I have a theory, and this commentary kind of backs it up. You ave so much mental energy to give and so much physical energy to give.
So you can either work staff really hard to get a project out and then accept an unproductive time to follow, or you can accept a more average effort over a longer period.
Personally the hardest mix is 9-5 of regular work and then having to come up with inspirational ideas and solutions. This keeps me up all night and burns me out.
This 150% nonsense sounds like trying screw an extra bit of work out of your staff in terms of innovation, without giving them the space to think.
I also have a similar theory. I believe rewarding work (interesting projects of passion) encourages employees because it provides them with energy and unrewarding work (monotonous, boring tasks) discourages employees because it drains energy. Interestingly, one could also burn out on rewarding work because it eventually starts consuming energy due to the obsessiveness it fosters. That's when unrewarding work is welcomed.
The problem is that if you're not innovative you will never understand how to encourage it others until you change within. You will read books and attend seminars with the buzzword of the month and it'll all make sense in theory but the practice of it will allude you and you will fall into old habits. Companies that need to become more innovative have to start at the beginning and at the very top and make this a company-wide cultural shift rather than making it a few individuals delegated overtime responsibility.
I actually believe that the mental strain of making 'breakthrough' level ideas is so high that workers who demonstrate they have that capacity should get whatever time and space they need, after deadline day or whatever. If you can't afford to give it to them that then you can't afford those people.
Imagine Greg House MD bouncing his ball against the wall...that is what it takes to constantly make big breakthroughs. Once these people are in the zone you wont have to motivate them
There are great books about making innovation your default culture. I highly recommend reading "An Everyone Culture" which is about creating Deliberate Learning Organizations: https://blog.coderbyheart.com/an-everyone-culture
Well, everybody starts somewhere. And books greatly help (me) to get more input and some books (like An Everyone Culture) are so outstanding and unique, that it's worth reading them even if you are not in the position to change an organization.
Yes, and Kotter does not offer any incentive for the hierarchy to change. First, because they can keep controlling the network, and second, they can (in his idea) keep people more productive, if there is the negative example of the hierarchy that makes working for the network so desirable.
As I developer I can only work on side-projects, if my days were mostly not code related work. On days where I was left alone and could code for 5-10 hours there is no way I'll go home to code another stretch. But I'll happily work on some physical project, or read a book.
And that is a normal life; and one worthy of aspiring to.
We have to strive for that balance every day. Otherwise people burn out, drop out from what they loved to do, etc.
It clashes with capitalism, but at some level you have to draw the line and ensure your mental robustness is intact, usually at the cost of saying no to overtimes, hackatons, work volunteerism, and the rest of the crap that is trying to keep you doing more of what you should be resting from in the first place.
I think that unspoken idea in the book is that people in corporations work half of the time they spend there to do useful things and the other half they just sit or walk around, suffering, bored out of their minds. I think the author just sees opportunity in providing them with something exciting to do during that time.
Yes, you could argue that in a hierarchy 50% of your time is spent with superfluous activity, like useless reports, endless meetings, and that you don't spend energy there … which you can put to good use within the network.
But this is a fallacy: if the hierarchy is your default you will never achieve your full potential working in a network organization.
Isn't the idea of having volunteer super-employees exceeding the regular production literally Stakhanovism?
Most organisations above Dunbar's number have some level of unacknowledged problems in the "formal" system. It ends up not being as productive as the formal figures would indicate. So people use the informal system to back-fill their quotas. This means the informal system isn't available to increase visible-to-management production, because it's already being used to make up for the deficiencies of the formal system.
Right. He thinks that because having a very compelling and inspiring objective you will put in extra effort to contribute towards it. The "celebration of wins" also further incourages you to keep pushing.
What might happen is that once you achieve The Big Opportunity, you can get back to your normal 100% job in the hierarchy; but who would want that?!
It sounds like XLR8 isn't wrong in that identifies the two main activities of a growing business: 1) Making their bread-and-butter work as efficient as possible and 2) Innovating to multiply opportunities and inefficiencies. In short, a company needs to streamline and explore. But, advocating that the networking and exploration required for #2 is an offline, voluntary activity is foolish, dangerous even.
I've worked in a variety of organizations of different sizes, in different industries and different states of startup or maturity and found one consistent pattern for failing organizations: They start to routinely tell people to "stay in their lane" at work and respond to new ideas with "Sounds great! As soon as these low value, high effort activities are done you can work on those high value, low effort ideas in your spare time." That's the beginning of brain death for a company. The body soon follows.
Instead, strong companies with strong leadership know that it isn't their employees responsibility to be more efficient and productive at low-value, high-effort activities. It is the leadership's responsibility to root out and eliminate those activities either by automating, out-sourcing or de-prioritizing them. The right way to streamline a business is to listen to employees and relentlessly cut, kill, and destroy routine or low-value work.
As you do that, you free up and empower employees and the organization to leverage high-value work in front of them and explore and pursue high-value opportunities on the horizon. In a healthy, growing organization those are everyday (during the day) activities not after-hours, side-projects that force employees to sneak time from work or steal time from their families.
"The second example works only because what is getting worn out during work in today’s businesses are cognitive resources. Coming home from a computerized workplace working on spreadsheets does not affect your ability to creatively wield a hammer and a saw."
I work in a Further Education college in the UK (like a community college in US). We are seeing a lot of people paying full cost for evening/weekend courses on dress making, hairdressing/barbering, welding, decorating &c. Might try a questionnaire to see where the students are coming from in new year. Hypothesis: a lot of badge folk.
Sorry: badge folk refers to corporate workers in large buildings who have to wear identity badges all day. Nothing to do with the badge collector syndrome mentioned in a sub-post. I sometimes forget when I'm using my own private jargon.
A perjorative term for people that take a lot of courses is "badge collector". Usually for people more interested in the credentials than the material.
But I think their motivation is different, they invest their spare time to advance their career, which serves a clear purpose and this is a great motivator. That is different compared to working over-time for the advancement of their employers.
Also, these courses have a clear timeframe and a clear defined curriculum which you can plan for.
"Asking your employees to think different for a better goal
and simultaneously forcing them to follow the old, left-side methods, which the right-side is trying to get rid of, is nothing but insanity."
Well it's also the behavior of revolutionary heroes in a dystopian novel who inevitably get either betrayed, corrupted, or killed. So there is also that.
Interesting critique, but you close by recommending your own (supposedly superior) brand of management training and provide a convenient link--all of which is packaged in a blog post that you posted on HN.
I should have known better. As soon as I read your advertisement I felt like I had been had, like this was all an elaborate rouse to sell hr management services.
Yes, I work for a company that tries to change organizations to the better. The experiences I make doing that gives me a good insight on what actually works and what does not.
What would be your preferred way how I publish this kind of content?
If you are promoting your own blog posts, them I would add a quick disclaimer at the top of the blog post, simply revealing that you have a dog in this fight. That will either give authority to what follows, or not. Either way, the reader is afforded the chance to decide ex-ante.
So you can either work staff really hard to get a project out and then accept an unproductive time to follow, or you can accept a more average effort over a longer period.
Personally the hardest mix is 9-5 of regular work and then having to come up with inspirational ideas and solutions. This keeps me up all night and burns me out.
This 150% nonsense sounds like trying screw an extra bit of work out of your staff in terms of innovation, without giving them the space to think.
Good blog OP