9Lenses just announced their exclusive partnership program for executive coaches. By partnering with 9Lenses, executive coaches receive unfettered access to the suite of organizational learning applications. 9Lenses’ executive coach program is designed to equip coaches with quantitative performance measurement tools.

“Executive coaches are masters at leadership development,” says CEO and Founder of 9Lenses Edwin Miller. “An executive coach can transform the entire culture of a business. Unfortunately, fewer than twenty-five percent of executive coaches ever provide quantitative data to demonstrate the impact of their services.”

9Lenses insight platform helps coaches reveal key sources of organizational dysfunction like misalignment, personality conflicts, and communication bottlenecks. In just a few hours, coaches can ascertain any organization’s top opportunities and challenges. Most importantly, 9Lenses’ secure cloud-based software applications help coaches track and quantify the evolution of their client’s organizations over time.

Consider how powerful that information becomes when placed in the hands of an executive coach. A coach is often an executive’s closest sounding board, council, and friend. With 9Lenses, that coach can help executives pinpoint actionable areas for improvement across the entire company, and track their client’s success as they flourish.

MetrixGlobal LLC recently found that the average return on executive coaching was about $7.90 for every $1 invested. Unfortunately, few coaches have tools at their disposal to demonstrate their ROI. 9Lenses’ executive coach application suite tracks the health of every part of their client’s organization and helps coaches articulate the direct and indirect improvements caused by their training efforts.

With 9Lenes, partners gain:

Most executives I speak with intuitively understand the value of leveraging “social” business solutions. Companies that foster transparent collaboration, innovative pipelines, and passionate communities are redefining the marketplace.

Success is all about breaking down bureaucratic hierarchies, doing a few things well, and creating continuous social feedback loops. Unfortunately, “social” solutions are great, but social tools are often too unstructured, disconnected, and complex to gain traction in enterprise-level boardrooms. 

Welcome to the Social Era:

I’m borrowing the term “Social Era” from the popular Stanford lecturer Nilofer Merchant. She’s argues quite persuasively that Schumpeter and Taylor’s traditional model of strategy is dead. Traditional strategy rests on 5 key pillars that Merchant believes are incompatible with flexible, collaborative business communities:

Ever get that 2:30 feeling? Where the workday slows and productivity slumps? Have you seen those 5-hour energy commercials which promise that 3:30 boost? At 9Lenses, we have a different way to slam through the afternoon malaise: push-ups. You've all heard of them, done them, and probably hate them. Well, at 9Lenses we don’t believe in limiting organic, all-natural growth to our business; no, we’re holistic. We take care of our bodies, too.

The interns took 9Lenses to a “whole-nother-level” by doing 10 push-ups every 15 minutes.  “We give our bodies a chance to get some blood flowing.  Besides, taking a quick break from the desk is never a bad thing,” stated push-up co-founder and Analyst Intern, Patrick Farrell.  Another co-founder, Sales and Marketing Intern Ryan Williams added, “It keeps you fresh, energized, and physically fit all at the same time.  It's a struggle to ‘get after it’ in the gym when you’re at work all day, so we decided to bring the workout here.”

The push-ups encourage healthy competition within the whole office.  Sometimes we compete to see who can do the most push-ups at a time. We have even gotten Zach Enos (Marketing Catalyst), Steve Shaffer (VP of Client Services), and Isaiah McPeak (Head Analyst) to gain from the pain. Although the winners are usually Interns (it should be noted here that Zach does 1 arms, so as not to pain our tender egos), who’s youthful vigor and good looks provide an unbeatable edge, the whole company enjoys the event.  Our office was skeptical at first, but our continued perseverance has won the critics, improved our physicality, and generated an awesome team environment at 9Lenses.

Can’t stand push-ups? Is it too hard for ya to crank out 10 every 15 minutes? Try starting with just a couple each hour.  It will give you something to look forward to, and give you a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day. Push-ups aren’t the only way to mix in a little fun. Get off your duff and bring a little competitive fire to your office!

The Point: Every day doesn’t have to be all work and no play. The best teams focus on working hard, but also enjoy winning and collaborating together. A fun and loose environment can be productive and hard working as well. Try something new in your organization that will bring people together, foster camaraderie, and lighten up the atmosphere. Let us know how you incorporate business and pleasure into your work environment.

As we say here at 9Lenses, get out there and turn that Insight Into Action!

Our world is dominated by data.  Ones and zeros are the lifeblood of business, entertainment, and social interactions.  A 2011 McKinsey study concluded that "five new kinds of value might come from abundant data: 1) creating transparency in organizational activities that can be used to increase efficiency; 2) enabling more thorough analysis of employee and systems performances in ways that allow experiments and feedback; 3) segmenting populations in order to customize actions; 4) replacing/supporting human decision making with automated algorithms; and 5) innovating new business models, products, and services."

Data is pervasive.  Businesses spend billions of dollars per year acquiring and utilizing tools that help them collect, store, and analyze data.  Unfortunately, many of these tools are limited in function and, therefore, benefit. 

Many tools attempt to help businesses diagnose and remediate problem areas. Unfortunately, most are too narrow and focus on isolated domain silos.  These tools could provide rich content in an single area, but lack the sort of holistic context businesses need to succeed. 

As McKinsey rightly pointed out in their 2011 study, there is tremendous value in "abundant data."  The real challenge for businesses is to leverage that data across business silos--to connect the dots and understand the strategic impact of relevant data across the whole organization.  The 9Lenses metastructure empowers organizations to make sense of abundant data, analyze it, and then turn that unfiltered insight into meaningful action.

Unlike the narrowly focused tools that are ubiquitous in today's business environments, 9Lenses social discovery software applications provide a powerful assessment of all the drivers of business success: Assets, Processes, and Structure.  The 9Lenses has mapped every aspect of business into a simple and powerful hierarchy providing unparalleled insight.  As a result, companies can collect, analyze, and use data immediately--and they can use data not just in one business domain, but across nine areas that are key to business success.  The 9Lenses application suite sits atop the advanced insight Engine architecture integrating hard statistical data with user perspective trends through four layers of logic: Interview, Score, Interpret, Recommend. 

9Lenses can help you use Data to drive:

Strategy

• Reveal your organizations top challenges and opportunities for immediate improvement.
• Targeted action plans based on unfiltered insight from employees. 
• Tailored to efficiently and quickly meet organization needs.

Transparency

• Empower employees through social transactions by giving each person in the organization a voice.
• Candor and transparency are hallmarks of a healthy organization and facilitate corporate responsibility.  

Efficiency

• Streamline operations. 
• Crowd source business optimization

Better Analysis (Experiments and Feedback)

• A cutting edge metastructure that captures data and focuses analysis around nine critical areas that determine an organization's success. 
• Run social baselines at strategic intervals to encourage continuous improvement and track success.

Innovation

• Leverage your organization’s Internal IP.