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It’s All in the Brain

It’s all in the mind

Continue Reading March 6th, 2010

Type Of Performance Appraisals

Managers have for many years been evaluated against standards of personal traits and work characteristic. Typical trait-rating evaluation systems may list ten to fifteen personal characteristics, such as ability to get along with people, leadership, analytical competence and initiative. The list may also include such work-related characteristics as job knowledge; ability to follow through on assignments, production or cost results; or success in seeing that plans are carried out.

Managers resist doing this type of evaluation or tend to go through the paperwork without knowing exactly how to rate. Even in firms that have made earnest attempts to “sell” such programs, to indoctrinate managers, and to train them in the meaning of traits so that they can improve their appraisal ability, few managers can or will evaluate properly.

One practical problem of the trait approach to appraisal is that trait evaluation cannot be objective. Serious and far-minded managers do not wish to utilize their obviously subjective judgment on a matter as important as performance. To complicate matters, employees receiving a rating lower than what they feel is justified almost invariably feel that they have been dealt with unfairly.

One widely used approach to managerial appraisal is the system of evaluating managerial performance against the setting and accomplishing of verifiable objectives. Once a program of managing by verifiable objectives is operating, appraisal is a fairly easy step. Supervisors determine how well managers set objectives and how well they have performed against them. In cases where appraisal by results has failed or been disillusioning, the principal reason is that managing by objectives was seen only as an appraisal technique. The system is not likely to work if used only for this purpose. Management by objectives must be a way of managing, a way of planning as well as the key to organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. When this is the case, appraisal boils down to whether or not managers have established adequate but reasonably attainable objectives and how they have performed against them in a certain period.

Performance Appraisals provides detailed information on How to Write a Performance Appraisal, Job Performance Appraisals, Performance Appraisal Software, Performance Appraisal Systems and more. Performance Appraisals is affiliated with Manufacturing Performance Management.

April 22nd, 2008

Knowledge Management - Lessons From Martin Luther

Sometimes you need to go back in time — say four hundred years — to understand that things have not changed. The movie Luther showed me that. What happened in the beginning of the sixteenth century is still of present interest.

Where a historical drama can never really approximate history as it really was, there is one very interesting aspect with a contemporary influence; language differences and the role of knowledge.

We all are aware of the importance of knowledge and that knowledge is the oil that keeps the economic motor running. Yet knowledge is also many times a problem. Organizations often depend on single employees or managers knowing how to manage certain activities. And then, the various departments use different languages and to manage activities from end-to-end is a real challenge that is common to any organization.

Somewhere at the end of the film — and I’m glad I saw it because my knowledge of history didn’t reach that far — Luther started the translation of the bible into German.
Why?

You can find many different languages in business but the main opponents are the commercial and the technical language. A commercial language is obviously uttered in the area of sales, and it is not so much the language itself but its focus on the market; what’s happening out there? A commercial language could be seen as the language of the demand side. What people want or need, what they see, buy…The day to day communication. The language of emotion.

The technical language is a language that is spoken where things are constructed, an internal language focused on how things work and function. A technical language is used to build a car, understanding how the motor works. A commercial language is what you need when you want to sell the same car.

Before Luther, the bible was available in Latin or Greek.

That’s why the Roman Catholic Church members could easily sell indulgences. Nobody — on the street — really understood what was going on. It was Latin to them. So they bought these, for a better life (afterwards).
Luther changed this practice. He translated the script so it was open to the public. Did he commercialize the bible? I wouldn’t go that far…

One of the aspects of knowledge management is opening knowledge, making the tacit knowledge that is somewhere locked-up in the minds of individuals, open for the group. Making it explicit.
In organizations, this is not seldom about making technical knowledge available for others. Translating the technical writings into a more commercial language.
So what now?

Different languages will always exist. Where different teams with different background meet, you should always reserve time to translate, to bridge the gaps.
Don’t forget to put it somewhere on the agenda if you think it applies in your situation.

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days.
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April 4th, 2008