Tom Abeles, responding to Winfried Dressler wrote in Time LO20793
> How do all these cycles fit together in an organization:
>
>- -quarterly reports, returns and external valuation such as stock
>- -product cycle times
>- -evolution of the organization
>- -personal time on a daily and life cycle basis
>- -past, present, future and longer term futures
>- -???
>
>all these clocks are running. Somehow, the time dissonance seems to be
>an unaddressed factor- and maybe a major factor
These measures are paradoxical and often oppositional to learning
organizations and organizational improvement efforts of all kinds.
Winfried's point about allow time to make improvement runs right into the
need to meet "The Numbers."
In sales people, we see silly behavior driven by the "fixed interval
schedule" of quarterly goals. The individual takes a "post-reinforcement
pause" after reporting quarterly results and generates a noticeably low
lever of results until the last few weeks, when the common "fixed interval
scallop" of increased behavior occurs.
Solution: Shorten the sales reporting period. Weekly would be better,
but paperwork demands increase. So, one generally finds the most
successful people setting DAILY goals, tracking and self-reporting weekly,
and formally reporting on a monthly basis in many organizations.
But this same focus on high productivity will generally result in
resistance to "miss selling" in order to attend a training course or a
resistance to coaching and mentoring because they take time away from
actually performing.
I liken it to the Square Wheels Wagon, where the players are so busy
trying to get the load a certain distance in a certain amount of time
(resources fixed) that they do NOT have time to step back and see the
round wheels that already exist in the wagon.
They generally do NOT share best practices because of a lack of time and
because of the paradox of "goals and objectives and competition" that
exist within the organization. It is competitive and not collaborative
ane the organization suffers because results are not optimized either in
the short or long-run.
I've got lots of stories and specific examples.
And these issues of measurement are surely some of the causal factors in
the non-acceptance of Learning Organizations in many cases.
--For the FUN of It!
Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D. Performance Management Company - 800-659-1466 <mailto:Scott@SquareWheels.com>
A great source for FREE tools and training resources: <www.SquareWheels.com>
"Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy." The Eagles, from "Take it Easy"
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>