The Seven Elements in Action

I have often received comments about how I end e-mails, letters, and sign my books with “Make a Great Day!” instead of “Have a Great Day,” so I thought I would share my reasoning.  In Leadership Lessons From the Medicine Wheel I share in Chapter 1 about the concept of Intent, which is closely linked to Volition, and has a lot to do with Personal Responsibility.  Intent or Volition resides in the Center within us.  We have the choice to determine things for ourselves.  As a result, we either choose to do things or we choose to allow others to do things for or to us. 

An example of this is the story I share in Chapter 4 about Personal Power.  In the story my friend the hospital administrator chose to give his Personal Power away by allowing the actions of the doctor to “make him angry.”  In other words, the administrator made the choice to allow the doctor to control the administrator’s emotions.  My friend gave away his Personal Power to the doctor at the same time as he was stealing the Personal Power from the elder.  An interesting paradox, indeed!

So what does this all have to do with the “Make a Great Day!” that I so often share?  Well, when we say “Have a Great Day” or “Have a Nice Day” we are using a more passive tense in our choice of words.  Through this choice of words we acknowledge that the ability to have or not to have a nice or great day is up to environmental controls that we have no real control over.  Sure, we’ll have a nice day if it happens, but if it doesn’t, then there’s just nothing that we can do about it, right? 

Wrong!  We do have the ability to choose how we will act and behave, and we can chose how we will react to other’s behaviors.  One of the basic tenants of the Adventures in Attitudes® program from Inscape Publishing, which was originally created by Bob Conklin over 50 years ago, is “I can’t help the way I think and feel, but I can help the way I act.”  And, of course, our choice in actions provides a double-loop feedback, of sorts, that can impact on how we think and feel. 

So we can make a choice in how we will act as we go throughout the day, and as such we can make that great day for ourselves that I wish everyone.  It simply starts with Intent and making the choice to retain your Personal Power.  No matter what happens during your day, you can choose to make it great.   So stop taking the chance on having a great day just happen and start making great days happen for yourself every day.   

Make a Great Day!

Those who have followed my writings on other venues, such as HRNet and TRDEV on Yahoo, will recognize that I am a huge opponent of the use of performance appraisals.  

By performance appraisal I mean the annual (sometimes more frequently) event where a manager sits down and fills out a form which rates individual employees on a variety of predetermined factors.  These factors are most likely rated subjectively, and they may or may not (most likely do not) directly impact upon the overall performance of the organization.  They are also usually focused more around the activities or actions that an employee “should” take, rather than on the outcomes of activities or actions. 

When it comes to performance appraisals, I think that Jim Collins said it best in his accompanying monograph to Good to Great about social sectors.  He stated on the first page: 

“When you compare great companies to good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness.”

I think this sums up performance appraisals quite nicely.  Many companies engage in them, however, they never drive performance.  I’ve spent the past 4 years reviewing large-scale research studies, case studies, and personal anecdotes on what drives high performance in organizations, and not once was performance appraisals a factor.

The problem with performance appraisals is that they are focused on the past, not future goals and results; they are most often dealing with the subjective opinion of the supervisor, not the objective measures of actual performance; and it happens so infrequently and so far removed from actual performance that any opportunity to enhance performance has long since passed.

I recently shared on the HRNet that I came across an article that was referred by Bob Sutton’s site (co-author of “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense” with Jeffery Pfeffer that I believe you’ve mentioned before) on this issue.  Sutton was musing about the possibility of performance appraisals doing more harm than good and referenced this article by Dr. Culbert of UCLA Anderson School of Management in the Wall Street Journal.  I found the article very well laid out with some practical approaches at the end. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122426318874844933.html

There seems to be a growing concern with this issue of the traditional performance appraisals by thought leaders of HR.  I also notice a similar thought process about the replacement.  Terms such as “feedforward” instead of “feedback” or “performance previews” instead of “performance reviews” are becoming more common.  I have previously shared an article by Gallup in other venues on this concept (The Four Disciplines of Sustainable Growth).  Discipline #3 (http://gmj.gallup.com/content/442/Four-Disciplines-Sustainable-Growth.aspx#4) seems to have a lot in common with what Sutton shares at the end of his article.

Also, you might want to read an article by Marshall Goldsmith regarding the concept of “feedforward” as opposed to feedback.  You can find the article here:

http://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/articles/article.asp?a_id=3

I’ll share some more on a nasty variant of performance appraisals, the 360 Degree Assessment later.

Make a Great Day!