Is it Five O’Clock Yet?

It’s Friday.  The weekend is nearly upon us, be honest, work is not uppermost on your mind at this precise moment in time.

So to help you slide into the weekend here are 5 articles you really should read.  Think of it as management education…  Not wasting your time surfing the web.

1.  Can Japanese car manufacturing transform the NHS?

In 2002, Dr Gary Kaplan, the chief executive of a Seattle hospital visited a Toyota plant in Tokyo.  He applied what he saw to his own organisation and reduced the number of potential accidents by 75%.

Junior workers having problems … were able to pull a cord and bring the entire multi-million-pound operation to a halt.  Managers would run over, not to shout at them, but to help.

Read the full article: Can the Japanese car factory methods … work on the NHS? – Telegraph.

2.  Do annual performance reviews work?

Nobody really enjoys their performance appraisal.  Samuel Culbert of the University College of Los Angeles lists out the flaws of the process — Can they be fair? What do they do for teamwork? Are they motivational? — and then proposes an alternative.

You can call me “dense,” you can call me “iconoclastic,” but I see nothing constructive about an annual pay and performance review

Read the full article: Get Rid of the Performance Review! – WSJ.

3. Do targets drive performance?

Triumph in life is all about setting and achieving goals, take for example the elated marathon runners who complete all 26 miles 385 yards in 2 hours and 59 minutes.  But if those goals and targets are arbitrarily set by somebody else do they lead to good economic performance?

Goals can be useful when they motivate us to perform better, but they’re harmful when focusing on arbitrary targets leads to arbitrary decisions.

Read the Full article: What Good Marathons and Bad Investments Have in Common – NYTimes.com

4. Does being clever make you a better leader?

Google’s data-driven people analytics team uncovers the surprising character trait that makes for great leaders.  It isn’t about high-test scores or being an intellectual genius… it is all about being boring and predictable.

When managers are predictable, they eliminate an obstacle from employees’ progress — themselves.

Read the full article Why Google’s Best Leaders Aren’t Stanford Grads With Perfect SATs – Inc.com.

5.  What is the best way to spend Friday?

Of course the answer to that is simple, you should be busy wasting your time surfing the net, just don’t let your boss catch you.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ~ Proverb

Visit the world’s most useless web sites: Take me to another useless web site please – The Useless Web

P.S. Please tell me you spent least time on number 5

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Image by Sarah G