I have never encountered an organization that at least rhetorically did not champion the importance of training for all its employees. But I have encountered quite a few organizations whose management actions and cultural attitudes sent some confusing and contradictory… Read More ›
Managing & Leading
DO NOT WITHHOLD INFORMATION THAT CAN HELP OTHERS SUCCEED
One of the great gifts any experienced manager has at his or her disposal, is the lessons of their experience. Years of hard work, countless hours of practice and application, the painful lessons of things gone wrong and the development… Read More ›
ARE YOU THE RIGHT PERSON FOR YOUR JOB?
Many of the managers I have worked with over the years have never asked themselves if they were the right person for their current job. Having been selected for the position, they naturally assume they were the right choice. Others, however,… Read More ›
GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES AT WORK
The March 24, 2013 edition of Businessweek contained an article by Marina Khidekel entitled “The Misery of Mentoring Millennials” (Etc. Section). Among the article’s highlights that caught my eye were the following: “For a new generation of workers, the idea… Read More ›
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EMPLOYEE OPINION SURVEYS
The March 15, 2013 edition of the magazine The Week contained the following item from The Wall Street Journal on its Business news at a glance page: “A study by the American Psychological Association found that women report higher levels of… Read More ›
WANT A SENSE OF REAL ACCOMPLISHMENT? CHAMPION A FEW BIG GOALS
So many managers I talk with tell me that one great source of their frustration with the job, is obtaining a sense of accomplishment day-to-day. This is an experience I well remember and it never ceased being a challenge. The management… Read More ›
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK: DOES IT MATTER MANAGERS?
Talk about a hot topic among managers in many of today’s workplaces. And here I use the term “social media” in its current contemporary sense to refer to formats like Facebook, Twitter, e-mailing, text messing etc. The question is, should… Read More ›
KNOWING THE LIMITS OF YOUR POWER
The job of a manager often strikes those of us who have done it as quite a conundrum: apparently straight forward, yet frequently complex; occasionally clear but often maddeningly ambiguous; and especially about having been granted power, yet often leaving… Read More ›
EXERCISING AUTHORITY: THE “IF NOT, THEN WHAT” MESSAGE
The best managers intuitively seem to understand that the less often they need to blatantly exercise their authority, the better. Frequent displays of management behavior, designed to impress and remind subordinates of “who is in charge”, generally have more negative,… Read More ›
A SIMPLE ASSESSMENT OF YOUR ORGANIZATION’S HEALTH: THE HUMAN DIMENSION
Anything quantifiable — that is, reducible to numbers — is obviously a potential measure of how well an organization is doing. So profits and/or productive output, for example, are usually one valid measure of organizational performance. But numbers do not give… Read More ›