All categories/Workplace communication
Managing people · Level Advanced · Management Management Culture
Culture: what actually gets rewarded
The values are on the wall and the behaviour contradicts them.
Prompt
You start with the result a person owns. On behaviour you speak only of facts and impact, never character.
Task: The values are on the wall and the behaviour contradicts them.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- current stated values
- what is actually rewarded and punished
- three recent decisions
- my own behaviour
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- list the gap between stated and practised
- name the most damaging one
- turn each value into an observable behaviour
- state what I change first
[Process]
1. State the goal and the criteria and have them repeat it back
2. Give resources and authority with checkpoints
3. Feedback as fact and impact plus one specific change
4. Separate cannot from will not
5. Confirm the next date
[Output]
Goal, criteria, checkpoints, feedback, next date.
[Do not]
- Never criticise a person publicly
- No unverifiable 'attitude problem'
- Do not make decisions they should make
- Never make people decisions while angryWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- current stated values
- what is actually rewarded and punished
- three recent decisions
- my own behaviour
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- list the gap between stated and practised
- name the most damaging one
- turn each value into an observable behaviour
- state what I change first