Aubrey Daniels presents a lot of great ideas on management and I especially liked his commentary on The Scientific Approach to Leadership and pinpointing precision which I may find applicable in future career endeavors. However, currently I work for a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide experiential education opportunities to students related to environmental science. As most of our funding is derived from grants, we are a rather non-results driven organization; in fact only our development team currently has actual fiscal goals to achieve. Despite the lack of concrete (or fiscal) goals or any true system to measure success, there are three behavior models described by Daniels that I could see implementing in my current organization and also utilizing to improve , or ensure high, performance. These models are:
· Goal Setting to Shape Behavior
· Teams and Empowerment
· Increasing Creativity and Managing Change
Goal Setting to Shape Behavior
Daniels’ explanation of understanding and properly setting goals is certainly affecting. As someone who has worked in an aggressive sales environment, and a lifelong athlete, goal setting has always been a major part of my psyche. And I have often found myself personally disappointed in my performances because I did not reach that stretch goal I have visualized for myself whether in the office or on the playing field. What I did not understand about setting goals was not just that one shouldn’t stretch them out too far, but also that when setting them one must consider what one can and cannot control.
As a youth softball coach I worked a lot with my players on setting “proper” goals. It would be futile as a pitcher to set a goal to strike out every batter one faces for example. One may throw a great pitch, in fact the exact pitch that was intended, but the batter may simply make a good swing and hit the ball, or they could get lucky and get a ‘texas leaguer’ to advance to first. Therefore I would coach my players to formulate goals that they could control, so an acceptable goal would be instead to ‘throw pitches down in the strike zone when one has two strikes on a batter’ or to ‘keep the ball on the outside half of the plate’. Both these goals being not only achievable but also controllable. So the same logic could be applied to employees, that goal setting be assuredly controllable for each individual.
The continual reinforcement strategies outlined by are certainly intuitive, and would be effective if applied in my current organization. However I think that Daniels missed an opportunity when describing stretch goals. I understand and accept the theory that workers only meet goals to avoid punishment, and that high achievers will reach their goals and stop working, but if one replaces the rather rhetorical and meaningless stretch goals with a solid shared vision and purpose for the organization, employees still have that idealized state which to work toward. Therefore as a manager I plan to create, and share, a compelling organizational vision and mission to replace the setting of stretch goals.
Teams and Empowerment
My current position and organization operates in a lot of team, or committee, environments to accomplish projects. There is a lack of competitiveness in my organization that I believe sometimes inhibits radical success, but it also contributes to a harmony between people, and among departments. However I have observed the effects of positive reinforcement among team members, though I wonder if it is possible to positively reinforce too much and/or too frequently? It is possible that my organization does this and I believe that it results in mediocre achievement, though I cannot say mediocre effort as it is tough to judge what someone’s true effort capabilities are. Perhaps if we instituted a large reward for the highest achieving team member on a given project, then employees would be inspired to go above and beyond the regular mediocre achievement I observe daily, and that has become relatively acceptable within my organization.
What really caught my attention in Daniels’ chapter, was the emphasis upon providing very clear initial direction when embarking on a team project. When working with highly educated, reasonably competent, but possibly lacking in task-specific skills, it has become apparent from my experience and reading Daniels’ analysis that the providing of direction initially, then reinforcing, is crucial at creating the desired behavior patterns. This is definitely something I will keep in mind, to be sure to clearly delineate the desired direction of the team’s project and then show trust in my employees to let them loose to accomplish their tasks.
Increasing Creativity and Managing Change
Daniels’ chapter on reinforcing creativity as a behavior, I found very enlightening. I feel that creativity is often underrated. Maintaining a high level of creativity is what truly enables an organization to remain at the top of their industry for a sustainable period of time. To be able to foresee the direction an industry is headed and formulate a strategy that enables an organization to capitalize upon changing business environments is crucial. As stated by Daniels it is that continual reinforcement of the creation of creative options on action items that keeps the creative juices flowing within an organization.
Much like reinforcing effort and achievement that goes above and beyond the expected for an individual or a team, as a manager one must consciously reinforce that creative initiative. To never do anything the same why twice keeps one’s competition on notice of the prowess of an organization. Also as a manager one must remember to not engage in negative reinforcement of non-creative solutions, but remember to reinforce only through positive acknowledgement of truly creative solutions. For my own organization it will be important to remember to only acknowledge such creativity that effectively advances the purpose of an individual or team related to a task; and not to fall prey to awarding averagely creative solutions.
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