Parcel - August 2008 - (Page 38) on the mark I overheard a manager tell his team, “When I tell you to jump, I don’t want to hear why; I want to hear, how high.” How do you think the members of that team felt? Inspired? Motivated to do their best? A Gallup Management Journal study (October 2006) showed that 71% of employees are not engaged in the workplace and that 15% are actively disengaged. The vast majority of us don’t care about work. That is why we hear, “Thank God it’s Friday, and oh my God, it’s Monday.” It is a shame that we have to spend most of our waking hours in a workplace where we feel disrespected, unappreciated, stressed and unempowered. The irony is that our leaders are rewarded for producing results, and they don’t see that their results are directly related to their behavior. A 20-year research project of over one million individuals by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman showed that the productivity of by mark taylor, MBA, DLP an individual is determined by the relationship with his or her immediate supervisor. Yet our projects are failing. Major companies in our industry are laying off thousands of people and losing millions of dollars. We are not managing effectively. To elaborate, an August 2007 study by Dynamic Markets Limited of 800 IT managers across eight countries found the following: • 62% of organizations experienced IT projects that failed to meet their schedules • 49% suffered budget overruns • 47% had higher-than-expected maintenance costs, and • 41% failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI The reason for failure is poor leadership and management. There is an adage, “The hard stuff is the easy stuff; the easy stuff is the hard stuff.” The hard stuff is the technical skills; we have those. The easy stuff is sometimes called the soft skills, like communication. George Eckes, the primary consultant for General Electric in its Six Sigma Quality Movement and author of The Six Sigma Revolution, says, “By far the greatest source of team failures is poor team dynamics and poor facilitative leadership behaviors. Approximately 60% of teams that fail have these as 38 August 2008 www.PARCELindustry.com http://www.dmgincorperated.com http://www.dmgincorperated.com http://www.PARCELindustry.com
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