Issue No. 7 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features radical “Water Cooler Wisdom” from Dennis Bakke and a warning from Peter Drucker. Bakke writes, “We have made the workplace a frustrating and joyless place where people do what they’re told and have few ways to participate in decisions or fully use their talents.”
THE JOY OF DECISION-MAKING: Get Advice Before Making a Decision—or “You’re Fired!”
The paperback edition of the national bestseller Joy at Work was published this summer. Subtitled “A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job,” the book describes Dennis Bakke’s radical approach to bringing joy into the corporate and nonprofit workplace. Example:
Water Cooler Wisdom #8: “Everyone must get advice before making a decision. If you don’t seek advice, ‘you’re fired.’” Bakke is no believer in workplace decisions by consensus or majority vote. Hire great people and let them have the fun (the joy) of decision-making.
If that’s not revolutionary enough, shake-up your team with Water Cooler Wisdom #9: “A ‘good’ decision should make all the stakeholders unhappy because no individual or group got all they wanted.”
Let me think about this: spend ten bucks per team member on the chance that they might have more joy at work and step up a notch? Hmmmm.
Click here to download Bakke’s 10 Water Cooler Wisdom Posters (PDFs).
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
#1. How effective are we in seeking advice from other team members? Do we give the point person the joy of making his or her own decisions?
#2. What would it take for “fun on the job” to be a core value here?
IS YOUR FOCUS ON INSIDE OR OUTSIDE RESULTS? Insights from the Management Buckets
Workshop Experience
Peter Drucker warned leaders and managers to understand the difference between inside results and outside results. If your weekly staff meeting is focused on inside results (personnel policies, computer problems, etc.), you may thwart your focus on outside results (the mission and your customers).
If a hospital administration tilts toward keeping the nurses happy (inside results), but the patients are dying (outside results)—then you’ve got a problem, said Drucker. Both are important, but great leaders understand how to balance the two. For more help, read Managing for Results by Peter Drucker.
In our Management Buckets Workshop Experience, we delve deep into The Results Bucket and dish up practical and revenue-producing tools for helping you keep the nurses happy and the patients healthy.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
#1. Based on our last four staff meetings, how much time did we invest on inside results versus outside results?
#2. Do we all agree on the top three “outside results” for this year?
Download the Management Buckets workshop brochure (Nov. 1-2, 2006) at www.JohnPearsonAssociates.com. For the original copy of this week’s Your Weekly Staff Meeting for Oct. 9, 2006, go to www. http://www.johnpearsonassociates.com/enews100906. To subscribe, just email me at John@JohnPearsonAssociates.com.
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