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The key traits an employer looks for in an employee are the right attributes, the right education and the right resume. The first of these essentially means the soft skills one has—and these are only changeable to a certain extent. After all, you are who you are, and it’s difficult to totally get rid of or change the ingrained behavior or experiences that make you the person you are. On the other hand, the experience and skills we acquire gradually as we move along our career graph form the framework that makes up our resume. The third factor, education, links the two, as it can go a long way toward helping one acquire soft skills one may lack and building one’s resume. In...

Another macro-trend is the dramatic increase in divides across society—while the globalization phenomenon has resulted in economic growth rates unparalleled in history, it has also caused inequalities to grow. The divides are of various types—economic, technological, access to healthcare and quality of life, to name only a few. Regardless of what the divide might be, there are individuals on either side of it, and those that perceive themselves as being on the wrong side are striving to cross over. Where such disparities exist, they generate resentment, disillusion, and yearning and could be contributing factors to much of the unrest in the world today. The current imbalances and...

There is a lot of talk about recognition out there. A Google search just on the term “Employee-Recognition” churns out over 900,000 hits. Recognition is one of those principles of people management that we are routinely reminded of, and frankly, should be reminded of as it is something that can always be done better and more often. The best organizations spend a substantial amount of dollars and resources on their recognition program. One only needs to look at the Google hits to see how many are related to employee awards and services being sold. Despite these investments, employees don’t necessarily feel they are being recognized for great work. One of the most commonly ...

As we wind down the year and many of us are in the midst of a year-end celebrations, I thought this would as good a time as any to discuss a process dysfunction I call “Small Win Aphasia.” Aphasia is a medical condition where you are no longer able to speak (articulate ideas) or see words (a/k/a visual aphasia) due to brain damage. I have personally extended the meaning of the word to mean an inability to express or perceive something.  Thus “Small Win Aphasia,” by my definition, reflects the inability of organizations to recognize (or express appreciation) the achievement of milestones on the way to loftier objectives. This is somewhat different from not recog...

There are many different ways that people are dysfunctional at work. Perhaps those that irk the most people are those that do the least.   These are the people who are committed to staying at the company, but aren’t engaged. That is, they aren’t making a meaningful contribution, but they aren’t going anywhere either.   You know exactly who they are too. They are the one’s you wonder “why are you here?” or are afraid to have included on your project team. Some appear quite content, just non-productive. They just “are” – occupying space in your organization. Others fall at the other end of the satisfaction scale, complaining a...

Last week this blog discussed why dysfunctions persist in organizations. One key factor is that there is often something about the behavior or process that is reinforcing somehow. To help understand what is reinforcing a dysfunction, I suggested the use of ABC (Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence) Analysis. Today we will see ABC Analysis in action. What often gets overlooked when trying to reinforce a positive (desired) action or process is there may be stronger, more reinforcing consequences for the undesired action or process. ABC Analysis begins with listing the consequences for the person displaying the behavior for both the desired and undesired versions of the behavior. Let’s exami...

The last few decades have seen tremendous growth and progress at an extremely fast pace, with certain macro-trends having gained particular significance. The first of these is globalization. This means numerous different things to different people and, depending upon their viewpoint, is considered a favorable development or a threat. However, whatever one’s view, there is no denying that globalization has meant the expansion of companies in a way that transcends political borders, geographic areas and different cultures. Quantum leaps in information and communication technology have resulted in the creation of what is frequently called a “global village” where, in terms of ...

Yesterday we talked about the folly of rewarding one behavior while wanting another behavior to occur. When we talk about dysfunctions of any kind, most people understand that the behavior or processes are not effective in some manner. The question then becomes, if it’s broke, why don’t we fix it? The simple answer is because it is reinforcing in some way. Someone is getting something out of the dysfunction, and so it becomes sustained. (By the way, this is the same reason why your cousin Stella keeps going out with that jerk Stanley…) People tend to think of reinforcement as just rewarding positive behavior. When we talk about reinforcing behaviors in organizations, it...

I was speaking with a colleague the other day and she relayed the following story to me. A friend of hers, who works for a life insurance firm, confided that whenever her group is asked to complete an organization survey, they give everything high marks. The reason being that the one time they answered honestly, their manager essentially freaked out and made their lives miserable in trying to resolve the issues revealed by the survey. In short, the manager reacted poorly to honest feedback (dysfunction 1), and her employees rewarded this poor reaction by subsequently providing false feedback (dysfunction 2). The sad consequence in this situation is that everyone ultimately loses. The mana...

What is dysfunctional anyway? Yesterday we talked about three sources of dysfunctions in organizations (People, Processes, and Strategy), but didn’t get into too much detail about what exactly do we mean by dysfunction. Merriam-Webster defines dysfunctional as either: 1 : impaired or abnormal functioning 2 : abnormal or unhealthy interpersonal behavior or interaction within a group So to put this in context of dysfunctional organizations we are dealing with something that doesn’t work correctly – be it impaired somehow (e.g., not complete) or irregular or deviant in some manner (e.g., just strange and not what one would normally expect). This describes processes and s...