Matthew Dent

This article is more of the same and it really makes you question any data or evidence that maybe presented. That fact that a group compiled the data and put it together based on the outcome they wanted to see shows the system is flawed. This seems to be the underlining theme for this course; systems are typically broken or could use a huge makeover. This goes to show you can’t trust your politicians, the media, or anyone else for that matter. In order to get the truth you need to seek the truth on your own. This requires more work than most individuals are willing to put out.

 All three of the articles for this week seemed to hit home with the same message, don’t trust statistics. Statistics are data that is gathered to support a claim and manipulated to prove a point. It is too bad that most individuals just listen to the media or what someone tells them without investigating the information further in order to have an educated opinion. I think it just comes down to laziness. Asking the why questions and investigating your source when it comes to data will make you much more informed.

Every group needs a leader, every company needs a leader, and every team needs a leader. The role of a leader is to effectively move the group or individuals in the right direction. The leader is supposed to be there to support the team and to make sure they stay on task. A leader should build up his team and company focusing primarily on making them successful! I believe Art Petty blog Two Dimensional Leader Disease does a great job of effectively breaking down a leader to basic terms. He states, “A leader must remember that you are there to serve, that it is never about you and that your success is directly related to how hard you work to support and promote and advance those around you.” Plain and simple, this could be the definition of a leader.

The more effective you are as leader the more motivated your team will be to succeed. The leader must facilitate the team to stay on task and continue to move forward. One of the main things that will cause a group to fail in the team setting is the lack of trust. For the team to succeed the players must feel free to participate. Instilling trust in members is key to getting the most out of each role player. Having a leader this is more of a facilitator and less of a decision maker will allow the team to grow. The more decisions they can make amongst themselves the more empowered they will feel which eventually leads them taking ownership of the team. The team will become more productive and more confident in there own decisions.

I like how the CEO took a different approach than most when it comes to performance reviews. After reviewing his managers scores of the employees in the company he came to the conclusion the scores were inflated. Expecting someone in the company to have something he/she can improve on isn’t too unreasonable, right? If the scores were truly correct the company would have reached its growth potential and would soon find it hard to compete. The management needs to be willing to “differentiate among their employees,” and by scoring each individual as excellent they appear to be unable tell the employees you need to improve.

 I am not fan of employee performance review because for the most part you are being judged by a superior who really doesn’t have idea of what you are doing. The short amount of time that you are in the spotlight in front of your boss isn’t enough time to evaluate and really it should be how you operate outside of his/her presence which really matters. Majority of your interactions are with other co-workers and clients. At my place of work we have an EPR in place and it’s great if you are getting a raise but really it doesn’t matter what your boss has decided. You work an entire year and are evaluated based on a few interactions which you have been judged upon good or poor performance. The dollar amount of your pay increase has already been decided and it pretty much all depends on how much the supervisor likes or dislikes the individual.

The employees for this company make there money of sales which is a performance incentive. The system is broken which pushes individuals to lookout for themselves and undercut each other in-order to make a living. The CEO has the right idea about having a strategy but more importantly the strategy needs to be executed. They tried to fix the broken system when they implemented the college recruiting program. The problem was the clash between the existing employees and the new employees which eventually caused the system to fail. Practically all of the college grads jumped ship and moved onto someone who would show them the money. The few that stayed turned out to be Stars. This is just another example of how if you don’t constantly modify the system to make sure it is working, it will fail.

Money may motivate but only temporarily. A raise is great but a few pay cycles later you catch yourself wanting an even larger compensation. This article is about incentive programs and more importantly it looks at different systems which are motivating the employees. When your main focus becomes less on the customer and more on the commission you have a broken system. Quite often employees which are incentive motivated over time forget about there purpose and start working for a paycheck. They begin to focus on selling the product rather than selling the customer the best product. Companies turn to incentive based programs to help the flawed system when they are actually making the problem worse like in last weeks article on Nordstrom’s.

I have never worked in a position where my pay was incentive based. I think a company could make that type of a system work but it would have to be monitored frequently and the necessary changes would need to be implemented. More importantly, commission shouldn’t be a way to fix an already broken system but a way to award individuals for performing based on how the company wants them to perform. Making the commission a smaller part of the overall pay could be more beneficial to the company.

I think a commission system would motivate me if the system was set up successfully. Is it possible? I see realtors on a different level than I view car salesman and they both work off of commission. One is try to move an item to make a buck while the other is assisting you in the overall shopping experience. There is a relationship built with a realtor which can be long-term especially when you are ready to sale a home they helped you purchase. If you established a trusting relationship they will most likely come back to you when they are ready to sale. The article refers to commission leading to “taking short-cuts” and I think it all depends on the system. Your company may thrive in an incentive based system, it just depends on the company and as long as you are constantly evaluating the system it will stay working.