Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Picked this book up some time ago, perhaps after seeing Daniel Pink give this presentation of the importance of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Read it back then, and have re-read recently as I’ve been casting my mind forward to the next recruitment initiatives.

The Book	What we thought
“Drive – the surprising truth about what motivates us” by Daniel Pink	Well worth it for us

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The content of this book is very much along the lines of the talk at TED – which  means that, if you are not aligned with the belief that Intrinsic Motivation is more important than Extrinsic Motivation (after watching the lecture), then the book will probably do nothing further for you.

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In 2010, as a result of our Autopsy 2 process, we have identified that we need to make two key appointments in 2010:

GM of Design, Development & Delivery.

GM of Marketing & Sales

We need to do this for a number of reasons – not least of which is to ensure that the company can become sustainable over the longer term, and to allow me to spend more time focused on other aspects of continuing to grow the business.

These appointments will be key positions for us, moving forwards. Hence this book was very timely….

1)  Binary Review

… not to mention a great read!

The Book	What we thought
“Great People Decisions” by Claudio Fernandez Araoz	Very thought-provoking

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Whilst there is some debate about the order in which they should be ranked (i.e. is it customers-employees-shareholders or employees-customers-shareholders) it is fair to say that employees are central to any business’ success (including ours).

With all the changes we have had on the go in the company since the autopsy, I have been very conscious of the need to ensure that all employees are still engaged and aligned (despite the fact that I might not do a great job at this at times).

1)  Binary Review

Hence this book was of great interest to me:

The Book	What we thought
“People Glue” by Ian Hutchinson	A great framework

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Read this book in spurts, but all together, it probably only took a couple of hours to get through it all.  Definitely a framework to apply in our company.

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In recent times we have been looking to the future, trying to be more thoughtful about how we structure the many things we need to get through each day in order that we can achieve our growth targets.

Hence, I pulled out an old copy of the article “Job Sculpting – the art of retaining your best people” (by Timothy Butler and James Waldroop) which I had been given a number of years ago.

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An article “How to make the rats run harder” in the AFR recently pointed me in this direction, which is great.  The article was written to promote a book “A whole new mind”, and references another, “Predictable Irrational” by Dan Ariely.  We have dutifully added both to our Amazon cart and will review in due course.

The article, and associated materials, is very relevant to discussions that are ongoing within our company about how to meet the challenges of the next 10 years.

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The basic premise:

As is noted ad-nauseum these days – the lower paid, unskilled or semi-skilled work is being outsourced to other countries, or automated.

For people in OECD countries like Australia, that leaves everyone who remains chasing a growing number of jobs in the “knowledge economy” [replace with your favourite buzz-word here].

To motivate such people (where creativity is a core part of the job), a fundamentally different system of incentivisation and motivation is required, compared to the previous (Taylorist) world in which a crude combination of carrots and sticks was good enough to achieve an outcome.

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