Recommended Resource – The Three Signs of a Miserable Job

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The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees)
by Patrick M. Lencioni

About the Reference

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees) by Patrick M. Lencioni examines three causes of job dissatisfaction. Focused on the executive and management teams, Mr. Lencioni illustrates the harmful effects of anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurability on worker performance and ultimately the organization’s success. He then prescribes actions that can be taken to overcome these obstacles thereby increasing employee productivity and engagement which subsequently improves organizational performance.

Benefits of Using this Reference

Employee performance serves as the foundation for the organization’s overall performance. When employee efforts are optimized and aligned to common mission goals, the organization realizes its greatest value potential.

Creating job satisfaction and thereby earning employee engagement and promoting focused, productive work effort is the responsibility of every executive and manager. StrategyDriven contributors like The Three Signs of a Miserable Job because it highlights the fundamental job satisfaction needs shared by all employees and the barriers preventing these needs from being met. As with all of his previous fables, Mr. Lencioni offers actionable steps executives and managers can take in order to eliminate these barriers. Additionally, Mr. Lencioni’s recommended actions support what StrategyDriven contributors believe is key to sustained, superior success; shared vision, focus, and commitment.

As a business novel, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job presents its principles for improving job satisfaction through a believable, vividly illustrated, and easily related to story of two organizations struggling to improve performance. Many of the best practice recommendations found on the StrategyDriven website compliment the actions prescribed in The Three Signs of a Miserable Job; making this book a StrategyDriven recommended read.

New Model Release – Decision-Making Base Model

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StrategyDriven contributors are pleased to announce the release of our fourth model, the Decision-Making Base Model. This model illustrates the concepts of uncertainty and risk associated with hurdle and window decisions. (Hurdle decisions seek outcomes above a defined threshold while window decisions seek outcomes between an upper and lower threshold.) Additionally, the model provides the foundation from which later posts and models will explore how various actions impact a decision’s uncertainty and therefore its risk and the probability of achieving desirable outcomes.

Resource Management Warning Flag 1 – Frequent, Inaccurate Resource Needs Estimation

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StrategyDriven Resource Management Warning FlagAll organizations face the dilemma of limited resources. Some organizations, through the use of deliberate work prioritization and sound resource needs estimation, ensure their resources are appropriately allocated to maximize the organization’s overall value. In other organizations, however, there exists an adversarial relationship between seniors and subordinates that results in inaccurate resource estimation and subsequently diminishes the overall value the organization is capable of producing.

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Additional Resources

StrategyDriven Contributors recommend the following resource as a guide to the common methods used to estimate resource needs for an activity or project:

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition
by the Project Management Institute

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

New Discussion Viewpoint – Warning Flags

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To succeed, it is often not good enough to have the best talent, the latest technology, and the most efficient processes. In many instances, the difference between organizations performing exceptionally and those that are merely good is the ability to avoid performance pitfalls.

To date, the StrategyDriven website has been focused on those best practices that successful organizations employ to achieve sustained, exceptional results. Going forward, StrategyDriven contributors will offer performance insights in a new type of discussion posting, Warning Flags.

Warning flags represent those activities or performance attributes that diminish an organization’s effectiveness. By their very nature, warning flag behaviors are active not passive. They represent individual or organizational behaviors that diminish the organization’s overall ability to create value. Because warning flags are behavior based, they can be readily observed, recognized, and corrected or eliminated.

Warning flags are not simply the absence of best practice performance. While this may be the case in some instances, the omission of a best practice often only results in an organization foregoing that practice’s benefits. Warning flags always represent behaviors that are destructive to organizational performance, not the absence of performance enhancing practices.

We hope you find these new warning flag postings to be of great value in your pursuit of organizational excellence and look forward to receiving your comments and feedback.

Recommended Resource – First, Break All The Rules

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First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

About the Reference

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman explains how great managers select employees, set expectations, motivate people, and assign people to jobs that fit. Selected examples from the vast research for this book reveal in detail why these practices are successful at attracting and motivating the most talented individuals in a way that produces results beyond those realized by applying traditional managerial methods.

Benefits of Using this Reference

The challenge of today’s highly competitive business environment is compounded by an ever tightening labor pool. In order to meet the need of continually producing more with less, managers must attract and retain talented personnel and find better ways to release their creative, productive spirits.

StrategyDriven Contributors like First, Break All the Rules because it clearly illustrates how managers, without elaborate and costly rewards systems, can better attract and motivate employees. Using the insights gained from extensive Gallop Organization research, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman show how great managers:

  • select employees based on their talents rather than their skills and experiences
  • define goals and expectations for the work employees perform
  • focus and build on the individual strengths of each employee rather than on “fixing” the employee’s weaknesses
  • seek to place employees in jobs that fit rather than on corporate ladder climbing

We believe the management approach described in First, Break All the Rules will motivate employees and help them reach their highest potential; ultimately creating increased organizational value.

Strategy without effective execution is no more than a compilation of good intentions. We believe managers implementing the approach described in First, Break All the Rules will enhance tactical business execution at all levels of the organization; making this book a StrategyDriven recommended read.