Evaluating leadership through structured team feedback

Creative Commons licensed from Michael Porter - https://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/As the year draws rapidly to a close, the thoughts of many a manager turn to that most dreaded of annual tasks – the performance review. Often ignored, frequently monolithic, a good idea that has been lost in translation to some awful Word document template. Dislike them or loathe them, they are out there. Sadly, this kind of prescriptive process can often discourage what should be a worthwhile activity, that of providing some sort of formal feedback to staff on their year in review, hopefully as a supplement to the regular feedback they have been getting throughout the year (wishful thinking, I know).

But what about feedback going the other way from staff given to their managers, particularly in the case of senior level managers?

In my fifteen years of reporting to senior managers or executives, not once have I been asked for formal feedback on their performance throughout the year. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some really good managers (and some bloody awful ones), but not once has any of them given me a formal opportunity to provide structured feedback. This year, to show that I’m willing to lead by example, I’ve set up a formal feedback process to give my senior leaders the chance to share their thoughts on my 2016.

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#censusfail – a case study in how not to manage peak load

CensusFailWell, I think its safe to call the result of this year’s Australian census, making it a much quicker call than our Federal election last month – the results are in, and the ABS lost. Lost to the point that makes the Australian cricket team’s recent performance against Sri Lanka look not all that bad in comparison.

It was, on pretty much all fronts, a train wreck.

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The Student Services conundrum: Part 3 – graduate outcomes and the (potential) role of the service centre

20151002_162309In the first two posts of this trilogy I discussed the background of the Flinders Connect student service centre and a strategy for driving the highest value from a combination of online self-service, service centre support, and more focused interactions. In this final post, I want to explore something which sets the University context apart from that of (say) a bank, a telco or a government department.

That something is one of the goals of of all Universities: to develop strong graduate capabilities within students as a fundamental outcome of attending University.

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The Student Services conundrum: Part 2 – the complexity vs capability equation

In the first post of this trilogy I set the scene around the creation of a new student service centre, and noted that many of the enquiries answered during our first ‘peak’ period at the start of Semester 1 could have been very easily done by students online. The question I posed at the end was which enquiries could have we avoided by having them done online via self-service, and how could we have achieved that?

Before I get into proposing answers to that question I want to consider another one – why should we drive enquiries online in the first place? 

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