The National Business Research Institute announces the NBRI Circle of Excellence Award to be given to those organizations that have shown a dedication to improving customer and/or employee satisfaction.

Recipients of the award will need to meet one of two criteria, either reaching the 75^th percentile in Total Company Score when measured against NBRI’s Benchmarking Database or improving five (5) or more normative percentiles in Total Company Score over the previous survey.

Nearly everyone sets goals. Many people set goals at the beginning of a new year. These New Year’s resolutions are notoriously short-lived. By the end of January these goals are often abandoned or forgotten. Why is it that few people seem to be able to stick to their New Year’s resolutions and even fewer manage to make dramatic, lasting changes?

The answer has to do with the difficulty of changing. Goals inevitably involve making changes – either in our thinking or behavior. Whether it is our eating habits, exercise habits (or lack thereof), time-management, or organizational skills; it is difficult to change well-established habits. Once we become accustomed to thinking or behaving in a certain way, it becomes automatic. We no longer have to engage in cognitive effort to perform the behavior. Changing a habit however, takes a great deal of cognitive effort, especially at first. We must think about the behavior we want to change and how we will go about it.

The same is true in organizations. If change is difficult for an individual, think about how difficult it is for a company to make changes. Organizations are made up of many individuals and when a company tries to implement changes on a macro level, the individuals within that company may resist. But change is a necessary part of survival in today’s dynamic environment and when a company commits to making positive changes the rewards can be great.

By Ken West, Ph.D.

ADVICE. How do you feel about this word? Have you ever given someone advice only to find that the person did not take it? Recently a friend of mine told me about traveling by car with three other people. The driver became lost in a rural area at night and twice asked the three passengers for advice. My friend and the two other passengers gave suggestions that were promptly ignored. The third request for advice was met with silence.

Why do individuals ignore advice? Is it due to stubbornness, pride, or lack of confidence in the person giving the advice? The latter sometimes happens when we are young adults, especially when the advice is from our parents. It is funny how our parents get smarter and wiser as we get older! We learn for ourselves how wisdom can come from experience.

It is one thing to ignore free advice, it is quite another when you have paid for it, perhaps hundreds of dollars per hour. Talk to anyone who is paid to give advice, such as financial planners, physicians, mental health counselors, or lawyers, and they will all tell you that people often do not take their advice, usually to the person’s detriment. Businesses, like individuals, are also known to ignore advice on occasion. Ignoring good advice can be costly, especially in business. Ignoring the advice of a consultant can result in wasting time, effort and human resources. Such costs can add up to millions of dollars.

The National Business Research Institute is celebrating 25 years of effective customer and employee survey research and analysis. December 1 marks the day in 1982 when Dr. Jan West began the process of identifying the employee and customer research issues that are universal to all organizations. And subsequently wrote the first set of standardized survey research questions through which organizations could share data anonymously.