Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
Gawker was promoted buzz this past month with speculation that an exec from a leading San Francisco Bay area company was gay. It’s helpful to remember that this is the publication that uses headlines such as “Anderson Cooper is a Giant Homosexual and Everyone Knows It” or “Which Pregnant Actress Has a Famous Cheating Husband.” It may be published, but it’s clearly Rupert Murdoch-style journalism.… Read the rest
North Americans (OK, maybe just those of us who are Yankees) love simple solutions, especially to complex problems.
We want a pill to cure obesity (instead of a change in diet, lifestyle, better sleep, and appropriate physical activity) and student testing to cure educational ills (in lieu of better teacher training and development, better resourcing, smaller class size, and greater parental involvement).… Read the rest
Motivation comes in many forms, and knowing what motivates the people you work with can make all the difference from “has done” to “has been.”
Pay, or as the HR people like to say, compensation, has turned out not to be the end-all-be-all for motivational purposes. As Dan Pink has ably exposed in his latest book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (and TED presentation here) research demonstrates that money in certain situations degrades, not improves, performance.… Read the rest
My doctor Michael Sdao practices what he terms “evidence-based” medicine: he puts his faith primarily in approaches and procedures that have been validated by substantiated research. While it’s not necessarily the most daring of approaches, in the main the outcomes (knock on wood) have been pretty good.
Organizations, on the other hand, are pretty hit and miss as it pertains to using human capital systems and processes that have been validated by evidence based research.… Read the rest