POSITIVE INFLUENCE

The most difficult aspect of leading, managing, and supervising is providing performers with negative feedback. Most people report public speaking as their number one fear; for anyone in a management role, providing one-on-one negative feedback holds that number one spot. Many managers not only avoid feedback, they do not do provide it at all.

Annual or bi-annual performance reviews are hated by everyone—employee and manager alike. In many companies, performance reviews and salary reviews are synonymous; the performance review provides the rationale for whether one receives a raise and how much that raise is going to be. It is often humorously acknowledged that everyone is on his or her best behavior for a few weeks prior to performance review time.

I thought I would record a few random, disjointed observations about behavior and positive reinforcement in the workplace in a sincere effort to shock and surprise  readers.

So, here are some observations you may find interesting:

I apologize for taking so long to post this blog. A rogue spam robot identified this blog as a potential spam blog, and the folks at Blogger had me blocked for 20+ days while they personally inspected the blog. I would label this experience as a window into the dark side of technology--a side most of us will see sometime in the future.

Secondly, I hyperlinked the terms isomorphic, homologous, Applied Behaviour Analysis, Lean principles, and Six Sigma but the blog will not hold the links. So, you will have to Google the terms that are new for you.

I have implemented positive reinforcement systematically at more business sites than any practicing OBM consultant.What relevance does that have for this blog, my comments about the best way to positively reinforce an employee—what works or does not work in Organizational Behavior Management (OBM)?It means I’ve made more mistakes than you can ever make and I may have learned something from them.

Behavior change—that was my objective. I walked into over 100 separate business sites over a 35 year period and baselined their key performance variables; quantity, quality, timeliness, waste, efficiency—I took a snapshot of their business scorecard because my job was to get all those numbers up. I was being paid by the plant manager or corporate leadership to reduce turnover and absenteeism and at the same time get all the performance numbers up—significantly!