Whistleblower

A whistleblower (whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities (misconduct) occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health/safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).

The term whistleblower comes from the phrase "blow the whistle," which refers to a whistle being blown by a police officer or a referee to indicate an activity that is illegal or a foul.

Most whistleblowers are internal whistleblowers, who report misconduct on a fellow employee or superior within their company. One of the most interesting questions with respect to internal whistleblowers is why and under what circumstances people will either act on the spot to stop illegal and otherwise unacceptable behavior or report it. There is some reason to believe that people are more likely to take action with respect to unacceptable behavior, within an organization, if there are complaint systems that offer not just options dictated by the planning and control organization, but a choice of options for individuals, including an option that offers near absolute confidentiality.

External whistleblowers, however, report misconduct on outside persons or entities. In these cases, depending on the information's severity and nature, whistleblowers may report the misconduct to lawyers, the media, law enforcement or watchdog agencies, or other local, state, or federal agencies. In some cases, external whistleblowing is encouraged by offering monetary reward.

Legal protection for whistleblowing varies from country to country and may depend on any of the country of the original activity, where and how secrets were revealed, and how they eventually became published or publicized. For purposes of the English Wikipedia, this section emphasizes the English-speaking world and covers other regimes only insofar as they represent exceptionally greater or lesser protections.

5 Simple Ways to Overcome Procrastination

"How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'."

Martin Luther

 

"A year from now you may wish you had started today."

Karen Lamb

 

Procrastination is probably one of the most common problems people have in their day to day life. So find a procrastination solution that works for you.

 

Here are five of them. Try them out and see which one or ones that fit you the best.

 

1. Do the hardest thing first.

 

What this means is simply to do the hardest and most important task of the day first thing in the morning. A good start in the morning lifts your spirits and creates a positive momentum for the rest of the day. That often creates a pretty productive day.

 

2. How do you eat an elephant?

 

Don't try to take it all in one big bite. It becomes overwhelming which leads to procrastination. Split a task into small actionable steps. Then just focus on the first step and nothing else. Just do that one until it's done. Then move on to the next step.

 

3. Recognize that there is more pain in procrastinating than not.

 

If you have procrastinated a lot you might have discovered that you procrastinate to avoid doing something that is boring, hard etc. You want to avoid that pain. But after having some experience with procrastination you'll probably realise that procrastination itself causes your more pain than actually just doing what you were supposed to. Realising the true amount of pain in the two choices will make it easier to get things done.

 

4. Make a small deal with yourself.

 

Promise yourself that you'll work on something for just 5 minutes. After those 5 minutes you can do something else if you want to. But make a note in your schedule for when you will come back to the task and work another 5 minutes on it. No matter how unpleasant a task may be, you can often talk yourself into working 5 minutes on it.

 

I've found this one to be effective to make a dent in those tasks you have put off for a longer while. Because many times you will just continue working after those 5 minutes have passed. It is the first few minutes of getting started that is the hardest part.

 

5. Use my three step method for doing something even when you don't feel like it.

 

Mundane or routine tasks can be a bit boring. Maybe you have a lot or emails to reply to or phone calls to make. Batch them - do them all in row - to get them done quicker.

 

If you feel inner resistance and just can't get started try this three step method to be able to reduce that resistance, up your motivation and get going.

 

Step 1: Accept it.

 

When you feel resistance within towards doing something the natural instinct may be to try to push that feeling away. To brush it off. I have found that doing the opposite and just accepting that it is there can do wonders.

 

Tell yourself: "This is how I feel right now and I accept it".

 

This sounds counterintuitive and perhaps like you're giving up. However by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this problem. It then tends to just kinda lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. And oftentimes it becomes so weak after while that it moves out of your inner focus and disappears.

 

This step may be all you need to reduce the negative feelings enough to be able to start taking action. If not, move on to the next step.

 

Step 2: List the positives.

 

After you have accepted how you feel list the positives of getting this thing done. Do it on paper, on your computer or just in your head.

 

When you don't feel like doing something it's very easy to get stuck and just focus on the negative aspects such as it being hard work or the risk of pain or failure.

So you need to change what you are focusing on to motivate yourself to take action. Making a list of positives like benefits and possible opportunities can be very effective for turning your focus around.

 

If you have problems getting started ask yourself questions that will empower you. Questions like:

 

- What is awesome about this situation?

- What is the hidden opportunity in this situation?

 

You can pretty much always find positives about anything. There are lessons to be learned about yourself and your world and opportunities to be found if you look at things the right way.

 

Step 3: Just do it.

 

You should now have reduced much of the resistance within and feel more motivated to start taking action and getting your thing done

 

It is at this point tempting to start thinking again. To reconsider and ponder. But I have found that if you do that then it easy to fall back into the same place where you began. You start to question doing this. Your focus starts to turn back to the negative aspects again.

 

So when I am at this point I usually just stop thinking and get my butt out of the chair. I get moving and I just do it.

 

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The Positivity Blog henrik@positivityblog.com via smtp-verifiedoptin-02.aweber.com

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (HRM)

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (HRM)
http://go.techtarget.com/r/14784459/5070930
 

Human resource management (HRM) is the governance of an organization's employees. HRM is sometimes referred to simply as human resources (HR).

A company's human resources department is responsible for creating, implementing and/or overseeing policies governing employee behaviour and the behaviour of the company toward its employees.

Human resources are the people who work for the organization; human resource management is really employee management with an emphasis on those employees as assets of the business. In this context, employees are sometimes referred to as human capital. As with other business assets, the goal is to make effective use of employees, reducing risk and maximizing return on investment (ROI).

Areas of HRM oversight include - among many others -- employee recruitment and retention, exit interviews, motivation, assignment selection, labor law compliance, performance reviews, training, professional development, mediation, and change management.

How To Write a Mission Statement

Writing a Mission Statement is a complex activity involving every level of the organization. Here's how to get started.

Here's How:

1. List the organization's core competencies; its unique strengths and weaknesses.
2. List the organization's primary customers, internal or external, by type, not by name.
3. Review how each customer relates to each of the organization's strengths. Ask them if possible.
4. Write a one-sentence description of each customer/strength pairing.
5. Combine any that are essentially the same.
6. List the sentences in order of importance to the organization's vision, if one exists.
7. Combine the top three to five sentences into a paragraph.
8. Ask your customers if they would want to do business with an organization with that mission.
9. Ask your employees if they understand and support it and can act on it.
10. Ask your suppliers if it makes sense to them.
11. Incorporate the feedback from customers, employees and suppliers and repeat the process.
12. When you have refined the paragraph into statements that clearly articulates the way the company wants to relate to those it effects, publish it to everyone. Post it on the wall, email it to everyone, etc.

Tips:

1. A good mission statement provides strategic vision and direction for the organization and should not have to be revised every few years. Goals and objectives are the short-term measures used to get there.
2. Revise the organization's mission statement when it is no longer appropriate or relevant.

What is 'a balanced scorecard'?

The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is widely applicable to organisations regardless of size or type of business. The system, extensively used in business and industry, government, and non-profit organizations worldwide, facilitates the development and ongoing review of an organisation’s vision and strategy, provides a method of aligning the organisation’s business activities with that strategy, improves the organisation’s internal and external communications, and allows the organisation to monitor its performance against its strategic goals.

It is a ‘balanced scorecard’ because a central component of the methodology is a management ‘scorecard’ that focuses on all of the important aspects of an organisation’s performance as well as its short term financial performance.

The different meanings of 'the balanced scorecard'

Because ‘balanced scorecard’ is a generic term which refers to a management methodology that has been rapidly evolving for some 2 decades, it has come to mean different things to different people. In practice, there are wide variations in understanding and implementation. In its most limited form, ‘the balanced scorecard’ is frequently seen to be a simple management dashboard of performance measures. At the other extreme, in its most developed form ‘the balanced scorecard’ is a comprehensive planning and management system designed to focus an organisation on achieving its objectives as effectively as possible. The various meanings are frequently presented as being ‘first generation scorecards’, second generation scorecards’, third generation scorecards’, etc, although there seems to be little agreement about exactly what is included within each ‘generation’.

The BSC Methodology

The balanced scorecard has evolved from its early use as a simple performance measurement framework to a full strategic planning and management system. The “new” balanced scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the "marching orders" for the organization on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps planners identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies.

This new approach to strategic management was first detailed in a series of articles and books by Drs. Kaplan and Norton. Recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, the balanced scorecard approach provides a clear prescription as to what companies should measure in order to 'balance' the financial perspective. The balanced scorecard is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organisations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback around both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. When fully deployed, the balanced scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into the nerve center of an enterprise.

In their initial 1992 article, Kaplan and Norton described the balanced scorecard as follows:

"The balanced scorecard retains traditional financial measures. But financial measures tell the story of past events, an adequate story for industrial age companies for which investments in long-term capabilities and customer relationships were not critical for success. These financial measures are inadequate, however, for guiding and evaluating the journey that information age companies must make to create future value through investment in customers, suppliers, employees, processes, technology, and innovation."

(Kaplan R.S. and Norton D.P. (1992) The Balanced Scorecard - Measures that drive performance, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb.)

Perspectives
The balanced scorecard suggests that we should view organisations from four perspectives, and develop metrics, collect data and analyze it relative to each of these perspectives:

The Learning & Growth Perspective

This perspective includes employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and corporate self-improvement. In a knowledge-worker organization, people -- the only repository of knowledge -- are the main resource. In the current climate of rapid technological change, it is becoming necessary for knowledge workers to be in a continuous learning mode. Metrics can be put into place to guide managers in focusing training funds where they can help the most. In any case, learning and growth constitute the essential foundation for success of any knowledge-worker organization.

Kaplan and Norton emphasize that 'learning' is more than 'training'; it also includes things like mentors and tutors within the organization, as well as that ease of communication among workers that allows them to readily get help on a problem when it is needed. It also includes technological tools; what the Baldrige criteria call "high performance work systems."

The Business Process Perspective

This perspective refers to internal business processes. Metrics based on this perspective allow the managers to know how well their business is running, and whether its products and services conform to customer requirements (the mission). These metrics have to be carefully designed by those who know these processes most intimately; with our unique missions these are not something that can be developed by outside consultants.

The Customer Perspective

Recent management philosophy has shown an increasing realization of the importance of customer focus and customer satisfaction in any business. These are leading indicators: if customers are not satisfied, they will eventually find other suppliers that will meet their needs. Poor performance from this perspective is thus a leading indicator of future decline, even though the current financial picture may look good. 

In developing metrics for satisfaction, customers should be analyzed in terms of kinds of customers and the kinds of processes for which we are providing a product or service to those customer groups.

The Financial Perspective

Kaplan and Norton do not disregard the traditional need for financial data. Timely and accurate funding data will always be a priority, and managers will do whatever necessary to provide it. In fact, often there is more than enough handling and processing of financial data. With the implementation of a corporate database, it is hoped that more of the processing can be centralized and automated. But the point is that the current emphasis on financials leads to the "unbalanced" situation with regard to other perspectives. There is perhaps a need to include additional financial-related data, such as risk assessment and cost-benefit data, in this category.

Strategy Mapping

Strategy maps are communication tools used to tell a story of how value is created for the organization. They show a logical, step-by-step connection between strategic objectives (shown as ovals on the map) in the form of a cause-and-effect chain. Generally speaking, improving performance in the objectives found in the Learning & Growth perspective (the bottom row) enables the organization to improve its Internal Process perspective Objectives (the next row up), which in turn enables the organization to create desirable results in the Customer and Financial perspectives (the top two rows).

Balanced Scorecard Software

The balanced scorecard is not a piece of software. Unfortunately, many people believe that implementing software amounts to implementing a balanced scorecard. Once a scorecard has been developed and implemented, however, performance management software can be used to get the right performance information to the right people at the right time. Automation adds structure and discipline to implementing the Balanced Scorecard system, helps transform disparate corporate data into information and knowledge, and helps communicate performance information