Understanding Your Value Proposition

Getting your value proposition right and knowing when and how to tweak it is extremely important. Intense competition and change are forcing many companies to re-visit their original value propositions. The best value propositions are those that solve major pain points for lots of people. Start by looking at how your customers spend their time – what frustrations do they encounter?

Science Explains Creativity

With so much emphasis on creativity and innovation, it helps if we can all cut directly to the chase – namely what's behind creativity? Thanks to various scientific studies and author Jonah Lehrer, we have great insights into where creativity comes from. In his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works , Lehrer highlights some very important research that explains creativity.

For starters, creativity is not one train of thought. It is about how people can switch their thinking from one mode to another. For example, we all get stuck on some problem, struggling to break through and reach a solution. What creative people do is they switch gears from say analytical thinking to day dreaming and imagination. Knowing when and how to make these switches is critical to creative problem solving.

Elevating the HR Function - Part 2 of 2

Part I of this article addressed the issue of elevating the HR Function into a more strategic type function, as opposed to an administrative type function. Part 2 of this article will describe several strategic ideas for moving HR into the strategic function it must become.

In Part I, we mentioned the importance of HR as it relates to core competencies. Organization's need to maintain and build their core competencies since this is the source of competitive advantages in the marketplace. Core competencies have a lot to do with recruiting and retaining the best people. Obviously, HR should play a lead role in this mandate. However, we do not want to stop here since there are numerous other strategic issues related to HR.