When we were children, or had children of our own, we experienced the joy of creative play. Great pleasure was had from crayons, or even better, pots of paint! We enjoyed the process of experimentation and creation. We had a huge pride in the finished product, even if we had to explain what it was supposed to be! Those of us fortunate enough to have shared that experience as adults know that it is completely absorbing. Time and other needs are forgotten while the pleasure of the activity is experienced. In the same way we become totally absorbed in playing sport, reading a book or playing a computer game. Sadly, as we grow up, we learn that work and play are two very different things. Work is not supposed to be enjoyable or you would not get paid to do it!
Continue readingCategory Archives: Perform
The Law Of Unintended Consequences
We all know about Suggestion Boxes. Good schemes pay good rewards to people who suggest actions which produce substantial results. But, during my research, the productivity data, before and after the Suggestion Scheme, showed a steadily reducing performance! Instead of everyone being expected to suggest improvements, the scheme classified people according to their grade. Obviously, you could not expect ‘those’ people to be helpful unless they were paid! The net result was fewer improvements and steadily declining productivity, and therefore margins and profitability.
Continue readingCompound disinterest
One of the difficulties of thinking is that we all tend to drop into the ruts of previous thought patterns. The deeper the rut the more difficult it is to think outside that rut. To escape the rut, it is useful to think in terms of analogies: to take an idea or method and apply it in a different context. It is a powerful tool. Managing people is not always straightforward. The uncertainty of outcome, which is normal with people, makes the mathematical tools of probability a relevant analogy. An engineering analogue might be the derivation of reliability statistics for complex systems. Human beings are definitely complex systems!
Continue readingMotivating the Professionals
Professional people do not need motivating by their managers do they? They know what to do, so you just let them get on with it. What is your experience? Perhaps leaving professional people to “just get on with it” is not the answer. Professional people have already shown that they can defer gratification by going through their qualification process. They usually do have a strong and far-sighted view of the right thing. Managing professionals is on a par with herding cats. They have minds of their own and want to do it their way when they are ready. But what if doing it “their way” does not match the organisation’s needs?
Continue readingEmployees are Customers too
We are used to being treated as special customers, as individuals. We expect to be able to get exactly what we want, when we want it. Naturally, our desire for treatment as special people, as individuals, comes to work with us. You can see the effect in the recent growth of flexible benefit packages. You can swap pay for holiday, medical benefits or gym membership etc. The availability of the flexible benefits does not depend on the day-to-day performance of the individual though. Neither does our immediate manager have any sway over the package. There is no link between our performance in the job and the benefits we receive. You get the benefits simply by turning up to work. How do you reward people for performance in the job?
Continue readingTalent Retention
Another of those HR buzzwords? What does it mean in practice and what should it mean? And what about the untalented you don’t want to retain? What’s the message for them? Enjoy the video!
Continue readingWhy motivation matters
Let us go back a few thousand years to before “Management Guru” meant anything and consider pre-historic Hunter societies. The pursuit of large creatures and their dispatch with sharpened sticks was a dangerous way to earn your next meal. But given the choice starve or hunt, the motivation is obvious. This happy, and easy to manage, situation changed when one caveman was found with a particular skill in sharpening sticks to a deadly point. His sticks made it much easier to bring down the hunted animal. It seemed a good idea to have him stay at the base to sharpen sticks, rather than spend his time hunting animals. In this way all the Hunters had his special sharp sticks and the hunt was more effective. Immediately the Tribe Elder had a problem. How did he ensure the Stick Sharpener produced a good amount of sticks of good quality in exchange for food and a safe working environment? Luckily, he didn’t know about SMART objectives as the Management Guru tribe hadn’t come into existence yet.
Continue readingManagement – My Way or Any Way?
What do you look for when you recruit a manager? Let’s not get into the Leadership/Manager discussion though. Let’s accept that Leadership and management are two sides of the same coin. One can’t exist without the other. What is the job of a manager? Enjoy the video.
Continue readingIs Leadership bad for motivation?
This query is interesting for the meanings imputed to “Leadership” and “Motivation”. If we view Leadership as having the following attributes: Out in front Public face Agenda setting Target demanding Driving Hard The do-as-I-say Boss The Decision maker Then under this sort of Leader, people have these experiences: demand for performance involves a threat – perform or else avoid identifying weaknesses a lack of self-directed work the vision from the top is obscured no-one cares how you feel about the work do not feel personally involved your opinion doesn’t count focus on satisfying the Leader do as little as possible commensurate with meeting targets no discretionary effort Such a work regime is familiar to many of us. It motivates us to do the job and not make a fuss. We are motivated to put as little effort into the work as is needed to satisfy the targets. We achieve our feeling of self-worth by how many get-out clauses we can build into the performance measures. We can beat the system!
Continue readingThe Project Manager in the middle
What is a Middle Manager? Why do they exist? It seems that many senior people have forgotten why. They are replacing the middle tier with management by spreadsheet and vastly increased spans of control. It saves money obviously? Only if you didn’t manage the middle managers correctly in the first place!
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