Performance Management at YemBees!

Once upon a time in Yemen, there were two beekeepers, each had a beehive. 

The beekeepers worked for a company called YemBees Ltd.  The company’s customers loved its honey and the business aimed to produce more honey than it had the previous year.  As a result, each beekeeper was told to produce more honey at the same quality.

With different ideas about how to do this, the beekeepers designed different approaches to improve the performance of their hives.

YemBees – Beekeeper 1

 The first beekeeper established a bee performance management approach that measured how many flowers each bee visited.   At considerable cost to the beekeeper as an extensive measurement system was created to count the flowers each bee visited.

The beekeeper provided feedback to each bee at midseason on his individual performance, but the bees were never told about the hive’s goal to produce more honey so that YemBees Ltd could increase honey sales.

 The beekeeper created incentives, special awards for the bees who visited the most flowers.

YemBees – Beekeeper 2

The second beekeeper also established a bee performance management system, but this approach communicated to each bee the goals of the hive—to produce more honey.

This beekeeper and his bees measured two aspects of their performance: the amount of nectar each bee brought back to the hive and the amount of honey the hive produced.

The performance of each bee and the hive’s overall performance were charted and posted on the hive’s bulletin board for all bees to see.

The beekeeper created a few awards for the bees that gathered the most nectar, but he also established a hive incentive program that rewarded each bee in the hive based on the hive’s production of honey—the more honey produced the more recognition each bee would receive.  

YemBees – PERFORMANCE  – Prediction

What  do you think might have happened to each hive at the end of the season when the Queen Bee would report back to each Beekeeper ?

YemBees Beekeeper 1 at the end of the season

The first beekeeper found that his hive had indeed increased the number of flowers visited, but the amount of honey produced by the hive had dropped.

The Queen Bee reported that because the bees were so busy trying to visit as many flowers as possible, they limited the amount of nectar they would carry so they could fly faster.

 Also, because the bees felt they were competing against each other for awards (because only the top performers were recognized), they would not share valuable information with each other like the location of the flower-filled fields they’d spotted on the way back to the hive that could have helped improve the performance of all the bees.  After all was said and done, one of the high-performing bees told the beekeeper that if he’d been told that the real goal was to make more honey rather than to visit more flowers, he would have done his work completely differently.

As the beekeeper handed out the awards to individual bees, unhappy buzzing was heard in the background.

YemBees Beekeeper 2 at the end of the season

The second beekeeper, however, had very different results.

Because each bee in his hive was focused on the hive’s goal of producing more honey, the bees had concentrated their efforts on

gathering more nectar to produce more honey than ever before.

 The bees worked together to determine the highest nectar-yielding flowers and to create quicker processes for depositing the nectar they’d gathered.

They also worked together to help increase the amount of nectar gathered by the poor performers.

The Queen Bee of this hive reported that the poor performers either improved their performance or transferred to another hive. 

Because the hive had reached its goal, the beekeeper awarded each bee his portion of the hive incentive payment.

The beekeeper was also surprised to hear a loud, happy buzz and a jubilant flapping of wings as he rewarded the individual high performing bees with special recognition.

THE MORAL OF THIS STORY IS: 

Design your systems carefully because they will affect the behaviour of your staff

Measuring and recognizing accomplishments rather than activities—and providing feedback to your “worker bees“— can often improve the results of the hive

Is your team a hive of activity? If you want to develop busy bees take a look at our  Managing Others Courses

A story provided by Adrian Nixon: Adapted from “A Handbook for Measuring Employee Performance”, Office of Personnel Management, U.S. Government, September 2001.

Cultural Lip Service

History is littered with examples of organisations that have underestimated the strength of cultural conditioning paying superficial lip service to cultural integration and this has resulted in failures in strategic   alignment, communications and delays in execution of plans which impacts returns on investment.

This story describes an example of one organisation in the engineering sector who failed to consider the local culture, the impact of the application and appropriateness of their existing policies, and the leadership skills required to operate successfully in the environment.

Situated in the Middle East where the local population consists of Arabs Palestinian, and Lebanese races. The expatriates connected to the project and the parent company originated from Europe, and USA. The plant was situated in a fairly remote location and almost all employees were from the immediate neighbourhood. The arrival of a multinational company offered considerable opportunity to the local community

Let’s take a look at the culture before we examine the impact of culture crimes

In this region, there is an elaborate system of identifying others by social class, rank and position within the family, clan, or tribe. A person is identified as someone‘s child or a father belonging to a particular family. Ibn or Bin means son of and Abu means father of. The same applies to women Bint means daughter and Umm means mother. So, the identity of an Arab is collective and not individual. The Arab male has responsibilities as head of house. Arab culture values group rights little value is placed on the needs of the individual and much more emphasis is attached to the needs of the group, hence the word private as we westerners understand it does not have an exact Arabic translation. While the concept of privacy exists in the Arab world privacy does not imply personal or individuated space, and this is evident in the need for inclusion it would be quite normal for a westerner to arrange a confidential meeting with his host in the Arab world only to find the room full of family, colleagues and neighbours.

Honour and dishonour are important factors that influence the behaviour in this culture Public behaviour is influenced recipient of the communication so, there is a tendency to express or communicate messages upon other people‘s perceptions. Before getting down to business at a meeting it is important to exchange pleasantries, and accept your host’s hospitality. The western style of going straight into business is considered impolite here people will do business with you because they feel good about you.

A thorough understanding of Arab culture and society is achieved with a little basic knowledge of religion, Islam, and its founder Prophet Mohammed whose recitations called for all to rid themselves of their sinful ways and to worship only one God as the true God whom he called Allah. The Prophet called for social reforms, caring for those who could not care for themselves, and encouraged giving personal wealth to charity. His followers were forbidden to drink alcohol and eat pork. The five pillars of Islam are, Profession of faith, Prayer, Almsgiving, Fasting and Pilgrimage to Makkah. Prayers are offered 5 times a day facing towards Makkah at daybreak, midday, mid afternoon, sunset and nightfall.  The holy book Qur‘an is the infallible word of God.

 Factors Impacting the Operation

The project had multiple shareholders in the financial sense and stakeholders with an interest in the environmental and social impacts of the project and this included those in the local community.

There had been a history of instability at the plant including a high turnover of managers and stakeholder disagreements. Originally I was brought into the project to deliver training and particularly to impact the “attitude” of the workforce. It soon became apparent that training alone would not provide the fix for this broken culture.

There was a HUGE divide between the managers employed by the parent company and local employees. Ignorance created perceptions of each other which added to the mounting conflict based on cultural differences, corporate policies and the impact of some operational practices on the local community. To be fair both sides had been poorly prepared and perhaps greater understanding may have been achieved with a little thought to community initiatives, training, and/open days. Both sides were now alienated from each other.

Culture Crime Scene

 Corporate policies had been thoughtlessly applied without any adaptation to the culture and some were completely insensitive, sufficient to cause unrest amongst the majority group that they impacted.

• Previous managers had discredited several employees and these judgements had stuck like glue while others closer to those managers had been promoted beyond competence, although there was little idea of what relevant competencies for those roles were, the incompetence demonstrated was alarming.
• In this remote community money was the significant motivator; of course it had been in short supply previously and individuals focused on the here and now, so, concepts such as promotion, prospects and job satisfaction were perceived as ineffective motivators, however this organisation had no structure, and no succession plan, and therefore had no real idea of the positive effects of recognition, job security, or promotion.
• There were different perceptions of priorities, with one group generally expatriates apart from their families driven by targets and achievements and another group valuing religion, family and community which play such important roles in life. Therefore local employees were perceived as lacking commitment corporate goals.
• The different perceptions of time caused huge frustration,  western managers were simply uncomfortable with this sense of timelessness things did get done in their own time but this cultural trait was interpreted as “poor attitude towards work”
• In this region many work routines evolve around religion and time for prayer. While foreign managers acknowledged that religion was important to people, they frequently scheduled meetings to coincide with prayer, and demanded the services of drivers to drive them to leisure activities during prayer times on Fridays and other holy days
• The importance of religion and the belief that the more religious a person is the more sincere and hard working an employee will be was a serious bone of contention. The perception of the managers was that such an employee should keep at a distance because that sort of behaviour was extreme.
• Use of the word inshallah after an agreement confused the western managers who saw it as the equivalent of a westerner saying “I’ll try” and perhaps leaving room to fail.  Managers were unsure whether the job would be completed or not.
• One manager ruled that annual leave could only be taken for 3 days or more any request for leave less than 3 days would be refused. The Arab make is head of house, and generally escorts family to hospital appointments, doctors, and dentists. The impact of this ridiculous rule was that absenteeism figures shot up because people needed but were prevented from taking a day off to attend to family business.
• Many of the expat managers were forced to work on Fridays to enable them to align with their parent company, suppliers and advisors in other parts of the world.
• The western managers were irritated when the Arabic language was used between people at meetings they saw this as an insult.

Listen to the Lessons

 I could go on and on contributing to this crime scene – maybe I should write a book!

The key to cross-cultural business success  is understanding your  business partners enough to make essential cultural adjustments and adjustments are required from both parties.

A practical rule is that business transactions should favour the cultural norms of the social infrastructure on which they primarily rely. Us westerners sometime have the impression that business is a self-contained activity, in reality it depends radically on pre-existing cultural mechanisms to get anything done. If business is to tap these resources, it must respect the culture that provides them.

 

We Are a Team – Everybody Agree?

A team had four members called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done.

Everybody was sure that somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was everybody’s job.

Everybody thought anybody could do it, but nobody realized that everybody wouldn’t do it.

It ended up that everybody blamed somebody when nobody did what anybody could have done.

Lessons

The story reminds me of the behaviours we quite often see in the boardroom scenes in the TV show The Apprentice, notice how the teams react when someone is about to get fired. Nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions or their collective failure. Of course the accusations, bickering and rivalry make great TV ratings, and these snapshots of team behaviours contain essential learning for team leaders and managers.

Role Clarity

Role clarity is essential to enable clarity and fair distribution of work amongst team members. Lack of clarity can mean that not all goals are achieved. It may be advisable to encourage collective responsibility and teach team members how to manage teamwork effectively. Avoid the following: “Everybody was sure that somebody would do it”.

Clear Goals

Does your team know where it’s going? Insufficient direction can lead to misguided focus and a failure to prioritise activities relevant to the task.

Poor Time Management

Allow adequate time for key activities including brainstorming, strategizing, decision making and implementation. Ensure sufficient awareness of constraints and timescales, failure to provide this information will impact efficiency in managing and implementing the task   

The end rewritten

It ended up that everybody somebody & nobody did what anybody could not have done alone – Terrific Team Work!

Read about our terrific team development courses here: http://www.spectrain.co.uk/Managing-Others

Tittle Tattle lost the Battle – Avoiding Toxic Gossip

Avoiding Toxic Gossip

In ancient Greece (469 – 399 BC) Socrates was widely respected for his wisdom.    

One day the great philosopher was approached be an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, ‘Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?’

‘Wait a moment,’ Socrates replied. ‘Before you tell me I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.’

‘Triple filter?’ replied the acquaintance!

‘That’s right,’ Socrates continued. ‘Before you talk to me about my student let’s take a moment to filter what you’re going to say.

The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?’

‘No,’ the man said, ‘actually I just heard about it and…’

‘All right,’ said Socrates. ‘So you don’t really know if it’s true or not.’

‘Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?

‘No, on the contrary…’

‘So,’ Socrates continued, ‘you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you’re not certain it’s true?’

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued. ‘You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter – the filter of Usefulness.’ Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Well,’ concluded Socrates, ‘if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?’

The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was such a brilliant philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why he never found out that Plato was having an affair his wife.

Constructive Conversations

Thoughts before Words

What you do before you talk to someone about a difficult issue will determine what tone and direction that conversation will take.

The way we begin a difficult conversation has an effect on whether the discussion goes well, getting the opening right requires a little thought beforehand to think things through clearly and to get into a productive state of mind.

Avoid Mind Reading

Mind reading occurs when we decide that we know what the other persons motivation, agenda or intention is, mind reading produces thoughts like:  “I know what he is trying to do” or “I can tell he is deliberately trying to humiliate me” notice how these thoughts always assume negative intentions! Mind reading is about guessing and does not produce facts, some of your guesses may be accurate, but if you were not born with telepathic powers your mind reading may produce a totally inaccurate perception. This can create unnecessary conflict by entering the discussion with false perception

 Seeking first to understand the other person’s behaviour and actions will produce a balanced perspective. Take some time to examine what it might be like from the other persons point of view

Fortune Telling

Fortune telling sounds like this “I can predict his next move” and “I know exactly what excuse she will use”. Fortune telling is a fatally flawed strategy because we are predicting what will happen and treating those predictions as facts. Those people with special fortune telling powers create a vision of a positive outcome and then plan their approach to achieve that outcome. They recognise that their assessment no matter how well-founded — is still an opinion, a guess, and not a fact.

How to Ensure Constructive Conversations

If you are really upset, talk to a person that you trust to and release some of those strong feelings and emotions to a level where you can enter the conversation in a neutral state

Ask someone that you trust for their perspective, when we are upset our emotions can distort our perceptions, a third party perspective can be very useful, because they are not emotionally involved they are able to see the situation in a more rational way

See if you can engage the person in one or more positive conversations before approaching the difficult issue, this will increase the odds that they will enter the important conversation in a positive state

Ask for feedback on the way you intend to approach the conversation, ask a trusted advisor how they would respond if they were approached in the manner that you intend

Unless you have special powers, if you catch yourself mind reading or fortune telling – STOP Now