StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 17 – An Interview with Garry Ridge, co-author of Helping People Win at Work

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 17 – An Interview with Garry Ridge, co-author of Helping People Win at Work explores the Partnering for Performance management system and how it engages employees to assess and improve their performance to unprecedented levels. During our discussion, Garry Ridge, President and CEO of the WD-40 Company and co-author of Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” shares his insights regarding:

  • the importance of building a “tribe member” versus an employer-employee relationship with organization members
  • how the Partnering for Performance system engages tribe members to develop their own performance assessments and take responsibility for their own development
  • benefits of eliminating the manager developed performance assessments, forced rankings, and bell curve performance distributions of traditional performance management systems
  • steps needed to move an organization, particularly its culture, to embrace the Partnering for Performance system
  • quantified improvement in bottom line results achieved after implementing the Partnering for Performance system at the WD-40 Company

Additional Information

In addition to the incredible insights Garry shares in Helping People Win at Work and this special edition podcast are the additional resources accessible from his The Learning Moment website, (www.TheLearningMoment.net). Garry’s book, Helping People Win at Work, published by FT Press can be purchased by clicking here.

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About the Author

Garry Ridge, co-author of Helping People Win at Work, is President and CEO of the WD-40 Company, the San Diego, California based maker of the ever-popular WD-40, as well as the Lava heavy duty hand cleaners, Carpet Fresh, and 2000 Flushes household cleaning products. Garry teaches leadership, talent management, and succession planning at the University of San Diego’s Executive Leadership program and in 2003 was named Director of the Year for Enhancement of Economic Value by the Corporate Directors Forum. A native of Australia, he has served as national Vice President of the Australian Institute and the Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association. To read Garry’s full biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:20 — 33.5MB)

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Problem-Solving Success Tip: Test Your Assumptions About Everything

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Test your assumptions about everything.

Assumptions have a way of creeping into all parts of a problem-solving project. They’re often wrong, which can lead to a lot of wasted effort and even cause a problem-solving project to fail entirely. It’s very easy to take a strongly stated assertion as true, especially if it’s the boss who makes it. Remind everyone involved to be skeptical and on the watch for untested assumptions.

Problem definition. Check the facts first to be sure that you and your team understand the problem the same way, and that you have data to confirm that the problem is important. Testing assumptions about the problem definition could include interviewing participants, collecting measurements, creating flow charts of what really happened, etc.

Organizing your project. Don’t assume that the resources you need to solve the problem will automatically be available to you. Solving a messy problem is a project. Treat it that way by developing a project plan, obtaining sponsorship, getting commitment to participate from key players, etc.

Root Cause Analysis. This is a favorite spot for untested assumptions to show up, especially if you use a root cause analysis method based on brainstorming. Once you’ve got a list of possible causes, be sure to collect data, devise tests or do whatever you have to verify which causes are real.

Choosing solutions. Test assumptions about proposed solutions by answering the questions: “How likely is the approach to eliminate a root cause of this problem” and “How practical is this approach (do I have the resources to actually do it and can I achieve the solution in an appropriate amount of time)?”

Testing assumptions throughout the problem-solving process will greatly improve your chances of solving the right problem successfully.

There is nothing so deceptive as an apparent truth.
– Russell Ackoff

copyright 2008. Jeanne Sawyer. All Rights Reserved.

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://crisis-management.bestmanagementarticles.com

About the Author:

Jeanne Sawyer helps her clients solve expensive, chronic problems, such as those that cause operational disruptions and cause customers to take their business elsewhere. These tips are excerpted from her book, When Stuff Happens: A Practical Guide to Solving Problems Permanently. Now also an ebook, find out about it and get more free information on problem solving at her web site: http://www.sawyerpartnership.com/.

Tools for Professionals – International Currency Exchange

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When traveling abroad, you’ll likely have some need for the ‘hard’ currency of the country you’re visiting. Below are three tips to consider when acquiring another country’s currency:

Tip 1: Use credit cards whenever possible. These do not incur an exchange fee and so provide the cheapest way to make purchases abroad.

Tip 2: Withdrawal foreign currency using an ATM. Again, this avoids an exchange rate penalty and the ATM fee charged by your local bank is often smaller than the fee charged by currency exchangers.

Note: It is important to accurately estimate the amount of ‘hard’ currency needed so to minimize the number of ATM withdrawals and subsequently ATM use fees incurred. Ask a colleague, friend, or family member living in the country to be visited or familiar with travel there to help you make this estimate. Remember, acquiring too much foreign currency will result in the need to pay a high conversion fee to change the unused foreign money back to your home country’s currency.

Tip 3: When receiving money from a currency exchanger, always check that the money received is the correct denomination and from the correct country. These transactions have a manual component which can result in costly (to you!) errors if the wrong currency is exchanged. For example, receiving Euros instead of British Pounds devalues your transaction (as of this article’s publication a Euro is worth less than a Pound) and may cause you troubles and embarrassment later when trying to spend this money in the United Kingdom.

Problem-Solving Success Tip – Use Your Time for Problems That are Truly Important

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Use your time for problems that are truly important.

Hard as it may be to walk away once you’re aware of it, just because a problem is there doesn’t mean you have to solve it. Ask yourself and your colleagues, “What will happen if we don’t solve this problem?” If the answer is, “not much,” then turn your attention to something more important. If you don’t know what will happen, find out before you undertake a problem-solving project. It should be clear to you and everyone else involved that the problem is worth the effort-and expense-to fix it.

Quantify the cost of the problem quickly, but as realistically as you can. Include lost opportunity costs as well as real expenses such as staff time to deal with the problem, travel expenses, etc. Use actual costs where you can; estimate where you can’t. Then guesstimate what it will cost to analyze and fix it. Write your analysis down, stating all your assumptions explicitly. Get a colleague to verify that your assumptions and estimates are reasonable. Start with a rough “order of magnitude” estimate. That may be enough to answer the question of whether you should proceed. If it’s not clear, especially if the cost to solve it will be high, do a more careful analysis.

If it will cost more to fix than to live with the problem, or if the number is even close, perhaps your resources (time, people, money) are better spent on other projects. If you decide to proceed anyway, you can do so with a better understanding of what you’re undertaking. On the other hand, if you can demonstrate that the cost of the problem is much higher than the cost of solving it, using estimates based on reasonable assumptions, it will generally be much easier to get the resources you need. You can use your written analysis as a sales tool to help win support for your decision to proceed or not.

We have to learn to distinguish those things that are truly important from those that are merely urgent.
– Jerry D. Campbell

Copyright 2007. Jeanne Sawyer. All Rights Reserved.

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://crisis-management.bestmanagementarticles.com

About the Author:

Jeanne Sawyer helps her clients solve expensive, chronic problems, such as those that cause operational disruptions and cause customers to take their business elsewhere. These tips are excerpted from her book, When Stuff Happens: A Practical Guide to Solving Problems Permanently. Now also an ebook, find out about it and get more free information on problem solving at her web site: http://www.sawyerpartnership.com/.

Management Observation Program Best Practice 4 – Observation Quotas

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StrategyDriven Management Observation Program Best Practice ArticleManagement observation programs seek to reinforce desired behaviors while also capturing data to enable the identification of improvement opportunities. Both of these objectives require observation repetition in order to be effective; enough reinforcement points to alter or establish reflexive behaviors and an adequate number of data points collected to enable a statistically sound conclusion to be formed. Realizing the desired number of observations is most easily achieved through a quota system.

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