Well what’s changed between 1973 and now, if anything managers are even more stretched.  On implementing a process in a recent organisation, I worked with Managers to understand their barriers.  The manager told me that they knew it was important, it’s not because they don’t want to do it, but they don’t have the time in the day.  We put so much on our managers that we have diverted their energy from what they should be doing, which is managing their people. So the question then should be if you know that this is important, what do you want to stop doing?  What in your view does not add value?

Half of the activities Mintzberg observed lasted less than 90 minutes.  He identified a cluster of ten roles, which stem from a manager’s formal authority and status – Interpersonal Roles: Figurehead, Leader and Liaison.  Followed by Informational Roles: Monitor, Disseminator and Spokesperson, and finally Decisional Roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator and Negotiator. Arguably Mintzberg initial work provided only a basic understanding of managerial behaviours.

In developing your organisation think about these roles, the formation requirements will vary for different roles, but consider what the main focus needs to be.  Then how can we enable our managers to get back to managing people.

It’s a good question, really, and one that probably hasn’t gotten enough thoughtful attention in the midst of the controversy surrounding them: What is the point of linking student achievement data to teacher evaluations?  Should we take it for granted that a primary goal- if not the primary goal- of these efforts is to identify and eliminate bad teachers?  If this is the case then these early findings should be a cause for concern, especially given the time and money being spent to collect and analyze the data.  If replacing bad teachers with good ones is the magic bullet for public education reform, it will take a pretty long time at this rate.

Of course, even opponents of the new evaluation systems would probably admit that the magic bullet theory is an oversimplification. Furthermore, it’s much too early to look at these numbers and extrapolate any meaningful conclusions about the actual number of ineffective teachers or even the accuracy of the evaluations themselves. Hopefully what these findings might do is allow us to finally begin to broaden the scope of our national conversation about how the linkages between teachers and students could actually drive education reform.  States and school districts implementing new evaluation systems have tried with varying degrees of success to communicate the message that linking student achievement data to teacher practice isn’t just about punitive measures- it also has important implications for improving professional development and teacher preparation programs by identifying shared practice linked to positive student achievement and replicating those practices in classrooms across the country. But that message is often overshadowed by the anxiety surrounding the punitive side of evaluation and underscored by public struggles with local teacher unions. If nothing else, these early findings might create an opening in the current debate for a more thoughtful discussion about the broader possibilities for linking teacher practice to student growth.

-Jacqueline Skapik

For a meeting to be successful it must move forward at a comfortable pace, be short in duration and focused on the subject at hand.

Remove all barriers that keep a meeting from interfering with a busy workday. It may be surprising, but people want to get back to work, and some regard a meeting as an interruption. Therefore, make your meetings a prelude to action and an event for personal and collective success.

Here are the 6 truths that can remove commonly perceived annoyances from meetings  that lead to troublesome time-loss and disappointment.

1. The Five Minute Truth
Be five minutes early to every meeting. Find your seat, chat with a few co-workers, open your laptop and be ready to go at precisely the meeting’s start time. No one should ever be late. Being late tells everyone the meeting really isn’t worth it. Being late is also a sign that you don’t want to be there. No one is late for something they love to do.

2. The One-Word Agenda Truth
Use an agenda. Everyone must know exactly what’s being discussed. Think of one word that is the reason for the meeting and write that word for everyone to see. Point to the word if discussion drifts. You really don’t have to use only one word for the agenda. A long meeting might have several agenda items. Either print the agenda or write it on a white-board.

3. The Participation Truth
Meetings go well when everyone participates. Meetings fail when even one person doesn’t participate. Some people are naturally garrulous. Others are reticent to speak. Loud, opinionated people who talk a lot may have great ideas, but so do those who are quiet. A meeting’s leader can either make or break a meeting. Don’t let any one person dominate. Use first names to call upon those from whom you haven’t heard, or whom you feel may have valuable insight into the subject on hand. And don’t allow one person to interrupt another.

4. The Conversation Truth
Carefully guide conversations. A conversation is an exchange of ideas between two or more people. A conversation at a meeting can easily grow to exclude everyone except those who are conversing with each other. This makes the meeting boring. A certain amount of conversation is necessary, of course, but it should not reach the point of excluding others.

5. The Attendance Truth
Only those who are critical to the success of the outcome of the meeting should be present. Don’t pad a meeting with onlookers or to bring other departments up-to-speed on a specific procedure unless the purpose of the meeting is to do so. Everyone attending the meeting should be deeply involved in participating in its outcome.

6. The Meeting-ending Truth
End the meeting on time. If possible, announce at the beginning of the meeting how long the meeting should last. This lets everyone know exactly when he or she can plan to get back to business. A meeting end-time is also a good way to help keep the meeting focused. The meeting’s leader can announce, as an example, that there are only ten minutes left until the meeting concludes and to make all statements focused and brief.

This was brought home to me at the recent Service Desk Show in London. As you might expect there was a particular emphasis on the Service Desk and this was highlighted by discussions initiated by the Service Desk Institute (SDI) around demonstrating Service Desk value and the meaningful metrics that have to be gathered to achieve this.

So what aspects of Service Desk performance matter to the business?

Well, as you might guess, the business isn’t particularly concerned about how many functional or hierarchical escalation rates or call abandonment rates. They are concerned about the percentage of incidents resolved within agreed service levels and the level of overall customer satisfaction with the service.

They are concerned too with one element that we’re not that good at measuring: Cost!

How much does it cost to provide support services? How much does it cost, on average, to resolve a call? How can the costs be reduced whilst maintaining (or even improving) the levels of service offered?

Daniel Wood, Head of Research at SDI, has produced a really valuable paper “Demonstrating Service Desk Value Through More Meaningful Metrics” that is essential reading for anyone engaged in the management of IT services.

Daniel’s paper re-affirms the conclusions that Michelle and I came to. If you want to engage with the business you have to talk to senior management in the language that they understand. Tell them how they can reduce cost and increase revenue. How much user/customer time is lost waiting for calls to be resolved? That is a key measurement that directly impacts the productivity of the business. What is the cost of down-time in business critical applications – particularly those that are customer facing?

It’s time to grow-up and ask the questions that will lead us to a more mature dialogue.

Stuart Sawle

www.sysop.co.uk

The Building Blocks to High-Performance

Teamwork. We all know the benefits of teamwork. But, how well does your team actually work? How do you know? What are the measures you use? Are they accurate? Here are the building blocks of a high performing team from the excellent research of Mike Woodcock:

Balanced Roles

Do you rely on one or two people to get the work completed on time and up to standards? Or does everyone contribute towards the goals of the team?

Clear and Agreed Objectives

How are targets set? Are they top-down, or bottom up? Is there a robust discussion about past performance and future goals?

Openness and Confrontation

High performing people are passionate about their work and want to confront the issues that are preventing development and success. Are you confronted by your team about performance? How open are the team about shortcomings?

Support and Trust

Does your team feel supported? Is there trust within the group and with the manager? Are the five pillars of trust present and what areas of development are needed?

Co-operation and Conflict

This seems a contradiction, however high performing teams have high levels of both. Most people only think of conflict as destructive, but conflict can be highly creative when channelled in the correct ways and times.

Sound Procedures

Are your processes and procedures appropriate and help individuals and teams succeed, or do they get in the way of performance? How do you know?

Appropriate Leadership

We lead people appropriately when the two dimensions of leadership are considered: The Competency and Commitment of the team. Most teams perform moderately due to the lack of appropriate leadership. Use a range of leadership approaches to get the very best from your team.

Regular Review

How often do you review team performance as a team? High performers do this regularly and frequently too. Not having the time to review performance is just an excuse that mediocre managers use to cover for poor performance.

Individual Development

Teams are only as good as the individuals within them. Managing this talent requires commitment and resources of time and money. Great leaders always have time to develop people.

Sound Inter-group Relations

Managing relationships within the team can be complex and feel unrewarding. Managers feel under pressure to focus on the work and many consider personal relationship “issues” a personal and private matter. This can be a fatal error regarding team performance. Our relationships at work are vital to our success. Beyond the numbers, it is the quality of our relationships that count.

Good Communications

What is “good” communications? How will you know when communication is or isn’t working? How can we measure communication in a team? These are great questions and they can be answered through regular testing and measuring the right areas.

Getting great teamwork is an on-going process. These building blocks will give you a great start.

Cali Ressler-Jody Thompson

Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler proposed compensating employees based on outputs, rather than elapsed time, in a “Results-Only Work Environments (ROWE)” policy.

This management strategy evaluated “performance, not presence” practices at Best Buy and has been implemented at another large retailer, Gap.
Is this is a return to a “piece-work” approach of decades ago?
Or is it a performance management practice that emphasizes achieving targeted results?

ROWE  is being considered at such tech giants as Cisco Systems, in direct contrast to Yahoo’s recent call for employees to be present in offices.
The underlying goal of Yahoo’s “presentism” policy may be to increase innovative performance outputs, although the explanation provided to employees emphasized presence as a prerequisite for effective collaboration.

Widespread negative reaction to Yahoo’s on-site work policy, based on complaints that the policy:

• Conveys lack of trust in employees
• Undermines opportunities to manage complex work-life responsibilities
• Places emphasis on “face time” rather than results
• Leads to employee resentment and disengagement.

Erin Kelly

In contrast, University of Minnesota sociologists Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen with University of Delaware’s Eric Tranby documented the positive impact of ROWE practices in their survey of more than 600 Best Buy employees before and after the program was implemented.

Phyllis Moen

The researchers found turnover was reduced by 45 percent after they controlled for gender, job level, organizational tenure, job satisfaction, income adequacy, job security and turnover intentions.

Participants reported reduced stress and improved work-home interfaces by increasing employees’ schedule control, and reduced the “opting out” of the workforce due to personal commitments for both men and women.

Eric Tranby

Kelly, Moen, and Tranby opine that ROWE “moves us away from the “time cages” developed around the work day…ROWE challenges these taken-for-granted clockworks…our mantra is ‘change the workplace, not the worker’.”

Rachelle Hill, also of University of Minnesota collaborated with Moen and Kelly in a related study that documented ROWE moderated turnover effects of negative home-to-work spillover, personal troubles, and physical symptoms.

-*What impacts – positive and negative – have you seen in “Performance, not Presence” workplace policies like ROWE?

RELATED POST

Working From Home: Calculating Cost, Time, Environmental Savings

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Why Don’t My Employees Work Harder?

Program Description: Many employees work at an 80% or  less effort level, which can cost the business most or all of its profits. This class provides a structured accountability approach for increasing employee performance without creating more conflict. You will learn why employees are disengaged to some degree; how the company may be creating this situation; and techniques for making  substantial improvements.
Program Objectives: • Recognize company policies and manager behaviors that hurt productivity • Learn how to incentivize employees to do their best without necessarily spending money • Learn how to clearly make successful job performance primarily the employee’s responsibility • Gain tools and techniques for quickly resolving sub-standard perfo

Seminar #TD348

Course Schedule:           (Click on Date to Register) May 13, 2013 9:00AM – 1:00PM June 10, 2013 9:00AM – 1:00PM July 8, 2013 9:00AM – 1:00PM August 12, 2013 9:00AM – 1:00PM $160 / TKE Members $120 Learn how to become a TKE Member!

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The Knowledge Exchange 5151 Babcock Street NE Palm Bay, Florida 32905 Phone: 321-473-8998 Fax: 321-327-8814

rmance ]]> http://tke4results.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/may-14-planning-for-top-performance-debbie-featherson/ Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:41:43 +0000 darby428 http://tke4results.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/may-14-planning-for-top-performance-debbie-featherson/ Human Resources

Planning for Top Performance

Program Description: What organization can lose 40% of  its workforce and 80% of its expertise to mass retirement?  Apply that to Florida’s workforce and finding solutions to improving performance becomes urgent. Debbie outlines  a 3-step process for planning for top performance, offers strategies and tools for analyzing performance, and designing solutions for improving performance.

Program Objectives: • Introduce a model and framework for analyzing employee performance in the workplace • Learn to apply a 3-step process for planning for top performance • Understand how to prepare for and conduct effective performance discussions

Debbie Featherston partners with           organizations to design, implement and           manage people development solutions to build strong leaders, engage and retain efficient teams, and manage change initiatives. For 20+ years as a Performance Consultant and Coach, she           works with business and industry ranging           from Fortune 500s to small, family-owned           businesses. Debbie has a Masters in  Adult Education from Indiana University. Debbie is a certified Leadership Coach and facilitator of MBTI, FIRO-B, TKI Conflict   Mode Instrument, and Covey’s Speed of Trust Simulation. * This seminar may also be taught by other industry         experts.

Seminar #HR472

Course Schedule: (Click on Date to Register) May 14, 2013 9:00AM – 12:00PM August 20, 2013 9:00AM – 12:00PM $125 /         TKE Members $65 Learn how to become a TKE Member!

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The Knowledge Exchange 5151 Babcock Street NE Palm Bay, Florida 32905 Phone: 321-473-8998 Fax: 321-327-8814

How do you do it? By asking lots of questions and providing very few answers. If you are a coach talking to a client you want to help him understand what is he trying to achieve so the question might be “What do you want?” If you are a leader you might be the one deciding what needs to be done and then the question is “How do you want to achieve the goal?” Let me borrow here a page from solution focused coaching.

The goal needs to be positive

When you ask these questions you need to get a positive answer. If you are not getting one, then ask again or ask differently. What do I mean by positive answer? Let’s say a team member comes to you and says he is not happy with the job he is doing. You ask him “What do you want?” and he says “Well, I don’t like the bureaucracy in my job.” This is not a positive answer that can trigger action and change. He is talking about what he doesn’t want, not what he wants. When you look around you will see that we all do this very often and it leads to endless complaining and dissatisfaction but very rarely to a real change.

So instead of working with this answer and figuring out how to remove bureaucracy or saying that it is the way things are and it cannot be changed you ask again “What do you want instead?” “I want to have at least several hours a day when I can completely focus on technical work I’m doing so I finish my project on time.” Now, this is something that is framed in positive way with a goal in front of our eyes. It also has second important aspect. It is under our control.

The goal must be under your control

Let me give you another example. One of your team members comes to you with this complaint: “My colleague is very annoying and he constantly asks simple questions again and again. I want this guy to stop doing it.” Well, this is not a goal that is under his control as someone else needs to do (or stop doing) something. Moreover, it is not framed positively. “To stop doing” something is just hidden way how to describe negative thought. When you hear this the question then might be “Why does it bother you?”

You may go through couple of these questions and then get to something like “I want more quiet time for my work to reach the deadline.” Now, this is something that just sparks action. The question now is “How do you want to achieve this?” “Well, I could just tell him that I would love to help, but I need to finish also my project. Or I could agree with the team that I’m open to questions in the morning, but I need to focus on finishing my project in the afternoon. I can move to separate office.”

Now you look at how is this under your control, what are the risks associated and how could you mitigate them. For example in our case “moving to a separate office” may be very risky as the team needs to communicate quite a lot and this could lead to breakdown in communication so it probably isn’t an option. Let’s say that at the end the best way forward is just to be very open with the inquisitive person. Now you can work with your employee to help him formulate his thoughts in a way that will be acceptable by the other guy who is “annoying”. You can even role play it if the employee is afraid what the reaction will be. Just make sure the solution is ecological.

The goal should be ecological

What do I mean by that? It should be aligned with the overall strategy of the organization or the team and it should support your other major initiatives and not go against them. You should always consider impact on the rest of the organization and not just on your team. You can have the best and smartest goal, but if it doesn’t align with what others are working on, it will fail. And even if it succeeds it won’t have impact as it doesn’t support the rest of the business.

The goal must have success criteria

Next step is to identify success criteria. “How do you recognize you achieved your goal?” “How do you know you succeeded?” This is important for two reasons. First, it will make the person to think about what the goal really is. Second, it will help the person to get the feeling of accomplishment when he finishes the job. This is extremely important in long-term goals or in initiatives that are repetitious. Let us say you are building a team or growing a company. Your goal is to “grow forever”. If you say the goal is “to grow the team” then there is no clear deadline, the target is constantly moving and you never get the feeling of accomplishment. You may say that “the journey is the goal” but that may not always work.

It is much better to break this long-term goal to something short-term and measurable. “I want to staff this team of four people this quarter and if I do this that is a success.” And then when you actually do it, go and celebrate. Yes, there are still hundreds of people to be hired in coming years, but it doesn’t make this particular accomplishment any less meaningful or important.

And last but not least the SMART part

The last step is to execute. To achieve something you need to start so “What is the very first step you will take?” And be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely) about this. Have it defined as a really small first step that is easy to achieve (small win) but that can be defined precisely, is measurable and has a clear set deadline.

What would be your answers to a person who comes to you with request he wants to feel more motivated? How would you set the success criteria and measure whether he succeeded and really is more motivated? Is it even the right goal?

In the rest of the country I usually get blank stares and people tend to quickly move on to the next guest to talk about something that makes sense. But sometimes I get people who just don’t perceive that there’s any problem to be solved in measuring outcomes. It’s always a little disturbing to have someone implying that there’s no real basis for a whole area of work you’ve involved in. I got this some time ago from a taxi driver on the way to an evaluation conference. I also got it again the other day the other night at the party.

A guest, who I later found out was a local government politician, heard me talking about being an outcomes strategist. He launched into something along the lines of: ‘I would have thought it was very easy, just measure the dollars’. Initially presuming he worked in the private sector, I gave my usual speel about the private sector and outcomes. In comparison to the public sector, it has the huge advantage that its outcomes are always measured (well the ones that people mostly focus on) and the measure is a common one (the dollar) which is used right across the entire sector, regardless of the type of work people are involved in. There’s also some more complicated stuff about the sector tending to have a more relaxed attitude towards attribution (proving exactly what caused what) than the public sector. I’ll blog about that second part sometime in the future.

When I introduced the point that non-financial outcomes, rather than financial outcomes, are at the heart of what’s done in the public sector, he then said something like: ‘well you just measure all that in surveys’. He thought that the whole problem of outcomes was simply solved by tracking outcomes over time. I pointed out that whether things were getting better in the district where he was in charge  said nothing about whether this was caused by his work. Things might be getting better in every city in the world because of general positive trends affecting everyone.

Up until this point, in my view, he was simply committing the basic outcomes fallacy of thinking that measuring a not-necessarily controllable indicator somehow shows that one has improved it. (see Duignan’s Six Type of Evidence That a Program Works diagram).

When I told him as politely as I could that I though he was not actually proving anything about what he was personally making happen, he introduced a more sophisticated argument which cannot be dismissed so easily. This argument was that he ‘hears from the people all the time’ and that he gets feedback from the different encounters he has with the people who live in his district. He also added that ultimately they would tell him if he wasn’t doing a good job.

Our conversation got interrupted about this time so I didn’t  get to continue talking to him. However, thinking in formal outcomes theory terms, in this second part of the conversation, he could have been making two somewhat different arguments. One is that his immersion in the nitty-gritty of working with the people in his district brought him into direct contact with the lower-levels of the outcomes model he was seeking to achieve (the model of the steps needed to achieve high-level outcomes – which can be operationalized in the form of a visual DoView). Being able to directly ‘see’ that the lower-level steps were being put in place (e.g. new environmental regulations), and having a sound logic of the intervention at hand (environmental regulation leading to a better environment), plus a measure that environmental issues were improving,  it was reasonable for him to claim that he had established he was having an impact. In Duignan’s Types of Impact Evaluation Designs, this is the seventh type of design: Intervention Logic (Program Theory/Theory of Change) Based Designs. It can be accepted as a credible impact design by stakeholders in some situations. Of course there’s always the question of who the observer is who is making the claim that lower-level steps have been achieved. But presumably we could get some independent assessment as to whether the lower-level steps were, as he was claiming, happening, so the logic of the design makes theoretical sense as a way of attempting to prove impact.

An alternative argument he could have been mounting, if the wanted to be very pragmatic, is that the fact that he keeps getting re-elected is what ‘hearing from the people all the time’ means in practice. Looking at it this way, he would be defining his outcomes as not changing things in his community (which he may well wish to do) but just as a matter of him getting re-elected. If this is the case, then the fact that he is regularly re-elected means that, by definition, he is achieving his ‘outcome’. And this outcome could be translated into something like ‘keeping the people satisfied’. The argument then would be that keeping the people satisfied was the best way of achieving outcomes for the community within a democracy. I think that this is an example of pulling the ‘outcome’ you’re trying to show you changed back down the outcomes model so they get to some lower-level where its easier to prove attribution.

So while, in my view, his initial claims about it being easy to figure out what is causing outcomes were weak and did not establish anything actually about him having an effect on outcomes, his second round of argument had more substance to it.

Want to know more? http://About.Me/PaulDuignan

What is more troubling is that the situation seems to be getting worse as the volume of change increases. The IBM study identified that the percentage of CEOs expecting substantial change rose from 65% in 2006 to 83% in 2008, up by 18%. The same CEOs reporting that their organisations had successfully managed change rose just 4% from 57% in 2006 to 61% in 2008. When you think about this, the difference between expecting change and feeling able to manage it rose significantly. In 2006, we were looking at the difference between 65% and 57% – that is 8%. In 2008, the respective numbers were 83% and 61%, a “change gap” of 22 – almost 3 times the “change gap” of 2006.

However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. The study also identified that the top 20% of organisations are successful 80% of the time. Given that the bottom 20% only manage to achieve their change objectives 8% of the time, how do you get into the top 20% and avoid being in the bottom 20%? After all, there is a big difference – if you can be in the top 20%, you are likely to be ten times more successful that the poor performers in the bottom category!

Subsequent posts on this topic will cover why change initiatives fail (so you don’t repeat the same mistakes) and why they succeed (so you can do the right things). Sign up to follow this blog and get a much greater chance of being in the top 20% and saving money on failed changes.

Mezmerize

THE NEW NORMAL

MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY SEMINAR

‘The New Normal’ – Work and Performance Management in an Age of Recession, by Phil Taylor,
Date:   Thursday 9th May 2013
Time:    17:00 – 18:30
Room:    W138, Williams Building, The Burroughs, Hendon, London NW4 4BT

The seminar is based on a presentation given at the recent Work, Employment and Society, 25th Anniversary Conference. It will take as its point of departure a reflection on change and continuity in the sociology of work and employment over a quarter of century with reference to the comparative political and economic conjunctures. Focusing on the recent and the present, the presentation will consider the nature of what Richard Hyman called the ‘new normalcy’ in 1987 and the term McKinsey Consultants is using today – ‘the new normal’ – to justify an unprecedented managerial offensive against workers in the post-crisis world of work and employment. The lynchpin of the new regime in the workplace is an emerging system of Performance Management. Phil will present findings from a three-year study of the ‘new workplace tyranny’ and will consider ways in which it can be resisted.

Phil Taylor is Professor of Work and Employment Studies in the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Strathclyde. He has researched and published extensively on all aspects of the call/contact centre, particularly work organisation and employment relations. Over the past decade he has extended this research to encompass the remote sourcing and the globalisation of business services. Other research interests include lean working, prison privatisation, union organising, and occupational health and safety. He was a lead member of a major project under the ESRC’s Future of Work Programme, based at the University of Strathclyde and drawing on researchers across several Scottish Universities. He is currently editor of New Technology Work and Employment. He was co-editor of Work, Employment and Society from 2008 and 2010 having previously served on its editorial board (2004-2006).

If you would like to attend this event please confirm your attendance to Elena Karoullas:  E.Karoullas@mdx.ac.uk

First published in: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/2018the-new-normal2019-2013-work-and-performance-management-in-an-age-of-recession-by-phil-taylor-middlesex-uni-9-may

**END**

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‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

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The engagement ring is going to business management routines keep on her hands forever, and every single time she sees it, it ought to remind her about that glorious day, and her partner’s undying devotion. This is why the engagement ring holds such an critical location in a man’s life. It is not just an ornament it symbolizes your enjoy, trust, dedication and the affection you have for your life partner.

If the Diamond engagement ring had been a mere ornament, you could usually go for the costliest a single and the most flamboyant, glossy model to display off your wealth and status in the society. But it?s not just an ornament it’s a token of enjoy and care. So, it has to be selected in a manner that it would really and wholly represent you.

A diamond is regarded as the very best selection for the engagement ring, because the diamond is as special as your life partner. It is the purest, and the hardest material available. Above all, nothing at all can beat the look of a diamond ring. Women are regarded as as the very best creation of nature, so presenting a Diamond Ring is like saying, ‘one beuatiful creation for an additional.’

You can performance management decide on whatever look you want in your diamond ring. Vintage, classic, modern, or ultra contemporary whatever style is desired by your partner. Picking the correct sort and style of diamond depends not only upon the color, texture and the price tag, but also on the likings and the looks of your partner.

An elongated diamond, such as the Marquise or Oval can make brief fingers appear sleeker. A diamond is challenging in character, incredibly excellent searching, dazzling all through its life, producing the man or woman who has it happier, and represents the glitter of love. So there can’t be a more unique reason to purchase a diamond engagement ring immediately after all, the proper diamond with the correct setting is the very best issue that can take place in your life, only next to your life partner.

To develop a language for improved business decision making, we created a survey with questions that cover five classes of decision-making biases, which we summarized in earlier work: action-oriented, interest, pattern-recognition, social, and stability biases.¹ The questions drew out preferences by asking people to choose between two neutral, equally defensible statements. Responses fell along a range from a strong preference for intuitive decision making to a strong preference for making decisions after exhaustive deliberation.

We received nearly 5,000 responses to the survey from McKinsey Quarterly andHarvard Business Review readers, and we conducted detailed analysis of 1,021 respondents, whose demographics and response characteristics were statistically indistinguishable from the full sample’s.² We used these responses and factor analysis to identify six objective dimensions of the respondents’ preferences, which roughly correspond to common steps in the decision-making process. Cluster analysis then yielded five groups of decision-making preferences. This research is still in its early stages; presented here are the five decision-making styles, including the percentage of respondents who fell into each group.

Interactive

Early-stage research on decision-making styles

People make decisions—often in very different ways. Learn more about five distinct styles and the preferences that shape them.

Early-stage research on decision-making styles (link to charts and report)

The percentages in particular are preliminary, since the self-selected nature of the respondent pool could have introduced sample bias. Also, the number of questions tested and the sample size are far below those of a standard psychometric tool such as Myers–Briggs. That said, we believe the current survey has within it the core of a tool to help individuals reflect upon the trade-offs they make as decision makers.

For more on how to improve decision-making effectiveness, see our interview with Stanford’s Chip Heath and McKinsey’s Olivier Sibony, “Making great decisions.”

About the authors

Dan Lovallo is a professor of business strategy at the University of Sydney Business School, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, and an adviser to McKinsey. Olivier Sibony is a director in McKinsey’s Paris office.

Early-stage research on decision-making styles | McKinsey & Company.

Cover of How to Break Bad News

Even in an uncertain job market, a December 2011 survey by human resources software maker Cornerstone OnDemand and Harris Interactive found that 21 million U.S. workers planned to change jobs this year, costing companies an estimated $2 trillion. The survey also found that the solution to keeping employees might lie in better performance management, including employee performance reviews. Only 37 percent of respondents felt that they were given useful feedback by their managers during their reviews.

Being consistent in giving performance reviews can be tough when you’re delivering a not-so-great review. Sharon Armstrong, founder of Sharon Armstrong and Associates, a Washington, DC-based human resources consultancy and author of The Essential HR Handbook (Career Press, 2008), helps companies of all sizes improve their human resources functions. Here are her tips to help you make poor performance reviews less difficult and more effective.

Related: How to Break Bad News to Employees

1. Come out from behind the desk. Lecturing from behind a desk isn’t an effective way to deliver a difficult performance appraisal, says Armstrong. Instead, come out from behind the desk and sit face-to-face at eye level with the employee. Better yet, get a conference room, which is relatively neutral space, as long as it provides privacy. Such changes in location can help facilitate conversation instead of making the employee feel like he or she is being scolded.

2. Consider your employees’ communication style. Good managers should understand their employees’ individual communication styles. Some employees respond to ice-breakers and chit-chat about families while others find that more nerve-wracking and prefer to dive right into the review. Some employees are extroverted interested in discussing how to do better while others might be shy and internalize criticism.

Tailoring your bad-news delivery based on the employee instead of using a cookie-cutter approach make it more likely the employee hears what you’re saying, says Armstrong.

3. Avoid sandbagging. ”There’s a wonderful supervisor’s mantra and it’s six words: When you see it, say it.’ Make your feedback an ongoing workplace discussion,” says Armstrong. In other words, don’t keep a running list of everything the employee has done wrong throughout the course of the year and then use the review to unload grievances.

Instead, if you see behavior that needs correcting, do so at the time you observe it and reinforce any positive changes that have been made. In addition to delivering the bad news in a poor performance review, keep track of any good behaviors and discuss those, as well.

4. Make it a two-way conversation. While you don’t want to go so far as to ask for employee feedback on your performance during the review, you should use it as an opportunity to get information about the challenges or triumphs he or she has had on the job. Armstrong suggests giving an employee some “homework” prior to the meeting so they can prepare for the review.

For example, ask the employee to think about six accomplishments of which he or she is proud or to discuss a difficult work situation that he or she solved during the course of the year. This helps you better understand how the employee thinks about his or her work, challenges, and priorities, she says. In addition, it gives you some positive material to discuss during a tough performance appraisal, which can help the employee from feeling demoralized.  

http://www.jackbassteam.com

( affiliated with Work Systems Associates )

Related articles

• Tips for Giving an Effective Performance Review (coffeeshophr.com)

Do you know what it takes to get the right people, in the right roles doing the right things?

By Terry Thompson & Jay Kipps

It’s time to summarize and set the stage for a number of forthcoming posts regarding the “People” aspect of corporate culture.  To date we have described:

1. How key the CEO’s approach to corporate culture is and the probable need for his/her behaviour change with respect to prioritization of time
2. The importance of:
   1. articulating a compelling corporate vision and values and,
   2. establishing an effective corporate communication program.

Now we will discuss the subject that has the most significant impact on corporate culture (and also almost every other aspect of corporate performance) while also being severely humbled by bearing the stigma as the most misunderstood and poorly handled subject by CEOs and managers.  What is this subject with such a personality conflict? HAVING THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE RIGHT ROLES DOING THE RIGHT THINGS.

Despite rising to a very senior management position early in life (i.e  30 years old), Terry did not come close to taking the correct approach to the subject of the right people in the right places until his early 50’s and he wasn’t alone. None of the senior managers or CEOs he worked with  for the first 20+ years of his career had managed to get their hands around how to ensure that they had the right people, in the right roles, doing the right things.

More importantly to note is that it was not until Terry significantly upgraded his personal knowledge and skills and materially changed his attitude and behaviour towards the importance of this subject that he was able to achieve the corporate culture goals of:

1. Improved corporate performance as measured by:
   1. Profitability
   2. Employee engagement
   3. Customer satisfaction
   4. Personal life balance (i.e. hours working vs personal / family time)
   5. Fun at work
   6. Exit valuation of the corporation

So, if the subject of placing the right people in the right positions is so critical, why didn’t we start these articles with it rather than  the CEO’s approach, vision and values, and corporate communication?  If you remember our introductory article on the importance of behaviour changes for personal development, we emphasized the need to start with small, achievable goals and follow with the more challenging goals which require the greatest amount of change.  Starting with the “People” aspect of corporate culture would be equivalent to a sedentary person beginning fitness training with a marathon. Not much chance of a lasting, successful lifestyle change. The same goes for corporate culture.  If you cannot commit to and take the time to effectively deal with the “Personal” aspects first, you will not be able to commit to and take the time to effectively deal with the “People” one.

Now don’t get us wrong, when we say that neither very few CEOs or senior managers take the right approach  we are not saying that we failed to treat people properly and with respect. Our failure was in acquiring the skills and spending the proper amount of time and effort in :

1. Properly determining the key personnel organization structure of our company (particularly at a management position level)
2. Properly assessing the people in the key positions in order to determine if they were the right people and, if so, were self-sufficient in those roles
3. Properly recruiting, screening, and hiring the right people for the right positions at all levels of the company

It is our opinion that any manager can get 80% of the way to being a great manager and having great corporate culture by simply becoming masters of the above 3 items.

Accordingly, one would think that every CEO and manager would devote the correct amount of time and effort to these functions. Unfortunately this is not true for the vast majority of CEOs and managers and is the area that we believe is the greatest weakness of most companies.

It is also the area of most opportunity for those who wish to take the right approach as it will provide a significant competitive differentiator for those who are successful.

Our next article will provide you with “bite-size” guidance as to how you can become an expert in “HAVING THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE RIGHT ROLES DOING THE RIGHT THINGS”.

Should you have any questions or feedback regarding the content of this article please email us at Terry Thompson at tthompson15@verizon.net  or  Jason Kipps Jason.kipps@gmail.com  ©

So where am I going with this? Simple – when having a discussion with an employee about their performance (review) it needs to be its own separate discussion aside from whatever pay increase they are or are not getting. I have seen far too many organizations combine the two – the manager sits down, delivers a performance review and then tells the employee about their x% increase. The problem is that all your employee heard in that conversation was what their increase was….which may or may not be in line with what they thought they were going to get. Instead of focusing on the wonderfully crafted performance review and its content, that was all washed away and the employee hones in on the pay increase…or lack thereof.

This is why in organizations I have worked at I have always worked with managers to separate the discussions. Complete the performance review process first – rate the employee’s performance against their goals and KPI’s and deliver the feedback. Have a meaningful discussion about where you see their performance and where they need to improve and/or continue to excel. Outline the path to success, provide recognition where due and close the meeting on a high note. Your employee walks away feeling respected and then begins to process the performance info (in the context of goals and objectives) that you discussed with them.

After that meeting, 1 week or 1 month later (whatever your corporate timeline is), follow up with them to discuss what their performance increase is (or isn’t.) That way, there is an opportunity to context the pay discussion outside of the content of the performance review. The pay discussion should outline how the increase (or not) was determined. It is important for employees to understand what the compensation context is and how pay was determined. Managers need to understand and be comfortable explaining things like:

a) The company’s ability to pay (in relation to its overall performance)
b) Relativity to related geographical industry averages
c) The employee’s overall performance and the employee’s performance in the overall context of their peer group (this is especially critical where distribution curves apply)

Managers also need to understand (where applicable) things like compa-ratios and distribution curves if they impact the organizations’ budget and overall ability to pay. This way, the discussion is now focused on pay itself and how it was determined and not the specifics of the employee’s overall performance. It is incumbent on HR folks to provide the explanations and understandings to managers so that they can intelligently have these types of conversations with their employees. Based on the intended goals and outcomes of your performance and pay meetings, these salient points, hopefully, identify why it is critical that these conversations are separate.

What about you? What has been your experience with separating (or not) these conversations? What works? What doesn’t work? As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

Road image courtesy of digitalart/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hand and money image courtesy of creativedoxfoto/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

ABOUT “COACHING SKILLS”
One of the most important tasks for Managers and Supervisors is coaching their employees. Good Coaching:

• Helps employees understand what they should be doing and how.

• Provides employees with important information on whether they are performing up to expectation and if not, how far off the mark they are.

• Helps employees develop and enhance new skills needed for future positions.

Yet as important as it is, for many Managers and Supervisors, it’s also one of the most dreaded.  Managers and Supervisors often worry that their employees will react negatively to a coaching discussion.  Without the proper ground work employees may feel caught off guard, and indeed react negatively to what they consider as unwarranted criticism.

Because effective coaching is so important, KAW Consulting developed “Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors”, an electronic handbook that helps you learn the skills you’ll need to become an effective coach.  Written in a clear, easy to use format you’ll learn how to:

• Establish the groundwork to have an effective coaching relationship with your employees.
• Determine expected performance levels for your employees’ major tasks and responsibilities.
• Provide your employees with the needed training.

• Analyze your employees’ current level of performance against expected levels, and identify areas needing improvement.

• Hold an effective coaching discussion to provide employees with feedback on how they are doing, and develop plans for making needed improvements.

Designed specifically for e-book users, this version of “COACHING SKILLS FOR MANAGERS AND SUPERVISORS” is something you’ll want to keep on hand to refer to whenever you need to coach an employee.

HOW TO ORDER KINDLE VERSION
To view information on and purchase the Kindle Version of “Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors“ either click the applicable link below, or visit your applicable Amazon website and input “Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors” in the search criteria.

Amazon U.S. click here.

Amazon.co.uk click here.

Amazon.de click here

Amazon.fr click here

Amazon.es click here

Amazon.it click here

Amazon.co.jp click here

Amazon.com.br click here

Amazon.ca click here

Posted by Cathy Benko on April 24, 2013

Do you ever feel like you’re the lead actor in an oxymoron? For example, unemployment is high yet there is a talent shortage. It’s a global economy, yet in his keynote speech yesterday,  “The World is Local—High-Impact HR”  Josh Bersin tells us it’s more local than ever. We seek one-size-fits-all customized work experiences. You flex like Gumby, yet CEOs are saying HR is the least agile of all the business functions.

Today at IMPACT

►

Cathy Benko Vice Chairman and Managing Principal, Deloitte LLP

As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

Training is easy to sell and easy to buy – it is produced in neat packages with clear labels that explain what it is about and that make it easy to buy ‘off the shelf’. This includes topics such as time management, team building and – rather improbably in my opinion – leadership. Increasingly though, when we look at the results of training we see that the desired changes in behaviours and attitudes do not follow through into the workplace. Now more than ever, we have organisations focusing on attitude and behaviour change since the financial crisis exposed some very worrying tendencies for which they are still paying the price in fines and lost confidence. In a previous blog [The Man Who Fell to Earth] I have described how the person returning from their team from a training course is drawn back into the prevailing culture and any attempts to change are soon dampened down by others and eventually brushed aside. I believe that this is generally true even with good will all round and strong initial enthusiasm.

Development by contrast does not come in neat little packages and is really very messy. There are no snappy maxims or quick fixes for real development and it is different for each individual. Of course we delude ourselves that having sent someone on a training course we have ticked the box and can now sit back and see the benefits. When this doesn’t happen we complain that there must be something wrong with them or the training.

Some providers claim that they have a neat and fail-proof leadership development package – caveat emptor, leadership development cannot be conveniently packaged and anyone who claims that is wrong.

I am not anti-training, I just think we need to be realistic about what it can achieve and be open to other forms of development that in reality are more powerful but perhaps more difficult to sell and buy. Be bold enough to not always take ‘route one’. By this I mean that sharply focused and short boxes of training may be reasonably effective for some basic level and technical skills but that the psychological changes required to become a better manager and leader are not achieved by simply aggregating lots of small boxes of training.

Charles Jennings says ‘when working is learning, then learning is working’ and I agree. Charles has been a leading proponent of the 70/20/10 model. This theory has some serious research behind it and its basis is that only 10% of what we learn at work comes through formal training. 20% comes from learning from another significant person or person at work and 70% comes through just doing the job. For many people who I have discussed this with, their instinct and more importantly their own experience tells them this is right. The model is challenging for those involved in training and those used to thinking that the neat little packages that they can tick off their lists are doing the job of developing their workforce and their leaders and managers.

An older, considerable force in this area was the late Reg Revans, the originator of Action Learning. A technique so wonderfully simple that it is often dismissed but is in fact the one of the most powerful developmental tool available to us. It may be difficult to see how a group of people, meeting over time and asking each other searching questions about their practice is so effective but there is plenty of evidence to show it is. In recent years another development tool, coaching, has gained popularity as again, the value and power of a few purposeful conversations can be felt by those who experience it. Not everyone responds well to coaching despite what some coaches’ claim, I suggest that the person has to be ready for coaching before coaching can be ready for them and the same is true for Action Learning and almost all real development tools.

This is why these things are messy – sitting through a training session is one thing – having an hours coaching every month or committing to an action learning set is quite another – some people just don’t ‘get it’ – yet! [Experience tells me they will sooner or later] The term soft skills and touchy feely are used to dismiss these things and instead we fall back on …..training.

The simple fact is that we can pump knowledge into people’s heads only so much – then it starts to gush out of the top and is not retained. Learning by doing the job and by reflecting in some way about that is where the really powerful learning is. Certainly that can feel less tangible and be difficult to manage and that is precisely the point……

We can’t manage the 90% that isn’t training, we can only facilitate it, make it likely to happen and make it better. We can also try to capture some of that learning that goes on to increase the knowledge base of our organisation rather than lose it when people leave.

This is where technology plays a part alongside developmental methods such as coaching [team and individual] and action learning.

Technology now allows us to do 2 apparently contradictory things

- organise and control our resources

- facilitate ad hoc collaboration and reflection to develop resources in a free flowing way

Many organisations are still stuck with the shared drive as a resource depository that neither motivates people to create resources nor even organises them in an effective way. A learning platform by contrast can act as a shared repository with controlled editing rights and enable online collaboration to create new resources. Some allow participants to develop their internal CV as a profile that can be called up by others searching for expertise within the organisation. These CVs contain videos and photos that deliver a more powerful message that an employee can use to ‘sell’ their skills and knowledge to others internally – think Facebook profile but with an organisational purpose – Who in your organisation is an expert and on what? How many times do you discover that simply through a chance conversation.

Platforms are no longer chained to the desktop because they work across mobile platforms on smartphones and tablets – taking full advantage of the cloud based platform by accessing it anywhere. So someone could be adding to your knowledge base whilst on a train. This accessibility also facilitates a wider circle of learning – a social learning framework. If someone has a great idea – how do they get it started? How do you capture the learning in ongoing projects and how do you review them. All of this can be done through effective use of technology as part of a full learning and development strategy that acknowledges that the answer is not just training or tidy little ‘development’ packages but is happening all the time whether you organise it or not.

One of the most powerful areas for learning to happen both up and down the hierarchy is in performance management – but it rarely seems to result in that because learning is not on that agenda. People I talk to in organisations tend to tell me about their appraisal system. How is anyone supposed to learn from their rating [which if anything less that excellent they disagree with anyway] over 12 months in an aspect – or worse all aspects – of the job. Performance management should be regular – when needed and should have learning at its heart or else a huge opportunity is missed.

An old story goes that a passer-by walking along at night saw a drunk on his hands and knees under a streetlight. Feeling concerned for him he asked him what he was looking for. When the drunk replied he was looking for his keys the man bent down to help but when they keys could not be found he asked where the drunk had dropped them – ‘over there in that doorway’ came the reply – ‘so why are you looking over here’ the man reasonably asked ‘because the light is better’ replied the drunk.

To make the analogy clear – don’t always look where the light is best when real development and improvements to organisational effectiveness may be somewhere less well lit and probably a bit messy but the potential for real results is much higher.