Mar09
Are you looking for inspiration on leadership and management? Lucky for you, the folks who live and breathe leadership and management every day enjoy sharing their thoughts and successes with the masses. Check out these top 100 blogs to help bolster your business acumen.
Leadership
- CEO Blog — Time Leadership: Jim Estill, CEO of SYNNEX Canada, talks about how you, too, can meet business success.
- Dispatches from the New World of Work: Tom Peters heads a consulting services company. His personal motto: “The starting point of all significant change is mindset.”
- Extreme Leadership: Have you heard of extreme sports? Well, now there are extreme leaders, too. Steve Farber heads up Extreme Leaders Inc., a business-development company, and he also shares his thoughts on his site.
- Leading Blog — Building a Community of Leaders: Michael McKinney thinks that everyone is a leader. Find out how to tap into your potential with his musings about learning, creativity and communication.
- Leadership Turn: “Leaders DO — and it’s your turn,” according to this site solely based on leadership and management.
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Mar08
No matter where you fall on the corporate totem pole, a salary increase is something cherished by all. Most, dare I say all, companies have a systematic way of assessing an employee’s overall performance. Sometimes it’s objective, sometimes it’s corporate politics, and sometimes it’s frankly about who brown-nosed the best. While you can somewhat determine your fate in all of these areas, the one area you are in clear control of is your performance.
Performance is a lot more than coming to an office everyday and doing ‘stuff’. In today’s ultra-competitive and global economy, people that skate by are expendable and easily replaced. So how do we take that and turn it around? How do we create a unique value that our bosses are willing to pay for? No, the answer is not to play sycophant and brown-nose. While that may get you a free lunch, it won’t be the long term approach you’ll want to base a career on. Instead, consider the six ways I am about to mention.
By the way, I have received two successful promotions in the past using these methods and I think these could work for you too. And yes, contrary to the tempting title, these may not be secrets but these are things that tend to be forgotten in the daily minutia you face. If you already know about them, consider this post as a reminder to follow them in your job.
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Mar08
It is a costly mistake to get lost in the false theory that more money equals happy employees.
Believing this is costing you valuable time, revenue, employees…and even threatening your own job. Cash will always be a major factor in motivating people and a solid compensation plan is critical to attracting and keeping key personnel. But the key is that additional cash is not always the only answer and in many cases not even the best answer.
Too many bonus or commission checks get cashed, spent and forgotten just that quickly. Grocery stores and gasoline stations are among the necessary stops that
seem to get in the way of using your extra cash on something special for you.
One alternative to giving commissions or bonus dollars is to give gifts through a catalog point system.
The company you choose will provide you with catalogs, price sheets and point checks at no charge. The structure for your bonus plan can remain the same but instead of awarding cash to your employees you award equivalent points. Those points may then be used to purchase an enormous variety of gifts or travel plans from the catalog.
The stimulation involved is long-lasting. It begins with the employee being able to browse the catalog choosing what they will strive to earn. The catalog acts as a tangible reminder of their goal. The gift itself will last as evidence of their achievements.
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Mar08
Events are indeed projects or at least they should be managed as such.
Here is yet another free list that will help you to be more productive.
Remember to save it in your del.icio.us for future reference and to let others know through StumbleUpon.
Project Management Software
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Mar08
Ever wonder why so many projects fail? Well, here’s your guide to the seamy underbelly of IT project management.
From Tony Collins, who writes a well-researched blog on government-related IT failures in the UK:
- Projects with realistic budgets and timetables don’t get approved
- The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the progress report
- A user is somebody who rejects the system because it’s what he asked for
- The difference between project success and failure is a good PR company
- Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it
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\\ tags: management tips, tips
Jul24
At a recent family gathering, my nine-year old niece used her new colored pens to draw animals on scraps of paper she found. The first horse she drew was a very nice blending of blues and yellows and greens and was kneeling in a field of tall grass. What does this have to do with Management? A lot really. Keep reading.
Interest and Motivation
She made several more horse drawings, in assorted artistic shades, and gave them to her grandparents an an uncle. I was impressed by the sense of color balance she demonstrated, as well as her skill level in drawing a horse that actually looked like a horse.
Late in the day she handed one to my sister. I jokingly asked her where mine was. She turned, matter-of-factly, and asked me what color I wanted it. I picked red. Just a few minutes later she returned and presented me a mono-chromatic red drawing of a stationary horse.
It’s a wonderful drawing that my wife has already hung on the refrigerator door, but it is not the artistic, multi-hue drawing of a horse in motion that she had done in all her others.
Be Careful What You Ask For
Have you ever done that at work? Have you ever been impressed with the way an employee completed a project so you assigned them another one like it and it got done, but wasn’t exactly what you wanted? Why do you suppose that was? What can we learn from my request of my niece that can help us as managers.
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\\ tags: Business, Management
Jul24
Listed below are ten things you can do to become a better manager. Pick one. Do it today. Pick another one for tomorrow. In two weeks you will be a better manager.
1. Select the best people
As a manager, you are only as good as the people on your team. Give yourself a better chance to succeed by picking the best people from the start.Read Job Interview Questions to Ask to learn to be better at selecting the best candidate for the job.
2. Be a motivator
Human beings do things because we want to. Sometimes we want to because the consequences of not wanting to do something are unpleasant. However, most of the time we want to do things because of what we get out of it.It’s no different at work, people do good work for the pay, or the prestige, or the recognition. They do bad work because they want to take it easy and still get paid. They work really hard because they want to impress someone. To motivate your people better, figure out what they want and how you can give that to them for doing what you want them to do.
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\\ tags: Business, Management, Manager
Jul24
When the screening of the candidates is done, you will bring the top two or three in for an interview. What questions should you ask them? What answers should you be looking for? How will you know which one to hire? Whether you work for a large company with a Human Resources department and volumes of procedures or are a small business owner with a few employees, the questions you want to ask are the same.
The Questions to Ask
You want to ask questions that, in increasing order of importance, tell you 1) whether the person has the skills to do the job, 2) how they function under pressure, and 3) how well they will fit into the team.
Can They Do the Job
These are perhaps the easiest questions. You have seen the person’s resume so you know they claim to have the necessary skills. Ask a few questions to verify what they claim.
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“I see you managed the payroll for three subsidiaries. What was the most difficult part of integrating all of them?”
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“When you were the Marketing Manager for ABC company what were the steps you took when planning the annual marketing budget?”
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“I see you program in (whatever language). How would you link an indexed field variable to display on mouseover?”
Notice these questions ask how or what. They can not be answered yes or no. Listen to the answer to see how quickly they answer, how complete/correct their answer is, and whether they actually answer what you asked or go off to something with which they are more familiar.
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\\ tags: Business, Job, Management
Jul24
Do your employees trust you?
Do your employees trust you? A recent suggests they probably do not. They trust their co-workers and they even like their job for the most part, but they don’t believe that their managers are making the best decisions. This is especially true when it comes to decisions made about them.
I have two questions for you to think about:
1) Does it matter that your employees don’t trust you?
2) How do you find out?
I believe the first question is the easier one to answer – YES, it matters very much. The two biggest reasons why it matters are related - PERFORMANCE and Profits.
Their Performance
I guarantee you that you will not get top performance out of any employee who does not trust you. If they don’t trust you to make the best decisions AND trust you to look out for their best interests – they feel they have to do it themselves. The time they spend doing that, or thinking about how to do it, takes away from their production, their quality, and their creativity.
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\\ tags: Business, Employee, Management
Jul24
What is Benchmarking
Benchmarking is the process of determining who is the very best, who sets the standard, and what that standard is. In baseball, you could argue that seven consecutive World Series Championships made the New York Yankees the benchmark.If we were to benchmark “world conquest”, what objective measure would we use to compare Julius Caesar to Adolph Hitler; Gengis Khan to Napoleon? Which of them was the epitome, and why?
We do the same thing in business. Who is the best sales organization? The most responsive customer service department? The leanest manufacturing operation? And how do we quantify that standard?
Related Issues
Once we decide what to benchmark, and how to measure it, the object is to figure out how the winner got to be the best and determine what we have to do to get there.Benchmarking is usually part of a larger effort, usually a Process Re-engineering or Quality Improvement initiative. The US Department of Energy’s Quality Management Implementation Guidelines shows one way of fitting it all together.
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\\ tags: Benchmarking, Business, Management
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