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The Tiger That Isn’t by Blastland and Dilnot — Book Review

1 November, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The Tiger That Isn't

What is it about? According to its authors: “Mathematics scares and depresses most of us, but politicians, journalists and everyone in power use numbers all the time to bamboozle us.  It is liberating to understand when numbers are telling the truth or being used to lie.” According to Steven Poole at the Guardian: “This very elegant book… […]

Filed Under: Blog, Book Tagged With: analysis paralysis, Andrew Dilnot, data integrity, data is not information, key performance indicators, measurement, Michael Blastland, targets

Everybody Cheats

15 October, 2018 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Everybody Cheats

Who can you trust? When I was a small boy, the most exciting thing in the world was a day trip to London with my father.  I was brought up in a field in deepest Yorkshire.  The big smoke was amazing.  It had museums, skyscrapers, underground trains, toy shops, galleries and ice cream.  Best of […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: cheating, human nature, incentives, measurement, performance management, reinforcing behaviour, targets, trust

The Puzzle of Motivation

3 September, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach.

TED Talk Dan Pink Improving employee performance is as easy as 1, 2, 3: Write an objective Define a metric Provide an incentive Then set people off to hit the goal.  It is just a question of building motivation. In his entertaining TED talk Dan Pink explains why this approach destroys motivation  instead of creating […]

Filed Under: Best of the Web, Blog Tagged With: beliefs, command and control, Daniel Pink, human nature, incentives, motivation, performance management, targets, video

Pointless Conversations

30 August, 2018 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Management meetings Do you ever lose the will to live in management meetings?  Sometimes they are so bad I want to scoop out my eyeballs with a tea-spoon.  I’d do anything to get out of the conversation. I hate futile meetings that are a waste of everybody’s time — usually highly paid people’s time. Here […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: bureaucracy, command and control, cost saving, diversity, effective meetings, employee performance measures, forced fun, key performance indicators, management style, motivation, objective setting, office productivity, performance management, targets, waste, wasted intellect

The World’s Most Toxic Culture?

5 July, 2018 by James Lawther 4 Comments

The Four Pests

Organisational culture If you have been reading this blog for a while you will have noticed that I am a caught in a repeating loop.  The human equivalent of a stuck record. I write about organisational improvement.  There are lots of fascinating advances in technology, management thinking and other whiz-bang solutions that I could pontificate […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, command and control, culture, human nature, incentives, management style, rhetoric, targets

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