The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

  • Home
  • Blog
    • People
    • Data
    • Process
    • Wild Cards
    • Index
  • Podcast
  • Book

Snakes, Rats and Your H.R. Policies

26 March, 2014 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Unintended Consequences

Have you heard of the Cobra Effect? In Victorian times, at the height of the British Empire, the governors of Colonial India were very worried about the number of cobras in Delhi — no self-respecting bureaucrat has a liking of venomous snakes. The governors came up with a plan.  They offered a reward for every […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: bad process, cheating, cobra effect, employee performance measures, human nature, incentives, nothing new under the sun, performance management, reinforcing behaviour, systems thinking

Explore

accountability assumptions beliefs best practice blame bureaucracy capability clarity command and control communication complexity continuous improvement cost saving culture customer focus data is not information decisions employee performance measures empowerment error proofing fessing up gemba human nature incentives information technology innovation key performance indicators learning management style measurement motivation performance management poor service process control purpose reinforcing behaviour service design silo management systems thinking targets teamwork test and learn trust video waste

Receive Posts by e-Mail

Get the next post delivered straight to your inbox

Creative Commons

This information from The Squawk Point is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons Licence
Customer Experience Update

Try This:

  • Regression to The Mean

  • Glory Lasts Forever

  • Fish Bone Diagrams – Helpful or Not?

  • Brilliance Alone Won’t Take You Far

Connect

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Contact Me

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in