Looking to broaden and deepen your personal and professional development?

Live and or work in Leeds?

Check out Progress School

Not in Leeds but like the idea of a Progress School on your turf?

Get in touch!

I have just set up a dedicated twitter account for PMN.  You can now follow me on twitter @PMNUK.

Check out the twitter stream at http://twitter.com/pmnuk

This account will be used to provide regular ideas, inspiration, reminders and nudges about effective progressive management.

I also tweet on @mikechitty – where the focus is more on my work in enteprise and education.

Hope this makes things better for you!

Mike Chity

I often meet managers who are obsessed with plans and performance.  As a result they tend to focus on deviance.  Things that go wrong, that don’t meet the plan.

As a result they find it hard to see and acknowledge the good stuff.  The vast majority of their feedback is about problems and they fail to acknowledge or even see the good work that is done every day.

If you need convincing that you only see what you are looking for try this video for size.

Share this Post

Find yourself half an hour and wathc ths wonderful video to learn about leadership from conductor Itay Talgam.

Looks at various conducting styles and teaches profoundly while entertaining!

Share this Post

In some very exciting conversations with Reach Further about bringing the Progressive Managers’ Network online.

Potentially become a blend of webinars, videos, face to face, e-mail and telephone support.

Looking forward to making this a reality over the summer.

Share this Post

Simon Caulkin’s Management Column in the Observer is a victim of the recession.

Read his last piece here.

Share this Post

We all have days, sometimes weeks, months even years when our enthusiasm and love for life is not as high as we want it to be. Don’t we?

We all suffer bouts of ‘passion depletion’.

In my world ‘passion’ is not just about enthusiasm, love and enjoyment.  It is also a measure of suffering – as in ‘the passion of Christ’.

It is a measure of how much suffering we are prepared to put up with to pursue that which we love.  It is linked to the question ‘Are you willing to pay the price for the success that you desire?’  What will you put up with, put at risk in order to pursue your dream?  How many hours of practice, research, writing, planning and thinking?

In this formulation ‘passion depletion’ (now meaning a reduction in the amount of suffering you are prepared to put up with in order to pursue your goals) is a sign that you are falling out of love with your original goal.  Perhaps there is something else that you would rather suffer for?

It maybe a very positive sign that ‘new doors’ are opening.

I know that this formulation about suffering is not popular, but for me it does reflect more of the truth of day to day life and professional and private practice.  It provides me with a useful benchmark against which to gauge my life choices.

When some of your team seem to have ‘passion depletion’  it might be telling you, and them, something important.

Share this Post

What is the true value of creativity to organisations?

Just read this post!

And then reflect on what you do to suppress or promote creativity.

Remember that your team is a perfectly evolved repsonse to YOUR management style.

Share this Post

Leeds Photo by Barnaby Alldrick

Carmine Coyote has written a provocative post which explores the fundamental dishonesty of motivation.

But I think Carmine has given motivation a bum rap!

What has been called ‘motivation’ is really ‘manipulation’.  Manipulation to get people to do something that the manager wants them to do.

Now I don’t think any manager can ‘motivate’ anyone beyond the short term fix of the pep talk.  (I think that we should set trading standards onto speakers who claim to be ‘motivational’.  The good ones might educate about motivation – but in my experience the motivational, as opposed to the educational, impact of their presentations tails off within a few hours of their closing remarks.)

What managers can do is to help each employee to get really clear on their (the employees) self interest and how working towards organisational objectives serves it.  Once this is done motivation will follow as sure as night follows day.  Or the employee will leave to find a place where they can pursue their self interest more effectively.  And this really forces employers to look at the value proposition that offer to their employees.  Why should good, compassionate, competent people choose to spend their working hours with us?  If it is just for the money then “Houston, we have  problem!”

Self interest, rightly understood, properly negotiated with others and then pursued with vigour and power leads to remarkable results and one of its many by-products is ‘motivation’.  Others are inspiration, creativity, innovation, passion, energy, vigour, strength.  But the proper negotiation with others is critical.  Blending self interests, weaving them together,  ensuring that they reinforce rather than undermine each other, lies at the root of all high performing teams.  And this is the real craft of the progressive manager.

The trouble is most of us feel uncomfortable about pursuing self interest.  We are uncomfortable talking about it.  We don’t even like to give ourselves the time to think about it.  We have been socialised to suppress our self interest and look for opportunities to serve others.  And VERY few managers build the kind of relationships where self interest (of all parties) can be clarified and negotiated fully to the benefit of all.

Carmine’s point about the fundamental dishonesty of motivation, that it is about getting people to ‘do more work for less reward’ is, I believe, a misrepresentation.  Employees who create value deserve a proportionate share of that value and this depends on the proper negotiation of self interest.  If the negotiation is not proper, but unfair, then self interest is not fully served and as a result motivation erodes.

Increasingly the nature of the reward is more than simply financial.  Employees are looking for a diverse and intensely personal cocktail of rewards with ingredients that include fulfilment, challenge, flexibility, creativity and personal and professional development.  These are essential components of self interest for most of us and help to keep people motivated at least as much as money, which is just a hygiene factor.

Appreciation also needs to be part of the mix.  It absolutely is part of the package of ‘rewards’ that most of us look for at work.  And it is a part of the job that many managers struggle with as they tend to leave things alone until they go wrong.

And perhaps we (professional management educators) need to do more with managers on ‘motivation’ as an emergent property – the preconditions for which require a full and proper negotiation of self interest(s) and the development of the employees power to pursue it with vigour.

And while I don’t think that people are any different in the third sector, I do think that the cocktail of self interest often needs to be much more carefully balanced.  And many third sector managers forget this at their peril.  Few of us join social enterprises to be overt vehicles for the delivery of government policy.  We join social enterprises to promote social justice.  And the ’self interests’ of politicians and the promotion of social justice are rarely properly negotiated.

Your thoughts….

Share this Post

One of the basic assumptions behind my work in the Progressive Managers’ Network is that excellent performance depends on excellent relationships.  Relationships that are characterised by:

• engagement
• honesty
• 2-way communication
• creativity and innovation from everyone
• development and progress

And still the most common objection that I face in my training?  “Mike I haven’t got time to spend building relationships.  I just need to get them to do as I ask.”  The longer term pursuit of excellence is consistently hi-jacked for the short term acceptance of mediocrity.

Great post here from Carmine Coyote which provides some clues about why getting relationships right really matters.

Share this Post