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Performance Appraisals Drive Mediocrity

30 July, 2018 by James Lawther 9 Comments

Play to your strengths

It is mid-year If you work in the corporate world that means you have been busy writing appraisals.  If you have never seen one, the standard corporate appraisal form has about 5 sections: Progress Against Objectives — what you did Fit with Competency Framework — how you did it Core Strengths — things you did […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: average, best practice, collaboration, employee performance measures, performance management, sacred cows, wasted intellect

The One Place You Should Excel

25 January, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Excellence Managers talk a lot about excellence.  It monopolises their communication. They rattle on about: Being best of breed Transcending the top quartile Utilising best practice Becoming best-in-class, world-class and maybe even intergalactic-class I’m sure you have heard something similar along the way. But it is only talk There are a handful of problems with […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: best practice, rhetoric

Was My M.B.A. A Waste of Time?

30 October, 2017 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Thought Experiment

Collaboration For my sins I have an M.B.A.  I am a child of the ’70’s.  By the time I hit the ’90’s an M.B.A. was the qualification to have if you were intent on pursuing a corporate career. The course taught me all about the parts of big business.  I learnt about: Finance and accounting […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: best practice, collaboration, communication, culture, systems thinking

Performance Management Best Practice

26 February, 2017 by James Lawther 3 Comments

performance management

What is the best way to improve staff performance? There is an awful lot of performance management “best practice” out there.  Lots of books, seminars, HR gurus and management consultants who tell you what to do and sell you a model. But which practice is the best practice? In 2002 the corporate leadership council decided […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: beliefs, best practice, performance management, pygmalion effect

Does All That “Structure” Help?

26 September, 2016 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Escapology

Organisations are complicated They have: Customer requirements Partner requirements Legal requirements Compliance requirements Legacy systems Specialist teams Obsolete databases Competitive pressure Profitability problems And all those competing priorities are in conflict with each other. How do we manage complexity? By creating process and structure: RACI frameworks Target Operating Models Interim targets Delegated authority levels KPIs Heads […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: best practice, blame, business process management, collaboration, command and control, complexity, constraints, office productivity, performance management, systems thinking, teamwork

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