by Esther Derby | Mar 7, 2009 | Leadership & Management, Organizational Change, Systems and Complexity
One of the big problems I see in organizations is that managers who want to improve productivity pull the wrong levers. For example, one company I know of decided to improve performance by ranking everyone in the company from 1…n, and firing the bottom 10%. Not...
by Esther Derby | Feb 11, 2009 | Leadership & Management, Systems and Complexity
What problem are organizations trying to solve with incentive pay? Is an incentive plan the simplest, most effective way to address the problem? Most managers believe that incentive pay plans encourage the desired behavior, drive performance improvement, and reward...
by Esther Derby | Jan 7, 2009 | Leadership & Management
Mark Levison has an interesting post in response to a Scrum Development discussion about “bad apples” on a team.Before applying the label, look for reasons the person might not be performing. There are lots of reasons for a temporary dip in performance....
by Esther Derby | Dec 6, 2008 | Collaboration & Teams
Jim Sowers asked for more information on team renewal.Here are some reasons teams need renewal.Over time, work that was initially a challenging learning experience becomes routine. Life circumstances change and some team members need to focus their energy in a...
by Esther Derby | Dec 5, 2008 | Collaboration & Teams
George Dinwiddie has posted his notes from one of my AYE 2008 sessions, Magic Chemistry of Teams.During the session, I asked people to draw a time line that represented their experiences working on teams, then, working in small groups, identify the factors that were...
