Most weekday mornings I get up around 5:00 A.M. to get ready for my work day. Part of my morning routine involves turning on the television to catch the weather forecast. I live in a climate where the weather can be quite variable. In the morning people may be wearing layered clothing and jackets and by the middle of the afternoon they are wearing shorts and T-shirts. Or some days it is just the opposite; you start out in short sleeves and before the day is over the temperature has dropped 20 or 30 degrees and you are grabbing for your jacket. Precipitation here also varies considerably. One moment there is not a cloud in the sky and a few minutes later it is dark and raining so hard you can barely see to drive.

I watch the weather forecast in the mornings in order to be prepared for these temperature and precipitation changes. I feel more prepared for leaving the house if I know what to expect. The forecast enables me to know whether to wear a sweater, jacket, or raincoat, or if I need to take such items with me for use later in the day. Knowledge of the forecast also helps me make an informed decision regarding footwear – Is it okay to wear leather shoes or do I need to wear shoes that are waterproof? Do I need to take an umbrella?

Once I leave home and begin my commute to work, I begin to notice other people on their way to work or school. Observing them, I sometimes come to the conclusion that many of them either did not watch a weather forecast before leaving home that morning or, did so but ignored it. I decide this because I will see people out in short sleeves with no jackets with their arms crossed over, shivering in the 49 degree morning. On other occasions I see people trying to cover their heads with a newspaper or anything else they can find as the rain pours down on them and they have neither a raincoat nor an umbrella.

Unfortunately, I observe the same lack of preparedness in some companies who do not affectively anticipate the behavior of consumers. Some businesses try to be successful by looking to other companies as models of excellence. In an article on factors affecting success in business, written by research professor Spyros Makridakis and published in the European Management Journal, this approach of looking for prescriptions from past success stories is discouraged. Makridakis argues that management theories and tools are like the fashion industry in that they have their moment of glory and die. He observes that very few survive and sometimes their passing leaves extensive corporate damage. When reviewing the large number of theories that have briefly blossomed from the 1960s onwards, he suggests we avoid extrapolating from those past success stories.

For Immediate Release – Addison, Texas, Sep. 30, 2009 - The National Business Research Institute, a world leader in survey research, today announced the promotion of Melissa Barba to Vice President of Research Consulting and Administration.

Known as multi-source feedback, multi-rater feedback, multi-source assessment, and the full-circle appraisal, 360 degree feedback has taken hold across America in organizations large and small.  In fact, research indicates that over 90% of Fortune 1000 companies use some type of multi-source feedback.

During World War II, the military used feedback from multiple sources to evaluate performance; businesses then began gathering feedback from multiple sources.  Although gathering feedback from multiple sources gained momentum throughout the 1990s, collecting and compiling feedback was time consuming and cumbersome using a paper system.  In this millennium, gathering feedback from multiple sources using web-based questionnaires has streamlined the process.

My spouse and I enjoy cooking and entertaining and we make a great team in the kitchen. When we have family or friends over for dinner it is not just a meal, it is an event. We want the occasion to be a very positive and memorable experience for our guests so we do not do anything half way. Most dishes are made completely from scratch. When we entertain, our typical dinner involves five courses. The meal begins upstairs in our library. Here we serve appetizers. Depending on the type of cuisine we are featuring that evening, our appetizer may be fresh bruschetta, spinach rolls made with a puff pastry, or chicken potstickers. After a time of socializing and nibbling on appetizers we move back to the first floor to the formal dining room. Here we partake of three candlelit courses: soup, salad, and the main course; each accompanied by homemade bread. After the main course, we retire to the living room to continue conversing and allowing the previous courses to digest. Finally, the evening is topped off with dessert. This often involves my favorite ingredient – chocolate...perhaps homemade chocolate mousse, cheesecake, traditional steamed English pudding, or molten lava cakes. No one leaves our home hungry.

What really motivates employees to be productive? Is it money? Recognition? Job satisfaction? Benefits? Opportunities? Employees are recognized as the most crucial asset of today’s organizations by both practitioners and academics. Employee satisfaction is stressed as one of the most important drivers of continuous improvement and satisfied customers in most classical total quality management (TQM) literature. But what really motivates employees to be productive in their jobs? Two often mentioned motivators are money and job satisfaction. We hear that better pay motivates employees to be more productive. We also hear that “happy employees are productive employees.”

But is there any truth to these sayings or are they just fictional beliefs? Anyone who has ever taken a course in social science has discovered that common sense beliefs are not always validated by scientific research. In some cases, common sense beliefs are just plain wrong. Take “opposites attract,” for example. This is not true. An overwhelming amount of research indicates that we tend to be attracted to people who are similar to ourselves. Thus, “birds of a feather flock together” is true; but “opposites attract” is false. The only way to know if money and job satisfaction really influence productivity is to look at the results of scientific studies. Let’s begin with what researchers have discovered about money.