This much-needed overhaul of the performance assessment process finds that less is more when it comes to motivating...
Inspired by the get-it-done attitude in the culture of sales, human resources consultant Ferguson proposes a new way to gauge employee performance.
It’s no wonder why both managers and workers cringe at the thought of annual performance reviews, Ferguson says. Conventional approaches try to link individual goals to lofty corporate goals that are difficult to relate to for the average employee. Worse still, today’s rapidly changing business environment means goals are seldom reliable for an entire year. Companies that put faith in metric-based systems to track performance overlook how easy it is to manipulate the scores, not to mention the fact that numbers don’t always tell the whole story. Convinced that popular methods are outdated and time-consuming, Ferguson combines behavioral psychology with a keen understanding of workplace dynamics to present an approach that promises to be faster and more effective. “Big Five Performance Management asks employees to answer two straightforward questions,” he says: “what were your five most significant accomplishments from last month, and what are your five highest priorities for next month?” Employees answer in a brief monthly report, and managers respond with encouragement or necessary corrections. Ferguson believes Big Five Performance Management works because it focuses on priorities, delivers timely feedback and holds employees accountable. His approach is a welcome departure from generic “satisfactory-unsatisfactory” ratings and the clumsy 1-5 scoring systems commonly used in corporate America. Concise, intuitive and mercifully free of HR buzzwords, the book effectively sells the Big Five method as a simple tool for evaluating performance and improving time management. Simple doesn’t mean hands-free, however. A major obstacle to the Big Five method is making sure managers stay engaged during the process, especially in the face of resistance from employees. To this end, Ferguson wisely includes tips on delivering feedback to employees and ideas for how his approach can be integrated into a company’s existing legal protocols. An appendix provides sample comments that managers can use to respond to their staff, “from simple encouragement and coaching to more formal corrective action”—a godsend when faced with the nettlesome task of confronting an employee who isn’t performing up to snuff.
This much-needed overhaul of the performance assessment process finds that less is more when it comes to motivating employees.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491098882
Page Count: 134
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A probing study of a scandal that spread even deeper than the standard histories claim—and one that has plenty of lessons...
If corruption is what you want, put someone with strong ties to the oil industry in the White House.
So we learn from business journalist McCartney (Across the Great Divide: Robert Stuart and the Discovery of the Oregon Trail, 2004, etc.) in this lucid account of the Teapot Dome scandal. At its root was Warren G. Harding, the Ohio senator who was a 40-1 shot to gain the Republican nomination for the presidency for 1920 until he secured the backing of Jake Hamon, Harry F. Sinclair, Edward Doheny and other oil titans. The trade-off was that Hamon was to become secretary of the interior and be given control of the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming, “an oil supply potentially worth several hundred million dollars—1920 dollars—a bonanza so rich that it was almost beyond comprehension.” Hamon’s wife shot and killed him before the deal could go through, but before he died Hamon sent a sealed note to Harding with orders to “get some of his friends taken care of.” The oilmen got their way with a longtime New Mexico senator named Albert Fall, hard-drinking and murderous, who had fallen on hard times and seemed in danger of losing his huge ranch holdings. No sooner was Fall installed than his money problems disappeared, the dollars flowing into his bank accounts and those of other prominent Republicans as the oil flowed out of Teapot Dome. By way of thanks, Sinclair gained access to two million barrels of public-domain oil per year, on which Harding signed off in a letter to Fall: “I am confident you have adopted the correct policy and will carry it through in a way altogether to be approved.” Of course, when all this backdoor dealing was exposed, approval was not forthcoming. Sinclair thundered that he was too rich to be jailed. He was wrong, but many others walked.
A probing study of a scandal that spread even deeper than the standard histories claim—and one that has plenty of lessons for today.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6316-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
The occasional distractions of pop-business cheerleading notwithstanding, if the book evokes a few creative ideas, it will...
Why think outside the box? Write business consultants Coyne and Coyne, “the key is to find just the right box in which to think.”
Readers may not have known that a famed Broadway producer, responsible for such hits as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, was also the father of the corn maze, an idea whose time, it seems, had come when he hit on it back in the ’90s. Corn mazes are now a big draw in some parts of the country, though the authors must be using faulty stats to set the number of visitors at twice that of the Grand Canyon. Why couldn’t we think of that contribution to American civilization? We can, write the authors—it’s mostly a matter of learning how to ask lots of questions that might generate the desired answer, which presumably is to hit it rich, in the manner of the “Z-1-4” (“zero to $1 billion within 4 years”) businesses they profile here. Enter “Brainsteering,” a gimmicky but, at least on the face, effective method for “consistently generating breakthrough ideas.” It would steal the authors’ thunder to describe this method too closely, but let’s take, for instance, their thoroughly useful series of questions meant to help pick out a welcome gift for the person who may have everything: “What was their favorite toy, hobby, or activity during the period of their life on which they look back most fondly?” “What event or accomplishment in their life are they most proud of”? The authors pepper their narrative with such idea-sparkers, with an appendix that is worth the cover price, and introduce acronym-tagged concepts that seem as if they ought to bear fruit, as with the notion of a “mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive” system of investigation.
The occasional distractions of pop-business cheerleading notwithstanding, if the book evokes a few creative ideas, it will have done good service.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-200619-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
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