Why people hate their work

This well researched article on NY times explains why people hate their work !
According to this reserach about 70% of white collor workers do not have regular time for creative and strategic thinking on their jobs.

Authors say -

"The most obvious answer is that systematically investing in employees, beyond paying them a salary, didn’t seem necessary until recently. So long as employees were able to meet work demands, employers were under no pressure to address their more complex needs. Increasingly, however, employers are recognizing that the relentless stress of increased demand — caused in large part by digital technology — simply must be addressed.Still, the forces of habit and inertia remain powerful obstacles to better meeting employee needs. Several years ago, we did a pilot program with 150 accountants in the middle of their firm’s busy tax season. Historically, employees work extremely long hours during these demanding periods, and are measured and evaluated based on how many hours they put in."

Read more ...

Leadership development at Accenture

Here is nice case study which talks about leadership training and other leadership development practices at Accenture. Over the years Accenture has developed strong leadership training and development practices. According to various research Accenture conducted, leadership development and having strong leadership culture is very key to high performance. CEO of Accenture, Bill Green is a key sponsor of this process and says "There is no more important quality, no more important skill, no more important character than leadership"

Among others, it has two main training programs;

1. Program for -Senior Managers

This includes series of workshops and coaching over 9 months, targeted to build leadership capabilities as defined by Accenture's own leadership model.About 400 mangers take this program every year.

2. Master program :

Newly promoted executives are given opportunity to develop leadership skills and capabilities in a 3 day workshop. In any given year about 700 managers participate in this program, conducted across the globe.Read more on this case...

Soft capital is very critical for economic development

Soft capital such as culture- Trust, honesty(non-corruption) and transparency are critical for economic development.

In his seminal book “TRUST”, which I read some 15 years ago, Fukuyama a great scholar,  argued that it is very imperative to build, along with physical capital social capital such as - trust, honesty, transparency and trade ethics. Over long run he argued if, this is not taken care it would be difficult to achieve economic prosperity by any country . He has researched lot of cultures and economic across the world for this book. A very interesting perspective especially if you read it with book by Michael E porter called “Competitive Advantage of Nations” which is largely about physical capital.

Economics influences cultures and vice versa.  Corrupt economy corrupts culture. Honesty and trust are very important part of social capital. I think it is now our highest priority.The soft-capital is becoming increasingly important in every form of organization be it government, private or public

http://www.amazon.in/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0684825252

Sense of progress is number -1 motivator - New study on motivation published in HBR

Believing entirely on common sense can be very naive. The worst is, we won't know when the common sense is wrong while it appears to be self-evident right thing to do!  For instance, look at this study published in HBR. When asked to rate, 600 odd managers who participated in this survey based research said number one motivator was "Recognition for good work (either public or private)”.  And they rated" sense of progress" as last factor for motivation.
The study proved them all wrong. Look at the chart below. Go to the summary of the article.

source: HBR- Break through Ideas

Moral of the story: Give employees tools to connect to larger picture and track their progress against their contribution to this Big picture;

In my opinion, one of the most powerful aspects of  performance management is to be able to provide sense of progress for large number of employees, preferably all employees. It was possibly impossible 10 years ago without IT for 500+ employees organization. Now it is not. It is easily within the reach of every company big or small. How exactly employee is suppose to feel this sense of progress? No lets not use IT the wrong way. Just by setting goals for 20,000 employees in a fancy software package with Facebook like updates is not performance management and does not provide sense progress.

Lets consider following questions
Do you track the progress you make against your strategic goals?
Is their a kind of agreed upon measure method on how you track the progress against these strategic goals?
Do you do that consistently and at regular intervals? Not in once in 12 months. You would have long forgotten your goals by then!
Are you measuring the right things not things that can be measured!
Repeat these questions to your team members
Repeat these questions to every member of the organization including employees of your key suppliers

A case in point

Recently we worked with one of the leading retail companies in India. We implemented balanced scorecard system for their sales department with over 200 odd sales executives spread across India. One of the scores now people had to maintain was the number of new dealers appointed in A class towns. Within 3 months, company was executing lot of dealer contracts. Simple, as sales people started tracking their numbers on how many dealer deals they brought to the table they were able to know where they were against the goals and they were immediately motivated to fill the gap.

I can site hundreds of such example from my experience in implementing such as system. One of our flagship clients United Breweries could achieve its ambitious sales from new products due to such a clear track on sales of new products at sales executive level.

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