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When it comes to improving productivity, our own or others, we frequently look to such things as motivation, commitment, leadership, incentives and rewards, and various other factors (obstacles?) for the answers. You know, I would be more productive if I was more motivated or committed, or if there was better leadership, or if the incentives Continue reading On Building Infrastructure A former Mastery of Execution student sent me the link to a great blog article posted by Fast Company entitled “2010: The Year of Saying ‘I Got It’ “. The focus of the article, written by Lynette Chiang, is how companies, as well as individuals, have gotten into the habit of not responding to inquiries Continue reading Not Responding Can Cost You I have been doing some research in preparation for a workshop on personal accountability a colleague and I are doing for MBA’s at the Fisher College. As I have been getting into it, I am beginning to notice more about what the absence of accountability sounds like when people talk. Consider the following example. The other Continue reading What the Absence of Accountability Sounds Like Don’t risk being held to account for things you don’t know about. Take the time to find out what people really expect you to do, and what they expect you to deliver. If they don’t tell you, ask. I recently had a conversation with a manager who was disturbed by her inability to meet the Continue reading Convert Expectations into Agreements If you read my earlier post on Incentives Don’t Work, then you know that Dan Pink’s TED video raises some interesting questions about incentives. In particular, he raises questions about the role of external incentives and their impact on non-routine, creative, or innovative work performance. His point is well made. Research has long known that Continue reading Incentives Don’t Work? Part II On September 29, I started my MBA class on Leading and Managing Change in Organizations. Unlike my prior classes, this is a mix of working professional and fulltime students. One of the questions I asked them was “What’s important to you? What do you really want out of this class?” Although there were a variety of Continue reading Motivating Others Is Easy IF You Stop Trying To Do you ever have trouble getting people to give you what you want when you want it? Do you find yourself explaining things over and over to people with the expectation that if they really understood what you wanted and why, they would give it to you? It could be that you are using the Continue reading Stop Explaining and Start Asking If you want to kill a werewolf, you use a silver bullet. If you want to stop productivity, there are silver bullets that will do that too. To avoid being stopped, know your silver bullets – and make friends with them. Folklore has it that if you want to kill a werewolf, you do it Continue reading Know Your Silver Bullets No one likes to fail. Fail is a four letter work. Failing makes us look bad, and most of us will do alsmost anything to avoid looking bad. Yet, without failure, we would probably enjoy few successes. No one is a stranger to failure. We failed repeatedly before we learned how to sit, stand, walk, or Continue reading Failure is Important for Success – If You Use It We often get upset with ourselves when we forget something. We also get upset with others when they forget. It seems we think that people are suppose to remember and that forgetting is somehow a mistake – particularly if it something important to us. No doubt forgetting causes problems, particularly when other people depend on Continue reading Forgetting is the Norm – So Remind Them |
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