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Tag: Productivity

Photo Credit: "SMART Goals" (CC BY 2.0) by photocamdavis
Goals are not a Panacea for Achievement

Goals are not a Panacea for Achievement

I have been a strong advocate of S.M.A.R.T. goals.  This method has significant appeal for annual bonus planning and assessing performance achievement.  However, being goal driven in all aspects of your life can be detrimental. What I have begun to understand is that goals always leave me feeling like I am chasing a long-sought reward that never seems to be within my reach.  By moving the objective as soon as I get meaningfully close, I convince myself that striving for…

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Andy Grove Signature on a Pentium Wafer
Thoughts on KPIs from High Output Management

Thoughts on KPIs from High Output Management

I am a strong advocate for the power of key performance indicators (KPIs).  These indicators help guide and focus departments, act as leverage when requesting resources, and provide insight when diagnosing trends before they become significant problems.  They apply as much to a personal level of accountability as they do for a department or company.  I am re-reading Andy Grove’s book, High Output Management, and he has an excellent chapter covering KPI concepts. In chapter 2, there are many pearls…

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Woman Looking at a Smart Phone
Miss Me Yet?? No, Not Really…

Miss Me Yet?? No, Not Really…

Back in February, I decided to close or curtail the use of a significant number of my social media accounts. At the time, this radical action included the likes of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, discussion forums, and general new sites. The first week was troubling as I felt a nagging sensation that I was being delinquent by not looking or logging into these platforms. For Twitter and Instagram, I did not have much of a choice as I closed…

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The Upside of Maintaining a Healthy Work-Life Balance

The Upside of Maintaining a Healthy Work-Life Balance

Increases in employee engagement and performance occur through the aligning of the organization’s culture and mission (Katzenbach, Steffen, & Kronley, 2012). This arrangement creates synergies that positively reinforce the firm’s cultural values, beliefs, and behaviors. A healthy high-performance culture leverages the tools and techniques brought about by the technology revolution to experience significantly higher levels of productivity but at the expense of employees work-life balance (Butts, Becker, & Boswell, 2015, p. 763). There is insufficient research that definitively demonstrates negative social,…

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