There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs in the business world. This cartoon from Geek Hero Comic captures the essence this key to employee performance and motivation. I have to say that I absolutely love it. Dave Thomas has talked about this for years in his classic Developing Expertise presentation, supported by the following quote:

Interestingly enough, a friend of mine (who is a quality control manager in a hospital) often makes identical statements in reference to doctors: Polite requests, coercion, etc. are useless at best and often detrimental. Peer pressure and competition are the key.

It’s a terrible way to manage employees, but I love the cruel reality the cartoon depicts. Although you will be getting a level of performance you never imagined you could get out of your employees, it comes as a Catch-22, because at the same time you’re introducing an extremely negative influences at the same time which will errode any sense of teamwork that you’ve ever had in your environment. Plus, you also introduce a sure-fire way to begin decreasing the quality of the work outputted by your employees.

I’ve personally been a witness to this several times in my career. I remember a number of years ago when I was working at a fast-growing Web-hosting company. Our support team, though of good quality, lacked tenacity in getting things done fast. I have always competed with myself wherever I have worked so I would turn out insane numbers while others would be just plain mediocre. Eventually, they introduced performance bonuses (kind, of). For every employee that reached a certain number of tickets completed per week, they could draw an envelope which would contain a random amount of cash ($5-$100). A list was emailed each week showing every employee and their efficiencies in their daily tasks ranging from number of calls, time on phone, number of email tickets, chats, etc.

Soon after this the place caught fire. All day long you would see smoke coming from the keyboards as the support reps raced through as many tickets as possible to meet their weekly quota. Soon enough, though, most people caught on that you could get your quota by cherry-picking the easy tickets and at the same time the real questions and issues that customer had would sit for a long time. No one would dare touch them because you could do 5-10 easy tickets in the time it took you to complete one difficult one. Furthermore, you can probably guess the types of answers you would get from the reps, short, abrupt, non-informative, not very customer-friendly.

I think that peer pressure and competition have their place in business. However, implemeting these influences should be done carefully, and employee performance must be carefully monitored so that quality is not sacrificed in behalf of quantity.

In the end, it’s necessary for any successful organization to implement, at least, some form of motivating atmosphere in the workplace. Whether it’s a healthy competition for best performance, or a board that shows output by each employee, implemeting these factors into the day-to-day activities of the organization will ensure that employees are motivated to perform at their best throughout the day. It’s amazing to see the change in a group of employees the moment there’s a list showing who has done how much of the work. Suddenly, the people at the top push a little harder to make sure that they are on top. The people close to the top work to improve a bit more so that they can get to the top, and the people at the bottom are faced with the ultimatum that they either get into gear and out of the bottom or they are probably facing a job change.

Managers are the key. They ensure that these competitive influences are kept in check. They are the key to ensure that there is enough competition to keep the team working at their greatest level of output, while at the same time, the manager is performing a good amount of quality control to ensure that the overall quality of the group does not destroy or undermine the overall mission of the organization. This then becomes the best way to improve performance.

Bookmark This...

The new craze on the Internet is social networking. Being able to connect with people all over the world gives individuals tremendous power to accomplish good, but at the same time it’s a two edged sword; you can very quickly and with relative ease, make a fool of yourself and discredit all that you’ve worked to accomplish.

I think we’ve all witnessed the good, the bad, and the ugly of social networking. We’ve probably also heard of the mishaps that have taken place because someone posted a bit much on Facebook or Twitter. A random party photo, or a snide comment about a co-worker or boss, can come back to haunt the individual.

In order to take advantage of the best social networking has to offer, we can’t just focus on doing the positive things, we have to also limit the negative things we do too. It’s like wanting to be rich, earning $500,000 dollars but then at the same time spending $500,000. In the end, your negative (spending) cancels the positive (earnings).

Social networking has some clear negatives to avoid, and good to do:

BAD: Irrelevant Updates: Unfortunately no one cares that you just woke up at 11 AM (actually, it makes you look lazy, and potential influential connections will look down upon these things). No one wants to know that you had cereal for breakfast, brushed your teeth, or walked the dog. Everybody does those things, so it’s nothing new, nothing important. There’s nothing wrong with the everyday things, but keep it minimal and interesting.

GOOD: Insightful Updates: Post about things you’re reading, comment on events, and what others have said. Updates are like free marketing, it is a great way for start-ups and companies to gain an underground following.  You can use it to broadcast updates, news and even articles and blog entries to the masses. Individuals can also use it to show their skills, talents, expertise, and by the value of your content, prove to others that you are worth the connection.

BAD: Insincere Connections: On more of the social variety of networks, it amazes me when people you haven’t spoken with in over 15 years request your ‘friendship’…only to turn around, after you accept, and never contact you again. Others post themselves on various sites just to be able to get more followers or contacts, just for the sake of numbers.

GOOD: Powerful Connections: Your contacts should be useful. You should stay connected with these people, comment on what they are working on, reading, actually stay in touch with them. When the time comes that you may need something, they will readily come to your aid. If you haven’t ever bothered to stay connected (other than just having the connection) there’s little chance that you’ll get any help. Show your worth and when your contacts need something, they’ll come to you.

BAD: Inaccurate Contact: If your contact information is old, and not up-to-date, it’s of no use to your contacts. If you have a Web site listed in your profile, keep it up-to-date. If you don’t have time to do that, make the site just a landing page with basic information on how to contact you.

GOOD: Up-to-date Contact: If you have work information, skills, experience, etc. keep that up to date too, you’ll be surprised how many people look at that and if the information is old you may miss some opportunities. I would suggest that you “Google” your name and see what is out there, then get to work at building your personal brand. Your personal brand is your name, if you have a common name it make take a little more work since there will be many other people doing the same time. Setup your basics, Web site (with your name [or a variation] as your domain name), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GoogleProfile. Get your name out there, what you do, and how to contact you.

Taking some of these basic steps will ensure that you develop at strong, professional online profile that will be useful to you and not something that will handicap you in future opportunities. Developing an online profile through social networking will increase the influence you have from your normal social group of co-workers and friends to include a whole wide community of people with similar interests, skills, and experience throughout the world.

Bookmark This...

There’s been a lot of changes recently to Internet security done mostly by browsers to improve the online safety of Web users. Even though I have a security background, I have some serious issues with the stance browsers and other technology companies have been taking in improving Internet security. My major concern is that not enough is being done to educate end-users.

I understand that there has always been an epic battle between businesses, tech people, and end-users, in regards to educating the everyday computer user. I know it has been a losing battle and understand that companies often resort to “well, if the user is going to be dumb, then I’ll just do everything I can to prevent them from making a mistake”. This mentality is, in an of itself, a mistake. Non-educated users are prone to finding innovative ways to make mistakes, regardless of the safeguards we put in place, despite the amount of preventive security that is put in place.

If you’ve ever seen a site that looks like this, you’ve been “saved” by a browser’s attempt to block “bad” sites. The problem with this is that your safety net, as a user, is dependent entirely upon a browser‘s ability to scan millions of sites and be able to differentiate between those that are good and those that are bad.

Unfortunately, browsers will never be able to catch all bad sites, some are going to get through and users will be defenseless. At some point, we will need to weight which losing battle we will want to fight. So far educating users has not been a popular choice of action, however, there are some changes in the horizon.

I came across a new Web site by Verisign, Phish or No Phish, which quizzes users on which sites are phishing Web sites, and which are real Web sites. It then promotes the use of EV (Extended Validation) SSL Certificates (the green bar on the browser) to identity secure domain names. I like that the approach taken was to educate the end-user on the reality of bad online and how to spot those sites that are bad. I also thought that the Verisign quiz was biased towards having users miss more questions than normal so that they can then show how bad the problem really is. Again, I have a security background and admit that I did not get 100% of the phishing sites on the quiz.

The problem, really, is that most phishing Web sites come from non-standard domain names for the company being copied. Verisign, on the otherhand, user man-in-the-middle (same domain name on both screenshots) for all but one of their quiz questions. Hate to break it to Verisign, but very little of the phishing sites out there operate this way. Most are coming from the garbage domain names. In any case, the overall, the positive effect here is that more emphasis is being placed on educating users.

As technology professionals we can only do so much. Eventually, our users will be left on their own and will have to stand on their own two legs, the question, then, is “will they do the right thing?” I certainly hope that we see more of this from technology companies.

Bookmark This...