The age of paternalistic companies is waning. That social contract was broken years ago.
I’ve had my own company for over a decade…my former colleagues still working for big companies told me they preferred the security of having a job. That security is an illusion. We’re all freelancers; its just more “in your face” for some of us than others.
Tammy Erickson’s article (http://blogs.hbr.org/erickson/2010/05/restore_trust.html) talks about the end of the old social contract and proposes a different equation (see below).
If the trust equations is really going to change, the “challenge” in interesting and challenging work must come from the content of the work itself.
I’ve seen too many organizations where the main challenge was struggling to accomplish anything meaningful in the face of broken work systems, politics, and organizational silos. Here’s the equation I believe will form the basis of trust between corporations and workers for the decades ahead: The organization will provide interesting and challenging work. The individual will invest discretionary effort in the task and produce relevant results. When one or both sides of this equation are no longer possible (for whatever reasons) the relationship will end. So if the organization no longer has interesting or challenging work for the individual to do, or if the individual is no longer willing or able to engage in the work — to invest the levels of discretionary effort required for excellent results — it is in everyone’s best interest to part ways. Read more at blogs.hbr.org |
Interesting post on HBR about giving feedback to your boss.
Two things come up for me:
The ability to hear feedback depends on the relationship. This is also true of feedback that flows downward. Giving feedback is part of a managers job; building relationships is a prerequisite to both feedback and coaching.
When feedback only goes one way–from boss to subordinate–the power difference is amplified and the sense of fairness erodes–making it less likely that the receiver will hear the feedback as helpful.
| if offered correctly and thoughtfully, your insight can not only help your boss, but also improve your working relationship. |
The relationship comes first
The ability to give and receive upward feedback, like any form of feedback, is dependent on the relationship between you and your boss. Without trust, the feedback will be impossible to receiveRead more at blogs.hbr.org |
Three things managers say that convince employees that the manager neither understands the work, nor has empathy for the employee.
“You’ll just have to multi-task.”
“Don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions.”
“You’ll be working weekends to meet these dates.” | The common mantra these days is, “engaged employees are productive employees.” Employees who think you have no idea or empathy for them are not going to be engaged. Read more at www.fastcompany.com |
I’ve done the exercise describe below in many organizations–with similar results. By posting all the projects, the problem is there for all to see. And then it’s the managers job to do something about it.
When managers fail to establish priority and/or say yes to every request that comes their way from the business or from above, they shift the burden for establishing priorities to the people doing the work.
Too often, those same managers turn around and blame the people for doing the work for not getting it all done. That’s not management, it’s abuse.
| The head of a large hospital brought together her direct reports and asked them to create a separate card for each major project or initiative underway. They then placed all of these cards on the wall and realized that, between the ten of them, they had over 150 active projects, many of which were drawing upon the same resources or impacting the same groups. It was no wonder, the team realized, that they were behind schedule and that their people felt overloaded. |
| But if everything is called a priority, then nothing is. In fact, what’s worse is that people at lower levels, faced with the impossible task of trying to respond to everything, end up deciding what is important based on their more limited sense of the company’s strategy and their ability to get things done. By not clarifying the few key priorities, leadership teams unintentionally delegate priority-setting to their people. And then they wonder why everyone isn’t on the same page. Read more at blogs.hbr.org |
Managers need data that will help them understand the state of the system and steer the system. Many companies collect data on stuff that’s easy to count, and ignore stuff that’s potentially important, but hard to count.
Some useful questions to think about data in this HBR blog post. managers would do well to ask themselves four questions about their data process as a way of improving the return on what is often a substantial (but not always visible) investment:
- Are we asking the right questions? Many companies collect the data that is available, rather than the data that is needed to help make decisions and run the business.
Read more at blogs.hbr.org |
The answer doesn’t involve bonuses, raises, praise or rah-rah.
People are motivated by a sense of accomplishment and progress.
So if you want to motivate people to work hard, stop demotivating them.
What demotivates people? Bureaucracy, unclear goals, constantly shifting goals, micromanagement, punishment for delivering accurate by unwelcome status (to name a few). In a recent survey we invited more than 600 managers from dozens of companies to rank the impact on employee motivation and emotions of five workplace factors commonly considered significant: recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, support for making progress, and clear goals. “Recognition for good work (either public or private)” came out number one.
Unfortunately, those managers are wrong. |
On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.
Read more at hbr.org |
There was a time when businesses told employees, “leave your emotions at the door.” Of course, no one can do that. Emotions and cognition work together in the brain. Suppressed emotions slurp out in unpredictable ways.
Now some want their employees to project certain emotions to customers–excitement, enthusiasm, empathy. But does feigning emotion work? Most people see through inauthentic displays of emotion. Faking takes a toll on the person when the inside and the outside don’t match.
I think we need a different approach: congruence. http://www.ayeconference.com/beyondblaming/ The Problem of Forced Fun |
Our culture cares increasingly about authenticity. Indeed, thanks to the work of Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, authenticity has become a watchword in the world of marketing. In this new cultural convention, being really excited all the time is patently inauthentic, not least because we know that peak moments of emotion are by their nature occasional. So when we ask our staff to roll out the bonhomie, some employees now believe they are being asked to be inauthentic. Read more at blogs.hbr.org |
There’s a story about a group who was redesigning the interface for a specialized printer. Their original design had all the buttons on the front…until they visited customers and saw that a significant number kept the printers on the floor. Front facing buttons meant that people had to lie on the floor to use them.
Go and see. | You can learn a great deal about customers by studying the broader context in which they use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service.Read more at blogs.hbr.org |
Once again, Bob Sutton has something interesting to say about managing in organizations.
It’s true, I thought more about good management when I had a bad manager. And as Bob points out, the price for the learning is very high.
Good management is often invisible…which is why Johanna and I wrote BCD…so you can learn about good management without suffering a bad manager. I also think people should understand that they will learn more from
a bad manager than a good manager. They tend to get into a cycle where
they’re so frustrated that they aren’t
paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a
good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going
well because it just feels fine. |
There are several elements of this comment that made me stop and think. The first follows from my post on not noticing, as the implication is that when things are going great, you don’t engage in very deep cognition about them, because little is happening to give you pause or upset you. In fact, this point is consistent with research on cognition and emotion suggesting that people in good moods do not engage in as much mindfulness,deep thought, or self-doubt as people in bad moods. |
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