Performance Improvement Archives

Are your team’s goals driving better results? Maybe we need a SMARTer approach.

If you’ve worked in any large organization during the past 30 years, there is a very high probability that someone recommended that you try setting SMART goals. This easy-to-remember acronym was originally introduced in a 1981 issue of Management Review by authors George Doran, Arthur Miller and James Cunningham. If one of their goals was to develop a memorable model that would stick in management practice, then they’ve been extremely successful. When I speak to large groups and ask, “Has anyone heard of “SMART” goals?”, almost every hand in the room goes up. Despite its memorability and simplicity, setting SMART goals has limitations. As suggested in the authors’ original article title – “There’s a SMART Way to Write Management Goals and Objectives” – the focus

Burl Stamp November 28, 2023 No Comments

What’s not to love about a booming economy – unless you’re a middle manager

What’s not to love about America’s strong economy? More people are employed, wages are finally beginning to inch up for workers left behind in the past, and stock prices are rising. But for middle managers, a growing economy can bring unexpected consequences. Simply keeping a department staffed can be more challenging, let alone developing employees so that they are individually and collectively more successful. In September, Bloomberg reported that U.S. job openings rose in July to a new record. At the same time, so did the share of workers who decided to quit their jobs, hitting a level not seen since 2001. Job postings exceeded the number of unemployed individuals by 659,000. In our work with leading companies to support improved employee engagement, Stamp&Chase reminds managers

Burl Stamp October 4, 2018 No Comments

medical staffers in meeting with stamp & chase

The Power of Empowerment: “The Village has it Handled!”

In a leadership workshop earlier this month at Summa Health in Akron, OH, a manager shared one of the most definitive, straightforward affirmations of true staff empowerment that I’ve ever heard. She explained that often when an issue or problem arises, by the time she becomes aware of it and approaches her team to work through a solution, she is confidently told, “Don’t worry; the village has it handled.”Empowerment is a frequently vaunted goal for high-functioning teams in today’s leadership literature. But while the term is commonly accepted, I’m not sure it best describes the true power of empowerment. When I clicked on the thesaurus feature in Microsoft Word while writing this post, I actually found a much better list of options: inspire, embolden, encourage,

Burl Stamp October 3, 2017 No Comments

medical staff holding patients hand - graphic for stamp & chase

Sometimes Silence Isn’t Golden: Improving Patient Engagement by Encouraging Openness

Like most of our experiences in life, the patients and families we remember best are the ones whose satisfaction with our care falls at the extremes. On one hand, the family that is effusive in their praise is one everyone likes to remember. At the other extreme, we can’t forget the families who are disappointed and seem to be critical of virtually everything we do. Even months after they’ve left the hospital, the experience of dealing with them is indelibly burned in our memory. While the families at the extremes of the satisfaction scale may be most memorable, the majority of the patients we care for likely fall somewhere in the middle. These are the families that come and go rather quietly, neither sharing significant

Burl Stamp September 28, 2017 No Comments

man with a clipboard graphic at stamp & chase

Five Sure-Fire Ways to Wreck Rounding

Over the past decade, health care leadership rounding has become a best-practice staple for organizations that are striving to improve patient experience, employee engagement and the overall culture of performance. While in healthcare we sometimes act like we invented the practice, it has been pursued in different forms for many years in other industries. If you are a disciple of Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System, you call it “going to the gemba.” Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard coined the term “management by walking around” in the 1960s when their rapidly-expanding technology company was growing beyond their capacity and ability to be involved in every detail of the business. In health care, our name for the practice of going to where the most important

Burl Stamp September 21, 2017 No Comments

Five Ways to Keep Goal Achievement On Track

Part 6 in our Series: A Smarter Approach to S.M.A.R.T. Goals In our six-part series, A Smarter Approach to S.M.A.R.T. Goals, our first five posts have focused primarily on the front end of the goal setting process. Making sure your goals are specific enough to change behavior, meaningful so they engage the team, agreed-upon for shared success, and realistic enough to be achievable is a great start. Now you have to effectively implement. The final element of our model, “T,” stands for tracked and addresses how the implementation plan and monitoring of results are critical to success.How often are well-stated organizational goals developed and distributed at the start of a new year – then barely addressed by individual teams until 12 months later when we

Burl Stamp August 8, 2017 No Comments

astronaut on moon graphic from stamp & chase

Why B.H.A.G.s without B.H.A.R.s are Pipe Dreams

Part 5 in our Series: A Smarter Approach to S.M.A.R.T. Goals “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” That quote from President John F. Kennedy’s speech to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, is perhaps the most often cited example of the philosophy that when you set big goals, amazing things can happen. And who doesn’t want to accomplish amazing things.So the fact that the “R” in our smarter S.M.A.R.T. goals model stands for “realistic” may be surprising. Realistic sounds so safe … hum-drum … even boring. Don’t we want bigger, transformative, inspiring goals? Maybe even “B.H.A.G.s”?Even if

Burl Stamp July 31, 2017 No Comments

Are your goals specific enough to change behavior?

Part 2 in Our Series: A Smarter Approach to S.M.A.R.T. Goals In last week’s blog, I outlined a smarter way for managers to approach S.M.A.R.T. goals. Designed to boost results rather than just improve goal-writing, our model emphasizes how leaders can better use goals to focus their team’s efforts and deliver superior outcomes:While there are many variations on the original S.M.A.R.T. goals model, the “S” almost always stands for “specific.” Writing a SMART goal that is specific means that all aspects of the goal are clearly defined and that it answers the standard 5 W’s (who, what, when, where and why). But even when a well-written goal is specific, it still usually focuses on what you want the end result to be, not on how

Burl Stamp July 12, 2017 No Comments

Tag: Performance Improvement

Are your team’s goals driving better results? Maybe we need a SMARTer approach.

What’s not to love about a booming economy – unless you’re a middle manager

The Power of Empowerment: “The Village has it Handled!”

Sometimes Silence Isn’t Golden: Improving Patient Engagement by Encouraging Openness

Five Sure-Fire Ways to Wreck Rounding

Five Ways to Keep Goal Achievement On Track

Why B.H.A.G.s without B.H.A.R.s are Pipe Dreams

Are your goals specific enough to change behavior?

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© 2020 Stamp & Chase

CORTEX Innovation District

20 S. Sarah St., St. Louis, MO 63108

314-299-9373