Product

My main product is The Horsepower System; a novel management tool for getting the best from yourself and your employees.  You can use The Horsepower System^TM as a stand-alone self-help tool, or combine it with management coaching and consulting services provided by me or one of my partners (skilled engine mechanics who can tune your motivational engine to peak performance).  An executive summary describing The Horsepower System can be downloaded HERE.

STEP 1:  Diagnose Your Motivational Engine

The first step in my process is to assess your company's motivational engine using The Horsepower Survey^TM.  This powerful software can monitor each department in your organization separately and provide every manager and supervisor with his or her own leadership dashboard, metrics and leadership-development resources.  All we need to get started is  your organizational chart and a spreadsheet listing your employees and their email addresses.  The software can handle any size organization easily and inexpensively.

STEP 2:  Tune Your Engine to Peak Performance

Measuring motivational horsepower is the easy part.  Moving the needle on the dial is much more challenging.  It usually takes 4 months of concerted management effort to create a trust-based workplace that fires on all cylinders.

Step 2 of my process depends upon the results of step 1.  If your motivational engine is humming, then keep doing what you are doing.  If your engine is malfunctioning, my partners and I can provide coaching and consulting services to fix the problem.

Engine Repair:   If your horsepower is negative, it means that your motivational engine is malfunctioning and that your employees find it painful coming to work.  In this case, I would recommend 6 to 12 months of follow-up coaching to fix the problem. 

Fine-Tune Engine:  If you horsepower is in the zero to plus-5 range it means that your engine is humming along nicely and that your employees, for  the most part, enjoy their work.  In this case, I would recommend 4-6 months of follow-up coaching to fine-tune your engine to peak performance.

Monitor Engine: If your horsepower is in the plus 5 to plus 10 range, congratulations, your engine is already well tuned.  In this case I would recommend that you monitor your motivational engine periodically in "self-help mode" with minimal consulting.

STEP 3: ONGOING MONITORING

After your engine is tuned and you are familiar with The Horsepower System, you should continue using it in self-help mode.  Motivational horsepower, I suggest, is the master metric that drives everything else.  It is therefore the single most-important parameter a company can measure. 

Here are a few of the many ways that ongoing monitoring can drive business success:

• The monthly survey results provide a good excuse to meet with your employees and perform “preventative maintenance” on your valuable human capital.
• If the horsepower trend-line shows a downward deviation, management can assess and remediate the motivational malfunction before it affects the bottom line.
• Measure the ability of managers and supervisors to lead and engage their staffs. If Department A has high horsepower and Department B has low horsepower, management can investigate what Department A is doing right and replicate it.
• Monitor the effectiveness of programs designed to improve workplace engagement and productivity.
• Provide concrete evidence to employees that management is concerned about their core wellbeing.
• Detect looming turnover problems before they become a reality.  

 Coaching and Consulting Services

There are four types of coaching associated with The Horsepower System^TM.

1. Kickoff Meeting:  I like to conduct the kickoff meetings personally in order to get everybody committed to the horsepower process.  I achieve this by describing a more promising and successful future where everybody wins.  This session is for managers and employees. 

2. Monthly Coaching Sessions for Management: The Horsepower Survey is generally administered monthly. I recommend monthly coaching session at the outset to interpret the results and provide leadership tips for getting the score to go up.  These monthly sessions can be conducted in person or via teleconference.  These session can be discontinued once managers are comfortable interpreting the survey results on their own.

3. Monthly Focus groups for Employees and Managers:    One goal of the Horsepower System is to embed employee motivation into the day-to-day fabric of organizational life using monthly focus groups as the primary vehicle.  My partners and I can facilitate the initial focus groups until managers become comfortable facilitating them on their own.  The focus groups are analogous to the focus-groups used in marketing.  Just as marketers use focus groups to assess the needs of external customers, we will use focus groups to assess the needs of our internal customers, our employees.  The monthly focus groups will examine the survey results and then brainstorm on ways to fix any problems.   Put another way, the monthly survey results provide a good excuse for managers and employees to get together and communicate openly and honestly on ways improve the workplace climate.  These sessions will provide “preventative maintenance” to keep everybody functioning at their best.  The focus groups are powerful because the solutions reached  are agreed-upon, not imposed. 

4. Help Desk:  The help desk provides one-on-one coaching for managers on an as-needed basis.  This help can be provided via email, telephone, or using the message board built into the Horsepower System software.   

Please call or email me today for an initial consultation.

Paul Herr
Tel: 608-833-9446
Fax: 608-833-8021
peherr@chorus.net

Create a Win-Win Workplace where everyone benefits.

Resources:

• CLICK HERE for an executive summary describing The Horsepower System^TM
• CLICK HERE for a letter you can use to announce the survey to your employees.