“Of course the work of Nostradamus continues to be a part of our life as a possible work of hypothesis and reality. While work would engulf our lives, as individuals, and we would go on as one human kind, I am unable to see the continuance of the corporation with 20th century as model for the future. It is not a conjecture to make a point but more summation and learning out of the last two decades of pace of change, particularly, in the commercial sciences and its consequence to the business enterprise”. New systems also exact a psychological cost on employees, which has to be anticipated and managed. Putting a higher percentage of reward mechanisms for intellect at risk is good for companies.
It allows them to move dollars out of the fixed-cost category and into the variable-cost category, and it provides tangible evidence that things must change. For employees, however, it means trading something that is sure—base pay tied to time and seniority—for an incentive that may or may not be paid out. Keeping values at the core of their thinking, Continue, Grenny et all, “When leaders want to influence people to make significant changes, they need to help them connect the changes to their deeply held values, those beliefs and practices that has held them to their behaviors over their life time. It is the moral compass that helps people see right from wrong or can do versus cannot do.
This establishes a moral framework that shifts people’s experience of the new behaviors. If leaders fail to engage people’s values, it means a conspicuous evidence of lack of commitment, they must compensate for a lack of personal motivation, drive with less profound and sustainable, retained sources of motivation, such as carrots – sticks and intrinsic or extrinsic rewards or punishment”.
Without clear measures, decisions made by supervisors and managers can seem arbitrary and create resentment between business units if some managers are perceived as easier than others. Are socio technical aspects of work for changes in behavior built into the system? In, “How to Have Influence, 2008 SMR, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield and Andrew Shimberg write further of their attempt to focus on, the challenges they wanted to explore in regard to bureaucratic infighting, silo thinking and lack of accountability. Nothing is less motivating than for a person to work as hard or harder than before, meet their personal goals, and find out there is no upside because of factors out of their control. “In fact, their study showed, they say, (believing that learning is a bridge to fill gaps) that a robust training initiative is at the heart of almost all successful influence strategies. Mike Miller, vice president of business customer billing at AT&T Inc., succeeded in turning around a 3,000-person IT function by creating a culture where everyone spoke up early (no one can walk out without saying something) and honestly about the risks they saw affecting project goals. Early in the change initiative, Miller saw that people needed more than the motivation to speak up. He realized people also needed the ability to step up (skill or competency gaps or process and knowledge fillers) to crucial conversations.
In the heat of the moment, speaking up about emotionally risky issues requires as much skill as motivation. So Miller made sure people got the right kind of training”. There are a few things to consider when contemplating introducing new structures: Is there agreement on what is important and is there a way to measure it? Any rewards given for meeting specific production, quality, or service goals need to have clear criteria. Some work needs to be done as part of the planning process to identify the behaviors that people need to do more of—and less of—to impact the culture and business results.
Although the management team can determine these behaviors, involving a representative sample of the people impacted will improve the result. They will identify the management behaviors that need to change in addition to what they and their peers need to do differently. They will also ensure the language is direct and descriptive. Finally, the involvement process will increase buy-in to the overall plan. Are people enabled and empowered to control the variables? It is impossible to ask people to excel if they are not enabled to achieve excellence. Whether it is pay for performance, skill-based pay, or some team incentive plan, it will only work when the people participating have some control over the outcome. These could include: Another business division not making their goals, Lack of reasonable authority to make decisions and solve problems, Lack of tools and resources to do the job well. The 20th century, when looking back, were possibly the most eventful and impacting in all spheres of life. From entry into space, several global wars, mass destruction weapons, the advent of biotechnology, emergence of the third world economy, death of socialism and communism, the consequent rise of capitalism, globalization, and domination of the service sector and finally the entry of Internet, E Commerce and its opportunities.
These are but a few of the radical changes that have impacted literally the human kind from all walks of life. One would never know how much of all of this at a minimum was predicted at the beginning of the 20th century or how many organized activities were undertaken by the thinkers of yesteryears to forecast for themselves their future.
