Investing in certification and training can empower individuals and organizations to lead and thrive in today's dynamic world.

Certifications and training programs are relevant to a wide range of professions and industries. Asynchronous, digital-first, interactive, and self-directed learning certification and training offer benefits to individuals and organizations alike, including demonstrable achievement, performance measurement, and tools for analysis toward continuous improvement.

For individuals, certifications and training can help them develop the knowledge and skills they need to optimally use an organization's products and services, keep them engaged and up-to-date.

For organizations, certifications and training can help them develop an agile and resilient business model aligned with the principle of continuous learning.

Digital-first certification and training platforms and tools can provide individuals and organizations with the resources they need at a lower cost than traditional real-time, in-person, and hands-on training after the initial investment in content development. They also offer opportunities to support accessibility and localization, contribute to sustainability by reducing unnecessary travel, scale to serve the relevant number of users and utilize content format agnostic deployment, whereby core content can be developed once and used in a variety of formats in a circular and reusable manner.
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Certification and training powered by digital-first tools can help individuals and organizations acquire new knowledge and skills in an agile and timely manner, enabling them to further themselves and make new contributions to business and society. Certification and training help to develop a skills-based economy where people can be rewarded for their abilities as they apply their skills as problem solvers and value creators.
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Practitioners must build cross-disciplinary and functional capabilities to quickly learn the skills required to achieve their goals and sustain organizations and communities in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments, especially as work becomes more interconnected with technology.

Stimler Advantage guides organizations in developing a certification and training programs. 

Content Audit

Organizations should audit their existing content to identify materials that can be converted into certification and training materials. This audit will help identify evergreen and topical content opportunities to build upon, ensuring that certification and training programs are comprehensive, up-to-date, and relevant. Audits can also identify gaps, which can be filled with new content to create complete and informative programs.
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Content Creation 

When developing a certification and training program, organizations must determine the content elements (e.g., audiovisual, text, presentations, and quizzes) and sequencing to create a consistent, predictable, or exploratory user experience. Content creation requires dedicated personnel and resources, so organizations should develop a production schedule, frequency, and publishing process to ensure orderly and sustainable work. Organizations may do this work in-house or outsource it to experts. When creating content, organizations must consider how individual assets will exist and be used together and independently. Additionally, they must examine, define, and document copyright, trademark, and licensing considerations. Finally, organizations must determine how to recognize certification and training achievements (e.g., digital badges or certificates) and store, share, and secure user data over time.

Platform and Tools

Organizations should examine existing and potential digital platforms and tools to create, publish, store, manage, and deliver certification and training content. Platforms may include a suite of processes, systems, and workflows that are part of a holistic and integrated solution. Databases, contract management, licensing, media asset management, project management, and other systems may also be important. In addition to features and functionality, organizations should evaluate cost, ease of use, and support. Organizations may elect to use an existing platform with established audiences and users, develop their own hosted solution, or use a combination of these approaches. Include accessibility considerations when selecting and implementing platforms and tools. Metaverse platforms like gaming and augmented, mixed, and virtual reality environments merit consideration and development in a certification and training strategy.

Partnerships

To extend the impact of certification and training content, organizations should consider partnering with allied organizations. Partnerships can reach relevant audiences, share resources, and offer more comprehensive and valuable programs. Evaluate potential partners based on brand alignment, shared mission, complementary efforts, and user benefit. Formal agreements, shared metrics, and dedicated resources are essential for partnership success. Partnerships can vary in length and value, and require careful monitoring to ensure they meet goals.

Pricing Model

Organizations should carefully consider pricing models for certification and training programs. Factors include development and delivery costs, user value, market competition, and payment methods. Self-directed learning models can be offered as à la carte, subscription, or package pricing strategies. The goal is to encourage users to take, complete, and evangelize about the program, so pricing should be inclusive and fair to foster adoption and use.

Marketing and Communications

Organizations should develop a content marketing and communications approach to inform and convert users to take their certification and training programs. Approaches should include a package of advertising and digital media assets to direct users to the programs through relevant channels such as social media, email, messaging, podcasts, and video. Organizations should align their budgeting and resource expectations for ongoing effort from the outset to ensure their programs remain visible, engaging, and impactful.

User Feedback

To develop effective certification and training programs, organizations should collect and analyze learner feedback through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and rating systems. User feedback can help organizations identify areas for improvement and incorporate feedback into revised and new programs. Communicating with users about how their feedback is being used can help build confidence. Additionally, organizations should communicate changes and updates to users through marketing and communications channels, and potentially through dated and time-stamped updates and version logs.

Stimler Advantage can help your organization with its budget strategy. Connect with me to discuss your executive coaching, tactical and strategy needs. Subscribe to the email newsletter. Follow Stimler Advantage on LinkedIn.

As part of its work areas and services, Stimler Advantage guides organizations to situate a brand in the context of its past, present, and future to keep and engage new customers. Brand strategy work is informed by the Stimler Advantage 5 S’s Framework. 

A strong brand helps organizations attract new customers, retain existing customers, and distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace. A brand is the sum total of how your customers perceive your organization across its touchpoints, including your logo, website, name, marketing channels, products, services, and customer experience. Brand, in the mind and perception of the customer, is connected to feeling and memory. 

Your organization’s brand should be an instantly recognizable expression of your organization’s mission, vision, and values. Critically, a brand should be accessible and legible, meaning that a brand must be easy for people to perceive and understand, regardless of their abilities or circumstances. In addition, an organization must build and sustain a devoted, durable, and dynamic brand. A successful brand is situated in the context of an organization’s past, present, and future. 

Your organization’s brand must be well-situated in the context of dynamic change. It is critical to understand the history surrounding the context from which your brand emerged, your brand’s own history (with its failures, missteps, and successes alike), its contemporary interactions with the marketplace and socioeconomic culture, and future.

Your brand’s past is the history within which it is situated and its own history as documented by its logos, marks, content, products, and services. It includes the organization's origin and foundation stories, evolving mission, vision, values, key figures, timeline moments, and defining products, services, and customer experiences. Your brand’s past can be a valuable and actively deployable asset. It can help you connect with customers through an emotional connection to a sense of the past within the context of the present and emerging future. 
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Sustainable brands should develop an evolving and multigenerational customer base and position themselves for longevity with a continuous pipeline of ongoing engagement. People will perceive and interpret your organization’s past in ways that may not always align with how you communicate the organization’s brand. However, an organization with a clear and documented understanding of its past is an empowered organization, more able to know itself to lead and manifest the experiences and relationships it desires with its customers. 

Your brand in the present is the current situation of your organization. It includes how your customers interact with and perceive the quality and value of your products, services, and customer experiences. In the present, your organization should be actively measuring and analyzing the impacts of your brand through digital metrics and other survey tools. Week-by-week, quarter-by-quarter, and year-by-year, your organization should have an accurate and active assessment of customer affinity to your brand. 

​Critical considerations for a contemporary brand are finding creative, timely, and appropriate ways to circulate your brand on channels, platforms, and products that attract niche but impactful and mass audiences, thereby compelling opportunities for building and fusing customer communities. Your brand in the present sets a direction for how your organization may or may not be successful in the long run. That is why it is essential to deliver a consistently excellent customer experience and measure customer satisfaction as embodied by your brand.

Your brand's future is what your organization plans to do in the ever-changing dynamic future. It is your vision for the organization’s role in the world. Your brand's future should give customers a reason to be excited about your organization and its products or services and prepare them for what is next. While your organization may seek to set some target milestones for future development, know that these are less fixed than you might think and should be in flux and responsive to change. Your brand should be something you can achieve, but it should also be something you can measure and track. By tying your brand to your analytics and metrics, you can ensure that your organization is progressing toward its goals and that its future investments are successful.

Placing your brand in scenarios of the future is a way to help customers situate themselves in the organization’s perspective directions. Examples of scenario forecasting for your customers include publications with illustrative storytelling, presentations, and prototype product demos. By placing your product in future test environments, while doing your research and development, you can help learn from your customers and stakeholders if your goals for the brand align with your customers' desires. While some people can imagine the future from the concept stage, concrete demonstrations and examples can help others who perhaps need another point of connection to situate and understand the organization’s direction. That said, prototyping and testing in future scenarios should be a focused and structured process aligned with the organization’s budget, mission, and priorities to ensure it is a constructive and helpful mechanism to build capabilities for future success.

By situating your brand in the context of its past, present, and future, your organization can better understand its strengths and weaknesses. Help your organization identify how to empower your brand to lead. When your brand is empowered, your organization can attract new and retain existing customers.

Here are three tips for situating your brand in the context of its past, present, and future:

1. Research and understand your organization’s past. Learn as much as possible about your organization's history, key figures, values, and mission. Then, embrace and utilize that history to empower your organization’s brand.
2. Know your present customers and stakeholders. Regularly secure feedback and metrics from your customers and stakeholders on what they think of your brand to understand how you can be relevant, and connected to their desires.
3. Innovate your organization’s brand future with a blend of pragmatism and visionary approaches. Take informed and reasonable risks to move your organization forward beyond stasis to work for accelerating and possible futures.

An empowered brand is essential for any organization that wants to succeed. It will help you attract new customers, build loyalty with existing customers, and distinguish yourself. By situating your brand in the context of your past, present, and future, your organization will be empowered to lead in today’s competitive marketplace.

​If you are looking for help creating or strengthening your brand, Stimler Advantage can help. We can work with you to develop a devoted, durable, and dynamic brand that continually engages your customers.

Connect with me to discuss your executive coaching, tactical and strategy needs. Follow Stimler Advantage on LinkedIn.  

Introduction to Board Development at Stimler Advantage
As part of its work areas and services, Stimler Advantage guides organizations to develop sound board governance, create empowering documentation and policies, recruit new board members, and build productive committees to help your organization’s board to operate effectively and efficiently. Board development work is informed by the Stimler Advantage 5 S’s Framework. 

5 Tips for Board Development
A strong board is essential for the success of any corporate or nonprofit organization. An optimized board can propel an organization forward with strategic guidance, financial oversight, and critical support for its mission. It can also help to build awareness and social capital, strengthening the organization’s public image.

Here are five tips for board development:

1. Recruit well-suited people and board dimensions. The first step in building a strong board is to recruit the right people. When recruiting board members, it is important to consider their commitment, experience, skills, and resources aligned with the organization's mission. It is also important to create a board that is able to bring the multifaceted dimensions of expertise needed that give the board breadth and depth across its activities, products, and services. Critically, board members should represent the communities and customers they serve presently and those they wish to serve in the future. 
2. Provide training and support. Once you have recruited board members, it is important to provide them with training and support. This will help them to understand their roles and responsibilities and to develop the skills they need to be effective board members. Training and support may include activities such as online courses, reading lists, retreats, and workshops. It is the responsibility of the board and organization leadership team to ensure that its board members are informed and prepared to help it succeed and thrive. 
3. Set clear expectations, responsibilities, and roles for board members. Have the essentials in place, such as a detailed board charter, position descriptions, and committee charters. Have clear policy and value board statements, which all board members agree to and support within the organization and externally with the community, customers, partners, and stakeholders.
4. Have ongoing and regular communication powered by digital tools. Tools include email newsletters, manuals, knowledge bases, meetings, and meeting minutes. Dedicated digital tools for peer-to-peer communication, like chat via mobile and web apps, can also keep conversation threads together with other more formalized communication channels. Regular board messages and meetings are essential for productive communication and collaboration. Whether through asynchronous or synchronous methods, board members should be actively engaged in nurturing the organization's progress, make decisions in its best interest, and constantly have an eye on the future. Messages and meetings should be well-structured, digitally documented, and time-managed to maximize the board members' valuable presence and time when interacting with the organization. Work with your information technology team to ensure that board and leadership communications are secure for confidentiality, privacy, and security.
5. Evaluate the board's performance. It is important to evaluate the board's performance on a dynamic and ongoing basis. Establish key objectives and results (OKRs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your board members' activities. Actionable, clear, and dynamic metrics informed by data and digital dashboards will help keep everyone on the same page and hold board members accountable for their performance. This will help to identify areas where the board can improve, and to ensure that the board is meeting the needs of the organization. Board governance, management, and oversight are critical components of a healthy and functional organization. 

By following these tips, you can build a strong board that will help your organization to fulfill its mission, vision, and values.

Here are some additional considerations for board development:

• Create internal and external board profiles and digital dashboards that communicate transparently to the organization and its constituents who the board is and what it does.
• Board members are not replacements or stand-ins for employees and contractors. Make sure your board members have a clear separation of roles and responsibilities focused on board activities and supporting staff in fulfilling their duties.
• Ensure that board members and positions regularly change, as defined in the board charter and position profiles, to keep the organization engaged, fresh, and responsive amid dynamic economic, environmental, and sociocultural challenges.
• Be open to welcoming persons with different backgrounds, career pathways, and experiences to join the board while ensuring that candidates are qualified with defined and documented criteria.
• Engage the board in dynamic strategic planning rather than annual or multiyear plans or strategies. Dynamic strategic planning is an ongoing and regularly updated process, while annual strategic and multiyear planning are periodic events that may leave an organization unprepared for the challenges and situations of a constantly changing world, as these latter methods lack the agility, flexibility, and responsiveness that dynamic strategic planning provides.​
• Create a board culture centered on and passionate about the organization’s well-being, informed by its past, but always focused on its present needs and future opportunities.

With the five board development tips and additional considerations, you can build an effective and empowering board to help your organization become a leader in customer success.

Connect with me to discuss your executive coaching, tactical and strategy needs. Follow Stimler Advantage on LinkedIn. 

Stimler Advantage provides executive coaching, tactical and strategic executive management consulting services.  The 5 S’s Framework is a tool used by Stimler Advantage as part of a facilitated and structured process of providing services in detailed work areas across business, executive coaching, and information technology.

I am regularly engaged by corporations, nonprofits, governments, and start-ups, seeking my unique expertise to coach their executive leadership and provide tactical and strategic advisement on the challenges they face. Through my experiences as a consultant at the intersections of business, culture, education, government, and technology, you will gain meaningful insights that critically address your pain points and help you to take visionary next steps. 

Stimler Advantage can give you guidance unlike any other advisor. Our solution-focused approaches can help you and your organization towards the future you need. With Stimler Advantage, you will be empowered to lead with ambition, confidence, and purpose. 

Connect with me to discuss your executive coaching, tactical and strategy needs. Follow Stimler Advantage on LinkedIn. 
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​Welcome to Stimler Advantage, an executive management consulting firm that offers executive coaching, tactical and strategy advisement. Stimler Advantage empowers today’s leaders to lead. The firm's President is Neal Stimler.

I bring visionary insights to your organization. I draw upon a breadth and depth of interdisciplinary knowledge to provide critical solutions to your challenges. My superpowers come from my critical and unique abilities as a digital and management practitioner, researcher, and strategist. Learn more about MY STORY.
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If you’re looking for how we can work together visit my SERVICES. I provide the following services:

• Executive Coaching
• Tactical Engagement
• Strategy Engagement

I offer my expertise and time to support clients on topics described in my WORK AREAS. The work areas, which contain subspecialities,  include:

• Business
• Executive Coaching
• Technology

My consulting services across work areas informed by the Stimler Advantage 5 S's Framework of: 

• Study
• Survey
• Scout
• Situate
• Start

Are you ready to drive you and your team forward? CONNECT with me so I can help you spur you and your an organization on to face change management and get on with the business that needs to be done for sustainability and success. 

You will be able to find my exclusive and visionary content on my  RESOURCES.