I just completed a great two day meeting at the OI Partners quarterly meeting in Charlotte.
I was very impressed the with thought leadership and innovation that my fellow partners had in the areas of:
- Talent management
- Business development
- Innovative outplacement delivery
- New product development
- Digital marketing
- Client management
- Business management
This leads me to the area of benchmarking.
I found that listening and capturing all of the best practices of my fellow partners provided me with the creative spark and guidance to start making positive changes within my own organization. What I gained was:
- Ideas both big and small
- Validation for my own practices
- New perspectives
This same benchmarking process also works for our outplacement and career coaching clients. Through networking and business meetings they can benefit from being in a constant feedback loop that enables them to find new ideas and new ways to change their current behavior. From this they can generate the positive energy like what I had after meeting with all of my OI Partners thought leaders.
Reid Hoffman - the founder of LinkedIn and author of the great book "The Start-Up Of You" calls this approach being in "permanent beta". This approach is where you regard yourself as a project that is and will be in a constant state of improvement and growth. This approach will allow you to open those mental doors to let the new ideas come in and the benchmarking to take place
