Terminology Paralysis – Performance Management & Program Evaluation

How often are we held back by “terminology paralysis”? Take for example the following related but different terms: business planning, strategic planning, performance management, performance improvement, performance enhancement, performance pay, program assessment, program evaluation, impact analysis and effectiveness. Doesn’t it just conjure up a bunch of “mind fog”?

Here is a hierarchy of terms for the purpose of this discussion:
1. Business Planning – why are we here, and where do we want to go?
2. Strategic Planning – how will we get to where we want to go?
3. Performance Management – both at the Strategic and Operational levels, ensuring that we remain on target as we engage in day-to-day operations.

It may be said that Strategic Planning is a process that ensures all the activities in paragraph one above are methodically considered in support of the Business Plan.

The terminological focus here is on the centrality of Performance Management. Managing performance at all levels will be most effective when managers and front line staff alike are committed to and involved in it. Let’s just say that Performance Management of the organization overarches the subordinate activities of individual Performance Management and Program Evaluation. Everything else should find its natural level in such a definition.

How can You benefit from Program Evaluation?
1. Managers need specific information to determine if policies and programs are on track – in other words, are they doing what they were designed to do – and to make adjustments “on the fly”.
2. This is a relatively easy platform for working closely with staff, colleagues and clients to build more effective programs and organizations.
3. The entire staff, provided they are all involved, will understand what is going on, and thus be able to offer improvements.
4. All staff will have the opportunity to enhance  their own work effectiveness, and that of others.

We know that “mind fog” leads to confusion, and often indecision. The worst consequence is that management action becomes a collection of “dis-integrated gestures”. Ignoring mutual overlap of paragraph 1 activities creates more work with less positive impact.

And why else should you care?
1. Oversight in many organizations today requires that Managers show how they have used their resources to achieve pre-defined results or outcomes, often as a precursor to budget approvals.
2. No doubt Managers’ performance pay will be linked to the results of program evaluation, and performance reports.
3. Finally, if you wish to move up in the ranks, you must be capable of dealing with abstract issues. In fact, following the Katz-Khan Managerial Competencies model, at the most senior levels, the major part of your work is centred in conceptual activities. For example, strategic planning, policy development, building relations within and without your own organization, to name only a few.

We can help you!

Consulting firms such as Bentley Corporate Dynamics Inc. can help you and your work team address this kind of work. Effective Performance Management and Program Evaluation is simpler than it sounds, and provides solid benefits. Bentley Corporate Dynamics Inc. can help teach your work team to perform this kind of task. We have 30 years of experience training and consulting to help transform chaotic environments into productive ones. We can help you to pull it all together. Please see www.vbentley.com for more details.

Vaughan Bentley
Principal Advisor
T 613 545 0525
vaughan@vbentley.com

www.vbentley.com

Ego Wars & The Miracle Organization

Mapping the Transition from Obsessive Competition to Collaboration in Organizational Life.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.  (Albert Einstein)

Most organizations are energy vampires.  They take more from their members than they give.  Even though high personal motivation is essential to long-term corporate health, the enduring motivational factors are generally invisible in planning and action.

“Leaders” understand motivation in theory, and ignore it in practice.  Why?  Because real leadership requires extra effort for the short run, and selfless effort for the long run.  But organizational life is not about motivation anyway.  It is about war.  Ego war.

“Ego wars” describes the kind of interaction that blocks individuals and organizations from moving ahead to being far more effective than they are, than they have been.  “Miracle organization” describes, rather succinctly, the state wherein the spiritual or “non-material” aspects of the human being are encouraged to flourish, and where maximum effectiveness is achieved.  So “ego wars” is more or less where we are, and the “miracle organization” is where we are heading.

Ego’s power rests in granting us the illusion of control over others.  We are deluded into believing it possible to exploit the “competition” without harming ourselves, deluded into believing we can diminish our fellow workers without diminishing the life force of the organization.  From its hideout in the unconscious mind, ego promotes strife and alienation, aided and abetted by the competitive ethos of human society.  So effectively has it insinuated itself into the workplace that hostility and fear colour much of our experience of organizational life.

The authors believe that ego warfare is killing organizations and their members.  The result:  we must soon yield to a different way of organizational being.  We call that way of being “the miracle mentality”, and the place “the miracle organization”.  The signs of quickening are all around.  Though the thing itself has not yet birthed, we believe it will soon be the dominant organizational form.

In a deeper part of our hearts we suspect that our highest interest may consist in helping others achieve theirs, in following the Golden Rule.  And is there anyone who would not wish to be considered  generous and kind?  Who would not agree that we need more collaboration and less  competitive frenzy?  But in the meantime, when attacked must one not defend?

 Where does all this wretchedness come from?  And could it contain the seeds of our salvation?

Our paradigm for organization is in desperate need of reform.  We are still ruled by the competitive military model of organization:

1. Chain of command.
2. Obedience to the word of command.
3. Insensitivity to the needs of individuals, including one’s own self.
4. Rigid rules and regulations defining a narrow band of “acceptable”         behaviour.
5. Rigid accountability systems which have a life of their own, and which  are often at odds with the stated purpose of the organization.
6. And so forth.

This model was somewhat workable when dealing with brutalized and hostile individuals who were enslaved to die for unjust causes.   Nonetheless, the stereotypical military model must be seen as the lowest common denomination of history, rather than the pinnacle of some former golden age.   In short, it was never the “highest or the best” of which humanity was capable.

Even in the benighted pages of history there were enlightened military leaders who treated their soldiers with respect, cared for their plight, and were rewarded with passionate loyalty and love.

The “seeds” of the coming organizational paradigm have co-existed with the old paradigm since the very beginning.  So let’s examine a few of those seeds to understand what they are now growing into.

Most of the seeds of tomorrow’s successful organizations were sown many centuries ago.  Those ancient seeds (spiritual principles) will not, however, bear fruit during the life of the military paradigm. The time of fruition will coincide with the flowering of the new paradigm based on interdependent relations amongst all members, and with an orientation towards the long-term development of all members.  Hence the “interdevelopmental” paradigm.

Old Seeds of the Future

1. Organizations are mainly designed to facilitate social intercourse and psychological maturation.   The principles governing the most successful organizations over time are spiritual ones. [Trust, Respect, Inclusion, etc.]

2. The psychology of human beings within organizations is the same as that of children, of  friendships, of conjugal couples, and indeed of every other form of human interaction.  The corollary to this premise is that if the psychology (= attitudes, policies, direction, and organization, and “awareness”) of the organization is not constantly adapting and changing (read “evolving”), it is devolving, or dying.

3. Individuals make the organization, not the converse. Today’s organizations mainly use their power to “unmake” or undermine the individual, and rarely to “make” or build him up.  That is why our organizations do not and cannot last.  That is why our organizations are in such a profound state of crisis and chaos.

Seedling Growth

1. The behaviour of organizations will become more ethical and spontaneous, and less materialistic and regulated … because it must.  The miracle organization will be more like a complex series of friendships, less like a series of employment contracts.

2. Organizations will be moved more by the spirit, and less by the bottom line.

3. Work will be much more integrated into the whole lifestyle – more holistically regulated.  For example:  Tending my vegetable garden on the way to building a shelf for the office closet, just before meeting the client for tea in the family kitchen.

 In Conclusion

Our currently-obsessive attention to material detail may be an important step towards a fully intuitive way of thinking and behaving, or not. Certainly major changes are needed at the most basic levels of thinking, feeling and acting… and we believe those changes are just beyond the tsunami-horizon.

David Luke & Vaughan Bentley – 1992

Pollute & Purify – a poem

Waxing, warming
Moon in Pisces rising,
flavour of emotion
too delicious not to drool
While smog rolled into
every set of lungs
at a dignified rate of suffocation
Sprouting apples of cancer
Devil’s delight

The crystal crucifix was their undoing …
So clear, it was unseen,
until the shaft of moonlight
pinned their hearts
Against the love of Gaia.

The ascension was so perfect
it was unseeable.

Vaughan Bentley – 28 Oct 1982

Management Sanity Centres

Managers today are experiencing high levels of distress, and a general sense of chaos on a daily basis.  Good technical order maintained through Responsibility Centres and generally good management … is a necessary but insufficient condition for success.  To complete the conditions for success requires the establishment of Management Sanity Centres.

What is a Sanity Centre (SC)?  A Sanity Centre is a place in the mind/psyche where calm, order and clear purpose reign. An SC is arguably the point of origin of all organizational success – effectiveness, high morale, good working relationships, and purposeful leadership.  This principle applies equally to organization at all scales – individuals, families, and large collectives such as Federal Government Departments.

We can help you develop a Sanity Centre in your own organization.  The tools are already well-known, and in fact are rooted in an evolved approach to Organizational Development (OD).  Here are the basic steps, which are not new:

1. Assess organizational needs to include management and employee needs.  Engage participants at all levels of the organization:  “involvement begets commitment”.

2. Validate the purpose of the organization:  “What are we designed to do?”  “Do we need to modify our purpose – is it still relevant?”

3. Establish or review all plans to ensure consistency with legislation, mandates, etc.

4. Use “back-casting” as opposed to “fore-casting” to develop relevant and current plans.

Sound familiar?  It should, because this Organizational Development approach is not new, rooted as it is in practical reality.  And under this head, all the tools of OD, Results-based Management (RBM), and re-engineering may be used insofar as they enhance development of the Sanity Centre.

What we are offering to combat chaos, is a sense of order at the psychological level.  Developing Sanity Centres requires the integration of conventional management practices with competencies typically associated with “nurturing”, “caring”, and encouragement.  We provide a combination of solid management and consulting experience, professional coaching, personal encouragement, and leadership by example.  This skill set is the product of long experience, learned flexibility, and a solid philosophy of respecting all partners in any enterprise.

A typical response from a junior manager in a recent amalgamation exercise:  “We felt listened to!”

What will a Sanity Centre look, sound and feeling like?  The main features are smiling faces, open and friendly conversation, and an all-round sense of well-being. These are the important differences compared with many organizational climates.  There are, of course, additional benefits such as higher creativity, clear results, higher attendance rates, and lower turn-over.

For more on other management issues, go to www.vbentley.com.

Vaughan Bentley

Middle East – as seen in 1972

In the early 1970′s I spent a year in North Africa and the Middle East.

During a brief retreat at Latrun, a Trappist monastery midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, I met a French Protestant clergyman also on retreat.  He declared that with the passion of the arabs and the intellect of the jews, if those two great forces could be joined, the Middle East would once again become a paradise.  We would return to the garden of Eden.

Intuitively I knew the man was right.  Everything that I have heard, seen and felt since then reinforces the truth of his assertion.

Theosophists say that whenever good things are about to happen, or good people are about to become better, that is when negative forces rush in to neutralize the positive energy.  In John Milton’s terms, Satan is horrified by the redemption of souls — he wants them with him in Hell.

The potential for good, beauty and magnificence of the people and the land of Palestine/Israel is so palpable that it terrifies the Dark.  It is called the Holy Land with good reason — beneath the surface, the feeling of spirituality pulsates.  This is why the Middle East is a focal point for the dark turbulence and mistrust.

I believe that the Earth itself may be unable to advance without the Holy Land taking the lead.  That is how important the Holy Land is to the destiny of Earth.

Formal mediation training with the Harvard Negotiation Project has since given me the tools to turn that dream into a reality.

I want to be a part of bringing the Middle East to its highest fulfilment.  I feel this to be a part of my destiny, part of my path.  This is one of the great projects I wish to launch very soon.  Certainly many similar attempts have been made, mostly failures.  I am not better or more intelligent.  I speak of destiny and of timing.  The “right time” is fast approaching.

Vaughan Bentley

Welcome to the new Bentley Corporate Dynamics

Welcome to the new Bentley Corporate Dynamics Inc. blog.  I am going to start conservatively without an interactive component, the intention being to present ideas which I consider vital for leaders at all levels.  And at all levels of each leader – intellectual, social and spiritual.

Let’s be bold and just say my long term goal is to “Create a new Universe”. Yes, I dream of creating a new universe – one person, one organization, and one community at a time.

I have dreamt of such things from childhood, and have spent 50 years developing tools to support such transformation – the tools of respect, encouragement and inclusion.

From youth, my experience was based upon summers at the farm on Prince Edward Island. My mother taught me the power of encouragement through her daily example. Then organizational life in the Canadian reserve and regular army. Communal experiences in theMiddle East were a great inspiration. Next came organizing teams as a civilian manager, and finally 25 years as a consultant in Organizational Development.

I have explored the current universe and now want to create my own. Starting with a transformation of personal psychology based in part on “A course in Miracles”, the words of Abraham Hicks, and Eckhart Tolle, my inner-scape is a work in progress.

My current external focus is larger-scale organizations, large projects and programs. In the following posts I will suggest specific areas for proposed action, and other subjects for consideration.

Vaughan-Bentley