Please remove me from this list.
Stew Friedman
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Gately [mailto:
gately@COMPUSERVE.COM]
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 1999 7:10 AM
To:
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Subject: Re: Motivation
Dr. Jay Warner <
a2q@execpc.com> wrote
>In other words, you would 'inspect in'
the 'good ones' for employment.<
It is all about reducing selection mistakes not good or bad people.
Good people in the wrong jobs make bad employees. Poor performers
reassigned to the right job may become good employees.
>In the above academia, a now outmoded approach
was to inspect out the weak ones, keeping those
who learned stuff at an acceptable pace.<
I thought colleges were ranked according to the SAT scores of their
entering freshmen? Don't the higher ranked schools have higher SAT
scores for their freshman class?
>does this say about the skills of the instructor
who works only with those left in senior year?<
It is easier to teach those who are still around in their senior year,
perhaps? It seemed that way when I was senior. :-)
>In manufacturing, we call that trying
to inspect Quality into a product. Doesn't work.<
If we presume people are machines or processes we are making a huge
mistake. We do not "inspect in quality" since quality in a person is
in the eye of the beholder and not in the job. However, we do "inspect
in" people who are predisposed to behave in the manner demanded by
the job. Different jobs require different behaviors.
>What happens when you have more work
to do than your selected bunch can
accomplish?<
What happens when we have more work to do than an unselected bunch can
accomplish? The point is that when hiring employees someone has to
decide who gets hired. Most manager admit that once the applicants
are deemed qualified to be hired the final hiring decision is often
based on gut feel or other nebulous selection criteria. There is a
better method to use when selecting which of the qualified applicants
best fits the demands of the job.
>What we are looking for here is a realistic
'model,' which we can apply in reality to
get our own selected people to do things
they didn't think to do. And come up with
occasional bright ideas the managers think is
worth pursuing.<
As long as managers don't have the foggiest idea how their employees fit
the demands of the jobs, managers will continue to be baffled by
motivational theory and practice. Our clients find that when the
match employees to the demands of the job their need to motivate
their employees is reduced.
>Maybe the key word is 'incentive,' maybe not.<
We can use incentives, but what motivates you may well demotivate me.
>Keep the thoughts coming in.
I don't think we've resolved it yet.<
All we can resolve is to keep talking. :-)
Bob
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/gately/welcome.htm