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Performance Architecture: A Walk on the Human Side – Part 1.
Performance Architects have a license to snoop. We are in the business of supporting our client organizations in their quest for results that meet or exceed goals. We accomplish this by poking our noses into all aspects of how employees perform their jobs to learn how they contribute to those goals.
Accelerating the development of learning organizations.
We live in a world of increasing and accelerating volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. This is happening across a number of different domains. Many of our traditional, modern ways of thinking, understanding and doing are poor matches for what’s needed to be effective now and to lay foundation for a sustainable future.
Here’s why the annual review needs an overhaul.
The annual review has been a business staple for decades and sitting down annually with employees to discuss performance remains a continued practice, despite calls for its demise. While the format and tone may have changed over the years, what it needs is an actual overhaul.
The supervisor’s job is performance support.
We are all familiar with the Peter Principle where a person is promoted up through the hierarchy of an organization to a level of incompetence. This tends to be true at every level of promotion. Perhaps the biggest leap is for individual contributors who are promoted to Supervisor or Manager.
Jagged Lines and Gordian Knots Managing and Integrating Donor-Funded Technical Assistance.
Advice, you would think, is the easiest thing to get. You listen and implement under the guidance of an experienced consultant. And advice, you would think, is the easiest thing to give. Especially, when a third party is paying for the service… and there is no real onus on the advisor to achieve the receiver’s objectives.
Should coworkers know each other’s salary?
A recent Workopolis article is one of many that argues the case for full transparency in compensation. The basic rationale is that full salary transparency can increase loyalty, improve productivity, and boost bottom lines.
Will automation take away all our jobs? Anatomy of a questionable analysis.
One of the most pressing questions that arises today is whether technological development will take our work away from us. It is difficult, if not impossible, to answer with certainty. Analysts and scholars try to understand and make understandable how the world of work is evolving and what future awaits us. To do this they describe possible routes and elaborate possible future scenarios.
Practicing Masterful Performance Technology.
OK, I’ll admit it. I’m a card carrying practitioner. It’s been that way from the beginning. Starting in the US Army in 1975, working in the 9th Infantry Division. I started in tactical intelligence. High demand assessment environment. Little time. Fragmented data. Urgent needs for prediction. Wrong conclusions extremely hazardous to your health.
Performance Assessment & Analysis.
Assessments are often done on a piece of a whole: a department within an organization, a cross-functional process, an organization within a government, a set of organizations within a sector. An assessment is done with a view to changing the object—the parameters—of the assessment.
If an Indonesian Volcano Hadn’t Erupted, Frankenstein Wouldn’t Have Been Created.
In April 1815, Mount Tambora, in what is now Indonesia, erupted. It was one of the most massive eruptions in history. Some scientists believe it was, in fact, the largest ever. Over a year later, that eruption created the conditions the led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein.
How could that be? Well, it’s a classic example of how complex adaptive systems work.