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The Strategic Comms Centre of Excellence

9 October, 2017 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Management Speak

Management Speak I reached out to my boss first thing this morning.  I had to square the circle about one of our strategic imperatives.  Fortunately he cascaded the relevant information.  He had the helicopter view, I was too busy searching for low hanging fruit. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to set me […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: communication, credibility, Dilbert, jargon

A Culture of Fear, Intimidation and Retaliation

21 September, 2017 by James Lawther 8 Comments

Nervous Teacher

The scandal In 2011, a state report to the Governor’s office in Georgia claimed that there was “organised and systemic misconduct” in 44 of Atlanta’s 56 schools.  2 years later 35 teachers, head teachers and administrative staff were brought to trial and charged with racketeering and other offences. The smoking gun The accusations revolved around […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: command and control, conformity, data is not information, fear and anxiety, Goodhart's law, key performance indicators, performance management, political intervention, poor service, targets

Poor Behaviour

5 September, 2017 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Dysfunctional situations It is easy to blame other people’s behaviour for poor performance: He is uncooperative She is selfish He is incompetent She is a bully He is power crazed She is rude Poor behaviour causes all sorts of dysfunctional situations.  Doesn’t it? The experiment In 1971 Phillipe Zimbardo set up the Stanford prison experiment. […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: beliefs, management style, reinforcing behaviour, systems thinking, video

Three Types of Culture

7 August, 2017 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Justice

1. Blame culture I am not a big fan of blaming people when things go wrong. There are two reasons why: It is hard to apportion blame correctly. Business is a team sport. With so many players involved failures are rarely the fault of one person. If a goal keeper lets in a goal, was […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, culture, management style

Empowerment

22 July, 2017 by James Lawther 7 Comments

saxophone

A problem with motivation My youngest daughter (8) is learning to play the saxophone. I’m very jealous, I’d love to be able to play the saxophone. It sounds like so much more fun than management meetings and PowerPoint. Yet no matter what I do, she doesn’t practice. And because she doesn’t practice she will never […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: command and control, management style, motivation, pride in the job, video

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