What are some practical ways businesses can improve performance?
The do-it-yourself performance review. I have not encountered a single person who thinks performance reviews are useful, valuable or enjoyable. They take place too infrequently. If you want feedback on something, you want it pretty quickly, rather than six months later. At the end of the month, call yourself into your office, and give yourself an appraisal. How are you doing? Where are you falling short? People want to know how they’re doing and I think we can assess that ourselves. Another free exercise is to gather your team, give everybody a blank 3-by-5 card, and have everyone write down the organization’s purpose. In some places you’re going to have people pretty aligned on a common purpose. In other places, 35 employees will think the company has 35 different purposes. Or worse, 31 of 35 employees will have no idea what the purpose of this organization is. How do you stay optimistic about business and companies’ abilities to change with record-high unemployment? We tend to get fa
