Category: Best Practices Page 1 of 2

There are a LOT of really good ideas out there focused on personal and organizational performance improvement. Some are thoughts about coaching other people or ideas around the concept of flow. There are many different collections of ideas about what best performers do differently such as these ideas from Dan Rockwell along with many other good thinkers.

There are instructional videos on a wide variety of personal improvement approaches and so many other resources. There are great videos on motivating people and generating teamwork and performance improvement like the TedX ones as well as YouTube.

So, I thought that I would start a hashtag collection using

#morebetterfaster

and twitter to see if we might generate a useful collection of ideas, articles, themes, tools, etc. Want to contribute?

Feel free to pop in some twitter ideas with the hashtag, #morebetterfaster, and let’s see if we can make something useful.

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s quips and quotes on Poems on The Workplace is here.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Co.
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO Group

Innovation, Infrastructure and Africa – Square Wheels or Round Wheel Choices

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On August 15, 2014

In Best Practices, Change, innovation, Innovation Implementation

For the past 10 years or so, I have been reading the works of my pal, Brian Paxton, in South Africa. His writing is insightful and I often send him notes about things that link to his thinking about Africa and its opportunities. Here is one that I received this morning in his Mbendi newsletter, notable because I think it hits directly on the kinds of thinking I see as problematic.

Before I share his writing, though, let me frame it up with this idea:

How things really work in most organizations...

In the above, the team proceeds to continue to do things the same way and getting the same result. They work hard and DO meet the goals that are set, but these same old goals and systems and processes generally keep them doing the same kinds of things.

The above is illustrated in what Brian shares:

————–

THE WORLD AFTER 2020 – INFRASTRUCTURE DREAMING

In these days of fast advancing technology, one of Africa’s key competitive advantages versus the rest of the world is that it is very much a green field. Not literally of course, because you have places like the Sahara Desert, but figuratively.

Take communications for example. Twenty years ago, at the advent of the cell-phone / Internet revolution, Africa’s telephone infrastructure, where it existed at all, was decidedly antiquated. Today the majority of Africans have cell phones – I have vivid memories of seeing a red-clad Masai in the wilds of Tanzania herding his cattle while talking on his phone. East Africa pioneered cell-phone payment systems largely eliminating the need for banking infrastructure, branches, ATMs and all.

New cheap smart devices can deliver education, entertainment, news, medical diagnoses, prices and a whole lot more to Africans without requiring all the obsolete copper, paper and corporate infrastructure developed nations still have to amortize.

A regular MBendi newsletter reader recently pointed me to an article on the Guardian newspaper website. It seems that at some times of the day Queensland wholesale electricity prices fall below zero as 1,100 MW of solar panels on the roofs of 350,000 buildings across the state churn out electricity. Of course those same buildings are also connected to dirty coal-fired plants via a complex system of transmission and distribution cables, all of which, likewise, requires amortization, so there’s a tussle developing between the utilities wanting a return on capital and their customers wanting cheap power.

Now, if Queensland is sunny, Africa is even sunnier with a countryside largely unblighted by transmission lines and coal-fired pollution. In our last newsletter we mentioned that solar street lights are to be installed in all towns in Nandi county, Kenya. Last week NYSE-listed Chinese company Jinko Solar, the fourth-largest solar PV manufacturer in the world, opened an R 80 million manufacturing plant in Cape Town which can produce solar photovoltaic panels equivalent to 120 MW each day. So, in the electrical power arena, it would seem that Africa too enjoys an advantage through its lack of traditional power infrastructure and there are some, albeit cautious, moves afoot to capitalise on this.

But not so fast. Last week the US government convened a meeting of the leaders from 54 African countries to discuss USA-African trade and investment. With great fanfare the US government used the occasion to announce that it is to invest billions of dollars in African infrastructure, particularly electrical power generation where General Electric will lead the charge. Chinese leaders chimed in to propose working hand in hand with the Americans on African infrastructure. Meanwhile down in South Africa, state investment in infrastructure is seen as a way to stimulate the economy, starting with yet another massive coal fired power station, a nuclear power plant and additional railways to ship coal locally and abroad. Not only do none of these projects take advantage of Africa’s green fields but they will leave the continent with expensive, soon-to-be-redundant infrastructure.

But that’s not the only problem. While the USA claims to be investing billions in African infrastructure, the payments will go largely to American suppliers and consultants with just a fraction paid to local manufacturers. In East Africa there’s a protest groundswell developing at the news that 5,000 Chinese workers are to be shipped in to build a railway; perhaps the Ethiopians have told them about the thousands of Chinese workers who weren’t repatriated when major projects finished there. We’ve all had the experience of buying a computer printer then finding replacement ink cartridges cost as much as the original printer; I hope someone sane is factoring in all the running and maintenance supplies needed from the donor nations after this generous donation of infrastructure goes live.

Back in 2002 BAE Systems, aided and abetted by the UK government, foisted an expensive and totally unnecessary military radar system on Tanzania. The whole shady deal turned out to have involved bribery and corruption so much so that in 2010 the UK’s Serious Fraud Office handed down a £29.5 million fine on the company. Companies from around the world who, with the support of their national governments, supplied South Africa with arms in the late 1990’s are suspected of similar malpractices.

All these big infrastructure projects – unlike solar panel or cell phone investments of individuals – carry the same potential for the decision making process to be perverted by bent carrots and sticks, especially by opaque governments. With Russia tipped as being the favourite of South Africa’s atom-minded cabinet, maybe that’s why President Zuma didn’t condemn Russia’s takeover of the Crimea as he lambasted Israel’s Gaza incursions in a supposedly trade-related speech in Washington?

Africa would be a better place if a group of experts could sit down and rationally plan how best to plow Africa’s rich green fields. Start with a glorious vision; take a sober view of where we are at present; and then build a logical plan to take us from here to there. This is a much better approach than simply gratefully accepting what is foisted on us by others in their interests even more than ours.

In my words, the Square Wheels are everywhere but the Round Wheels already exist in the wagon. We can repeat the same old models for electrical infrastructure or we can look to NEW proven models that would seem to make a lot more sense. They need to step back from the wagon to see things differently and to generate alternative choices that make the best sense and that optimize the journey forward.

(An irony is that GE’s Turbine manufacturing is located here in my home town. I think they are a great employer and I have many friends working there. But are the same Square Wheel Turbines what Africa really needs to move their wagon forward?)

Y9u can reach Brian Paxton here – MBendi Information Services <brian@mbendi.com> and you can find and subscribe freely to his previous (great) newsletters here: http://www.mbendi.com/mbendipr/newsletter/website/index.htm

For the FUN of It!

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Square Wheels are a trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of the The LEGO Group

Elephants, Line Managers and Workplace Engagement

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 6, 2014

In Articles on Teamwork, Best Practices, Brainstorming techniques, Change, Continuous continuous improvement, employee engagement, empowerment, Facilitation, Involving and Engaging People, Managing and leading change, motivation in the workplace, team motivation, Team work, workplace performance improvement

More and more, I am convinced that the key training people in organizations do not reside in HR / Training Departments but exist in the ranks of the line managers. The complexity of their job roles, however, can block their efforts to involve and engage their people to implement change and improvement. We need to look at that reality. Here are some thoughts and ideas.

——————

Managers are responsible for performance. Managers are responsible for quality and service. Managers are responsible for productivity and results. Managers do reports and attend meetings. And, more and more, we are driven away from the simple act of focusing on skills needed to motivate and retain people (including the managers!).

Yet these same managers are the only ones who have the direct influence on the workers to understand issues and generate changes.

The reality of the supervisors and managers will probably look something like this when it comes to opportunities to involve and engage their people:

So, what are we doing to provide managers with the tools they need to function as organizational performance improvement consultants, coaches for identifying best practices and communicating and implementing changes and improvements? Are we giving them the time they need and freeing up worker time for them to be asking, listening and considering?

Are managers involving and engaging their people or are we just wasting time and energy thinking that they might?

This could be brainstorming and an action to involve and engage people in workplace improvement. Or, this might represent another “Yell and Tell” training session.

In most workplaces, people are NOT involved and engaged — sure, the BEST Bosses are good at leading people forward, building ownership and engaging people in teamwork and process improvement. But in most organizations, BOSS spelled backwards is self-explanatory (email me and I will explain privately, if this euphemism is not immediately understood!) and people are not being engaged — the boss is too busy, as in the haiku below:

What do our managers need to do to shift the energy of these meetings and discussions from negative to positive? One solution is to use better tools and an approach that is facilitative rather than confrontational. This simply requires the right tools and some simple, self-taught facilitation training.

Asking is a much better approach than Telling. Engaging is a much better approach than generating resistance to change. Generate SMILES, not frowns.

For the past 20 years, I have been developing simple but powerful tools for involving and engaging people and generating ownership and performance improvement.

My view is that the solution to the work situation looks something like this:

And we need to allow the team and the managers the time to consider possibilities and plan actions.

If you have any questions about how your organization might accomplish more of this, drift around randomly through the PMC website and generate your own thoughts on how people can be more intrinsically motivated and build a better sense of team and “US.”

People have ideas for improvement and supervisors can do a better job of asking and engaging and implementing, don’t you think? Could people simply choose to do things better and more efficiently?

For the FUN of It!
Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

 Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/
Scott’s blog on Poems and Quips on Workplace Improvement is here.

Square Wheels are a trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of the The LEGO Group

Thoughts on building a high performance environment – Teamwork and Flow

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 23, 2013

In Articles on Teamwork, Best Practices, business team building exercises, employee engagement, employee motivation, manager as motivator, Organizational Development Tools, team motivation, workplace performance improvement

“Flow” is a simple concept that relates challenges to skills, with the understanding that the two are integrated and that they can dramatically affect performance. A good manager is aware of the relationship, and can structure the work environment to maximize results by keeping things in adjustment.

I expand on this in a long article on my website. You can find this and other performance-related articles and download them by clicking here. Or, you can simply click on the link below to download a pdf file directly. High_Performance_Team_Flow

The concept is based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s model for improving individual performance that blends Challenge with Skills and helps people to frame a process for optimizing performance, both theirs and others. Overall, the situation looks like this:

Low skills in a highly challenging situation generate stress and sometimes fear. High skill levels in a low challenge situation generate boredom. It is not a complicated notion and most of us can readily think of situations where this has occurred.

His model takes these issues and puts forth a different proposal for how to improve performance. That looks like this:

“Flow” might be described as becoming absorbed in an activity and tapping into that energy field to perform at a high level.

A high performance state is where individuals and teams operate most effectively and find that state intoxicating. People who have played my team building exercise, “The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine” occasionally experience flow toward the end of the planning period when everything comes together very rapidly – or not, depending on how their team was working!

Skills and Challenges are important, but environment also counts.

How does one structure an environment to generate flow?

The overall environment generally needs to be supportive to reinforce the positives and minimize the negatives. The key is to set up an environment that helps to engage people and drive such a state of thinking and behaving. The components of a team-based, workplace environment design might have many or most of these components:

Clear goals, missions and purpose, where expectations are specific and processes and procedures are understood. Goals need to be perceived as achievable and the individuals must feel they possess adequate skills and abilities. The involvement of the team in the situation can also support flow.
Concentration and focus with a narrow field of view. Flow is more likely to occur if focus is on a narrow band of things rather than a broad one. Think of Bob Beamon’s thoughts on that record long jump in the 1968 Olympics. Avoiding distractions and disruptions is very helpful, although sometimes difficult to arrange and influenced by personal concentration skills.
Effective Performance Feedback is a critical factor, and one that many people do not well understand or implement (click here to access Scott’s Performance Feedback Analysis materials). To support high performance, feedback needs to be nearly immediate, positive, demonstrate trends in results, be narrow and specific and generally be self-measured and self-produced. When delays are introduced, it is like learning to play the piano when one cannot hear the notes for 30 seconds, a most difficult task.
Sufficient resources must be available so that external influences are felt to be minimal and a sense of “local control” exists about what is needed to succeed. Having to wait for equipment or permission is not conducive to a flowing workplace. A sense of control over the situation or activity lends itself to improved results; an internal focus-of-control generates better flow than a reliance or dependence on outside influencers.
Mental skills training is important and can be developed. People should be using skills such as dissociation, meditation, visual rehearsal or projection, positive self-talk (opposed to the constructive criticism so often used as a leadership technique by management!) and other creative skills that can benefit individuals. People should be able to access high performance mental states and also avoid distractions, both mental and physical. Teams using thinking processes like Ed DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats and other brainstorming or mind-mapping practices can add thinking skills to a problem-solving situation. Self-generated stretch or push goals for performance can create the need to expand and improve results and productivity.
A focus on success, rather than avoidance of failure, is important for most individuals. While some may employ a fear-of-failure strategy as a motivational force, it is generally not something that will drive peak performance. Having a focus on achieving success and meeting goals is much more rewarding than avoiding failure or lack of success. Intrinsic rewards support sustained performance much more than any added extrinsic rewards might generate. Achieving the goal and generating immediate positive feedback are powerful motivators and help sustain flow.
Balance between ability levels and challenges presented for the team (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult) is a key factor and something that managers and key leaders must attend to for best results. Balance is a critical factor in sustaining flow.
Engagement within the activity itself is really important, especially when it is a group or team situation where there may have been some past negativity surrounding this activity. Sharing risk can help minimize distractions and contribute to the feeling of support. Organizations DO have histories, as do individuals.
A situation of ownership can help, whereby teammates are enlisted in a shared challenge. This generates peer support for the perceived risks as well as support for the needed efforts. As I have said many times, “Nobody ever washes a rental car.” Having a sense of ownership can help reduce distractions as well as providing overall support and a decreased sense of risk. Individuals who do not have a sense of ownership involvement will not often create a sense of flow.

All of the above represent manageable environmental factors that managers can influence or control and any of these will help improve performance. And making people aware of the concept of flow is also helpful – the awareness can change how they deal with their thoughts and ideas and the choices they make about their performance.

And Remember, Fun is a helpful addition to almost every team building, high performance or organizational developmental situation.

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

And please note that PMC has developed a new, online version of the Dutchman exercise (Jan, 2022) that can be used with remote work teams that links to optimizing performance, collaboration and engagement, and fits into leadership development and organizational development programs.

Kill The Paperwork – Improve Effectiveness

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 18, 2013

In Articles on Teamwork, Best Practices, dis-un-engagement, employee motivation, productivity improvement

Who out there among us does not have too much “paperwork” or “paperwork responsibilities?” How can you improve morale and motivation? How can you improve efficiencies and engagement? How do you keep things in balance?

There are some pretty good ideas out there about how to make lemonade out of lemons, how we can improve effectiveness and impact and improve organizational effectiveness. It is not about inventing new solutions but about understanding the issues and the opportunities.

Here are a couple of ideas from my experiences on organizational improvement that you might adapt to your own purposes.

1 – Accountability

Working in a big organization with a great president, he and I were focused on organizational results and people and performance. We had 126 retail stores with all sorts of problems and an awful culture under the former president. It was clear that “staff” had the power and we were not focused on many of the right things — one indicator was that our store manager turnover was more than 250%! We had inventory problems, service quality issues, bad morale, high “inventory loss” problems, etc.

In talking with store managers, it was clear that they were overburdened with things. WAY too many forms and “immediate priorities” to handle rather than focusing on actual store operations, so we looked for ways to impact that. As Senior VP Operations, I pretty much immediately tried to clone the 13 young District Managers into my kind of people, changing their perceived role as forensic accountants into performance facilitators and coaches.

Lou asked his admin, Becky, to start a clandestine investigation herself — she was charged with collecting every single bit of information sent from the departments to the stores, filing it by Department and by Day. Two 3-ring binders that quickly filled up. We basically got a grip on the amount of paperwork sent each day to the stores and the demands that were being made of store managers for reports, etc.

The “All Department Head Meeting” that Lou directed was most interesting. This was the first time that anyone saw how much paper we shipped to stores — it was inches a week. Some was simply “policy information to read” from personnel or marketing. Other stuff was weekly order sheets for inventory. Some was requesting information of one kind or another, and always under a couple-of-days deadlines. Some were sent to all stores asking that only some stores respond. Anyone could type something up and send it to ALL stores.

The product group might send out an inch of paper a day — since some of the people were sharing news of the industry and what’s hot kind of stuff. It was eye-opening how many of these missives were three or four pages long. Nobody at corporate had a clue as to how much stuff was being sent out…

New Policy: One Page Memos, tightly written: Specific reasons for sending. Stores not needing information were not to get lazily copied. And, random reviews of all memos by Lou and me and Barbara (VP Stores). If the memo needed more than one page, it required special approval to send from Lou (there were few of those, as a result!).

The impact was amazing. Stores were being unburdened by “things to do and stuff to read” and managers could now find time to actually look at what was happening, manage store inventories, train new hires on best practices, and actually focus on customers! Manager morale went up immediately!

Note: This example occurred BEFORE today’s email system was established and, in today’s world, the onslaught of being overly burdened with too much email happens all of the time. Therefore, whether it was paperwork needing attended then or email needing to be read and responded to today, it can all be better managed and the volume turned down.

Suggestion: Have some simple and direct conversations with your operations people about what kinds of things distract them from accomplishing their jobs, their MAIN jobs. Minimize distractions and allow focus on primary issues and opportunities..

2 – Responsibility

Team building with the top management group of a manufacturing operation in Texas, we asked these Department Heads what kinds of things prevented them from doing their jobs most effectively. A bunch of things were discussed, with some Best Practice solutions offered by their associates. Many of them were unintentional inter-departmental kinds of issues, with non-congruent measurement systems interfering with collaboration, for example.

The most interesting were the external influences. A while back, their organization had been acquired in a merger and there were now “executives back in Cleveland” who were asking for things. A Department Head might get a memo asking them to complete this or that data analysis within three days, for example, something that required a scramble to get done and distract that manager from the job at hand.

With the Plant Manager sitting there listening, the complaints about this kind of thing were numerous. So, he made a pretty surprising Policy Decision. From that point on, any request from Corporate that was not an obvious priority or that was not aligned with the plant’s goal of Producing Product was secondary to plant operations and could be ignored or rejected.

If that corporate person justified the importance of the request and gave a reasonable deadline that did not interfere, fine well and good. But any “stupid request” should be forwarded to the Plant Manager and probably tabled. After all, the goal was production and not production of paperwork! The Plant Manager said that he would handle the politics and that Corporate would need to develop relationships with the Department Heads to build some teamwork.

A year later, I checked back and this actually worked extremely well. If some analyst really needed data and it had an impact on the company, they could get what they needed. If they were just “making some report,” they needed to do more than send some demand letter. The Plant Manager, after all, was responsible for generating operating profitability and not “reports for some clerk,” as he put it!

Suggestion: Look closely at what Staff requests or requires from Operations and be sure that there is an alignment to the Mission and Goals for all of that. Staff needs to support Operations and not vice versa.

Square Wheels Toolkits are a simple and effective way to generate discussions on what things are not working smoothly and what ideas exist that could make improvements in the journey forward. Check out our performance improvement support products on the website and sign up to receive the blog posts at the right.

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Performance Feedback – Breakfast of Champions!

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 26, 2013

In Articles on Teamwork, Best Practices, employee motivation, experiential learning, Facilitation, Feedback, intrinsic motivation, motivational team building exercises, Performance Feedback, team building exercises workplace

Feedback is a real key to intrinsic motivation and performance management. And most organizations can make big improvements in how people can self-maintain and self-improve if they just stepped back from things and looked at them differently.

Many years ago, we polished up and used a simple 14-point checklist that seemed to hit on the most important aspects of people getting the feedback they need to improve or maintain the highest levels of performance. To some degree, many of the items are a bit unrealistic or idealistic, but they also represent possibilities and reframes and potential things that might be addressed or improved or designed. Some of the items on the list are below, and you can click here to download the pdf file of the checklist and explanations: Analysis of Feedback

1. Information on performance is based on actual measured accomplishment and not on estimates or opinions about how results were accomplished.	Some people may appear to be very busy or doing a good job, especially if you are there watching them. Others may work at a slower pace and not appear to work as hard. Personalities differ and opinions about accomplishments may not reflect actual results. Good measures of results need to be implemented.
2. Information highlights areas of performance that have quantifiable value to the organization rather than more general areas of preference	Be concerned with results that produce bottom-line impacts. Sometimes, we get focused on issues of little or no importance to profits or quality or revenue. While a poor producer may chew gum and come in late, it is better to focus on the productivity than on the gum or lateness. Feedback should focus on more critical issues.
3. Performance information routinely goes to the people who do the work, rather than mostly to management.People see summarized results.	People need performance data, not just feedback from management. In the absence of specific information, people will often assume that all is okay. Alternatively, some managers may only say something when results are not good, missing on the opportunity to comment positively. Information on results provides balanced feedback.

Some of the other items are:

13. Data is expressed in a positive way. This means “results achieved” and accomplishments rather than failures, complaints or errors.	Regular negative information (such as error reports) has a tendency to be ignored or debunked and thus become ineffective motivators over time. People tend to learn ways to avoid the negative as opposed to improving the positive.
14. Information is summarized to interested levels of management to insure recognition of achievement and continued positive involvement of others.	Without the observable support of top management, few feedback and performance improvement programs are maintained. Top management will not support programs in the absence of reliable and actionable information. Top managers are generally unlikely to continually request and review information that is not positive and current, reflecting issues of performance related to bottom-line impacts.

In playing with this in workshops over the years, few managers would say that they attained even 8 or 9 of the 14 possibilities, but they were always impacted to consider ways that they could improve the feedback systems, even to go toward simple checklists or other things on a random basis — like a post-customer-contact call list to self-assess if customers were called by name and asked if they had any other questions and if they said they were satisfied with the contact. Stuff like that can be a powerful reminder of things to do and can be intermittent.

Shifting focus, let me address the play of our team building game and how we try to add performance feedback into the play to make it a more powerful learning experience.

In my post on Perfect Play, I shared a bit about how to debrief really good performance. You can see it here.

The idea is around how to motivate performance and build intrinsic motivation.

The performance situation, briefly, is that tabletops are challenged to “Mine as much gold as We Can” and given resources they need to manage a 20-day journey to the mine and back. They have a variety of choices to make as to resource management, risk, route, information and similar. Once they leave the home base at the bottom left, Apache Junction, they move toward the mine on one of three routes.

Some facilitators just let the groups play. In all of my games, I have a map on an overhead that also has “dots” of some kind that represent each team. Thus, every team can see the location of each team every day. Some teams might stay at Apache Junction for an extra day or two to acquire information, while others might take the high risk, apparently shorter route across the bottom of the map.

Since the goal is to mine as much gold as possible, the more days that teams are able to spend in The Mine (toward the top right), the more gold they get. Since they have to return to Apache Junction by Day 20, we can also see who leaves when and what route they use.

A design feature of the exercise allows for some teams to stay much later in the mine and get back twice as fast, This becomes VERY evident when a few teams return on Day 18 while other teams have just left the mine. The former, who are often a bit information-starved or resource-deprived because of their choices, see this discrepancy and this generates their conversations about how this is possible and what they might have done differently.

By the time we get to the debriefing, they already know what they could have chosen to do differently and the role of the facilitator is to bridge that information from the play of the game into the realities of the workplace and the issues of alignment, information sharing, collaboration and optimization of results.

Because of the map, I think we set up a neat little situation of cognitive dissonance and thus the motivation of the lower performing teams to discover these unknown best practices. At the same time, the map reinforces the higher-performing teams for the planning and collaboration that they did during play that helped them perform at a higher level.

My personal belief is that this feedback – the visual aspect of the map and the movement and performance of each team — helps generate a more effective debrief.

In the workplace, we have higher performing individuals and average and poor performers. If we make the performance a bit more obvious, and make the tools that are used (best practices) better-known and understood, we should be able to create these same kinds of gaps in actual and desired results, lending to better intrinsic motivation and self-directed improvement.

I may be wrong, but I do not think so. I think we can help people perform better, build teamwork and esprit de corps, and make the workplace a more engaging place.

You might also find this article on Managing Flow to be of interest: high_performance_team_flow

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Managing The Mavericks – Caring for the High Maintenance Employee

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On April 23, 2013

In Best Practices, employee engagement, employee engagement, employee motivation, Engagement, intrinsic motivation, manager as motivator, motivation in the workplace, ownership involvement, productivity improvement, workplace performance improvement

Lisa Woods penned a really great article on managing the people who are the atypical and hard to manage high-performing and uncommon individuals.

She starts her article with:

“The High Maintenance/High Value Employee. They earn that name because they require a full fledged management program to reach their peak performance, coupled with an extensive maintenance program to keep them functioning there. It sounds like a lot of work and it is, but when it comes down to results, if you want your business to stand out above the rest, these are the people that will help get you there, make your business more competitive and create a notable reputation in your industry.”

For me, this gets at a lot of issues and opportunities and, as someone who has found it hard to work in most workplaces, I resonated with a lot of what she has to say. I’ve now been running my business since 1984 and I am glad that I am not working at the Post Office or in some bureaucratic / administrative job somewhere…

Here are the 8 traits that identify these High Maintenance / High Value people:

They are NOT great team players. They would prefer to do their own thing and make their own rules.
They don’t care much for company policy. They know their own value and can’t be bothered by structure.
They don’t like a lot of attention and public praise, for others or themselves.
They are there to work, bring value and move on. Office cheers and high fives appear very superficial to them.
They are very willing to help others if asked, but do not follow up and maintain a working dialog with the individuals they’ve helped. It is more of a on-off relationship.
They typically create outstanding relationships with their customers, clients, suppliers etc.
They have a reputation for getting away with things, going rogue, without recourse, because people are afraid of their emotional, sometimes angry, reaction.
They show signs of greatness & creativity, but it is inconsistent, mostly occurring when a problem is brought to them, or when they went on one of their rogue adventures.
They probably have notations in their performance reviews that indicate large swings of ‘outstanding’ to ‘needs improvement’. At some point they may have been considered for termination because of it.

Yep. I can sure identify with that list. And I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with some of those people over the years. You can probably guess, after reading Lisa’s article that she can also identify with that framework in some way.

Lisa also shares ideas as to how to support these people to optimize their continued engagement and high performance. Innovation and improvement will come from the edges of organizations and these people are often on the edge.

You can read her whole blog here – Caring For The High Maintenance/High Value Employee

Written by Lisa Woods, President ManagingAmericans.com

Lisa is a successful entrepreneur, world-class marketing strategist, and dynamic business leader with more than 20 years experience leading, managing and driving growth. Throughout her career, Lisa has been influential in integration techniques, organizational and cultural overhauls, financial turnarounds and developing employees into exceptional leaders, results driven managers and passionate team contributors.

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Hope that you found the article of interest,

For the FUN (and benefit) of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.  Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Is HR the Puppet Master or the Puppet?

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On March 6, 2013

In Articles on Teamwork, Best Practices, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, employee engagement, employee motivation, empowerment, Engagement, manager as motivator, workplace performance improvement

There was a great post this morning by Dan Rockwell on his blog, part of which I reproduce here simply because it is a great subject as well as a target of some of my cartoons.

Dan wrote (some snipped):

My worst experience with HR is a broken confidence. She smiled and listened and within an hour violated my trust.

Human Resource personnel are among the most criticized people in business.

HR is criticized for:

Treating humans as resources.
Not understanding positions they’re filling.
Managing paper better than people.
Subservience to policy and procedure.
Defensive, CYA postures.
Lack of operational experience.
Working for the C-Suit, not the people.

New potential:

HR matters because people matter.

“I don’t know about you, but I love HR.” Dr. Vik (Doc) in “The Culture Secret.”

“They are underrated, over-criticized, and underutilized.” Doc says, change the name from Human Resources to Human Empowerment (HE). The job of HE is, “Maximizing human potential.” Doc goes on to say, “HE could be the single biggest champion of your companies Culture.

New ideas for HE:

Focus more on development.
Become more human. Since when does serious work prohibit smiling?
Sit in the seats of workers and do their jobs.

My take is that HR pretty much does what the C-Suite instructs it to do. I wrote:

Well, as they say, “Good Luck with all that.”

It is NOT HR’s fault, it is the C-suite that does to them what it wants and focuses them on the psychopathic side of running a business. Our Generally Accepted Accounting Practices treat people as a cost on the ledger of life. That crap all cascades down.

Over my 30 years, I have seen some attempts to address it in one company or another. The average company will SAY something like, “Our people are our greatest asset,” but then go look for some of that.

Because senior managers like extrinsic rewards, the whole operation works that way. Because senior managers like golf, they do teambuilding around a golf resort. Since people are often disposible, they treat them like paper tissues (I will go no further in that description).

I once had the CEO of a company at a retreat with his top managers blurt, “Asking employees for ideas is like asking the vegetables to design a refrigerator.” (He was not trying to be funny…)

Executives are SO far isolated from the workers that they have little clue as to who they are or what they do. Why should they treat them with respect?

How can a chain of 5000+ retail stores operate with none of the workers qualifying for any benefits — no health care in a company that labels itself a pharmacy?

Look at the people on minimum wage – 80% work for billion dollar companies that are profitable. Some even help their new hires apply for Medicaid and other government benefits designed to help the poor — and these are the new hires.

Let’s not place all the blame on HR. Lots of guilty parties making a lot of financial decisions to support the stock prices, not the people. Are there good exceptions? Surely.

and

Addendum: It is about Money. That means it is about Taxes and reducing costs. Does that really seem like a good base for building people skills and investing in organizational development? Any wonder why “Re-Engineering” took off and the focus changed from improving the processes to reducing headcount.

I always liked this: “How long can we go lean and mean until we become gaunt and dead?” (source unknown)

to which Dan responded:

Seriously, I think you’re nailing an important component of this issue. It seems to boil down to the idea that HR is the “puppet” of people at the top. We know people are reluctant to give up power once they have it.

I think that many organizations run something like this:

and larger organizations tend to look more like this as the control cascades down from leadership:

And things can get really crazy as top managers try to gain even more control over how things work and who does what when.

So, what is the role of HR in all this? Is it to simply help senior managers control the behavior of the employees or is it to help the employees generate a sense of self-worth and to create some engagement and involvement in what happens in their workplaces? Is HR there to help the corporation control “all things people” or simply to help keep costs under control and manage “Human Resources,” you know, the people who do ALL of the Actual Work in the organization?

It is an interesting paradox, for sure.

For the FUN of It!

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Santa – Getting the Job Done and Living The Dream!

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On December 7, 2012

In Best Practices, Continuous continuous improvement, employee engagement

Work is work. And some things just do not work smoothly.

It is not about effort, but about systems and processes that do not work smoothly and the idea that things can continually be improved.

There are lots of idea and available resources, if only the gang could stop pushing and pulling and Step Back from the Wagon!

Have FUN out there!

Improve Your Engagement of People: The Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit!

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On August 15, 2012

In Best Practices, Brainstorming techniques, Change Facilitation, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, employee motivation, Facilitation, implementation, Innovation Implementation, Involving and Engaging People, Manager as Trainer, Managing and leading change, motivation in the workplace, motivational team building exercises, team motivation, Team work, workplace performance improvement

If you are looking for a simply toolkit to impact people and workplace performance improvement, here is a great solution. Using our Square Wheels illustrations as part of an interactive discussion about issues and opportunities is really straightforward and quite easy, actually.

My little company, Performance Management Company, has been focusing on improving results through team building and employee engagement, involvement and ownership activities for decades. Since 1984, it has been offering its tools and simple approach to companies everywhere and offers a high impact toolkit in an unusually collaborative way.

PMC is supporting collaboration with its customers by offering our easy to use, bombproof and powerful Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit. It is a flexible and engaging set of simple tools to get people talking about issues and opportunities.

This complete training package sells for $49.95 and contains:

A Facilitation Guide with clear and simple instructions for use
A PowerPoint file containing 64 slides of images, notes, and ideas – ALL you need to roll forward (more than you need, actually!)
Ready-to-use handouts for generating involvement and engaging participants in the concept, including:
- –a Worksheet for mind mapping ideas generated by the main Square Wheels idea
- –a Round Wheels Worksheet for identifying opportunities for improvement
- –a Key Learning Points Summary Handout of Square Wheels themes for implementation
The “Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly” article by Scott Simmerman, focusing on managing and leading change for organizations and individuals. This is background as well as an optional handout.

You can see more about the toolkit and its contents in a one-minute video here.

The approach is anchored to the Square Wheels One illustration that is a proven, powerful tool for promoting a participative learning approach, the concept pushes people to “step back from the wagon” and disclose their views about how things are really working, engage each other in a creative discovery process and use the diversity of ideas and perspective to generate thinking, innovation and communications. It’s a great facilitation tool for leadership development skills, employee engagement, team building and motivation.

We can use the Square Wheels theme to set up all kinds of discussions.

We can also use the themes to get people to discuss possibilities and generate ideas for improvement, discuss ideas for implementation, and improve their active involvement in making changes occur:

Facilitating Square Wheels is an easy process, something that we discuss in detail in the supporting documents in the toolkit. It is simple for a manager to use the materials to engage the workers on innovating ideas they have for workplace improvement. It changes the language of innovation and change and sets up cognitive dissonance — an unwillingness to allow things to remain as they are.

You engage and thus motivate people to make some of
the changes they feel will improve their performance!

You can see a 2-minute video about why Square Wheels work so well here.

It’s my ardent belief that “Nobody ever washes a rental car” and that people become more engaged and motivated if they feel a sense of ownership in the journey forward. Therefore, it’s my hope that by your setting the price for this Toolkit, you’ll enjoy a keener sense of ownership/motivation for its use as well as discover, first hand, how this simple cartoon can create an empowering situation for participants as it stimulates communications, ideas and improvements around workplace issues.

You’ll find the Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit (an Asian version is also available with some of the illustrations more “Oriental” in appearance) on our website at www.PerformanceManagementCompany.com or go there directly with this link.

Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., is Managing Partner of Performance Management Company and has presented his Square Wheels Illustrations series for Organizational Improvement and Team Building Games in 38 countries.

You can easily reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On August 14, 2012

In Best Practices, Change, Change Facilitation, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, dis-un-empowerment, employee engagement, employee motivation, empowerment, Facilitation, implementation, Innovation Implementation, Managing and leading change, motivation in the workplace, Organizational Development Tools, team motivation, un-empowerment, Uncategorized, workplace performance improvement

For 20 years, I have been playing with my Square Wheels cartoons and using the metaphor in a variety of training programs on managing and leading change, involving and engaging individuals and teams in performance improvement, and focusing on individual and team intrinsic motivation.

One of my most fun as well as powerful tools is around the metaphor of “the change from caterpillar to butterfly” and the paradox of how one might lead that change.

I start with the basic Square Wheels illustration and then, after I get those key themes and ideas anchored down, add in the storyline that there are two caterpillars sitting on the wagon. A beautiful butterfly floats by and the one caterpillar says to the other caterpillar,

“You’ll never get ME up into one of those Butterfly things!”

From here, it just gets crazy as I identify a whole series of punchlines to the joke, not the one that most people get and simply stop thinking about. And I discuss how this process of “stopping the thought process” is what often gets in the way of continuous continuous improvement at work and in personal development initiatives.

You can download a pdf file of the article, Teaching The Caterpillar to Fly, by clicking this link.

The article gets into my model for managing and leading change, talks about the use of the Square Wheels illustrations as tools for facilitating personal and organizational development and focuses on making improvements. Another document you might like is the poem about the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies

Teaching Caterpillar poem

This is a solid metaphor, and one where our Square Wheels tools work beautifully. You can also purchase a very extensive powerpoint-based training program on Managing and Leading Change here, which builds nicely on these metaphors and works to involve and engage people in the change process.

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Stress as a Motivator? Cognitive Dissonance and Square Wheels!

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On August 14, 2012

In Best Practices, Change, Change Facilitation, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, employee engagement, employee motivation, empowerment, Facilitation, implementation, innovation, Innovation Implementation, team motivation, Uncategorized, workplace performance improvement

In the LinkedIn discussion mentioned in a previous post, the question arose as to whether stress was motivational and if it has a link to creativity. The question was expressed as:

What impact do you think stress has on innovation – does it hinder or help the creative process? Does Stress work like the “fight or Flight” response?

I think that this is more than a fair question and my response and reactions are pretty straightforward.

Two framing questions that I would ask are, “Whose stress is it?” and “How MUCH stress does it generate?”

If the performer sees a gap between where they are and where they want to be, that will usually generate “a stress” — consider it a motivational drive. That can be very positive since it is self-generated. It is healthy if that gap is perceived to be something that can be closed and the goal achieved — it is one of the things that is involved in self-generated, intrinsic motivation.

I think of that old work on “Cognitive Dissonance” (Leon Festinger in the 1950s) that clearly explains and researches this issue. He focused on gaps and the discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may feel emotions of frustration caused by the differences in their goals, thoughts and actions and that people are motivated to close that gap.

An example of this would be the conflict often seen in smokers who, knowing that smoking is unhealthy and annoying to others, will often change their feelings to not caring or to thinking that the smoking is worth short term benefits. A general view of cognitive dissonance is that a person is biased towards a certain action even though other factors favor different alternatives. It is this gap that sets up the possibility of change — without this perception, little motivation exists.

Festinger in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, which chronicled the followers of a UFO cult as reality clashed with their fervent belief in an impending apocalypse. Festinger subsequently published a book called “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance”, published in 1957, in which he outlined the theory. Since then, Cognitive Dissonance has been one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology because it is simple and straightforward.

The theory says that people have a bias to seek congruence and alignment among their thoughts, engaging in a process Festinger termed “dissonance reduction.” This can be achieved in any of three ways:

lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors,
adding consonant elements, or
changing one of the dissonant factors.

What we do with our Square Wheels illustration is to set up a Rorschach Inkblot Test-like condition by showing the Square Wheels One illustration and asking people how it might represent how things really work in most organizations. With that very general introduction, and a few minutes of thinking time, individuals and groups of people will identify a variety of key themes about the cartoon and how things work. Since the cartoon is unreferenced and very general, people project their beliefs and thoughts onto it.

Once that has occurred, and the themes and thoughts are anchored and discussed, we can then simply ask the participants to suggest what might be represented by those Square Wheels in their workplaces, with Square Wheels being defined as the things that do not work smoothly. Next, we can have discussions about possible Round Wheels (there are many ways to facilitate these discussions to generate desired outcomes).

It is this creative cognition of a Square Wheel and the associated relationship of some Round Wheel(s) to it that generates the cognitive dissonance, the gap between how things are and how they could be. It is that gap which helps generate the motivation to change, to remove the Square Wheel and add the Round One into the situation. This IS a stress, but not a debilitating one.

And if this discussion is done at tabletops with 5 or 6 participants, there is often enough “creational mass” to generate some commitment to implement the idea or improvement.

We find that Square Wheels illustrations work pretty much everywhere. I have used them with Most Senior Managers in large multinationals as well as in workshops with managers and front-line employees. We have delivered this concept in schools, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies and all sorts of industries and in sessions with hundreds of people representing every level of management.

Ideas for improvement are simply ideas — the key is generating enough motivational stress through cognitive dissonance and peer support so that things get implemented and changed and improved. These cartoons are unique in their effectiveness as organizational development tools — Fast, Simple and Effective.

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is a globally experienced presenter and consultant.
Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Dis-Un-Engagement – thoughts for impacting employee engagement in the workplace

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On June 26, 2012

In Articles on Teamwork, Best Practices, Brainstorming techniques, Change, Change Facilitation, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, dis-un-empowerment, employee engagement, employee motivation, empowerment, Facilitation, implementation, innovation, Innovation Implementation, Involving and Engaging People, Manager as Trainer, Managing and leading change, motivation in the workplace, Organizational Development Tools, team motivation, un-empowerment

A series of different LinkedIn posts in my lists have focused on the general theme of “employee engagement.” Some focus on asking about reactions to definitions of engagement, some focus on the relevancy of focusing on improvements and their relation to profitability and results, while others seem to just be information or publicity-focused and do not seem to add much value to people reading the post.

I saw one post today and two yesterday that I responded to and thought, well, what the heck, post something up in here. SO, here we go with Dis-Un-Engagement. I think it looks something like the illustration below:

Some people know that I have used a concept of Dis-Un-Empowerment for many years and I am thinking now that it actually has many of the same general applications to many aspects of improving workplace engagement.

We talk about and see a lot of data on engagement but most people are un-engaged.The statistics and surveys show that they are not actively nor emotionally nor behaviorally involved in the workplace on a regular basis. They are un-hooked and un-involved and seem to choose to be so. It is not like they have no opportunities because the same surveys show that some of the people in that workplace ARE involved and engaged. That difference is informative, actually.

No amount of banter will change their choices and a LOT of their behavior to become engaged may actually get punished or otherwise emotionally isolated by the management team in the way that ideas are put down or jokes are made about some people’s “contributions” and in SO MANY other ways in the workplace. Many people grew up being bullied or simply being average and our schools do not always do a great job of building the self-esteem of students. Then, they come to the workplace…

You cannot engage me just like you cannot empower me. I mean, go ahead and try; I will wait…

…

Okay, never mind. But please accept the reality that you cannot do something TO me that empowers me — it is about the choices that I want to make — internal stuff as much as the external stuff.

What we need to do is identify the things that are BLOCKING engagement and do things to remove them. A “non-ever-meeting-responder” might be asked directly for their thoughts and ideas on fixing a problem in a team meeting, for example. I do not have to generate that list for you. There are a zillion ways to get people MORE involved and some additional involvement will generally translate into a bit more engagement.

If you read the literature, such as the survey results from the Big Consulting Companies, there are some VERY Expensive ($$$$$) Tools and Techniques you can get from them to improve things measurably. If you read the Big Consultants’ sales materials, you will need to spend money hiring them to come in and evaluate the results of your corporate Engagement and Involvement Program and then do regular surveys to insure that you are making progress (I am not big on acronyms but should probably take the time to make up some funny ones like “Corporate Response Activity Program” or some such thing.)

OR, your company could choose to do something completely silly like ask the managers to ask the people for ideas for improvement and ask that each employee generate at least one idea about what might be done differently and do this in meetings as well as using some back-of-the-door posters in the bathrooms to collect those anonymous comments.

Yeah, this would improve engagement if it is done honestly. And yes, some disgruntled employees might share some ideas that show that they are disgruntled. But at least they would be engaged in sharing those ideas!!

This stuff all adds up over time. Ask and Ye Shall Receive (more engagement than you had before).

Then, work on the “Dis” part of the above and do things to remove the roadblocks and improve the choices…

That’s my 2 cents worth of stuff… I have written a good bit on dis-un-empowerment over the years so you can google that to see more on this general line of thinking along with some specific ideas for what you can actually do cheap ($).

Organizational Positive Self-Talk – Ideas for Improvement

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 29, 2012

In Best Practices, Change, Change Facilitation, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, employee engagement, empowerment, Facilitation, implementation, innovation, Innovation Implementation, Involving and Engaging People, motivation in the workplace, Organizational Development Tools, team motivation, workplace performance improvement

Cleaning out some old filing cabinets, I came across my NLP folders, which contained a lot of articles and ideas and notes and different kinds of programs. mostly from the late 80s and early 90s. Good stuff, still. So, I thought to reread a couple of articles that I had saved.

One of them was on the benefits of positive self-talk as it relates to performance improvement. The ideas were well researched and well presented, and it got me thinking about organizational and team-based improvements as it relates to how we frame things.

These days, the statistics and stories all point to a lot of organizational engagement issues. The numbers are not good and many are frustrated with how things are and how things are working from both the perspective of the worker as well as the management team.

One of the key points in the article was how we “language” things — do we self-talk negatively about the current state of things? For many (or most), the answer is Yes. We talk about problems and fears, we focus on what is wrong and not on moving things forward or making improvements. And this does not lead to improvements in morale or intrinsic motivation or anything really positive — the research says that it leads the other way and that our inner attitudes are shaped by our thoughts.

Experts as well as the research suggest that, “more than three quarters of everything we think is negative, counterproductive and works against us.” And, if anything, this is probably more true today in the workplace than in the good old days of the 1980s…

The brain basically does what we tell it to do (my doctoral degree was in behavioral neurophysiology). So, how we think is critically important to the choices we make. So, how do we change things? How do we reprogram our thinking patterns.

Again, the research says that we need to frame things differently, that we make different choices in how to think about things. It is actually pretty easy to frame things differently and each of us has full control of our own thoughts as well as some degree of influence on other people. You cannot stop thinking of things, but you can choose how that thinking represents itself.

Square Wheels One represents how things really work...

Square Wheels represent how things really work…

My suggestion, after doing the reading, some thinking, and some additional research, is to change our model of thinking.

What we need to do is focus on what we can do differently in the future. Yes, we may be rolling on Square Wheels at the moment, but what Round Wheels might we try to implement and how might things change or improve if we were to do so?

We have lots of choices and alternatives and the ideas already exist for most of us. If we flub a sales call, our thinking should focus on what we did well (what worked smoothly) and what we could do better next time. If we’re kayaking and flub a drop on the river, the review of that run of the rapid should focus on where we should have been in the boat and what we should have done to navigate that rapid successfully. Heck, in the river, you can even go back and do it again within a few minutes. Doing it successfully builds the confidence you need to run the next rapid well.

Intrinsic motivation comes from feeling successful and wanting to continue to improve how things work.

This is all about how we think about things and the choices we make. Intrinsic motivation comes from building on past successes to generate future ones.

If you are managing people, you can acquire a simple toolkit of cartoons to involve and engage people in talking about possibilities for the future. You can find this facilitation toolkit at http://www.performancemanagementcompany.com/Square_Wheels_Facilitation_Toolkit_p/10.htm

We also have a more formalized toolkit for coaching individuals and groups that you can find at http://www.performancemanagementcompany.com/Square_Wheels_for_Coaching_p/17.htm

For the FUN of It!

The Customer sets the price for our Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit!

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 14, 2012

In Best Practices, collaboration, Continuous continuous improvement, dis-un-empowerment, employee engagement, employee motivation, empowerment, Facilitation, Icebreakers, implementation, Innovation Implementation, Involving and Engaging People, Manager as Trainer, motivation in the workplace, team motivation, un-empowerment, workplace performance improvement

Please note: We stopped this promotion a while back. People continued to pay our retail price for the toolkit, understanding it was a great value as is. Thank you for that and have fun out there!

We just sent out a Press Release on customers setting their own price:

Taylors, SC – (5/10/12) Performance Management Company is supporting collaboration with its customers by offering them an opportunity to “name their own price” for the Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit. This complete training package normally sells for $49.95 and contains:

A Facilitation Guide with instructions for use
A PowerPoint Presentation containing 64 slides, notes, quotes plus illustrations / cartoons
A variety of ready-to-use handouts for generating involvement and engagement including:
–a Worksheet for mind mapping ideas generated by the main Square Wheels concept
–a Round Wheels Worksheet for identifying ideas and opportunities for improvement
–a Key Learning Points Summary Handout of Square Wheels themes for implementation
The “Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly” article by Scott Simmerman, focusing on managing and leading change for organizations and individuals

Based on the Square Wheels One illustration that is a proven, powerful tool for promoting a participative learning approach, it allows people to “step back from the wagon” and disclose their views about how things are really working, engage each other in a creative discovery process and use the diversity of ideas and perspective to generate thinking, innovation and communications. It’s a great facilitation tool for leadership development skills, employee engagement, team building and motivation.

Dr. Scott Simmerman, creator of the Square Wheels illustration series, believes that “Nobody ever washes a rental car” and that people become more engaged and motivated if they feel a sense of ownership in the journey forward. Therefore, Scott hopes that by your setting the price for this Toolkit, you’ll enjoy a keener sense of ownership/motivation for its use.

You’ll find the Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit (an Asian version is also available with some of the illustrations more “Oriental” in appearance) on our website at www.PerformanceManagementCompany.com or go there directly with this link.

Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D., is Managing Partner of Performance Management Company and has presented his Square Wheels Illustrations series for Organizational Improvement and Team Building Games such as “The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine” in 38 countries. The products are available at www.performancemanagementcompany.com

People basically liked this idea, thinking that we have really great and simple tools for engagement and performance improvement. The amazing thing is that so few people paid only a little — most people paid the full price and a couple paid even more for it! THAT was most surprising. Guess they had seen the tool and felt it was a really good value.

If YOU need a great tool for involving and engaging people, give our Square Wheels tools a try. Click here for more information.

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Ideas on People and Performance, Team Building, Motivation and Innovation

Category: Best Practices Page 1 of 2

More Better Faster – Thoughts on collecting ideas for improvement with #morebetterfaster

#morebetterfaster

Innovation, Infrastructure and Africa – Square Wheels or Round Wheel Choices

Elephants, Line Managers and Workplace Engagement

Thoughts on building a high performance environment – Teamwork and Flow

Kill The Paperwork – Improve Effectiveness

Performance Feedback – Breakfast of Champions!

Managing The Mavericks – Caring for the High Maintenance Employee

Is HR the Puppet Master or the Puppet?

Santa – Getting the Job Done and Living The Dream!

Improve Your Engagement of People: The Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit!

Teaching the Caterpillar to Fly

Stress as a Motivator? Cognitive Dissonance and Square Wheels!

Dis-Un-Engagement – thoughts for impacting employee engagement in the workplace

Organizational Positive Self-Talk – Ideas for Improvement

The Customer sets the price for our Square Wheels Facilitation Toolkit!