We know from personal experience that our capacity for performance is significantly enhanced when our efforts and we ourselves are appreciated. When we believe otherwise, we become easily stressed and soon give up or stop caring. We also understand that people who go out of their way to acknowledge our effort and output, even if only with simple words of sincere thanks, go far beyond the limits of performance appraisal systems or conventional customer-client relationships: they nourish a … [Read more...]
Leadership lessons in a merger
A merger-in-progress of two large service organisations is struggling to achieve its intentions. What’s happening has important lessons for everyday leadership and self-management practices. The distinctly different organisational cultures are not a natural mix; each has a long history of operating idiosyncratically in separate areas, serving distinctly different demographics with strong local loyalties and attachments, and of growing their own unique responses to local problems over many … [Read more...]
Stop talking about values!
Values are measured by what we do, not by what is said. Whatever we may want an organisation’s culture to resemble, its nature and character are determined by the approach its members consistently apply to their roles and duties. That's the difference between proclaimed or espoused organisational culture (professed or declared as existing or intended) and applied (functional, actually experienced) organisational culture. An organisation's or team's leadership should identify and clarify the … [Read more...]