FutureParadox
Author Alasdair White
When Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and her soul mate, Ronald Reagan, became President of the United States, it did rather seem that a new era had dawned: one in which collectivism died and individualism became the dominating philosophy. Gone were the restrictive practices of the unions and the limitations on what we, as workers, were allowed to do and in came a new approach to the work relationship (see my essay of 2000 entitled New Realities). No longer a case of master-slave, it became one of willing buyer (the employer) and willing seller (the worker) and a negotiated agreement was reached that, in many cases, left the worker with the right to earn whatever he or she wanted, and the company with a motivated and highly performant workforce. It all seemed like a win-win situation and the world (or, at least, the advanced economic world) was changed forever.
By the Nineties, the new philosophy had spawned its fair share of extremists: there were the Geekoists spouting that fictional character’s mantra “greed is good” and proposing ‘big hairy goals’ to ‘stretch’ the performance of the workers with unlimited bonuses to reward the best results. Then there were those who felt that society was changing unacceptably and Read the rest of this entry »
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Author Alasdair White
One can hardly fail to be aware of the current crisis in the world of finance and you don’t have to look hard to find the media (and the politicians) laying the blame squarely at the feet of the banks. It’s the fault of the banks, they scream; if the banks acted in a more responsible manner, etc – but, of course, banks are NOT to blame because banks are inanimate and have no capacity to act on their own. I even thought I’d seen such a respectable newspaper as The Economist make the same mistake – but they hadn’t (fortunately!!).
If we want to allocate blame (and who doesn’t) then we need to look at root causes and the fault lies with PEOPLE. Now, people are capable of … Read the rest of this entry »
Author Alasdair White
One of the things to come out of our research into the Performance Life-cycle (From Comfort Zone to Performance Management) concerns the importance of communications. As an organisation passes into the ‘reforming’ phase, management recognises that … Read the rest of this entry »