Managing risks and controlling costs, it’s a question of culture.

Risk, according to one dictionary definition, is

“The possibility of suffering harm or loss”.

Failing to manage risk hits the bottom line; contrary to widely held opinion there is no conflict between managing safety and quality and maintaining profitability. Relying on regulation, supervision and box ticking is extremely expensive and is not wholly effective; it is the decisions that people take “at the coal face” that affect results, and corporate culture and management behaviours influence those decisions. As Aristotle succinctly observed in 300BC,

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”

How to link Reward to your Business Goals

A new benefits strategy can revolutionise the way that your employees are managed, encouraged and incentivised. Yet many companies fail to recognise that if you get your Reward System right then Employees become much more focused on their own performance. If staff know what they need to do to achieve business goals and, crucially, how they can improve their own package by being more productive – you’ve cracked it.

The constant change that surrounds most industry sectors these days requires that you regularly review your business goals and it makes sense to review the Reward Systems at the same time. I can’t go into all the ins and outs of the process in this short blog (you will have to hire me for that) but I will give you a few things to consider

#5 in How do we create a High Performance Culture?

Ask for Help

I mentioned in #4 about avoiding blame. This not the same as not accepting responsibility when something does not turn out as expected and certainly not an excuse for doing nothing!

Responsibility and accountability are the flip side of autonomy and ownership. You cannot have one without the other. The task, therefore, is in accepting responsibility and being accountable, that when things do not follow the plan you step up to the mark and start looking for solutions. More importantly, if you are stuck, ask for help!

#3 in How do we create a High Performance Culture?

So we agree that KPIs are important and they need to be used correctly. They need to be owned, but how ?

How often does a boss tell (or maybe ask!) someone to do something? How often does a boss ask someone, ”What do you actually do?”

Defining KPIs is very much about understanding what people do to achieve their objectives, targets etc. as required by the strategy communicated from above. Once this is understood a practical metric for the KPI can be defined and a source of reliable data is identified or created. Do this for the small number of activities critical to a person job and you are on the way to success!

Is pure positivity the way forward?

I’m all for having a positive mindset.

Turning problems into opportunities, looking for the best and not being dragged into a negative spiral. All agreed. However problems do occur and the best thing to do is investigate them and fix them as efficiently as possible to avoid it happening again. Well, that is what I thought but this event I attended last night seemed to teach differently. It was based around the evolution of a new Six Sigma approach which uses the ‘Strength based approach’.

The core message of the presentation appeared to be always looking for the positives and strengths of a situation. If a problem arises the key is to not keep digging to find a problem. When we do this, it starts of a negative spiral of thinking which creates a negative mindset. Instead we should be focusing on what went right in the situation and how we can improve. This positivity and energy is what will always take us to the next level.

Do you belong to a High Performance Culture?

Do you think you are part of and belong to a High Performance Culture at work? In fact, what is a High Performance Culture?

A few hints:

1. You enjoy going to work each day!

2. You feel valued as a team member, but also as an individual

3. The company has a vision which is articulated in the strategy, understood from top to bottom of the organisation and reflected in the values of the company. If you were to stop someone in the corridor and ask them what the vision and values are they would be able to tell you. (Try it sometime!)

Maslow's pyramid

This is an excellent case to illustrate a fact I had problems to understand: the accuracy of the information that brings us knowledge is much less important than the emotion it fixates in our brain, and which begins to influence our decisions.

I've learned from Falconi the importance of philosopher Maslow's work, which in the last century brought an important human focus to Deming's statistical theories. It played with the brain's right side, rounding the edges of the TQC's logical-mathematical approach.

Of Maslow's lessons I have permanent memories regarding human motivation:

1 - Our natural state is that of dissatisfaction (or neutrality); we have satisfaction impulses. Motivation is the product of the frequency and range of these peaks.

2 - These satisfaction peaks happen when we solve problems related to the 5 layers of basic necessity, characterized by Maslow as:

a. Physiological - such as hunger, sleep...

b. Security - maintaining job, patrimony...

c. Social - being accepted by family, friends...

d. Self-esteem – being free, independent, recognized

e. Self-actualization – achieving your own potential, working on what is your vocation, self-development.

3 - There is a hierarchy: the most basic needs must have been satisfied so that the superior layers may become important. If we are thirsty, as long as we don’t have anything to drink we'll have few social concerns, for instance;

4 - Later, I read in another book by the same author that above self-actualization there is donation, donating what we have for the benefit of others (a Maecenas is a good example).

Because it is a hierarchy, with more or less basic needs, almost every author refers to as a pyramid and represents it as such.

It is a very good representation, but Maslow' books don't have any images.

We can go into further detail as there are other more advanced needs said author presents and discuses.

To me these 5 suffice, added of a sixth layer representing many needs. They've helped me a lot in understanding and explaining routine motivational problems. If we hold a meeting to discuss Maslow, everybody will quote his pyramid and the five basic necessities. What others have for extra content is of very little importance for the (meaningful and representative) 80%... 

Written by: Claus Süffert