REPOST: It Really is Good Works

This was originally posted in 2015 and needed this morning as a reminder of the importance of the basic things of life. Enjoy discovering your purposed work!

https://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com/2015/03/it-really-is-good-works_4.html

Equal Works

DC & MD get Real, Right & Funky on the Women's Tribute Show with our guest hosts activist and workforce consultant, Latanyua Robinson and Memphis Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalist, President, Siobhan Riley.  Enjoy The Show!
http://thefunkypolitics.kudzukiannetwork.com/funky-politics-radio-womens-tribute-showwomens-march-to-metoo-kudzukian

Knowledge Works

The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out 

(Proverbs 18:15)

February has emerged as one of my favorite months to spend time online and on social media. During Black History Month, I get exposure to many dynamic stories that force me to evaluate what I was taught during my public school education, but most importantly, to seek additional knowledge and learning for myself. My professional background is not in education, but I have been spending a considerable amount of time in public schools in support of career readiness and workforce development. Last week, I heard a teacher’s reference to Margaret Ammond’s definition that the purpose of education has evolved from producing a literate society to producing a learning society (http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_update/eu201207_infographic.pdf).

Referring back to February and Black History Month: It was during this time last year that our church used the weekly announcements to focus on Education by introducing the congregation to stories of the Rosenwald Schools. During the early twentieth century, Julius Rosenwald, an executive of Sears, Roebuck, and Company, partnered with Booker T. Washington to build quality schools to educate black children in the south. The purpose of that Sunday morning program was to solicit people to contribute to preserving the history of these schools. To learn more about the initiative, visit https://savingplaces.org/places/rosenwald-schools.

That evening, I searched the related Fisk University archives (http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/) and proudly learned that I was a benefactor of the Rosenwald investment in education. My mother graduated from Holman School, one of three segregated high schools built in Arkansas County, Arkansas for black children. After desegregation in 1970, Holman remained a critical part of our community, yet there was a lot about the history of the school literally in my back yard that I did not know. Desiring to learn more, I came across this link that gave more insight into the legacy http://www.abandonedar.com/holman-school/.

Fast forward to present day and the education reform debate continues. I am witnessing the pendulum shifts from a focus on humanities, to STEM-centric, to the current STEAM emphasis. Without jumping into politics, it is safe to say that the current Education Secretary has not eased or enhanced the debate on what the country defines as quality education. At least today, education is still viewed as a human right. At this point, I am more grateful that as a parent and a lifelong learner myself, I am not limited to what is taught in schools, nor does curriculum limit my family and community’s education. Education begins at home.

Stay tuned and follow the journey of education engagement, economic development, and entrepreneurial readiness. We value your input. Feel free to comment, or drop us a line at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. 

Greatest Works

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:4)

2018 has started as a season of new beginnings. We are eight years into the Latrobe journey, recognizing a genesis of new starts and revised focus. While we continue our efforts in career readiness and commercial readiness, an area of need that I never imagined addressing and humbly serving is with youth workforce development. Here’s the backstory:

I got my first job in high school because I enrolled in Distributive Education Clubs of America, commonly known as DECA (https://www.deca.org/). Back then, a major component of the course and benefit to students was that we were required to obtain work experience. In exchange for high school credit hours, students were expected to have gainful employment in our local community, working 15-20 hours per week. My personal motivation was two-fold: 1) I wanted to work to get out of the school day early. 2) I needed to work to earn my own money toward the purchase my first car.

Fast forward thirty years: Latrobe have been contracted to assist our local school district with career navigation and career readiness implementation. The high school subscribes to Jobs for America’s Graduates, JAG (http://www.jag.org/) as an evidence based workforce development model as a preventive measure against dropping out for at-risk youths. Thirty seven core work competencies are grouped into six outcome clusters (http://old.jag.org/model_competencies.htm): 

• Career Development Competencies (6) 
• Job Attainment Competencies (7) 
• Job Survival Competencies (7) 
• Basic Skills Competencies (5) 
• Leadership and Self-Development Competencies (5) 
• Personal Skills Competencies (7)

In the middle, I am curious as to how an entire generation of children missed out on the importance of the high school work experience as an element self-sufficiency and growth. I say that because as 2018 began, I got a call from one of my former high school teachers asking for a personal favor in coaching her granddaughter, a recent college graduate, who has little work evidence on her resume to support the return-on-investment from her education to sustain her salary expectations. The grandmother remarked that these children graduate from high school with fewer life skills than we (our generation) learned in high school (how to obtain, survive, maintain, and develop, and thrive while working).

Instead of blaming the children, I challenge economic development (education, business, and entrepreneurial communities). How are children expected to develop the basic work skills if not invested in and required to obtain said skills as youth? The capstone of the semester long project with the school district is a community sponsored summer jobs program with a purposed intent to match the needs of the business community with the desire of students to earn valuable work experience by

• Promoting entry level jobs for up to 100 students who participate in career readiness
• Marketing job opportunities for local business owners who want to support workforce development
• Providing a potential pipeline of students and job opportunities for the JAG program

Stay tuned and follow the journey of summer youth workforce development in our community. Education, economics, and workforce development all go hand-in-hand (Marilyn Smith, SETX Workforce Solutions). If you have suggestions about what has worked in your experience, feel free to comment, or drop us a line at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. 

#MeToo! and Sexual Assault in the Workplace

Assessing Good Works

Technology has changed the way we live and work. Instead of meeting with someone in-person, we Google Hangout or conference call; instead of calling on the phone, we e-mail or text. Communicating is easier than it’s ever been, but less human interaction has produced people who don’t know how to communicate and who don’t know how to interact with others.

LATROBE’s Career Readiness portfolio, as the name suggests, ensures you have the skills you need to get started in your profession or to advance in your profession. Whether you’re an individual interested in career growth or a leader of managers or directors, your success will depend, in large part, on how well you communicate and interact with others.  

Technology is also changing the workplace as automation is slowly phasing-out workers. As robots are programmed to have technical skills (i.e. hard skills), they lack the ability to communicate, lead, or work with people. As a result—and this is true based on what I’ve seen—communication skills and social skills have become important again.

According to a January 6, 2017, article in Forbes, in which 100 CEO’s, human-resource managers, and job recruiters were polled, nearly all of them said they value soft skills more than they value hard skills. Why? The reasoning was, if an employee can collaborate, communicate, and lead, they can be taught how to do the job.

How are your social skills—are you at ease interacting with co-workers and superiors? It’s important you answer this question honestly because having poor social skills will impede your ability to advance at work. If you’re not sure how good your social skills are, you can always ask someone, but with so much at stake, I recommend an in-depth, scientific, knowledge-based approach.  

LATROBE knows the value of personal and professional growth, so if you’re interested in finding out how effective your communication and social skills are, we offer the Human Asset Imaging® Inventory, a 128-question assessment that measures communication and social skills, indicating where you are strong and where you are weak. Our assessment is unique because in addition to measuring aptitudes, attitudes, perceptions, and skills, it also evaluates knowledge and understanding of what is required to successfully work alone or as part of a team.

If you’re in charge of managers or directors, our assessment can help you too. It will quantify interpersonal knowledge and learning progress and allow you to gauge and manage monetary and time investments. By using the assessment to measure knowledge and identify gaps, you’ll be able to target training dollars and build sustainable development plans. We also provide group reports to help identify training needs.

The Digital Age has produced increased convenience and deteriorating social skills. Don’t let social awkwardness or poor communication skills keep you from realizing your potential. Get started today by purchasing an interpersonal skills assessment at http://hai-institute.com/product/hai-inventory-feedback/. 

Commercial Readiness

LATROBE’s Commercial Readiness portfolio helps business owners make their businesses more effective, more efficient, and more profitable. This is a great time of year to consider these things because 2018 is around the corner, and by setting your business goals now, you’ll be able to hit the ground running. So if you want to grow your business, here are some things to consider.

Plan

It’s common for business owners to go into business without first deciding what they want to accomplish and how they plan to accomplish it. Instead, these business owners—and I may be describing you—simply hope to sell their products and services and make money, and while this is a common business practice, it’s hardly an effective one.   

Business success requires planning, and you need a strategic plan, which lists your goals and explains how you will accomplish them. Your strategic plan includes strategies, and there is a comprehensive (overall) strategy for your business and strategies for each area of your business. Each strategy has accompanying goals, with short-term strategies (1 year) and long-term strategies (3 to 5 years).  

Your strategic plan keeps you focused on what’s important. You’re faced with a never-ending list of tasks to complete every day, but by keeping your goals in mind, you’ll know which activities will help you meet your goals and which will not, so it will be obvious which tasks you should spend time working on. Your strategic plan will answer questions like this:

• What are my profit-margin goals?
• What do I want to do next month? Next year?
• What is my sales goal?
• Which customers am I pursuing?
• Which customers provide the biggest profit margin?

Get Help

Nearly every small business (more than 96%) is run by one person: the owner. These are single-person businesses. The remaining businesses (less than 4%) are employer businesses, which means they employ at least one person in addition to the owner. Here’s why it’s important that you scale-up and become an employer business.

Annual revenue for single-person businesses averages $18,000; for employer businesses it’s $1.5 million. Scaling-up and expanding your business capacity simply means you’re not doing everything yourself. It’s not possible for you to go out and sell and market—and be the face of the business—then be expected to do all of the work. You can only do one thing at a time, so when you’re working on one task, another task isn’t getting done.

Do what you do best and get others to do the rest. If a business owner is an introvert, is it a good idea to have them make presentations before groups of people, with them sweating and stammering because they’re nervous? Or would it have been better for them to have spent that time doing what they’re good at while having a polished speaker make the presentations?  

If you want to grow your business, your strategic plan might have questions like these:

• How do I scale-up to become an employer business?
• What talent or expertise do I need on my team to offset what’s lacking?
• Who do I need on my team to help me accomplish my goals?

Conclusion

If your business strategy is selling as many of your products or as much of your service as possible, you don’t have a business strategy; and if you take pride in being a jack-of-all-trades, you’re probably not making much money. As 2017 comes to an end, create a 2018 strategic plan and assemble a team. Your business will need both to realize its potential.

Finally, have you ever said you’re going to take your business to the next level—but don’t know what level it’s on now? We can help. Few business owners view their businesses objectively, but in order to grow your business, you have to do just that. FLITER^® is a business operations and management assessment we administer that will assess where your business is and show you how to take it where you want it to go. To learn more, visit http://www.fliter.biz or  https://www.latrobellc.com/services.html.