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Reading Group Guide

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Discussion Group Questions

1. What percentage of our people are acting like DYNAMOS (i.e. acting as if they had a career, actively working to expand their skills and responsibilities)? What percentage are CRUISING (i.e. doing the job well, but not learning and growing)?

2. How can we manage differently in order to encourage more dynamism, and tolerate less cruising?

3. What are our enforced values (in the sense of the non-negotiable minimums that must be observed to belong to our organization)?

4. How well do we live up to the values we espouse? How well do our people think we live up to them? What must we do to better live up to our values?

5. Are we too tolerant of dysfunctional behaviors or "adequate" performance? What should we be less tolerant about?

6. How organized and disciplined are we in using our non-reimbursed time to invest in things that will make us more competitive?

7. How well are we performing on the following business processes?:

• Creating innovative solutions to client/customer problems
• Finding new, efficient ways to lower cost of performing our tasks
• Earning unprompted referrals from client work
• turning individual client assignments into long-term relationships
• continuously gathering market intelligence and tracking emerging client needs
• generating awareness of capabilities in important markets
• turning inquiries into assignments ("Sales Process" Effectiveness)
• Developing new services
• attracting high-quality new recruits
• Transferring skills to junior staff
• Developing and growing New Senior people from junior ranks
• Disseminating and sharing skills and knowledge
• Helping people to continue to grow and develop their capabilities throughout their careers

8. How well do our managers perform in the eyes of their subordinates? Do they pass the tests of Motives, Values, Competence and Style?

9. Is your firm culture one where firm life is to be enjoyed and not endured? Are your people "having fun" at what they do? If not, why not? How can the level of fun and fulfillment be improved?

10. Are we a firm of "True Professionals" or one of "Good Technicians"? How do we describe our firm and why? How can we raise the degree of professionalism?