Tuesday Tips

Excel-based Scorecards Cause Management Headaches With a 3rd generation release of PBL ScoreCard coming out this year, CSI conducted some research though random client surveys with our clients.  We found that nearly 90% of PBL ScoreCard users had previously been using Microsoft Excel for their business scorecard needs.  The survey revealed some key insight into why leading organizations are making the jump from simple spreadsheet technology, like Excel, to a modern and robust solution, such as

Top 3 Issues with Business Scorecards By 2011, an estimated 85% of organizations had adopted a performance measurement system in one form or another.  Roughly half of these organizations are using a Balanced Scorecard methodology pioneered by Kaplan and Norton.  Although this is a useful system, one should be aware of the common issues faced with most scorecards today.Top 3 Issues with Scorecards Today:1) Improperly defined metrics. With poorly defined objectives and/or targets employees can claim

Why Your Spreadsheet Fails as a Scorecard One of the most popular uses of spreadsheet software is for Business Scorecards. Is this a good decision? Electronic spreadsheets arrived in the late 1970s as a replacement for bookkeeping tasks traditionally done on paper. Are they capable of handling your scorecards in 2012?Studies Show a Disappointing Reality Recent studies find numerous reasons to lose faith in your spreadsheets.• 94% of spreadsheets contain errors* • 57% of spreadsheet

Why Incentive Programs Don't Motivate Employees With the best of intentions many leaders throw parties, give gifts, and shell out monetary rewards in an attempt to motivate their teams.  Unfortunately, such traditional incentive programs have no lasting, meaningful affect on workforce motivation levels.By definition, one person cannot motivate another.  Motivation is intrinsic; therefore a leader can only provide an environment that is conducive and supportive of employees choosing to exhibit motivated behavior.Employee Recognition is an important

Breaking Down Multi-Gen Communication Barriers For many managers today, coming up with a practical way to communicate with their employees can be a major challenge, especially with a multi-generational team.  When leading a multi-generational team, it helps to understand their backgrounds and communication style preferences when developing a standardized communication process.Break Down Communication Barriers:1) Learn more about each employee’s communication preferences with a DARE survey.2) Identify generational differences to better understand how each employee views communication.3)

Adjust Your Decision-Making Style to Motivate Your Multi-Gen Team Each generation views decision-making in very different ways.  For managers today, there can be a challenge in creating a single process for making and communicating important business decisions.  Without a defined and transparent process, managers run the risk of frustrating and de-motivating their team members.Decision-Making as Seen by Different Generations:1) Mature (65+) – Typically expect decisions to be driven from the top down2) Baby Boomers (46 –

Finding Common Ground for Motivating Your Diverse Workforce Most organizations today draw strength from having a diverse workforce.  One area of diversity is having multiple generations working side by side.   These generations bring different views on how they work, find motivation and achieve success.Being able to identify and understand employees from the different generations can provide leaders with a big advantage when looking for ways to motivate their team.Four Workforce Generations and What Motivates Each:1) Mature

Elevating Employee Engagement Expectations by Seth Davies Run Time: 30 minutesEmployee Engagement has become a high priority for many leading organizations today. This recent focus on getting people more engaged has created a variety of issues for leaders. Although studies show that 90% of leaders say engagement directly impacts their organization’s success, only 25% of those leaders actually have a strategy in place to create a highly engaged workforce.What You’ll

The 8 Tenets of Employee EngagementBy and large, employees in any organization want to be successful.  They want to be seen as collaboratively and collectively moving their organization forward – they want to be engaged. True employee engagement cannot occur without a defined methodology.Key to an employee’s success in becoming highly engaged is the ability to follow a model of Learn, Know, and Do.  There are 8 tenants of employee engagement that should serve as

Empowerment or Engagement? Why not both?A decade ago “empowerment” was a top buzzword and Human Resources Managers were searching high and low for the best methods to provide it to their employees.  What was being labeled as empowerment really only took the employees’ perspective into consideration.   What employees were actually asking for was the opportunity to make an impact, which from the organization’s point-of-view means to be “engaged.”Today, leading organizations are dually focused on increasing