Arnold Beekes

Many managers are delegating to members of their team for three reasons: -        Time (they don’t have enough time to do the job/task themselves) -        Skill (they lack the skill to perform the task themselves) -        Like (they don’t want to do the task themselves) While the first two reasons can be quite acceptable, the last one clearly is not. The employees will soon notice why you have asked them to do the task. This will negatively impact their motivation as well. You could say that this is a form of delegation from weakness. Bearing in mind the fast pace of change, it is critical that you continuously innovate with a high-performance team. This is normal in sports. The coach looks at the strengths of the individuals first and then sees how this person best fits into the team. In every position you will find the player with the best capabilities, both individually and as a team pl...

You all know the power of word of mouth. So, here is what happened. Some of my friends stayed to have dinner at the golf course. They ordered a simple meal. After waiting for an hour they did ask the waiter why it was taking them so long. The waiter went back to check with the kitchen. After waiting another ten minutes my friends did check with the waiter again. She told them that the order wasn’t communicated to the kitchen in the first place, so they just started with the preparation ten minutes ago. This infuriated the customer. He told the waitress that mistakes could happen. But he didn’t accept the fact that the waiters didn’t inform him of the mistake, nor that they didn’t made an apology for the mistake. S, they did immediately leave the restaurant. As, they are well known members, this experience quickly disseminated in the entire club. The damage is therefore much bigger than the two meals, which were being prepared in vain. Many members will think twice whether they wa...

Many organizations are focused on their core activities and the rest they outsource or subcontract to third parties. When I contact the customer service department from my service provider, than they are still responsible for solving my issue. This is not clearly understood by some of them. After an accident I did call my insurance. They told me that the next day the expert would come to assess the damage. The next day the expert didn’t show up. So, I called the insurance again. They said that they subcontracted the activity of the expert to another company. They said “ we can’t influence that and it is not our responsibility”. This is clearly a mistake. The service provider (the insurance company) remains responsible at all times. The performance of the subcontractor is their responsibility and has a direct impact on my customer experience. So, they have to design the service (including the subcontracting) in such away that they always remain in control. How is subcontracting ...

Last two week I did attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany. While walking around in and observing both the halls, the lounge and the various meeting rooms, it becomes clear why there is not much progress. Most people are continuously looking at screens (from pc’s, smartphones, tablets) and are not communicating with each other, with other human beings who are sitting next to them. In this way you don’t build a relationship and you depend on the written language to bring your message across. In those international meetings many people have to use a language, which is not their mother tongue. This creates an extra complication. Only when you have real face-to-face contact, you can also rely on the impressions from your senses. E.g. you can see whether someone understands you or you can hear his tone of voice. This is especially important when you are innovating or creating a huge change. (as is both the case with respect to climate change) It is people who will ma...

This is a follow up to my earlier post (http://bit.ly/ld68wW) about my experience with the ING Bank. The last time there was a person who was mistakenly ‘authorized’ for my mother’s account. So, we had to send in a form to have that person removed. Yesterday I did go to the bank and I was in for a big surprise....... I was no longer authorized myself . Mistakenly they had removed me as well! The person at this local branche had no explanation for this. The only suggestion was to restart up the whole authorization process from the beginning. Needless to say that I also couldn’t perform the transaction that I was supposed to do. This is really an incredible experience. They can add and remove people who are authorized to your account, without your consent! I do think that trust is a very important cornerstone of the financial system. I told them that my trust was damaged and they totally understood. But they said that they could do nothing about it. The message of empowering your em...

A friend told me about a meeting with people from a multinational (Cargill). Out of the 40 HR people present, only 2 were on LinkedIn and Twitter was blocked for internal usage. This ‘policy’ proves a couple of things: -        their leaders don’t trust their employees -        they see social media as a waste of time -        they shut of their capacity to learn from the outside world -        the NIH (not invented here) syndrome is still very active Of course they can block this access internally, but more and more employees are using their own tools (gmail, chatting, social networks) anyway to do their work. This is because the IT department cannot meet their needs with its legacy environment. And the job must be done, so they use any tool that they deem to be appropriate for that. Research has also proven that people who have a break to e.g. check-in with the...