Raf Sanga dot com

There's an unnoticed population of employees in business today. Strangely enough, they're also the majority. The diagram below illustrates the labels that organizations often use (knowingly or unknowingly) to classify their employees. The y-axis focuses on how a professional is measured on meeting the organizational performance criteria that fuel the business engine. The x-axis centers on how the professional fares on meeting the expectations of the human engine. In each of the four corners, we find the Stars, Sinners, Low Performers, and Saints. I'll go into more detail on the four corners of the diagram in my next post, but for now, I want to bring to your attention those falling in the middle of the diagram — the Stalwarts. These solid citizens make up the majority of employees in most organizations. The odds are you may find yourself among the Stalwarts at some point in your career, no matter how high-revving your internal drive is. If so, you probably will find yours...

Support functions, from HR and finance to product development, have to manage a complex mixture of repetitive, project and adhoc work. Teams must prepare updates and reports on a regular basis and must ensure that both internal and external customers are handled in a timely manner. They must also respond at any time to unexpected requests for action or information from across the organization – frequently urgent requests from senior managers who are unaware of the disruption they cause. On top of all this, staff may be asked to spend considerable time in meetings to discuss, review and plan their work. This environment makes it extremely difficult for managers and team leaders to measure and improve performance. Their teams may be working on multiple projects simultaneously. Without knowing who is doing what, it can be hard for leaders to help their teams prioritize tasks. Problems arise from this lack of transparency. For example, work may be unevenly allocated, with staff overwhelm...

Several years ago, I was talking with one of my colleagues about a project he was thinking about taking on. We were both solidly in the middle of our careers, but his evaluation of the possible project surprised me. He said, "There are a limited number of things that I'll be able to say I've done in my career, and I'm just not convinced that this should be one of them." What struck me about this conversation is that it took a backward-looking perspective. That is, my colleague projected himself to the end of his career and looked backward over his contribution. By contrast, most of us tend to be forward-looking. We make decisions based on how we think that particular decision might influence the next stage. This strategy can be seen clearly in politics, where politicians often make decisions based on what will help them get re-elected . Research on regret has made a similar distinction. Psychologist Tom Gilovich and his colleagues have compared the regrets o...