If a week is a long time in politics,  then one year is an absolute age,  particularly when it is the past 12 months where we have witnessed one of,  in not the,  most tumultuous periods in the history of the global economy.  Everything has changed,  no sector has been unaffected and,  in many ways,  this is a period when new ideas and propositions can prove their worth and help shape the way we will all conduct business in the future.

Which brings us neatly to our own journey over the last year,  the discovery of Axiology and its potential benefits,  and the launch of AxiaMetrics.  Back in the dark days of September 2008,  the Credit Crunch was decimating the lending market in which I worked.  As director of sales & operations at a specialist secured loan and mortgage lending arm of a major building society we were having to re-invent ourselves in a rapidly changing market place.

Our sales process,  which had been very successful for years,  needed to be adapted to a market where demand massively outstripped supply.  In order to meet this changing need I enlisted the help of sales guru,  Gary May,  to redesign our entire sales process.  Working on the project together we implemented some of Gary’s revolutionary techniques which brought about immediate benefits.  As part of this work-in-progress,  Gary asked me if we would like to trial the Axiology profiling system,  based on the works of Robert Hartman and one couched in science and values.

While I was intrigued by the system I was also rather sceptical at what appeared to be yet ‘another psychometric test’,  however I agreed to run a trial on our sales team.  Each member of the team took the profile test and,  while the outputs provided were hard to understand due to the need for significant manual interpretation,  the results for two individuals in particular provided incredible insights considering I had personally recruited and developed the whole team and considered us all to be quite close.

The profile for one team member highlighted a significant personal issue which,  only when it was revealed,  showed just how clearly damaging the problem had become to that particular person.  Were it not for the profile this problem would never have been raised let alone addressed.

The second individual had been head-hunted from a competitor where they had been the star sales performer yet having joined our team and despite many one-to-one meetings and discussions they had failed to meet expectations over the previous 12 months.  The information revealed by the profile confirmed our initial thoughts about why we had employed them – they had great access to talent – however the profile also revealed the circumstances that would frustrate them.  Armed with this knowledge,  we were able to make a small change in the team’s structure which allowed them to demonstrate their talent and following this they became the top performer in the team in the following months.

The use of the profile had clearly delivered results in my own business and it seemed apparent that many more firms would benefit from the use of the profile.  With my interest levels heightened I began to immerse myself in Axiology and the works of Hartman.  This provided me with increased personal understanding gained through a knowledge of how we value and what is important – not only did this provide many answers about myself and how I processed the world,   but most importantly my research brought me in contact with Dr K.T. Connor and Prof. Wayne Carpenter at The Centre for Applied Axiometrics in the US.

Their work with Axiology had progressed Hartman’s research to an even greater level and on seeing the huge value and benefits this could bring to business and individuals I took the decision to establish AxiaMetrics in order to bring the benefits of Axiology to the UK.  This is a journey we have just embarked on and it is clearly an exciting time – a lot can happen in a year.

Nigel Griffiths is Partner at AxiaMetrics LLP

Tags: linkedin, People assessment, Personality Tests, Psychometric tests, Recruitment tests