informal coalitions

Building commitment -v- rewarding performance

Many organizations retain an almost messianic belief in the power of performance-related pay and bonus targets to generate commitment and deliver high-quality performance. This is most evident in the approach to executive pay, which is rarely out of the headlines. But the same thinking often penetrates much more deeply into organizations - whether translated into formal pay systems or simply governing the organization's general approach to managing performance. Unfortunately, commitment can't be gained simply by setting up a process of formal target setting or arranging periodic 'performance review' meetings. People might comply - for a time and in a fashion - with externally imposed routines and targets. But commitment is an inner drive. It arises naturally where people feel that they have the motive, means and opportunity to excel at what they are doing.

The negative spaces of organizational dynamics: #1 - A metaphor

Some years ago, I bought a book by Betty Edwards, entitled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. This coincided with my initial interest in the impact of the hidden, messy and informal dynamics of organizational change, which has since found its way into Informal Coalitions. This post takes a brief excursion into the world of the artist as set out by Edwards, with the aim of drawing out some new insights for leaders into the underlying dynamics and performance of their organizations.

The seductive power of ‘the one best way’

Towards the end of my time as an in-house OD Manager, I attended a series of half-day, inter-company workshops which had been organized by a leading HR-based networking and research organization.  These were designed to address a number of pressing HR issues of the time, including (so far as I recall) performance management, succession and development, manpower planning, competency frameworks and so on.  Each workshop was attended by senior managers from a range of member organizations.

Misdirection through ill-thought-out incentives

In The Most Perverse Incentive of All, Earl Mardle tells the story of a Norwegian oil company in which management's obsession with KPIs eventually came back to bite it.  The organization’s budgeting ‘system’ was based on the widely held management assumption that "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." This simplistic approach to performance management and executive reward had resulted in attention being misdirected towards short-term costs at the expense of more important oil exploration opportunities. 

Organizational consulting - The search for 'truth' through storytelling

A few years ago, I attended a session on psychodynamic consulting, led by Larry Hirschhorn, at the Tavistock Institute in London.  The basis of his approach was to “get people to ‘tell their story’ and engage with it.”  Although he acknowledged that he keeps a model of the psychodynamic process in mind, his basic message was to “stick with the data.” A similar philosophy underpins the task of leading or facilitating change from an informal coalitions perspective.

Jack Welch's 'messy and chaotic kitchen'

I was recently given a copy of Jack Welch’s autobiography, Jack, which describes his rise to CEO of General Electric and the changes that he presided over in his years at the top. The book is characteristic of the multitude of business biographies that mix personal anecdotes with business ‘lessons learnt’. It offers an interesting read of Welch’s life and philosophy, although the management detail is inevitably limited. I shall have to see if his later book, Winning, adds more flesh to the bones. However, I was particularly intrigued how he argues in the prologue to Jack that, like the kitchens in even the best-run restaurants, all business is “messy and chaotic.”

"Compensation" offers no benefits for HR

Why is it that ...?

We often hear senior VPs, directors and managers in HR talking about their goal of making their organizations "great places to work" (or other similar phrases).  Why is it, then, that the HR profession persists in talking about "compensating" people for working there?  You compensate people for breaking a leg, not for turning up for work in the type of organization that the HR community claims to aspire to.

Managing performance through informal conversations

Performance management is usually thought of almost exclusively in terms of formal, structured processes through which managers are expected to control the performance of their staff. These include formal target setting procedures; routine progress checking and performance monitoring; programmed feedback sessions; and end-of-year reviews. Often these elements are driven more by the requirements of an organization’s pay structures and the felt need for managers to get to grips with ‘poor performers’, than by the wider considerations of business performance and staff engagement.

While leaders are focusing their attention on getting these formal systems and processes ‘right’, though, they need to recognize that other, more powerful forces are at play which unavoidably impact upon organizational performance. The everyday conversations and interactions that they have with their staff – and that staff have with each other - are particularly influential in this.

Re-focusing performance management

During my years as an engineer and then manager, I experienced many attempts by HR and OD departments to introduce what they saw as the ultimate answer to the performance management ‘problem’. The systems that they put in place were invariably well crafted, in terms both of the procedural disciplines that they sought to instil and the quality of materials provided for line managers, to facilitate their central role in the process. Despite these valiant efforts, the impact on results – if any - was invariably short-lived.