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Channel: The Squawk Point: Organisational Mechanics
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Management Targets Result in the World’s Largest Stag Party

Since 1978 China has had a One Child Policy.  The aim of the policy is to reduce population growth in the country.  The theory is that this will curtail demand for natural resources and so enable...

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Do You Want Engaged Employees or Honest Ones?

Employee engagement is everything.  If your employees engage with your strategy they will work hard, go the extra mile, look after your customers, come into work when they are sick and at weekends… and...

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Employee Recognition Awards: Bragging Rights and Bling

If you read blogs and books about staff engagement, sooner or later they will tell you that: The most motivational thing you can do for your employees is thank them Money isn’t a motivator Recognition...

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How to Change Behaviour or Why Fish Don’t Ride Bicycles

It is a big challenge, maybe the big challenge.  How do you sustain change?  How do you get people to do something different, to change their behaviour? Here is a model to frame the problem… There are...

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Process Design and Human Nature

Mothers were dying In 1840′s Vienna they were dying of “childbed fever”.  In one hospital the death rate was alarming, roughly 1 in 10 mothers perished after childbirth, some months this statistic...

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92 People Die for Lack of Trust

In 1974 TWA flight 514 was flying into Washington Dulles airport.  As it came into land the air traffic controller said “cleared for approach”.  The flight crew thought it meant one thing (we will...

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Are Your Team High Performers or Losers?

What do you think of the team you manage?  Are they the crème de la crème or a shower of … Is that a rather harsh question?  Perhaps, but the answer may well have a lot more to do with you than with...

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The Most Powerful Management Tool in the World (Probably)

If you want your staff to do something, don’t just command them to do it, put in place a structure, something that helps them to do what you want.  Make life easy for them: If you want short meetings,...

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The Simple Reason People Won’t do as You Ask

Some people just won’t follow commands. They won’t follow directives; they hate being told to what to do. This is a problem, particularly if you want them to behave differently, if you want that all...

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Change Management, Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The idea for this post came from The Customer and Leadership Blog by Maz Iqbal.   You have heard the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. Goldilocks climbed upstairs and saw that there were 3 pretty...

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4 Ways to Change Behaviour

There are 4 ways to change people’s behaviour: The first is the stick: Beat people until they do what you want. The stick works, but people hate being controlled, they will rebel — sooner or later....

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Snakes, Rats and Your H.R. Policies

Have you heard of the Cobra effect? In Victorian times, at the height of the British Empire, the governors of Colonial India were very worried about the number of cobras in Delhi — no self-respecting...

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What Could a Lab Rat Teach you About Leadership?

In the 1960’s a couple of scientists (Rosenthal and Frode) were busy trying to breed clever rodents.  To see if they had succeeded they ran some experiments with two strains of rats and a series of...

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Is Your Platform Really Burning?

You know this already… We respond to change differently.  There are lots of different categorisations, but we are usually described in groups a bit like this… Dangerous to know — The gung-ho mob, they...

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Strengths and Weaknesses

Harry was not a well man He was in a terrible state of health.  Cancer had eaten away at his digestive tract, it was so bad that surgeons had removed three-quarters of his stomach. He was constantly in...

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The Potato King

They were dying of hunger In 18th Century Prussia bread was expensive, people were malnourished and famine wasn’t uncommon. The King at the time was Frederick the Great. He was wise enough to realise...

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5 Ways to Cultivate Evidence Based Management

In my last post I argued for E.B.M. (evidence based management) as an approach that will help you: Make the best possible decisions As fast as possible At the lowest possible cost Here are some...

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Layering Your Problems In

How to cook a leg of lamb When my wife cooks a leg of lamb she asks me to cut off the last 7 inches – the shank. Cutting the last few inches off a leg of lamb is not easy.  It requires a hack saw and...

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Synergy

A great management word We love to talk about synergies, it is a super word, hard and scientific. It gives the impression that we know what we are doing. That we are in control. Synergy: the creation...

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A World Without Objectives

Objectives: could we manage without them? How would we cope?  The guys in H.R. would throw up their hands in horror. We couldn’t rate our staff. Pay for performance would flounder. Annual appraisals...

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