Talent Optimization Archives - Meraki Consulting

Retention Starts with Alignment: Why TO Is Your Secret Weapon

In today’s competitive talent market, retention isn’t about perks – it’s about purpose, alignment, and leadership. Talent Optimization gives you the blueprint. The cost of replacing a single employee? Estimates range from 50-200% of their annual salary. And that doesn’t account for the ripple effects: lost knowledge, team disruption, lower morale, and stalled projects. In […]

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Smunday Scaries and the Employee Engagement Equation

Leadership, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

Why Your Team Is Coasting — and How Talent Optimization Can Flip the Script On a scale of 1-10 how engaged are you in your work? Whether it’s your cozy home office or the overpriced downtown corner you brave traffic to reach, some people genuinely love what they do. And then… there’s Smunday — that

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The Feedback Shift- Why Great Leaders Look Forward, Not Back

Leadership, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

How to Inspire Growth, Not Grit Teeth Picture this: you’ve just wrapped up a performance review. You’ve ticked the boxes, delivered the feedback, and now you’re left with a strange aftertaste—like you’ve just handed someone a mirror and asked them to critique their reflection in public. You meant to inspire.Instead, you may have hit a

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Workplace Culture Shift – Say Sayonara To Toxic Vibes

Leadership, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

Using Talent Optimization to Improve Company Culture So Your Business Can Go From Meh to Magnetic. If I asked you to describe your company’s culture in one word, what word comes to mind? “If you said ‘great,’ think again. How would you really describe it when catching up with an old friend?” Does it lean

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If You Want To Kill Your Company, Lead Like This

Leadership, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

If not, stay tuned until the end… Welcome to the dark side of leadership – where the path to success is sabotaged by the very people meant to lead the charge. And at some point in our careers, we have encountered and endured one or two from the ranks of ‘Worst Boss Ever.’ We think

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The Key to Winning the Talent Game: Understanding Talent Optimization vs Talent Management

Leadership, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

In a world where companies love to throw around terms like “War on Talent,” let’s get real: there’s no war, just a serious need for strategic leadership.Stop just managing talent—optimize it. If you’re not stepping up to invest in your greatest asset—your people—you’re leaving opportunity (and profits) on the table. It’s time to rethink your

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[please welcome] Strategic Planning’s More Sophisticated Cousin…Intentional Design

Business Development, Leadership, People Development, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

Disruptions. Pandemics. War. Market Instability. Global Warming. Restructuring. Misinformation. Espionage. In an era marked by VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity – organizational leaders, and humans in general, strive to weather the storms that threaten our survival. Discussions ensue, emergency meetings pop up, plans are made, contingency plans are considered, and probabilities are calculated. If/Then

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For the Love of Learning (Training and Development)

Business Development, Leadership, People Development, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

How to avoid tragic training experiences while enhancing employee engagement. Have you ever thought… ‘Maybe if I jab this pencil in my eye I can leave this circle of hell in an ambulance, it would be less painful than sitting here listening to this nonsense.’ -or-‘Well, there goes 4 hours of my life I’ll never get

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The 10 Hiring Mistakes I See Most as a Talent Optimization Specialist

Business Development, Consulting, People Development, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

Elevating Business Success through Emotional Intelligence Advances in technology and the use of behavioral and cognitive assessments have greatly improved the hiring process for many companies. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go until the hiring process realizes its true potential and meets the needs of both sides. As someone who has seen

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How to Build Strong and Effective Teams in the Workplace

Business Development, People Development, Talent Optimization / Nicole Beggs

Leveraging The Predictive Index To Build Bridges & Empower Teams In today’s fast-paced and competitive business landscape, the key to success lies in building strong and effective teams within your organization. A cohesive team can achieve remarkable results, foster innovation, and drive growth. However, building such teams is not a simple task; it requires a

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Jason G.

May 2, 2024.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Nicole as a consultant, trainer, and administrator of Predictive Index for both for-profit and non-profit entities. In both cases, the PI software proved to have an immediate impact on my teams With the non-profit organization, we used PI to evaluate both our board members and frontline outreach teams. The PI data was used to better align our board committees and to give our executive director an easy-to-read playbook for managing the diverse personalities and motivations of a growing board. I’m unaware of what other tools could have given us the deep insights we got from PI, and they came at a critical time. It was indeed a blessing. With our outreach teams, PI gave us the same level of operational management insight. We were also able to leverage the software as a screening tool within our hiring process. Nicole trained several of our board members and team leads on the software so that we had the working knowledge to access and integrate the many recommendations into our daily workflows. Due to the successful implementation with the non-profit, I introduced Nicole to the HR manager at my employer. I suggested an in-house demo with one of our teams that needed some tweaking following a recent expansion. There was some hesitation, even a little pushback. Some team members felt we were “too busy” even to take the questionnaire, let alone roll out whatever new practices it would recommend. What’s rewarding about PI is that the whole system initiates with two simple questions. Even those in opposition had to yield to its simplicity. From there, it was a similar experience as that with the non-profit. The “work-style” assessments were incredibly accurate, and they immediately helped the team’s directors identify the sources of common tension points within the group. I left that organization for a C-level position with another company, and I was able to perform the same team and organizational assessments for my new group. Consistently, PI delivered the relevant insights to empower us as leaders to get the most out of our group. Beyond that, the PI assessments spotlight what our organization is presently set up to accomplish vs. what we, as leaders, have defined as our organizational goals. That distinction is invaluable and eye-opening as we focus our strategic plans. Far more than the value of the software, Nicole’s expertise, generosity, patience, and compassionate nature have been instrumental in helping our teams understand and adopt the PI recommendations. We operate in a competitive industry, and people management has never been as challenging as now with the recent shifts in the labor market. I’m thankful to have PI as a tool and Meraki as a partner to help us be more skillful and efficient in our people management, which, of course, translates directly to the successful delivery of our products and services.

T.H., Non-profit

January 6, 2024.

The depth of Nicole’s heart is unmeasurable. I met her for the first time in a parking lot unloading necessities for a group of young people who were searching for guidance and in need of necessities. Her giving didn’t stop there. She continued to bless our non-profit with her gifts and resources. Two years later she is pouring into our organization with her wisdom, using the Predictive Index to build a foundation that has taken our non-profit to stages that a “new” and “small” non-profit can only dream and hope for. Her wisdom, gifts, and talents have changed our organization! We doubled our guesstimated reach of serving vulnerable youth this year, youth that are wandering our streets, in the community we call home, searching for someone who will show them their worth. Our mission is that no youth will journey life on their own without a consistent, healthy adult beside them. Meraki Consulting Partner is walking beside our team and we are so deeply grateful, as is our community and the youth we’re currently serving and will serve! Thank you!

P.C. ,Travel

December 15, 2023.

“I have gone into a coaching session completely broken and in tears. Everything seemed to be going wrong in my life and work was a nightmare. Nicole listened to everything I said and even brought things to my attention that I had never really thought about. By the end of our session, I was laughing and had a game plan for tackling issues at work and home.”

D.R., Engineer

October 12, 2023.

"Nicole is undaunted in her approach to breaking down the barriers of limiting beliefs. Thanks to her I have a new appreciation for my strengths and talents and the desire to grow even more than I have already.”

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Talent Optimization

Retention Starts with Alignment: Why TO Is Your Secret Weapon

Smunday Scaries and the Employee Engagement Equation

The Feedback Shift- Why Great Leaders Look Forward, Not Back

Workplace Culture Shift – Say Sayonara To Toxic Vibes

If You Want To Kill Your Company, Lead Like This

The Key to Winning the Talent Game: Understanding Talent Optimization vs Talent Management

[please welcome] Strategic Planning’s More Sophisticated Cousin…Intentional Design

For the Love of Learning (Training and Development)

The 10 Hiring Mistakes I See Most as a Talent Optimization Specialist

How to Build Strong and Effective Teams in the Workplace

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