Author Archives: Andy

About Andy

I am a 35 year old IT Manager in the finance industry. I am a computer programmer by trade, but spend more times in meetings now than programming! I am currently half way through a Master of Business Administration with Adelaide University, South Australia. I am a firm believer in the power of merging traditional business theory with the more modern mantras from the start-up world. I have a lovely wife, Eve, who encourages (and has patience for) my late nights and early mornings spent studying or working. We have two boys - Archer & Oren. My LinkedIn Profile is here http://www.linkedin.com/in/mrandrewforbes and my Twitter handle is @MBANights

Alfie Kohn Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work

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In 1993 Alfie Kohn wrote an article titled ‘Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work’. For the time it was a radical piece critisising any attempts of increasing employee productivity via incentive plans. Even now, it is still more on the radical side of management and leadership theory.

Kohn said that “rewards typically undermine the very processes they are intended to enhance” and that they secured, at best, only temporary compliance.

Before getting further into Kohn’s reasoning, it’s worth hitting pause to revisit some motivational basics. Firstly, motivation is classified into two types, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes from the self, whereas extrinsic motivation is supplied externally, usually by the manager. There is a large amount of research that shows that the highest performing people are intrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation is a form of behaviour modification, whereby a manager will use techniques to motivate the individual to do something that they would otherwise not want to do. It may be that the employee theoretically wants to do the work, but in practice they’d rather take it slower or more relaxed than you’d like. Continue reading →

Complex Systems and Change Management – Guest Post

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Complex Systems and Change Management – A guest post by Philip Southwell

I used to think that I could drive change like Michael Schumacher used to drive a Ferrari. If I drove with consummate skill I would take the corners smoothly, overtake competitors and win the drivers’ championship. How wrong was I.

This approach led to frustration. Why wouldn’t people do what I wanted? Why couldn’t people see that the change I was advocating would further the aims of the organisation?

My frustration came because I didn’t realise one simple fact: Continue reading →

Chase the Cool

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I’ve had this saying going for a few months now, where I tell my friends that they need to ‘Chase the Cool’. The concept has had some incubation, and now I think I’m at the point I can walk people through behind my new ethos, my new compass, on what I should and should not aspire to do, or be. I hope you like it and find it useful.

To help illustrate the point I’ll use a real life story. It’s easy to find many stories that match, but for this example, we’ll pick the story of the PS22 Primary School Chorus in Staten Island, New York. Know of it?

Here’s a sample:

PS22 Chorus performing ‘Walking on a dream’ by Empire of the Sun.

The origins of the PS22 Chorus are very humble. It started with the music teacher, Mr Breinberg thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to engage the kids via music? Wouldn’t it be cool to record the kids singing covers of modern songs, songs that probably aren’t normally sung in schools?

Continue reading →

Dancing with Systems – Donella Meadows

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The late Donella Meadows wrote an interesting article titled ‘Dancing with Systems’ that provides a fourteen recommendations on how to approach the change of complex systems.

Newtonian thinking says by breaking down a system into smaller parts, and then understanding them, we will understand the system as a whole. Thinking about it in this way assumes that the system is certain, predictable, obeys known rules and laws, and has linear causation.

The problem is however, that most systems we deal with as managers do not meet these assumptions. Some examples are the workplace culture, company performance, or even an individual’s performance. All are complex systems that cannot be controlled by Newtonian thinking. Our toolkit to understand and deal with this needs another approach.

This is where complex systems theory can help. Complex systems are said to contain uncertainty, unpredictability, non-linear causation and emergent behaviour.

The core idea being that complex systems cannot be properly understood in the Newtonian way we are so used to thinking in. This is where ‘Dancing with Systems’ comes in.

Meadows states that “We exaggerate our own ability to change the world”, and that “the idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best”.

You can’t understand, predict and control a complex system.

Continue reading →

Victor Vroom Expectancy Theory

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In 1964 Victor Vroom developed his Expectancy Theory to explain observations on the motivations behind decision making. It has become one of the most dominate motivational theories in use today, and can be used to explain common workplace strategies such as performance reviews and financial incentive schemes.

Vroom believed that employees were more likely to be highly motivated when they perceived a link between effort, performance and rewards. Sounds fair enough.

He proposed that the link between motivation, effort, performance, and reward could be explained via the following formula:

M = E x I x V

where M = motivation, E = Expectancy, I = Instrumentality, V = Valence. Continue reading →

It motivates the workforce to do what, exactly?

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As managers we will be asked to play a part in the application of company endorsed motivational techniques.

We might be asked to improve motivation by:

  • Holding annual performance reviews
  • Applying and setting incentive payments/bonuses
  • Cracking the whip, pointing out poor performance
  • Setting aspirational goals and KPI’s

When considering any motivational technique, it is important to ask- Continue reading →

Top 9 Employee Values

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Why do employee’s stick it out with companies, even when the renumeration is poor? Why do overpaid employee’s still leave? There are a many things to consider here, and it will be the subject of another blog post, but for the moment, lets keep it simple. Let’s focus on values.

Values can be defined as:

“Important and enduring beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or desirable and what is not. Values exert major influence on the behavior of an individual and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.”

from : www.businessdictionary.com

To meet the needs of their employees, managers need to consider their staff’s values, and think on how they are delivering, or enabling those values. As a manger you need to be aware of all the core values. So what are they? What are the Top 9 Employee Values?

Continue reading →

Why MBA? Positives and Negatives

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Why MBA? Positives and Negatives found whilst studying an MBA at the University of Adelaide

So what’s it like studying an MBA? Why do it and would I recommend it?

These are some of the questions I get asked about my Adelaide University MBA study. In short, yes I recommend it, but there’s a better answer, with disclaimers.

Studying an MBA is great, but it depends on your motivation for doing it. What do you want to get out of it?

It’s a LOT of work if you’re just after a bit of paper. Adelaide works on trimester system. For each trimester, you’ll be giving up 3 hours of your time for lectures, somewhere between two and seven hours a week preparing for them (reverse class room style), and then there’s all the time spent on assignments and exam preparation. At three subjects per year, this repeats for four years.

Does everyone really do that much work? Well, no – if you believe in the undergrad saying ‘P’s get Degrees‘ then you may get away with less effort. Even so, it’s still a big commitment.

To give you something to think about, here’s a brief list of positives and negatives of MBA study.

Continue reading →

Adelaide University Professional Management Program PMP

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Adelaide University Professional Management Program PMP - The Entrée MBA

Thinking of studying a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) but aren’t completely sure you are ready to start several years of study?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to “try out” MBA level study?

Well – if you can get to Adelaide or Darwin – you can, via the Adelaide University Professional Management Program PMP, run by the Executive Education Unit.

The Executive Education Unit’s Professional Management Program is like an entrée MBA, giving you a small bite sized experience of MBA level study across six subjects. Continue reading →

Marketing Levels of Scales

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Marketing Levels of Scales Summary

When working with marketing research you may come across the concept of the four “levels of scales”, or “levels of measurement”. All measurements collected by the three marketing instruments: questionnaires, qualitative measures and technological devices will measured by one of these forms of data.

The four levels of scales are:

  • Nominal
  • Ordinal
  • Interval
  • Ratio

Continue reading →