informal coalitions

Escaping from the Activity Trap

Many years ago, I came across the notion of the "Activity Trap", a phrase coined by George Odiorne in his book Management and the Activity Trap.

This is one of the dynamics of organization that I have recognized time and time again, both during my time as an in-house manager and latterly as a consultant. I’ve referred to it in passing in a number of posts but, prompted by a recent consulting assignment, I felt it was worthy of specific mention.

Organizational values and performance appraisal

The formal appraisal of performance features prominently in most organizations’ approaches to people management.  Typical aims include providing a structured way of monitoring and evaluating people’s performance; using this assessment to inform aspects of capability development, career progression and employment decisions; and relating it in some way to financial reward.

In many cases, the assessment includes a review of the extent to which individuals are felt to ‘live’ the organization’s values. And it’s this aspect of the overall process that I want to focus on here.

Discipline in organizations – On ‘hot stove rules’, performance conversations and an opportunity to learn.

The October 2008 edition of Management Today bemoans the fact that the management of discipline and poor performance in the workplace is not what it was. Under the headline "Death of the Bollocking", a mixture of managerial timidity, increasing bureaucracy, fear of litigation and general societal malaise (death of a competitive ethic etc) are cited as reasons for this.

Its main argument is that people need to know when their performance isn’t coming up to scratch and that, as stated in its sign-off paragraph, "… if you want a workplace where you don’t have to tick people off in the future, you may need to start bollocking them now."

I agree with much of what’s said, especially in relation to the contextual factors mentioned in the article. At the same time, I think it’s important for managers to see discipline in a broader sense than simply ‘telling people off’.

Employee engagement - With what?

Stephen Billing's post Leadership and Management Matter, Not Engagement Scores is the fourth in a series that he's 'penned' on what he sees as the ''cult of engagement''. In it, he summarises his main points as follows:

• high employee engagement does not cause high productivity
• engagement is becoming a cult and wise leaders will not pay much attention to it
• leaders should concentrate on business results and employee engagement is not a business result, it is an input.

The goal of raising employee engagement has become one of the 'taken-for-granteds' of organizational management - fuelled in large part by the ready availability of a multitude of questionnaires and surveys that purport to be able to measure it. But, as Billing argues, does this really make sense?

Paying for performance at the Olympics?

I was dismayed to read in yesterday’s Sunday Times that the British Olympic Association (BOA) is drawing up plans to pay bonuses to athletes who win medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London (Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold).

This is not to say that our athletes don’t deserve recognition for their sporting achievements and a generous reward for their efforts. Far from it. But advocating a crude form of performance-related pay as part of the strategy for securing more medals seems to me to miss the point on several levels:

High-expectations leadership – moving from vicious to virtuous circles

Some years ago, when I was a manager in a large industrial plant, we took the decision to scrap a whole raft of ‘performance measures’ and related practices that had been introduced some years earlier under the guise of productivity improvement and management control. Despite widely-held concerns that poor work practices would increase if controls were relaxed, we pushed on with the decision.

The reasoning was simple. If we were ever to unlock the vast wealth of untapped talent in the business, we needed to change the expectations that managers - throughout the organization - had of their staff.

Who needs job descriptions?

A few years back, I was a member of a group that was looking to design the managerial roles, management systems and work processes for a new organization. We were being helped by one of the then Big Five consultancy firms. As part of this, the consultants produced a set of draft job descriptions, which included one for the role that I would be filling.

I saw the descriptions as bland, matter-of-fact and limiting.

But, when I argued that I was not excited by them, my comments were dismissed by the in-house sponsor: "Job descriptions are not meant to excite," he insisted, "Provided they set out the main activities of the role and identify what’s in and what’s not, that’s good enough for me." My continued protests fell on deaf ears. Or so I thought.

During a break, the Director chairing the meeting confided that he’d agreed with what I’d said. Of course, he couldn’t say so in the meeting itself - money had been spent on getting the experts’ advice and the ‘defender in chief’ was his right-hand man – but he asked me to send him an outline of my thoughts. And so, the Contribution Statement was born.

Calling weaknesses "development needs" is not a sign of strength

Why is it that ...?

Many HR, L&D and OD professionals insist on referring to individuals' weaknesses as "development needs."  Perhaps this euphemism is meant to make people feel better and less threatened.  Perhaps it is an attempt to avoid giving people what is misguidedly seen as 'bad news'. 

Evaluating development and improvement interventions

During a recent management workshop, the vexed question of how best to evaluate development initiatives and interventions arose.  This reminded me of the comments made by a spokesman for the UK's Ministry of Defence, during an international conflict that took place a few years back. He stated that the MoD evaluated the effectiveness of their aerial attacks by asking three questions:

• Did the missile hit the intended target?
• Did the damage caused by the attack materially reduce the enemy's functionality?
• Were the combined effects of the various strikes advancing the overall aims and objectives of the war?

These criteria provide a useful metaphor for assessing the validity and effectiveness of targeted initiatives in other areas, not least organisations.

Drucker on controls and control

In Is a Balanced Scorecard Bad?, Jonathan Becher argues "... metrics by themselves are unlikely to increase the performance of an organization... metrics must be accompanied by objectives and initiatives."  This echoes Peter Drucker's often repeated view that:

• controls are different from control; and, most importantly, that
• more controls do not necessarily lead to more control.

Becher makes the equally important point that use of the term "scorecard" inevitably places undue emphasis on measures (ie 'scores' and scorekeeping).  As I've suggested elsewhere, organizational scorekeepers and commentators are too often seen as more important than the players!