Professional Growth Seminar 1997 Featuring Kolbe Forecast™ & Active Learning

Nearly 100 Kolbe Certified clients from across the nation and around the world attended the 1997 Professional Growth Seminar in Scottsdale, Arizona. While there they learned how to use and apply the Kolbe Forecast program.

Entitled "Performance Forecasting and Energy Management," the seminar included outdoor activities that concretely demonstrated the predictive powers of Forecast.

One activity was called the "Great Arizona Pipeline." Participants were placed on three teams of diverse talents based on their Kolbe A™ index results. Each team was given marbles, golf balls and pieces of pipe.

In the first competition, teams used the pipe halves to transport marbles and golf balls to a target. The trick was to keep the marbles and balls moving continuously forward to their destination without dropping them. The team who had the most golf balls and marbles in the container won.

As Forecast predicted before work began on the Great Arizona Pipeline, Team C came out victorious. Forecast determined that this team had the highest Probabilities of Profitability, Goal Attainment and Viability, meaning that it would be the most likely team to work effectively and efficiently together. These percentages were by far the highest of all three teams, as shown below.

Pipeline Exercises	# of Balls in Target	Probability of Profitability	Probability of Goal Attainment	Probability of Viability
Team A	14	67	20	47
Team B	13	55	20	40
Team C	21	95	100	97

Robert Dorsey, Ph.D., a member of the winning team and leader of Eastman Chemical's SAP implementation project, commented that members of other teams were unaware of their own poor performances.

"With Forecast, we have a tool that says if we do not have a synergistic team with a good probability of success, we may think we're successful but the evidence will say we aren't," he said.

The second challenge was for two teams to tie a knot in a 15 foot piece of rope without a single team member letting go of the rope. Again, the teams were put together based upon their instinctive talents.

Team A tied its knot within minutes, exactly as Forecast had predicted. Team B had considerable difficulty tying the knot, but after a considerable amount of coaching was finally able to reach its goal. Team A was able to accomplish two other variations on the exercise without any coaching before Team B finished the first aspect.

Tie-the-Knot	Probability of Profitability	Probability of Goal Attainment	Probability of Viability
Team A	95	70	84
Team B	51	62	56

In addition to building pipelines and tying knots, participants also heard testimonials from companies who have already seen the positive results of using Forecast.

"I see us using it when we're putting together new teams - new product-introduction teams - where we're pulling people together from marketing, engineering and manufacturing," said Jim Czupil, Strategic Planning Manager in Human Resources for Hershey. "It's a great place to use it."