Volkswagen has launched a competition to demonstrate that FUN is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. The competition ends December 15th and the winner will receive 2500 Euros (US$ 3700).

“Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here.

To throw rubbish in the bin instead of onto the floor shouldn’t really be so hard. Many people still fail to do so. Can we get more people to throw rubbish into the bin, rather than onto the ground, by making it fun to do? See the results here.

Most organizations use a top-down approach to assess their employee’s performance. The assumption is that the individual’s manager is the best person to perform an un-biased, quality performance review. As I already pointed out, only archaic organizations still rely on this type of performance assessment (see #6). Not only are traditional performance review not representative but they focus on the skills and competencies the manager wants his employee to develop.

On the other hand, if you prefer a more comprehensive review, you may be interested in 360-degree feedback. This type of feedback mechanism covers various sources – boss, colleagues, employees, customers, suppliers, etc and as such provides better coverage for the evaluation of an employee’s strengths and weaknesses. In some cases, the employee may even decide which specific skills to assess.

360-degree feedback form

After working on the competencies required by my bosses for most of my career, I have decided to build my own 360-degree feedback form to assess my leadership abilities. You may download and use the Excel version of this form – a pdf version is also available. *

The form presents Weaknesses – skills to improve (in column C) and Strengths – skills to maintain (in column I). The evaluator must rate each statement or competency, using a scale from 0 to -4 (for the weaknesses) and from 0 to 4 (for the strengths). The evaluation scale is presented below.

Although there are 50 competencies, the evaluator is given a maximum of 25 points to allocate forcing them to choose which competencies to recognize as strengths or weaknesses.

Evaluation scale

360-degree feedback form by Martin Proulx is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

Don't hire super heros

Sure, super heros are powerful. They have strengths and abilities that regular humans don’t possess. They can always be counted on to save the day and they wear cool suits! But…

Have you considered the damage a super hero can do to your team, to your department, and sometime to your organization?

Over the years, I have had the opportunity (?) to work with super heros. Every time, the initial reaction is always the same – wow, this individual is amazing! Eventually, after I analyze the accomplishments, look at the situation and the impact on others around the super hero I am less than impressed. Here’s why:

• Having a super hero hides the real underlying problems because the super hero will always save the day – no matter what caused the situation to start with. Unless you have a retrospective or a post-mortem following the resolution of the problem, you will not be able to assess if the problem is likely to happen again in the future;
• A super hero causes resentment within a team since he is typically the one rewarded for the efforts. In addition, a super hero loves the spotlight and will seldom share it with other people who helped resolve the crisis;
• A super hero thrives on solving problems and some have been known to spark an explosive situation so they can jump in later on to resolve it.

Everything is not lost if you have a super hero on your team. Next time he saves the day, simply thank him for his action and then reward the individual who suggests and implements a way to prevent the situation moving forward.

“Americans hate their jobs more than ever” … ”Majority of Americans dislike their jobs” …

These are only 2 examples of a quick google search that returned over 44.1 million pages. Try “I hate my job” and the content of the pages returned is also very sad.

I don’t intend to go into socio-psychological analysis in this post but I wonder if something as simple as trusting your employees to do their job properly would actually increase job satisfaction?

For most people, enjoying their job would simply mean doing the same type of work but in a different work setting. Many people have spent years studying to develop their expertise in a specific field that they love. Then, one day, they start working and life becomes miserable – not because they hate what they are doing but because of the way the are treated at work. Once again, I don’t want to go into harassment or this type of treatment. The only point I’m raising is that letting professionals determine the best way for them to complete their work would is such a simple of increasing job satisfaction.

“Yes, but I’m the boss” – you reply.

So what? The fact that you were hired to lead or manage people in achieving a team or departmental objective doesn’t make you the most qualified individual to resolve day-to-day issues.

“Yes, but I’ve done this job before” – you insist.

Once again, so what? The individuals performing the job now bring different skill sets and expertise to the equation and as such are qualified to address their work as they see fit. You may provide guidance or answer your employee’s questions when they come ask for help but not tell them how to do their job.

Put together a community of expertise so people doing similar work can support each other. Provide tools if they need, support your employees in finding the right answers to their problems but don’t tell them how to do it.

There is a small Japanese car-manufacturer that understood that concept a while ago. They are now the largest car manufacturer in the world. Don’t you wonder how they achieved their success?

Steve Roesler has a great post. “The Four Things Every Employee Wants to Know” is simple and accurate. They are easy questions to remember and would make a huge difference in increasing your employees’ job satisfaction.

Want to know “the most important skills needed to be an effective global leader“?. Dan McCarthy explains why Ethics, Honesty, Transparency, Integrity, Humility, Respect, Flexibility, and Collaboration are the most important.

“Organisational Design, Development and Change” presents various organizational structures.

1 year of blogging

It has already been 1 year since I published my first blog post. As I quickly figured out, Blogging is like training! It requires time, energy, and commitment and when it is done regularly, it is a great exercise for the mind.

In the 154 posts published since the beginning, my blog has evolved – a lot. I admit, I originally had no real focus and mostly expressed personal opinions.

• Since I like to read, in the beginning I was publishing book reviews which eventually led me to share my virtual bookshelf.
• After joining Pyxis, I naturally started discussing Scrum and Agile principles.
• I then moved on to Agile Business Intelligence which was more technical in nature and attempted to launch a collaborative book.
• Until I discovered something I was much more passionate about – Leadership and Strategy.
• Once in a while, I would point out Other interesting blog posts.
• For several months now, I have been focusing mostly on new organizational structures, communities and agile management.

I realize my style is a mix of situational analysis (analytical-mind), philosophical perspective, suggestions and advices sometime using humour to convey my message.

Finally, my most popular posts were:

1. How I failed as a Product Owner and the lessons I learnt in the process
2. The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Applying Game Theory to Agile Contracting
3. My Virtual Bookshelf
4. Less projects were reported to be successful in 2008
5. Scrum Artifact: Burn Down Chart

In order to improve my blog moving forward, I did a 1-year retrospective and I asked myself 3 simple questions.

What do I feel I did well?

Although there were times when I didn’t publish for a few weeks, I remained committed to maintaining the blog. Not all posts have the same depth but I try to share my perspective and discuss a different way of doing things with the objective of improving people’s quality of life at the office and improving the return on organizational investments.

What do I feel I didn’t do well?

Until I decided which track to follow, I wasn’t focused. It was difficult to retain readers since they didn’t know what to expect.

What do I need to start doing?

Increase collaboration with other bloggers and stay focused on the topics of innovative management, new organizational structures, and leadership.

This is not an un-usual situation. You call a meeting that you deem important. You invite the right people to have a constructive conversation in the hopes of coming to a decision that will be accepted by most. You planned everything ahead of time in order to maximize your participants’ “Return On Time Invested” (ROTI).

Before the meeting and without further information, your boss tells you that he won’t be attending your meeting. You try to get over the inital disappointment and frustration in order to answer the nagging question that pops in your mind “Why doesn’t my boss show up at my meeting?“.

Assuming for a minute that this is not due to an un-expected situation and that you were told before the start of the meeting – being told during the meeting would add insult to injury by showing a lack of respect.

I can only think of 2 reasons to explain that behavior:

• The decision for which you are meeting has already been taken or will be taken behind closed-door.
• The decision is not important for your boss.

Either way, this demonstrates that your boss doesn’t care about the decision stemming from the meeting. Although that is frustrating and wastes people time and energy, it is not dramatic in itself. This becomes a problem because of the lack of communication around your boss’ decision not to attend the meeting.

You may not be pleased if your boss tells you that the decision has already been taken but at least, you wouldn’t feel like an idiot when you realize this fact after you put your time and energy in the meeting.

Now, let’s give this situation a different spin and imagine receiving the following information from your boss before your meeting:

• My absence to your meeting does not indicate that I do not believe in the value of your meeting;
• I trust the group and their collective intelligence to make an informed decision;
• I am confident that the participants will challenge each other and will have good discussions;
• I want to prevent the debate from revolving around my opinion, which could bias the conversation;
• I prefer to support individuals with my expertise rather than take decisions for them.

Would you still wonder what your boss’ intentions were? Wouldn’t you feel good? Trusted? Motivated??

If you manage people, don’t let them wonder about your intention. Tell them the reason behind your actions.

I was living in the now this morning. One of those zen moments. I was sitting peacefully, eating a yogurt. My wife was at the grocery store, my daughter was at her painting class, and my son was still sleeping.

Since my brain wasn’t jumping around with various thoughts, I was really tasting the yogurt.

“Hmmm, it’s delicious!”, I thought to myself. It was the first time I tried this new flavor.

“It tastes like pineapple with a hint of banana…”.

“Interesting, the label says pineapple-coconut-banana but I can’t taste the coconut!”.

“Let me read the ingredients. Skim milk (that’s good), Sugar (really, 2nd ingredient), pineapples (yes, that makes sense), bananas (yes, that also makes sense)… Colour”. I got to the last ingredient and realized there was no coconut in the yogurt. None!

Why would they call their yogurt pineapple-coconut-banana if there is no coconut? Why not simply pineapple and banana?? Is the simple fact of adding coconut to the label enough for people to believe there is coconut and actually taste it? Is this simply a case of misleading consumers? I wonder…

I guess living in the now does bring us a better perspective of the world around us.

Yoplait's pineapple-coconut-banana yogurt

Where is the coconut?

If you are using Scrum and Agile within your organization, you already know about the daily stand-up meeting and the value its brings to the team. Many organizations who have not fully adopted Scrum still find the stand-up meeting to be extremely useful when done properly – but this is not the objective of this blog post.

We have just released a really neat ipod touch app – the _agilely Timer. No, this is not a shameless plug but a way to help people in need. As part of the Agile Tour, Pyxis has released a timer application that allows you to efficiently facilitate daily stand ups, roundtable discussions and manage timeboxes. For only $1.99, this is a great way to help FIAN since all revenues will be donated to this organization that “fights hunger with human rights”.

Go ahead, get this neat app and stand-up for something today.

Buy it now - only $1.99

_agilely Timer to support FIAN.org

For only $1.99, help fight hunger

ipod touch and iphone timer application

Want to know more, you may be interested in this blog post in French or the English version translated by Google.

Joining a Community is Simple

Everyone can ask to join a community if it is open to integrate new members. Once again, the community decides how many members it will allow and which skill set, profile and experience is required to qualify. Assuming the community is accepting new members, anybody who believes they meet the requirements may ask to join the community.

Leaving a Community is Simple

Based on the norms established by the community, people may leave with (or without) advanced notice. Communities are usually fluid and allow for members to join and leave in order to support the emergence of new ideas and new energy to reach the set objectives.

In order not to disrupt significantly the activities of the community, members are usually required to provide advanced notice to the other community members.

The Community May Ask People to Leave

Norms vary for each communities but in our situation there is a fundamental rule that states the “no single individual can have authority over another individual”. As such, community members cannot be expelled or fired based on the decision of a single individual, including the community leader. Community members who fail to comply to the norms and values of their group may be asked to leave if the majority of community members support the decision.

As in the case of a voluntary departure, the community is required to provide advanced notice to the member they wish to expel.

For more content on the topic of communities, you may follow the community tag.