First of all, I hate the word human resources for our employees.  This verbiage starts the discussion as if people were fungible.  That people, their talents, aspirations, motivation and capability are identical. That is simply not true.  I just got out of a discussion with a company that left me feeling hopeful.  After working in […]

by Shawn P. Quigley and Jon M. Quigley In our previous post we have discussed Maslow’s Human Motivation Theory (Hierarchy of Needs) and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory (Hygiene and Motivation Theory). However, to be aligned with our recent post about Pavlov’s Employee we should look at the Expectancy Theory of Motivation developed by Victor H. Vroom. […]

By Jon M. Quigley and Shawn P. Quigley Negative Motivational Lessons Learned We have been spending considerable time on lessons learned and the learning organization.  Lessons learned can have various perspectives, personnel, project, and both.  We will take a break from the pure project aspect, and consider project and personnel.  Lessons learned by personnel can […]

By Rick Edwards and Shawn P. Quigley How projects and processes are related If one were to describe their project to someone, they would most likely describe the end deliverable or objective of the project (a.k.a scope), the expected completion date (time) and the expected resource requirements needed to faithfully execute the plan (cost).   Nowhere […]

Why Lessons Learned are vital to the long-term vitality of organizations To best discuss any topic, we must first establish a common foundation from which to build. Let’s start by defining some key terms: 1. Lesson: an activity that is done in order to learn something; also: something is taught, a single class or part […]

By Shawn P. Quigley More on Maslow In our previous discussions we have referred to Maslow’s Theory of Human Motivation (Hierarchy of Needs) and how this relates to work place motivation. To best continue our discussion we must first review some of the tenets of Maslow’s theory in more detail and dispel the misconception that […]

Organizational Learning Differences for the Team and Management (Mental Models) By Shawn P. Quigley In a previous post, we discussed the five principles behind Organizational Learning (L.O.). In this post, we will discuss how the different levels of an organization view the principles and why these different views make it difficult to obtain a learning organization. […]

By Shawn P. Quigley There are a lot of new management and leadership jargon out there and perhaps it has always been so. Why? Did the roles of a leader and/or manager change? What did we do before and why does that no longer apply? Yes, the roles of the leader have changed; many people […]