Standout employees are hard to find, so stop looking for the right people in the wrong places. Instead, search out the Doers. They are the vital few who deliver amazing results. Doers are the personification of the 80/20 Rule that says 80% of a company’s production is accomplished by 20% of its employees. Doers excel […]

“Becoming skilled at doing more with others may be the single most important thing you can do to increase your value—regardless of your level of authority.”                      (Christopher Avery) The primary mission of the school-family system is to train young people to compete against each other for the approval of teachers, parents, and future […]

Many assumptions have been made regarding the value of working together in teams, one being that people will perform better as part of a team than they will on their own. Working collectively can stimulate people to perform at higher levels, but only when there is a means of recognizing differences and resolving disagreements between […]

Employees are expected to keep current by learning on the job. In order to acquire and practice new skills, these folks not only need support and encouragement from management, but from their peers as well. The superior-subordinate relationship is the most obvious one to be concerned about. But what isn’t so obvious, and can sometimes […]

We tend to think of commercial enterprises as the only organizations that need to be making a profit. In reality profit is a measure of performance and therefore has a much bigger social context. To a nonprofit corporation or public funded charity, profit should be a gauge of whether or not they achieved what we […]

The story in the previous Blog shows how one employee was welcomed into a company. Amy is a high achiever who was used to having her efforts recognized and rewarded. She approached her new job with great expectations for herself as well as her employer.  Because of the way she was treated during the first […]

The whole point behind a corporation is to create a place where individuals can achieve collectively what they cannot accomplish by working alone. And, in a good and positive environment, where everyone is treated as a corporate citizen, managers and employees can do great things together. But this is not what usually happens—especially during the […]

More and more managers are abdicating the responsibility for resolving behaviorally related issues involving hard-to-handle subordinates. Opting instead to pass these troublemakers along to the human resource department.  Perhaps the responsibility for behavioral management in your workplace has not yet been determined. If that’s so, and you decide to take on this responsibility yourself, here […]

It is sometimes easier for people to accept a moralizing story than a straightforward analysis because they don’t have to figure out the underlying lesson. For example, I like to use nautical terminology when I’m trying to teach people about organizational change. I sometimes describe a motorboat moving at high speed into uncharted waters to […]

What is truly puzzling in this age of enlightenment is the increasing number of people who are still not able to make any connection between the results of their efforts and their company’s future. When their employer gets smacked in the face with a sudden market shift and the profit picture starts to dim, these […]