Master of the obvious and the mundane

June 21st, 2008

Here are my notes from Pfeffer’s eye opening talk . He is the Author of

This has really got me excited! Some great information and paths to study. I hate to just have recycled content on my blog, but it’s so good. Let the fairly disorganized notes begin.

Premise is that organizations are stuck in established traditions that mostly don’t make sense, and don’t make decisions based on facts.

Casual benchmarking is harmful

  • doing something because folks better than you did it that way

We should examine why they made that decision, and understand the context rather than just blindly applying it.

Ideology and belief

  • More than 200 studies prove that giving top management stock options has no effect on company/financial performance.

Don’t comprise on providing evidence to your team that can lead to them uncovering issues.

One manager did this by titling certain things “we do not have this information” in hopes of having the team find it. That forced management to find ways to that information. If he wouldn’t have done this, they wouldn’t have realized they even needed the information.

Devita CEO

When Pfeffer was consulting for him, he didn’t care about compliments, but cared about the problems.

Yahoo business guru is quoted as asking “why not customers what they want instead of debate about it”

*note: interestingly this comes from Yahoo which isn’t the greatest at useability

Time for reflection is important

Joe Benaducci- COO, Fireman’s Fund and Insurance company

“What makes you so successful?”

1. Read one book a week

2. Critiqued himself after every significant meeting on a notepad

Put your feet up on desk, close your eyes and think.

Debunking common myths

You need the all stars

  • the system the company has, not the all stars determines quality and output
  • GM operated a lousy plant in Fremont Ca. Low quality, productivity, and large amounts of drug and alcohol abuse.
  • Toyota, under New United Motors, ( a toyota/GM partnership ) took over that company with the SAME people and had twice the productivity and quality.

Financial incentive work

  • reward system signal what matters. (Is it money?)
  • seems fair
    truth:
  • we believe other folks are motivated by money, even though we aren’t
  • pay incentives loose effectiveness after a month
  • folks that are payed per piece rush through work

** garbage truck example: they got paid for 8 hours of work no matter how long it took. Turns out they just skipped trash cans to go home early

  • other rewards must be more creative

Teacher incentive pay case
Paying teachers more for higher test scores

  • it turns out it didn’t work, as you can assume. A study on 100 years of merit pay shows it.
  • Teachers are interested in teaching not pay. They would have chosen different field if money was their goal.
  • Incentives work on effort, not ability

60% of companies use the Forrester rating system

  • This rating system allows the manager to subjectively judge/score every employee and hand out benefits accordingly
  • a study showed that if the manager hired a employee, they were given a much hirer review
  • this study showed this rating system doesn’t work

Results

  • treat your organization as an unfinished prototype, always trying to change, optimize and challenge the norms
  • It’s about being the master of the obvious and the mundane
  • Test every assumption by its evidence

Resources:

Evidence based management webiste

Facts-Dangerous-Half-Truths-Total-Nonsense

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 and is filed under Interaction Design, Theory, don't know how I got on without knowing this.