Resources
The Silver Bullet: 43 Ways to Drive Organizational Excellence
Here’s the silver bullet you’ve all been waiting for. In the next two newsletter columns, I’m going to give you the “secret sauce” for achieving and sustaining organizational excellence – the answers to all the questions that leaders might have for improving their results. Seriously, I’m going to give you 43 best practices that have [...]
On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B
Whether dealing with monkeys, rats or human beings, it is hardly controversial to state that most organisms seek information concerning what activities are rewarded, and then seek to do (or at least pretend to do) those things, often to the virtual exclusion of activities not rewarded. The extent to which this occurs of course will [...]
Get Rid of the Performance Review!
“I see nothing constructive about an annual pay and performance review. It’s a mainstream practice that has baffled me for years.” So wrote Samuel Culbert, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, in a provocative essay called “Get Rid of the Performance Review!” that appeared in 2008 in Business Insight (now renamed Executive Advisor), [...]
Where Change Really Happens in Government: Who Will Save Us?
Government is under incredible pressure right now. The economic crisis has hit us with a double whammy: exponential increases in demand and dramatically reduced resources. In other words, more people out of work need our services and we’re cutting 25% of our core budgets. Government simply doesn’t have the capacity to do all the good [...]
The Profound Puzzles of Effective Management
I have never tried Sudoku. I don’t even know how to pronounce it. Yet every time I get on a plane, there’s someone next to me scribbling away. On one flight I got curious and asked my seatmate, who had a giant book of puzzles, why she was so enthralled with it. “What do you [...]
