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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

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

Thought Walks

7 July, 2017 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Brainstorming doesn’t always cut it Sometimes you have a problem that requires an imaginative solution. The standard management method for adding a spark of creativity is to brainstorm the problem. But brainstorming doesn’t always work. The ideas can be a little tired, you may not get something really new. Random thoughts There is an argument […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: brainstorm, innovation, video

The Management Dilemma

6 November, 2016 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Fair and Just

Scientific management Some people think management is a science.  It has clear rights and wrongs, with best practices to follow and benchmarks to beat.  Success lies in targets, goals and objectives; building the right processes and having the right infrastructure.  Organisations are just machines.  By applying cold hard logic you will get results. Clarity is a good […]

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

Poor Performance

11 January, 2016 by James Lawther 7 Comments

We are responsible for our own behaviour This belief underpins our approach to management. We are all capable of deciding how we should behave.  So if an individuals performance isn’t up to scratch then that is a problem of our their own making. To improve performance manage the people. Is it that simple? Professor Philip […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: performance management, systems thinking, TED talks, video

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