Benefit Analysis

When you perform a cost-benefit analysis (CBA), you make a comparative assessment of all the benefits you anticipate from your project and all the costs needed to implement and support the changes this brings.

Here are four steps to account for revenue and expenses in your CBA:

1. Prepare a Balance Sheet

Begin by carefully examining your costs and expenses (or money-in, money-out).

After you categorize expenses in your balance sheet, you are ready to weigh upcoming business decisions with a rubric that puts potential benefits and costs in context.

2. Give Dollar Values to Anticipated Costs & Benefits

A CBA, in a nutshell, means adding money in benefits plus money in costs over a set period of time.

A functional CBA seeks to express benefits and costs in monetary equivalents. Some CBA’s are easy to quantify. For example, adding new seating to your restaurant might incur a one-time expense of $60,000, but result in $7,000 of extra sales each month.

Clearly, those benefits outweigh the costs. 

Some CBAs are more complex. Perhaps hiring a team member will cost $40,000, but the increased sales and productivity are hard to estimate. In this case, do your best to express benefits and costs in monetary terms to facilitate the assessment of a project’s net value.

3. Weigh Future Values or Expenses

As you build your CBA, remember to make projections for all phases of the project.

Some of your costs may occur only once (like capital investment, equipment purchases, etc.), and others will be recurring (like staffing, maintenance, or increased utility bills). The farther into the future you look, the more important it is to convert the net value (of benefits over costs) into today’s dollars. As you refine your CBA, consider inflation, interest rates, and even opportunity costs (the potential benefits that might be lost by passing on a different project in favor of this one).

Here you may want to run a sensitivity analysis, which is a “what if” analysis that goes back to your CBA and plays around with assumptions. For example, if you had uncertainty about sales projections, you could vary projections by several percentage points before re-running the analysis.

4. Make an Informed Decision

Now it’s time to compare total costs to total benefits and make a decision.

Do benefits outweigh costs? Do they do so significantly? In this case, you should green-light the project. If more capital is needed, you’ll need to rethink your goals or form a new strategy.

No matter what the decision, a CBA can be critical to the success of any project, allowing you to make non-critical choices and keep your business running smoothly!

3 of the Coolest Sticker Marketing Campaigns EVER

For many decades, stickers and labels have been helping to establish brands, elect politicians, spark micro-marketing engagement, and build social proof.

Stickers and labels are more popular than ever. Just sit in a coffee shop for 20 minutes and look at the water bottles, laptops, or notebooks of young people. Stickers are not only inexpensive and enduring, but they are also fun for users!

Build an Enduring Brand with Custom Stickers and Labels

Looking for creative inspiration? Here are three examples of sticker marketing campaigns that left a tangible impression with every single viewer:

1. Cillit Bang: Destroying Dirt Wherever You Find It

Cillit Bang is a household cleaner.

To build credibility and marketing momentum, the company placed transparent stickers on coins that were halfway cleaned by the product, highlighting the contrast between the filthy and the clean. Coins were then given as change to customers, demonstrating that people could “bank on” Cillit’s ability to get the job done.

This simple sticker drove home the obvious brand message: Cillit Bang destroys dirt wherever you find it.

The effect was simple, surprising, and successful. The company saw a sales lift of 337% in markets where the campaign was implemented.

2. Gillette: The “Ouch” Factor

Could your business use stickers to supplement the materials you already have?

That’s what one razor company did.

Gillette launched a strategic marketing campaign using stickers smaller than a palm. Instead of paying for extra outdoor ads and signs in Manhattan, Gillette enhanced signs it was already using. Everywhere Gillette had an outdoor sign; they simply added a small custom sticker that looked like a bloody tissue. Stuck on the faces of the men in their ads, the stickers made it appear as if the person had nicked themselves shaving.

Gillette turned heads citywide and got people talking!

3. Le Cactus: Screaming Hot Wings

How can you pair a sticker with people’s senses?

Le Cactus answered this brilliantly with their spicy wings campaign. To build appeal for their spicy wing specials, Le Cactus put a sticker of a man screaming on the back of taxis throughout the city.  

If that wasn’t visible enough, they took things a step farther, lining up stickers so that the man’s tongue precisely laid over the cars’ brake lights. Every time the brakes were touched the tongue looked like it was burning.

At the end of the campaign, the restaurant reported increased customer visits, high-level brand recognition, and (best of all!) tingling tongues.

Any Message, Anywhere

The beautiful thing about adhesive products is that they can take any form and can be used to adapt to any existing product.

Whether your sticker or label is a stand-alone promotion or something you add to presentation folders or brochures, any brand name, slogan, or image can be used for your sticker. From window clings and car decals to logo stickers and custom product or packaging labels, well-designed stickers generate low-cost exposure, make lasting impressions, and build word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

When done right, promotional stickers can do more than promote your brand; they can become profitable products on their own.

Want to chat about adhesive marketing options? Contact us today to brainstorm!

Tackle Big-Picture Projects Using a Cost-Benefit Analysis

Start at the bottom.

That’s what legendary basketball coach John Wooden did every year. Wooden did not start with layups or defensive strategy – he started with shoelaces.

Coach Wooden, who won 10 championships in 12 years with U.C.L.A., had a reputation for fortifying the fundamentals before moving forward. Before his athletes played, they had to practice pulling up their socks, leaving no loose flaps in the sneakers, and pull laces tight to avoid ankle sprains.

 “He didn’t want blisters,” said former player Rich Levin. “I mean, that’s not a serious illness, but you could miss a game or two.”

Whether you’re a new business owner or a seasoned veteran, sometimes we all need to start at the bottom.

Have you refreshed the fundamentals of your business plan lately? Managing finances is essential to success, and one tool of the trade is a cost-benefit analysis. Whether you’re considering a new venture or weighing a staffing decision, a cost-benefit analysis can help you decide which projects to tackle and what resources are needed.

The Basics of a Cost-Benefit Analysis

When you perform a cost-benefit analysis (CBA), you make a comparative assessment of all the benefits you anticipate from your project and all the costs needed to implement and support the changes this brings.

Here are four steps to account for revenue and expenses in your CBA:

1. Prepare a Balance Sheet

Begin by carefully examining your costs and expenses (or money-in, money-out).

After you categorize expenses in your balance sheet, you are ready to weigh upcoming business decisions with a rubric that puts potential benefits and costs in context.

2. Give Dollar Values to Anticipated Costs & Benefits

A CBA, in a nutshell, means adding money in benefits plus money in costs over a set period of time.

A functional CBA seeks to express benefits and costs in monetary equivalents. Some CBA’s are easy to quantify. For example, adding new seating to your restaurant might incur a one-time expense of $60,000, but result in $7,000 of extra sales each month.

Clearly, those benefits outweigh the costs. 

Some CBAs are more complex. Perhaps hiring a team member will cost $40,000, but the increased sales and productivity are hard to estimate. In this case, do your best to express benefits and costs in monetary terms to facilitate the assessment of a project’s net value.

3. Weigh Future Values or Expenses

As you build your CBA, remember to make projections for all phases of the project.

Some of your costs may occur only once (like capital investment, equipment purchases, etc.), and others will be recurring (like staffing, maintenance, or increased utility bills). The farther into the future you look, the more important it is to convert the net value (of benefits over costs) into today’s dollars. As you refine your CBA, consider inflation, interest rates, and even opportunity costs (the potential benefits that might be lost by passing on a different project in favor of this one).

Here you may want to run a sensitivity analysis, which is a “what if” analysis that goes back to your CBA and plays around with assumptions. For example, if you had uncertainty about sales projections, you could vary projections by several percentage points before re-running the analysis.

4. Make an Informed Decision

Now it’s time to compare total costs to total benefits and make a decision.

Do benefits outweigh costs? Do they do so significantly? In this case, you should green-light the project. If more capital is needed, you’ll need to rethink your goals or form a new strategy.

No matter what the decision, a CBA can be critical to the success of any project, allowing you to make non-critical choices and keep your business running smoothly!