Growth tips 30 seconds to business enlightenment.
Evidence-based people management
08-Dec-2011
Stanford university professor, Robert Sutton has written a number of
very insightful business books which present evidence to expose many of
the commonly held management practices – as being nothing more than
myth. Just because “all the books say that’s what you should do” does
not make it true.
Here is our take on a presentation Prof Sutton gave to a group of Human Resources managers.
Belief: Find rock star employees and pay them whatever is necessary to keep them happy (the "Wall Street" mentality)
Fact: The best performing organizations do pay above average salaries
for roles, but the pay bands are more compressed i.e. the gap between
what the CEO earns and what the lowest paid employee earns is far less –
and less likely to cause employee resentment.
Belief: The most important thing HR can do is to find and develop the senior leaders
Fact: The key to success is finding and developing great front line supervisors.
Belief: The best organizations have the best people (the “war for talent” mentality)
Fact: The best organizations have the best systems and not necessarily
the best raw talent. Ordinary people can learn to perform at top levels
in a well-designed system, but even a rock star is doomed to fail in a
bad system
Belief: Promoting team harmony is crucial to success
Fact: Promoting productive conflict – not harmony is key to creating
highly functional teams. HR should teach people how to “fight as if
they are right, and listen as if they are wrong”.
Belief: Every company needs a great performance review system.
Fact: Most organizations do performance appraisals because they have
always done them – and there is an entire industry vested in promoting
this model. Forced rankings, merit ratings and other forms of grading
that breed internal competition tend to undermine employee motivation
and breed contempt.
Belief: HR should focus on finding, hiring and developing the very best people
Fact: Reforming or terminating the very worst people is up to 5 times more important for raising team performance.
As we have written previously, research shows that managers of the
highest performing teams confront problems directly and quickly, issue
more warnings and formal punishments, and promptly fire employees when
warnings fail. These no-nonsense managers inspire higher performance
because they make it crystal clear that they will not tolerate poor
performance - so long as they are fair and consistent, and balance this
with ample recognition and praise for good performance.
The key lesson for managers is - eliminate the negative. Don't procrastinate when it comes to doing the unpleasant work. Rooting out poor performance and negative behaviors is not fun, but playing “bad cop” is an essential part of being a successful manager.
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34531334269947::RESULTS.com | The Missing 98%
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| Date | 21-May-2012 |
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