Business Week "Competiton Issue"

What Makes A Winner

Great issue that should be stimulating to achievers. It so thrilling to read about excellence.

The Poll section , a survey of 2,509 Americans in middle management and above, was interesting in a number of areas, but the fact that 45% of young (ages 25-34) workers "think it's a good idea to fire the bottom tenth of the performers each year" was especially interesting to me.

I could find no explanation of why they believe that it's a good idea, but my guess is that they "get it." Educate, motivate, and appreciate your employees, but for the good of the organization (and the people that put up with their lack of performance) accept their resignation when the challenges of improving themselves prove to beyond their abilities.

As Jim Collins points out, not everyone qualifies to ride the bus.

Which part of your company has the most competitive employees? The results here were expected, but also further evidence of why "performance management" is so difficult for many businesses to do well, if at all.

Sales 38%
Operations 21%
Executive suite 15%
Marketing 9%
Human resources 3%
Accounting 3%
Legal 3%
Finance 3%
Strategy 2%
Research 2%

Customer service was not mentioned because??? No department? I'll cover that another day.

15% thought the Executive suite had the most competitive employees. A better question would have been, "Excluding sales....?" So, let's say 10% of votes that went to Sales would have been for corporate, that is still only 25% who believe top leaders are highly competitive people. In other words, few of them have the stuff found in books like "In Search of Excellence," "Built to Last," and "Good to Great."


I believe it. Super achiever arrive in corporate and immediately begin going through the motions, but not having the courage to lead. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO. They are still competitive, but it's hard to compete when you don't know how to win.


They are in a pickle. They had all the answers, but now they need new ones and they don't have a communication system that leads them to new strategies, solutions, and systems. They don't know how to ask for help and then listen, learn, and lead.


Performance leadership and management is driven by communication, cooperation, and competition and the will to win. If you are not in it to win it, if you lose your passion because tou are out of answers, you don't have a chance of creating something special.


So they don't. They create people and programs to blame poor performance on. Or they buy more software, take more surveys, do more team building games and exercises...


A communiaction system that allows the maintenance staff to take a crack at improving the status quo. Thank you JC Penney for teaching me the value of getting EVERYONE into The Game.

New Title ? Performance Management Expert ?

There is a great seminar in Reno coming up in October with some big names in HR. I hope it's a full house. I hope I can get a copy of the attendee list.

Why is the HR department responsible for performance management? How do they interact with frontline team leaders? How do they make their jobs easier, more productive? How do they help them motivate, educate, and appreciate? How do they keep out of the way and allow someone to do their job?

The article in the previous post says it. Frontline team team leaders and managers don't have SYSTEM that motivates exceptional performance. Well, I do. It's easy, enjoyable, engaging, exciting, and energizing.

I am getting more excited every day! A week ago I set up google alerts for "performance management," "performance leadership," and "management performance leadership" fully expecting I would get a few articles a day similar to what my "engaged employees," "employee engagement," and "management training" alerts generate.

Wow! Was I mistaken. There are a lot of people going in the wrong direction in the performance leadership and management arenas. It's not a matter of better software, HR, consultants, theories, five things to remember, ten tips to keep in mind, etc.

It's frontline team leadership with a system that people respect and buy into because it is the right thing to do. The right, ethical, sensible, and intelligent thing to do. It's not for everyone (no jerks, crooks, or politicians) thank goodness, but for quality leaders and managers it is an awesome way to create, energize, and retain a team of achievers focused on excellence.

My plan was to finish my book before beginning my seminars and marketing my video. But now that I know what I am selling-a Performance Management System-I think I'll get on with the video and start marketing it.

Just imagine. Entire teams of people who enjoy working together and love helping each other achieve (improve). Team pride, spirit, and synergy.

I Just Love "Performance Management"

As an emotional, excitable Type A Aries, my heart just flutters when I read articles like this.

I had no idea that the "corporate world" was struggling with how to get people excited about doing their jobs well. I spent months wondering if anyone would care about "The Excitement Program" my Team Leadership Game that rapidly creates extraordinary business teams.

According to this article I'm a Genius. Cool....

You Could Be A Genius...If Only You Had A Good System

Performance management is one of those many management issues (leadership is another) that becomes more puzzling the more you look at it. At first sight it seems evident that teams and individuals should be managed to produce good performance. But that doesn't make it effective or easy. A recent report by the Work Foundation notes that despite intensive attention from academics and practitioners over the last two decades, for many organisations performance management remains a vexed subject with a 'grail-type quality' always out of reach. more...

It is not difficult to see where the "vexed subject" challenges people. Most businesses are so overburdened with a Human Relations department justifying its existence, continual upgrading of software that most often tells them what they already know, and a never-ending focus on more and more layers of management who are also often justifying their existence.

You want to learn how to motivate performance? Get the largest group of frontline team leaders you can squeeze into a room, tell them you want to lead your industry, tell hem you want to do it the right way, and you want to know how they will do it. Tell them you don't expect to get all the answers in this meeting, but you want to know what they think being the leader would mean to the company and how do you start the process.

Then invest in a copy of "The Enthusiastic Employee" for all of them. Send it to them three days later without any explanation (or warning) and see who brings it up.

You want to do The Performance Management Game? It takes a system, which takes getting their attention.

You get what you emphasize. Talk abou excellence ALL THE TIME and you'll get the ball rolling.

The biggest Big Hairy Audacious Goal of them all is to concentrate on becoming the very best. It elimates acceptance of OK, fine, good, etc. as a response to individual and organizational performance.