Guidance from within, service from above.
Given Human Organisations require a much more bottom-up approach, where does that leave the Senior Leadership? There remains a place for Senior Leadership to articulate direction and boundaries. But, ...
If we want freedom we must purchase it with accountability, responsibility, insecurity, vulnerability and, ultimately, a promise. It doesn’t come for free. Which is one reason why not everybody wants ...
What we choose to measure is a belief statement: it says “this matters, and this is success”. It is loaded with meaning - even the decision ‘to measure or not to measure’ says something about us. As s...
Surfacing Assumptions As leaders, we must first surface and address the hidden assumptions we hold about the nature of management and the capacity of “lower ranking” employees to deliver. Leaders ofte...
Measurement is key to the belief in status quo organisations (see: What is the status quo organisation?) that we can not only predict outcomes but that we can reliably control and analyse them. So wha...
Before we approach anyone to discuss performance, we must first take on a few tasks in preparation: Consider our own role and the wider context by asking ourselves some key questions and preparing our...
To become a Human Organisation we must accept that we can’t motivate people to become enthusiastic about the things we choose on their behalf (see: What is wrong with the normal approach to motivation...
People make mistakes. That’s just human nature. If we attempt to hold others to a standard of perfection then we ask for too much. But, a lot of performance issues are not down to some deficiency or e...
In C21st orgs, there is no standard approach to measurement. Each team and structure is unique and measurement should reflect that. We need to think differently about the concept of measurement and se...
Motivation in the status quo misses the point. It strives to get the most out of people by offering the best incentives and to stop people slacking off by providing clear retributions. Unfortunately, ...