Interview Tom Foster (Management Skills Blog) – Part 3 of 6

Q3 Dr Lisa: As you know we recommend against most incentive or bonus programs. How does the prevailing belief by Western management that incentives are effective relate to the “best efforts” contract?

Tom: Yes, incentives are effective. They are most effective at creating mistrust in the organization. They violate the implicit contract between the employer and employee. Incentives lay the groundwork for counterproductive relationships and sow the seeds for deceit. Incentives pit manager against employee in a game of underperformance, where the carrot rules.

Even worse, managers use incentives to abdicate their responsibility to hold people accountable for performance. Managers throw up their hands and say, "the only way I can hold my people accountable is to withhold part of their pay until they meet the performance standard." If that is the only strategy a manager has to hold people accountable, then I think I need a different manager.

...to be continued.

Here's to maximizing YOUR profits!
Dr Lisa Lang
(c)Copyright 2008, Dr Lisa, Inc. All rights reserved.

Are you a Vistage/TEC member who would like your team to hear my speech? Here it is: NEXT Maximizing Profitability Event (no charge): December 1, 2008 in Denver from 1:00 to 5:00 pm at the Science of Business Training Center. More information at http://www.viable-vision.com/. You can register by fax or on-line.

Next Mafia Offer Boot Camp -- is December 2, 3, 4 2008 in Denver.

Interview Tom Foster (Management Skills Blog) – Part 2 of 6

Dr Lisa: Tom in your speech you mention the “best efforts” contract that exists between an employer and employee. Could you elaborate on what that is?

Tom:
There is a widely held notion that to get the best efforts from a person, management must engage in a game of trickery, using manipulation, incentives and bonuses to extract the last ounce of willingness from their employees. The notion concludes that employees are basically lazy and to get their best efforts, management must withhold some benefit or some money until that best effort is observed.

Under that notion, the contract reads like this: For your salary or standard compensation, I expect you to show up and trust that you will deliver less than your best effort. At the end, after you have delivered less than your best effort, if I can get you to deliver a little more than less your best effort, I am willing to pay you more.

How silly is that?

It does nothing more than breed mistrust and sets up an incentive system that employees will manipulate. It is a destructive game that tears at the fabric of most intentional cultures.

Now, try this contract: For your salary, or standard compensation, I expect you to show up and trust that you will do your best.

That's it, no games, no manipulation.

...to be continued.

Here's to maximizing YOUR profits!
Dr Lisa Lang
(c)Copyright 2008, Dr Lisa, Inc. All rights reserved.

Are you a Vistage/TEC member who would like your team to hear my speech? Here it is: NEXT Maximizing Profitability Event (no charge): December 1, 2008 in Denver from 1:00 to 5:00 pm at the Science of Business Training Center. More information at http://www.viable-vision.com/. You can register by fax or on-line.

Next Mafia Offer Boot Camp -- November 10, 11, 12 2008 in Denver.

Interview Tom Foster (Management Skills Blog) – Part 1 of 6

We'll take a break from our POOGI series for this interesting 6 part interview of Tom Foster.
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I had a chance to interview Tom Foster. Tom is a consultant and TEC Chair in Florida. Brad heard Tom speak, checked out his blog and then I ended up speaking to his group. During our trip to Florida we had dinner with Tom and discussed a number of interesting topics. Here are some questions we asked Tom and his answers.

Dr Lisa: Tom, as you know, we do results based consulting. We only get paid if our clients increase their profits. So it is very important for our clients and for us to have the right people on the bus. Many times we come into a company to find that the right people are no where near the bus.

You have found that “time span of discretion” is a better indicator than the various personality tests of how successful a person will be in a job. Please explain more about that.

Tom: Each of us has an innate ability to deal with various levels of complexity in our world. This is a finding by Elliott Jaques in his research on how organizations get work done. This innate ability to deal with complexity is measured in terms of "Time Span." While many companies employ various instruments (psychometric testing) to determine what Elliott describes as "temperament," the correlation of any given temperament to success in the position is hardly more than random.

The real key to determine whether a person has the capability to be successful, in a given role, lies in matching the Time Span of the role with the Time Span of the person.

To do this requires some understanding of Time Span and how to measure it. For now, I will leave you with the definition:

Time Span is the length of time that a person can work into the future, without direction, using their own discretionary judgment.