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After exploring various social media options, we decided to use LinkedIn to create a forum for dialog among our colleagues, users, and friends. Actually, we set up the group as an experiment and started getting requests to join the next day! So we're off, and we'd like to invite you to join us. Ask a question to the group, post a story or an example, share your insights. Here's the link to sign up. We hope to meet you there.

Having just read yet another discussion group thread about HR/HRD having a "seat at the table" with senior management in organizations, I thought I'd take a minute to share our way of making this happen.

Well, actually, it was the Six Boxes Summer Institute, held two weeks ago at Islandwood, a sustainable education center on several hundred acres of forest a few miles from our offices on Bainbridge Island near Seattle.

We learned a lot of things, but one of them is that we will definitely do this again. And we might add some other events to our annual calendar as a result, too. Here's what one participant wrote:

"Six Boxes Camp has been added to my 'short list' of extraordinary life experiences.
I expect like the others, it will have a major impact on my future. Thank you."

Now let me share some of what we learned.

After the larger group of participants in our Six Boxes Institute departed, we spent an intense and fun two days with the small group whom we fondly refer to as our Six Boxes Accelerators – those who chose to dive more deeply into the tools and their applications on the path toward certification.

Day 2 of the Six Boxes Summer Institute was a demonstration of Managing and Leading with The Six Boxes® Approach, our newest program for developing “people managers” in organizations who can connect the day-to-day activities of their people to business results.  Normally broken into two half days with on-the-job homework in between, we  did a “run through” to demonstrate the lean, flexible program for enabling managers to actively develop their people.  We finished the program with 45 minutes of presentation and discussion among participants with Julie Capsambelis, Organizational Development Specialists at Syniverse Technologies, who has spearheaded implementation of the program at her company, garnering strong support from the CEO on down and integrating training with coaching and accountability in the Company’s performance management system to take management practices and processes to a new level.

The green beauty of the Pacific Northwest welcomed participants to a week of learning and investigation about how the Six Boxes Approach can improve performance in organizations through practical and effective management practices. Our first day of the Six Boxes Summer Institute on Bainbridge Island was full, including a tour of the Islandwood facility, a center devoted to education and demonstration of sustainable architecture, energy use, and environmental husbandry.

Tom Gram posted an interesting list of ideas on how to use web 2.0 tools to build a Community of Practice for Managers. It's a helpful list of prompts for how to develop managers without defaulting to training or depending on mentoring from senior managers. Communities of Practice hold great promise when there is the right balance between structure and flexibility. Using varied virtual tools, managers have the opportunity to engage with others and accelerate their development without waiting for scheduled events. The potential of self-directed learning depends on loose but guided structures that create opportunities for learning and access to knowledge. These ideas are an exciting way to step out of the training box and use technology to facilitate development.

To all of you who have considered or planned on attending the Six Boxes Institute June 21-24 on Bainbridge Island, the early registration discount of 15% ends June 1st at midnight. Of course, we will gladly accept registrations up to the day of the program. We hope many of you who have inquired, and those who have expressed interest, will be able to join us. To learn more, either check out the details on our web page or just call or email us directly. 

We believe that if you clearly connect the day-to-day activities of people to the goals the organization needs to achieve through their valuable work outputs, and then align and balance all the factors that influence their ability to perform, you will fully engage your employees. But let’s drop down to the working level beyond theory for a moment (even though we’ve proven the theory with clients!). Assuming that you know about the Performance Chain and the Six Boxes Model , here are eight steps that will help you strengthen employee engagement.

Like millions of others, we recently rented Blind Side since we hadn't seen it at the theater. Sandra Bullock and academy award weren't an easy association so we were anxious to find out what was up. That, and I have 3 kids at home and finding good family movies is a challenge. The movie was better than expected, Sandra was fine (still not sure about the Oscar), but more importantly it left me thinking about how we evaluate people's capabilities.