Parkinson’s Law states “work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion.” A corollary is “set the performance bar low enough and many will eventually give you their worst performance.” Unfortunately we have all seen this too often.
A particular challenge for good managers is to find a performance demand level that is high enough to catalyze excellent performance yet not too high to utterly discourage people from trying. This is complicated by the personal differences in people’s perceptions of too high or too low.
Clearly good goal setting and timely accurate, mostly positive feedback are the critical elements driving high performance. Does that sound like The One Minute Manager?
Interestingly, leadership may be the art of setting the bar too high and then guiding people to attain it by capturing their imagination and enthusiasm. Consider: “To achieve the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon…..”
Beyond Luck is now an e-book on Amazon. At $6.95 it’s a great deal.
Managers Into Leaders 
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