A Day at Works

[1] Suspect flattery. Sincere compliments from a coworker or a boss are nice, but outrageous flattery is often an attempt to draw you into a psychopath’s snare. If you feel your ego is being massaged, you may be dealing with a psychopath. Be careful.

[2] Take labels and titles with a grain of salt. Just because someone is older, has a higher position or more degrees, or is wealthier than you are does not mean his or her moral judgment is better than yours.

[3] Always question authority when it conflicts with your own sense of right and wrong. This may be hard to do, but it is crucial to your own career and well-being.

[4] Never agree to help a psychopath conceal his or her suspicious activities at work.

[5] If you are afraid of your boss, never confuse this feeling with respect.

[6] Realistically assess the damage to your life. If it’s too great, you may have to leave.

Remember that living well is the best revenge.
source: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss-fasttake.html

Marketers understand that affluent customers are very promising but they are difficult to handle because require most attention, information, discussion and sometimes incentives. While the potential revenue/ profit is high, corporate customers generally more price conscious, difficult to be satisfied, and have access to ‘swing’ to other suppliers. This phenomenon is not new in customer market. Conversely it is new or at least denied by many departments dealing with Internal Market, the employees.

Employees, who are promising, clearly more ‘price’ conscious, difficult to be satisfied, and difficult to handle. We can not expect them to follow the instruction by order, loyalty or fear. This type of employees is like a wild horse: difficult to handle, but potential, thus requires also high caliber coach.

Think twice to define your potential employees as someone who is showing ‘nice’ attitude, they may do that just to ensure paying or promotion. Even worse they do that because no other place willing to accept them. Consider why Citibank employ people who virtually no need money? Who works just because they want it? Obviously they could not be bought by money, facilities or praise. They work for themselves – so the valid motivation is only the work itself. No more, no less.

“Someone who is capable but refuse to work for your firm might be the best candidate you have”

Recently many companies try to improve employee motivation and attitudes by sending them attending seminars & training. Company thinks that all of this initiates are enough, or if things still go wrong company can say that the problem rest in the hand of employees.

All of these efforts are not enough. Back from the seminar, employees face management decision and attitudes that are contradicting and de-motivate them. In seminar they are told to be positive and never give up while management install excessive control and enforce increasing target, indicating their distrust to employees. Management promotes merit pay, while at the same time giving excuse to top managers, indicating caste in organization. Management coach employees and act like a coach, but at the end of year they judge employees performance by attributes not performance.

Believe me, there is no employees genuinely not motivated. Notice that employees, who in working hour look very unmotivated, can be very committed to extra office activities such as sport or arranging events. Motivation exist, but because of negativity the motivation is not directed to do the job extraordinaly.

This might indicates jobs, or people surrounds the office (including the Boss) possibly destroy their sense of responsibility and achievement. So while stepping further to any motivational intervention, first of all, look whether management stop de-motivate employees?