Appraisal is such a good idea and it is founded on such solid psychological principles that it is a wonder it has such a bad reputation, and that it fails to deliver so frequently. It was WE Deming, the great quality guru, who said that it took the average American six months to recover fromContinue reading “Thinking About Appraisal and Making it Work”
Tag Archives: Performance
The Right People Need No Motivation
Jim Collins, the world famous management guru, has said that “if you have the right people on your bus, you don’t need to worry about motivating them”. As a friend of mine said, “Does this mean that employee motivation programs are useless?” It would seem so – if only we could get our recruitment right,Continue reading “The Right People Need No Motivation”
How Nothing Creates Performance and Beauty
I was with some friends the other day, including Ginny Richards, and she had just played the piano superbly well. We were discussing how it is that some people play the piano – or instrument or sing – so expressively, and others, who may be technically proficient, make it all sound so dead. There isContinue reading “How Nothing Creates Performance and Beauty”
The Motivation of Art
Like most people I love art in all its forms, especially literature, music and painting. We take it for granted that art exists; after all, the papers are full of reviews of it. Only last Saturday the Telegraph was stuffed with interesting art reviews. But as I read some of them I thought: is thisContinue reading “The Motivation of Art”
Performance, Motivation and What Else?
We have long held at Motivational Maps that performance is down to three core components: direction, skills (including knowledge), and motivation. So far as the operational work goes at middle and technical levels, then we are really concerned with two aspects: skills and motivation, and this since the direction – strategy, plans, goals, objectivesContinue reading “Performance, Motivation and What Else?”
Leadership as theatre
To work in metaphors is the essence not of childishness, but of maturity, and it is fundamental to our appreciation of the world because it enables us to see the invisible relationship between things, ideas and processes. Metaphor is essentially dynamic – precisely what leadership is. If we wish to capture the essence of theContinue reading “Leadership as theatre”
Getting to grips with performance
The subject of performance is one of the most important of our lives and of our business. The reasons are not difficult to understand. At one level we are constantly judging how people perform, consciously or subconsciously. This may be easy to get when we consider a leader or manager at work: we think,Continue reading “Getting to grips with performance”
Leverage and people
In organisations dealing with the people is always about dealing with all that is not secure! With all that is ambivalent and difficult to quantify– leadership, culture, values, management, motivation and morale, attitude, training and development, performance and so on. And the thing about these elements is that they are highly ambiguous. What is itContinue reading “Leverage and people”
Leaders breaking hierarchical norms
One of the most important aspects of being a leader is generating creativity – innovation – in the organisation. This is often perceived as being an issue to do with product or service development; rarely about how the very structures in which people operate can be loosened – the hierarchical norms in fact. These structuresContinue reading “Leaders breaking hierarchical norms”
Creating Teams
One of the most important skills of a true leader is the ability to create strong and effective teams. The reason for this is simple and can be summed up in the well known acronym: TEAM – Together Each Achieves More. What this means is that there is a synergy that happens when a trueContinue reading “Creating Teams”
The Mapping Motivation Series 