In an article for the May issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine entitled The Leadership-Profit Chain, authors Drea Zigarmi and Scott Blanchard identify the impact of leadership behaviors on employee passion and customer devotion. Their research shows that organizations can’t treat employees poorly, put pressure on them, and then expect them to perform at high levels. Sometimes organizations…
Colleen Barrett, past president of Southwest Airlines, and Garry Ridge, president and CEO of WD-40 Company both spoke at The Ken Blanchard Companies recent 2010 Client Summit. Each leader talked about the ways that they have created a close-knit, high performing culture in their organizations through a combination of high expectations with a sense of…
Earlier this year, I wrote about the importance of making sure that everyone in an organization understands their role and feels some ownership and pride in what a company does, or produces. For some reason, this posting has remained quietly popular throughout the course of the year. With very little fanfare, it has continued to…
Organizations want their employees to be more intrinsically engaged at work. They want their employees to be more creative, more innovative, and to take more risks. One of the ways organizations are supporting these initiatives is through the use of incentives. While incentives can be a good way to drive short term behavior, you have…
Making the bottom line your top priority may not be the best way to improve profitability. That’s the conclusion of recent research conducted by Mary Sully de Luque and Nathan T. Washburn of Thunderbird School of Global Management; David A. Waldman, of Arizona State University West; and Robert J. House, of the University of Pennsylvania,…
In an online article for Human Resource Executive Online, Propping Up Employee Morale, author Lin Grensing-Pophal shares new research showing that engagement levels among high-performing employees have decreased at a higher rate than average performers during the recent downturn in the economy. The 2009/2010 U.S. Strategic Rewards Survey by Watson Wyatt and WorldatWork found that “employee-engagement…
An in-progress, online survey by Sean Silverthorne of Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge newsletter shows that 82% of respondents indicate that “Yes, the crisis is sapping my enthusiasm.” (Econ Crisis Making Middle Managers Miserable) Silverthorne also reports that 27% of middle managers find their current roles less meaningful and exciting than before the economic crisis,…
Most workers do not feel that employee performance reviews are valuable. That’s what Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company discovered when he surveyed students in a business course he teaches at the University of San Diego. The problem, according to Ridge, is that most performance systems are used for the wrong reasons. They are either arbitrary,…
We just published the latest installment in our ongoing research on employee passion. The focus of this latest paper was to look at the process people go through in deciding whether their current company deserves their full commitment or just enough to get by. We found out something really interesting to keep in mind…
What’s the best way for leaders to impact their organizations after a layoff, merger, or acquisition? If you had to choose between focusing on your people, financials, or customers, where would you begin? We asked that question to 700 frontline, mid-level, and senior executives who attended our webinar on Revitalizing the Downsized Organization this past…