New Business Ideas 4 U

Posts Tagged ‘Idea of the Day’

GROWTH Step 5      Turn Anxiety into Optimal Energy

Keep yourself moving ahead even when you want to stop

This step indicates how we can turn anxiety into something positive.

“When we stay within our comfort zones, we don’t experience much anxiety, but we don’t experience much growth. Knowing exactly how to make the most of our worries is something that inevitably comes up as we get closer to our goals. With no anxiety you get no results. With too much, you get poor results, But with the right amount, you get great results” (pp 68/69)

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Losing All “A” Performers in a Small Office

This is a true story, and is offered to indicate how not doing what is recommended by Profs Becker, Huselid and Beatty can be expensive and serious for a company.

The office was a small sales office – around 15 people. The “A” job in the office is the sales and marketing manager. Why? Because the office was selling big ticket items – hopefully once in a lifetime purchases – and this manager is responsible for the total top line of the organization. Unfortunately, the “A” job was filled by a “C” performer and fortunately for both the office and the person, she was ‘promoted upstairs’ moving to a job in Head Office.

The recently appointed GM then set a winning strategy, and took over the role of sales and marketing manager, since Head Office would not allow the appointment of a replacement for the sales and marketing manager.  All other jobs in the office were “B” or “C” jobs. Interestingly, both I and the GM saw the job of Customer Support as a “B” job tending towards an “A”, while Head Office saw the job as , the company saw this latter as a “B” job, tending towards the “C” level. Just a necessary evil

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I have been asked to explain a little more about the ‘average’ approach from the book Performance Intelligence at Work that we talked about in the last posting. So here is an supplementary posting for you to consider.

I am a FreeCell addict. I am fascinated by the game and I play it more than I should, I guess. Since I am a performance measurement nut, one of the features I like about the game – part of the Windows basic package, for those who haven’t come across it – is that it keeps score. After each game – win or lose – you can check your cumulative score. This allows you to calculate your average – how you are performing at the moment in Dr Julie’s terms. I have played many thousands of games over the years, so what I do is play a series of 100 games, enter my percentage wins for that 100 games, then start again. The reason I do this is simple. After a number of games have been played, the winning or losing of one game has a minuscule  effect on my overall average. Even a run of 50 wins – which I achieve sometimes – has a tiny effect on a database of 5000, but is significant in a series of 100. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi again. Here is a second idea from the book Performance Intelligence at Work by Dr Julie Bell, and Robin Pou ( McGraw-Hill, 2009). It made me think, and I am sure it will do the same for you.

How do you feel when you are termed ‘average’? Many people – including me – bristle a bit at the term, because we feel that we are above average – even outstanding! But the way Dr Julie – as she likes to be called – explains ‘average’ makes good sense. She defines average as ‘the place where you perform on a consistent basis today’.

If we are totally honest with ourselves we do not perform at an outstanding level all the time. We certainly don’t perform perfectly, since perfection is not standard practice among mortals. Dr Julie suggests that we shouldn’t even strive for perfection, because we are setting ourselves up for failure, and that doesn’t seem like a sensible thing for us to do. Rather we should assess our day-to-day performance as average, and rate ourselves on a scale similar to the one below.

There are several important implications from thinking this way:

According to the scale, there is considerable room for improvement. Now that’s a positive!

The average we are talking about is a personal average. It is your present level of performance.

The average is a moving target. The more you perform above your present average – the more you succeed, according to the diagram – the  higher your average becomes.

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