Tag Archives: performance

Financial Incentives – do they work?

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Revisit an Important Topic – a repeat posting from 2013

It is accepted wisdom in human resource management practice that financial incentives, wages and bonuses, drive work performance ((Note that we are talking about individuals here. Organizations, for profit, non-profits and government, definitely react positively to financial incentives and disincentives)). This is a part of our business and political culture. ((In fact the notion that people make “rational” decisions based in part on financial rewards is a central pillar of our “if we only let markets work, everything will run smoothly” culture.)) Though studies and surveys have shown for decades that people find many other factors (growth of skills, engagement, sense of purpose, social connection, and many others) to be important in their work, the key to every human resource management strategy has been the compensation plan. Increasingly over the past couple of decades human resource management professionals have devised ever more complex methods for connecting various performance metrics to compensation plans. 

Do Financial Incentives Work? Continue reading →

Performance, Contribution, Results, Commitment – Drucker’s The Effective Executive – 4

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“To Focus on Contribution is to Focus on Effectiveness”

Peter Drucker's The Effective ExecutiveThis is the fourth in a series discussing the 1968 book by Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive: the definitive guide to getting the right things done. In this part we will focus on the third chapter, “What Can I Contribute?”

“The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward towards goals. He asks, “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.” ((all quotes in this posting come from pages 52 – 70 in Peter Drucker The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done. Revised. Collins Business, 2006.)) …..

“The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, in in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management”. He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole.”

What Is Contribution?

Contribution refers to three areas critical to organizational success: Continue reading →

Planes Change. Values Don’t – No Sloganeering

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Plane change. Values don't United Airlines

Recently I was on an commercial air flight and was greeted by a bit of corporate sloganeering that accompanied by meal (yes, you guessed correctly that I was on an international flight). The napkin shouted out in bold blue text, “Planes change. Values don’t. Your priorities will always be ours.” Continue reading →

Proven Checklist for Business Success – How Do You Put Them Into Action?

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I receive a regular email titled, “Management Intelligence…… from Edward de Bono and Robert Heller” ((http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/)) . Their most recent email was “Management Intelligence: A proven checklist for business success”. Here is the checklist they provided:

“DO YOU…

  1. IMPROVE basic, measured efficiencies continuously?
  2. THINK simply and directly about what you are doing and why?
  3. BEHAVE towards others as you wish them to behave towards you?
  4. EVALUATE each business and business opportunity with total, fact-based objectivity?
  5. CONCENTRATE on what you do well?
  6. ASK questions ceaselessly about performance, markets and objectives?
  7. MAKE MONEY- knowing that, if you don’t, you can’t make anything else?
  8. ECONOMISE always seeking Limo (Least Input for Most Output)?
  9. FLATTEN the organisation to spread authority and responsibility?
  10. ADMIT to your own failings and shortcomings and correct them?
  11. SHARE the benefits of success with all those who helped to achieve it?
  12. TIGHTEN up the organisation wherever and whenever you can because familiarity breeds slackness?
  13. ENABLE everybody to optimise their individual and group contribution?
  14. SERVE your customers with all their requirements to standards of perceived excellence in quality?
  15. TRANSFORM performance by innovating creatively in products and processes including the processes of management?

Again from this email concerning this list: “These questions penetrate to the heart of successful management. They have passed, and will pass, the test of time.

This list looks a lot like others I have seen, and certainly many entries would be on such a list that I might create. But, whenever I see lists like this, I say to myself, “Great, but how do I do this?” Lets just take number 15, for example,  “Transform performance by innovating….”. What business processes do I put in place that assure that these results are regularly and sustainably produced? Or, what approaches and tools do I deploy to achieve number 8, “Economize…” ? Again, are there tools and approaches available that assure the we meet number 13, “ENABLE everybody to optimize their individual and group contribution?” Continue reading →

Podcast – Three Counter-Intuitive Steps to Becoming a More Effective Manager

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Be a More Effective Manager – stop answering those questions, seize your time, and it’s your fault

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Three Counter-Intuitive Steps to Becoming a More Effective Manager

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Become a More Effective Manager – Three Counter-Intuitive Steps

In the world of planning and strategy, there is a truism that too much planning, too much detail, too much analysis, leads to inaction, to a loss of opportunity. Along the same line of observation, in the world of learning to becoming a more effective manager, there can be too much study, too much thinking, too much integration of the many many skills and aptitudes required to become more effective. In both strategy and management skills action is almost always preferable to another round of study. Action bumps you up against the real world and provides the real basis for improving skills and results.

But, that still leaves us with the nagging question as a manager, especially for rookie managers and supervisors, how do I get started?

Based on many years of personal work as a manager and many years coaching managers, here are three steps you can take that will get you into action and guarantee striking results. These results will come in your personal effectiveness and in of the results of the organization you manage.  Remember,  by results, I am referring to the three meanings Drucker defined: (1) direct business results (usually measured in $s); (2) improved organizational culture (values); and (3) development of people. ((see Chapter 2 – What Can I Contribute? in his book The Effective Executive))

1. Stop Answering Questions

If most managers could listen to themselves, the proverbial fly on the wall, for just a few hours, they would discover that they are chronically enabling dependency all around them and undermining whatever formal delegation systems are in place. How is this happening? Just listen and you will hear a stream of questions coming at them followed by answers in response. You are enabling the following the reflexive pattern: ask the expert and be rewarded with answers. Ask the boss, get an answer, and be safe from responsibility for the answers.

If you want to get people to take responsibility and be involved in the business, you can’t go on answering all these questions. They will just go on asking whether they need to or not. And, you are spending an enormous amount of your time, your most valuable resource, to answering all of these questions.

What should a manager do to break this pattern? Continue reading →