Blog posts

Stay up to date with industry trends regarding performance, productivity and motivation. Read the Perform Forward blog here.

Wrapping up or Setting up for Success

As I sit to write this blog, probably my last or second last for the year, I’m feeling kind of checked out. And I think part of the problem is that after the year 2020, everyone, including myself is looking forward to the Festive Season, and time with friends and family. To add insult to injury, instead of writing my blog I found a new app that was interesting, and very distracting.
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The Why, the Strategy and the Culture

Hardly an article is written, or a conversation is started, without a mention of the terrible trials we have endured during 2020. Motivation and engagement seems to be at an all-time low and leaders and business owners are concerned about how to approach planning for 2021. They appear to be stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place. 2020 was challenging enough but 2021 seems be shrouded in mystery as the way forward feels more and more uncertain as we prepare to enter 2021 with COVID in tandem. How does one create forward momentum during such uncertainty? How do you motivate team members, or even yourself, when the goal-post keeps moving?
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The clever thing about clever people

I love getting older! I am fascinated by all the people I have connected with over the years, the guidance and mentorship I received, and how that has impacted my life. I am going through an incredible journey of reconnecting with ex-colleagues and clients at the moment and it is lovely to reflect on what I have learned from them. In this week’s Performance Cafe I am joined by Caryn Schalit, she was my HR lead when I was a training and development manager. We had a blast working together as she has an openness to new ideas, while at the same time never dropping her standards and keeping an eye in the bigger picture.
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The exotic vs building bridges

Many people realize the value of travel as a self-development tool. I couldn’t agree more. Visiting a different country, especially one where the norms, culture, food and language are very different can really open one’s eyes and that encourages a respect for diversity. Visiting America, India, Tanzania, Lesotho and Namibia certainly left me with new perspectives. With COVID and lockdown reducing our ability to travel many individuals have been eagerly awaiting news of a return of international travel. Their need for their travel-fix has been building for the last few months and the call of the exotic is becoming stronger by the day.
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Remote Working 2.0

At the beginning of Lockdown I wrote a blog called “Dear Manager this is not remote work this is work from home” which led to me being interviewed for a LinkedIn Live show called Virtual Coffee with Francois. I had just completed two on-demand courses about setting up remote workers and managing remote workers and the topic was red hot at the time. Now I find the conversation becoming relevant again. Firstly as lockdown has eased up some of the challenges faced by employees, and by extension businesses as well, are easing up. An example of this is children returning to school so parents do not need to split their time between work and homeschooling. So the viability of remote working is improving and companies are weighing up the positives and negatives of making this a permanent change.
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The Risk and Reward of Your Employee Spend

Would you ever buy a thoroughbred and expect no return on your investment? What would be the logic of spending time looking for the best breed, with the best breeding lines, the best muscle tone, and the best character and then putting it in a field where it does not have place to run? Surely at the cost of buying the most capable animal you can find there is a sense that this is a resource that can be utilized to make money? In a recent conversation with Junita van der Colff, who specializes in Risk Management, she mentioned that risk is only one side of the coin – the flip side is opportunity. Hence the analogy of the horse. Why take on the risk of owning the animal if you don’t make use of the opportunities created by the ownership.
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