The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

  • Home
  • Blog
    • People
    • Data
    • Process
    • Wild Cards
    • Index
  • Podcast
  • Book

The H.R. Hammer

13 February, 2018 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Performance Management

My brother is nothing like me Before I start this post I should point out that my brother and I live in very different worlds: He works for a F.T.S.E. 100 bank (not an insurer) He works in Canary Wharf (not the City) He works in I.T. (not operations) He is going bald (see picture […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: blame, collaboration, performance management

The Two Faces of Accountability

1 January, 2018 by James Lawther 7 Comments

Accountability When things go wrong there is a simple solution. Politicians do it, journalists do it, managers do it and even my children do it.   When things go wrong we search for somebody to blame “hold accountable”.  It’s in our nature. Fortunately it is more nuanced than that. There are two ways we can […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: accountability, blame, learning, management style, reinforcing behaviour, root cause analysis

What Are You Talking About?

21 December, 2017 by James Lawther 1 Comment

Snowman

Does your language define you? The Sami people in the far north of Scandinavia have lots of words for snow. Soavli — Wet slushy snow Vahca — New snow Guoldu — Very fine snow that blows up from the ground when there is slight breeze Skavvi — Snow with an icy crust Snow surrounds them, […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: communication, human nature, management style, reinforcing behaviour, weltanschauung

Corporate Infighting

12 December, 2017 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Corporate Conflict

The battle On any day in any corporation, you will see barbed e-mails, poisonous meetings, water fountain backstabbings and all-out turf wars. This is common or garden corporate infighting and nothing to write home about, though it may cause some gossip in the pub. Organisations are chock-full of infighting: Usually, the conflict simmers below the […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: performance management, purpose, reinforcing behaviour, targets, teamwork

The World’s Most Useless Document

27 November, 2017 by James Lawther 2 Comments

The org chart When you join a new business the people in H.R. will give you something like this: As good corporate citizens we all seize this as one of the most important pieces of paper we will be given. It tells us how the concern works. It is critical information, it tells us how […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: bureaucracy, command and control, communication, culture, customer focus, human nature, organisation

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • …
  • 63
  • Next Page »

Explore

accountability assumptions beliefs best practice blame bureaucracy capability clarity command and control communication complexity continuous improvement cost saving culture customer focus data is not information decisions employee performance measures empowerment error proofing fessing up gemba human nature incentives information technology innovation key performance indicators learning management style measurement motivation performance management poor service process control purpose reinforcing behaviour service design silo management systems thinking targets teamwork test and learn trust video waste

Receive Posts by e-Mail

Get the next post delivered straight to your inbox

Creative Commons

This information from The Squawk Point is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons Licence
Customer Experience Update

Try This:

  • It’s all About the System Stupid

  • The Two Faces of Accountability

  • Quantity Versus Quality

  • Quality Control Doesn’t Work (and how to fix it)

Connect

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Contact Me

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in