I like my business articles, marketing factsheets, sales perspectives, customer focuses, employee motivation guides. So I end up looking around a large number of websites, and today I’ve had to stop.

Today, I’ve been doing some research for a project – which requires me to look into money spinners as it were. Quick bucks, easy money and risk free investments.

I’ve been in a few forums and read Spam about, well – here’s the spiel:

“How would YOU like to be in a home-based business, where you do NO Prospecting … NO Advertising … NO Selling …NO answering questions … NO Speaking to prospects …and make absolutely NO telephone calls? How would you like to discover a great home business in which you can make great income just being totally passive? It is a legitimate company and it is a real business run by real people.”

How absurd is that, I’ve read this – or allusions to, and paraphrase of, rubbish all day.

They’re all topped off with the ubiquitous:

“To discover this amazing opportunity enter your name and email address to receive your free report, without obligation.”

It’s not just Spam posts, Spam comments and emails that have 50 links to services and products you have never heard of. Their banner ads on and sponsored links on sites that aim to provide you with information about how to run a business.

The last banner I saw before writing this post said – “Turnkey systems with no selling”. I didn’t bother investigating that one.

They might as well say, “Enter the sweepstake, now!”

Getting money without work is, despite it being née-on impossible, there’s little or no point to it. A budding entrepreneur needs a drive to get stuff done (good point made here) – not to free load. Yes, we all like it a little easier sometimes, and most of us like to think of – If I won the lotto’ scenarios. Surely, though, the whole point is to chase the challenge?

There two related concepts are quite separate if you need them to be – in fact most people, especially in business, don’t bother thinking about the distinction.

Business thinking is about just that, thinking. Many business people are driven by panic and evolution seems to be latched on to this by some.

Evolution is the steady incrimination and change of something. That’s not to say that whatever is born of evolution is the best option – just the speed at which it goes. Or, importantly, the steps it takes.
Evolution requires steps, steady, well placed, firm steps. One step after another, without skipping – at least not making a habit of it.

Revolution is much more of a burst. Steps are leaped over, and resistance is almost always strong and determined. That determination is found on both sides of the fence, the call for and the augment against.

Many business people, quite rightly, get a bit shaking when talking about revolution. It’s high risk, and the potential for high returns doesn’t always mitigate the stress.

Here’s the thing though.

A lot of businesses seem to mistake evolution for revolution. They see the slow, small steps of change and start to get worried. They panic, and say, “No - leave it how it is”.

If you’re in business, and see opportunities for change, and you find yourself saying “no”; it might be prudent to think about whether said change is evolution or revolution. If it’s not radical, it’s not hard to dip your toes in, if it’s not an explosion of differences – it’s not too difficult to put things back how they were.

You don’t always have to fight the change.

I downloaded AVG 8.0 about a week ago. It’s great, easy to use and very quick.

I spotted however, that the new Link Checker that works while you search with sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN – doesn’t seem to do what I’d like it to do.

I’ve looked at the HTTP requests going to and from Google when I search, and it looks like AVG are checking nearly every single link on the search page. “Great” you might think, “fantastic, I can feel safer while surfing”.

From looking at the HTTP requests, it seems that each link is being followed (included sponsored links) with no change in use-agent requests, or the like. This means that it appears to be throwing artificial
clicks every which way.

Does anyone know more about this?

Am I worrying over nothing?

Or goes AVG, Google, Yahoo and MSN all handle data a little differently for these requests?
I’ve disabled the Link Checker for now – but that doesn’t stop the millions of other web users out there with AVG installed – from taking away AdWords credits and fudging my stats.

Anyone?

There are many companies that band the word ‘meritocracy’ around, but what does it mean and what is involved?

Meritocracy is a form of leadership where decisions about an employee’s wage, role, bonuses and the like are made on the merits that that employee presents. Skill, performance, punctuality, experience and enthusiasm are all examples that one might use to measure merit – of course that depends on the decision being made.

A meritocracy is heavily dependent on skills. Not just in the shape of employing and promoting those who have skills over those who don’t – regardless of things like gender, sexuality, age, disability, race and allegiance; but also on the part of those making the decisions.

It’s not easy to assess the skills someone has, nor is it easy to assess the skills that someone might need for a particular scenario. Yet, despite its difficulty many feel they are up to the task.

This can be seen in the somewhat whimsical manor that a lot of companies run interviews. It’s assumed that, if someone is in a certain position, then they must have the appropriate skills. A logical decision, granted, that a team leader – whose job it is to assess and maintain the skills of their charge, might be appropriate.

What if, however, it transpires that one of those very team leaders were themselves employed in a floored process? What if, throughout their tenure, no real attempt is made to confirm their skills, let alone those of their teams? Would that not forgo the benefits of afore mentioned assumption?

How do you know?

Can you tell if a team leader is a skilled team leader – by monitoring their team’s performance?

No, you can say that their team is performing well – but that doesn’t prove that their performance is due to the diligence of the leader. There are many teams that functions well, despite having very poor leadership. In fact, a good team doesn’t need a designated leader, as order is distributed automatically.

Most designated team leaders are in fact team managers.

Most real team leaders are actually part of the team – a well organised and motivated individual within its ranks. They are often over looked, don’t realise themselves, and they are often too busy getting on with it. Real team leaders don’t require a pay rise, a pedestal or an inflated sense of self-importance.

Team managers

A team manager is someone responsible for assessing skill levels, constructing feedback and providing a channel of communication for the team. They are, and rarely need to be, the person motivating and driving the team. You can have someone who is a team manager as well as a team leader – but they are few and far between.

It’s the team manager who, if affective, should be getting involved in meritocratic assessments – like those in interviews.

A good thermometer

Measuring the skills of a team manager, or an interviewer is oft over looked. It’s a scientific process, and should never be approached otherwise.

Perhaps, I try to sell to you a thermometer – a very familiar piece of measuring equipment. You, as a diligent science teacher, cook or anyone else interested in such a purchase might say, “How do I know it is a good thermometer?”
“Well,” I proclaim, “I’ll prove it!”
I take said thermometer and place in hot water, the dial, mercury or digits respond and provide a reading.

Does that prove my thermometer is good?

No, it proves that there is an apparent correlation between the temperature and the response of my instrument, but – it does not prove the instrument is correct and accurate.

You may trust me, and buy in good faith. If you were a particle physicist, however, and you were measuring the energy produced as two atoms collided – you’d want some confirmation. You’d want to make a long series of tests to confirm the accuracy of your new instrument’s design and a guarantee of its quality – or at the very least a seal of approval by some government supported body of professors.

Now, let’s get back to your team managers.

Do you trust that they can make accurate assessments of an individual – to such a skill level, as to do it in one or two hours with the aid of only a clipboard or notepad? Do you trust this, based only on fact that they have made assessments of someone before? Or, do you verify their skills of assessment stand up to scrutiny?

So where’s the merit?

What I’ve said above, can be paraphrased into many attempts as assessing and making decisions on merit. A floor in many businesses, is that they assume they are doing things right. They assume that decisions are based on merit.

That’s not to say that they aren’t doing things right. More, if you don’t assess things correctly and you don’t pay attention to the right principles – it’s all the more likely that you won’t be doing it correctly.

If you can’t assess someone’s skill – then how do you develop it, or promote it or reward it? If your assessments of someone’s skills are inaccurate, then how should you view those decisions based on them?

The problem with meritocracy

There is a major fault in a drive for a more meritocratic organisation, in that more people say, “Yes, that’s a brilliant idea – I love that” – yet rarely do you find someone actually making changes to truly satisfy the needs of a meritocracy – that of true assessment.

Many businesses use productivity incentives, but do they actually work?

Well, quite frankly – in a world were skill, experience and motivation are the key actuators in performance, it’s unlikely. Where it does have a benefit, it’s hard to prove and usually isn’t very significant. The ratio of productivity to incentive doesn’t seem to be very much, and the correlation coefficient will be erratic.

Now, give me my money

Bonuses do motivated for a while, but there are many shortcomings. If it’s late, not enough, withdrawn, doesn’t satisfy expectation or is in some way offset by a negative experience unrelated to it – its benefit is destroyed. If you do it once, it’s is expected again and again. Then, when a decision is made to move away from an incentive – those who benefited from it feel neglected, lost, hard done by and more importantly; they feel that they are now supposed to work less.

Those who don’t realise the direct benefits of incentives – ie those not earning through performance; feel left out, downgraded, disrespected and more importantly they feel – “well, I’m not getting paid more so why should I work harder?”

Incentives don’t last

An unobserved fact about incentives is that they don’t last. Let me clarify: even if the incentive is still administered – eventually it’ll be the norm to be paid an extra £100 per month. It’s no longer an incentive – it’s a deterrent. If I don’t work hard enough, the money I get will be taken away. So, the positive nature of an incentive is mutated in to the negative nature of a deterrent.

When they do create an increase in performance, they mask any other facilitators of development. Good coaching, great training and awesome leadership get confused and can’t be pinpointed. When the motivation derived from incentives build skill and experience – you then start paying bonus for no reason – your now highly skilled worker could perform just as well without the bonus; yet you’d never know. Your hands are tied so you can’t take it away, and they’re still stressed under the pressure to keep earning.

Time to normalise

Reciprocal normalisation is the response to an action that reflects the original action’s nature. Whereby, a positive response is elicited by a positive action, and a negative resonance for a negative action. Transferring to a paradigm that takes advantage of reciprocal normalisation reverses causality, also transferring obligations. Instead of the business being obliged to reward productivity, the employee is obliged to be more productive.

Potentiality is the way forward

Although incentive causes problems when attached to productivity, it can be used for other aspects of a working relationship. Instead of incentivising productivity; incentivise potentiality. This means rewarding those that have the potential to be highly productive – leaving the true productivity factors to be address more effectively with coaching, training and relationship building.

Someone who arrives on time, stays at the workstation and doesn’t have days off sick all the time has much more potential to be productive than someone who is never at their desk, wakes up late and who’s grandma dies every two weeks for 3 years.

This frees up your time to really focus on analysing skill sets, the dynamics of workflow management and ergonomics.

Giving bonuses for being on time, being at your workstations or not being absent is great.
Those who don’t receive their bonuses are highlighted and replaced if changes aren’t made – and as an added bonus the bane of management [shrinkage control] takes care of itself.

Happy workforce

Free of worry, about if they can earn their bonus, staff can become much more introspective and managers don’t have to fight a barrier of ‘bonus depression’ every month.
It’s a big change

I know the above recommendations might sounds ridiculous, but change often does. Waves will be caused, risk will rear its ugly head – but once you’re there, you’ll never go back.
Your big earner, change his pay and say, “right, you’re no longer getting a bonus – that extra £100 that you get every month anyway – is now in your wage”. The pressure comes off and now you’re free to work on focusing on skill – not effort.

Be warned though. By making these changes, you’ll expose any floors in coaching, mentoring, training and leadership – and if you don’t fix them, all the changes will have been in vain.