Management Articles & News
Performance Evaluations Can Be Beneficial
THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW MEETING: It’s a fact — most supervisors and employees have negative feelings toward performance appraisals and appraisal interviews. It’s often necessary to shift people’s thinking from the perception that the interview is a time of judgment to the perspective that supervisors can provide support and direction to employees who want to improve their productivity and be involved in the process. Most employees, after all, wish to work effectively. Few can tolerate the ...
Assertiveness Helps Accomplish Everything
When trying to get something accomplished, assertive behavior is the most effective. Although other methods may accomplish the intended ends, the alternatives imperil our own rights or those of others, creating conflict and building mistrust into relationships. One of the keys to effectiveness is learning how to communicate thoughts and feelings without jeopardizing yourself or others, and this ability elevates both morale and productivity in the workplace.
Training Adults, Not Teaching Children
Adults are vulnerable to personal and professional embarrassment from poor performance in the training program. Poor performance in the classroom may become the basis for personnel decisions by supervisors or the source of ridicule by peers. Economic benefits or promotion may be associated with the training program, creating a feeling of pressure to succeed. The way you handle these fears will largely determine the effectiveness and usefulness of your training program. To fail to recognize ...
Using an Appraisal to Benefit Your Organization
PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS BENEFIT THE ORGANIZATION: Appraisals help spot employees with potential for advancement. Appraisals bring attention to the so-called high-potentials — people who have both the will and the ability to excel in the organization. Appraisals can also aid in the human resource planning of the organization. --Appraisals provide management with a profile of the supervisor. One important incentive for supervisors to do appraisals expertly is that higher management ...
Today's Employees and Their New Needs: What You Need to Know
Today’s employees are not only interested in security or in pay and fringe benefits. They are often placing increased value on being recognized and involved in reaching personal growth goals. As a supervisor you must be aware of these new values. Keeping your employees’ interests and priorities will help you better motivate them to work well.
Communication, Feedback, and Participation: Three Easy Tidbits For Smarter Business
On communication: One of the biggest strains on the communication process occurs when the sender or receiver is experiencing stress, anger, or frustration either at work or at home. When a situation is emotionally charged, it is difficult to express yourself clearly and maintain a positive communication relationship. How we communicate can be as important as what we say. Using “I” statements is the most effective technique to counterbalancing an emotional dialogue. “I” statements, help the ...
Performance Appraisal Scenarios: Improve Your Communication
IMPROVING COMMUNICATION DURING THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL: If the employee has trouble getting started on the self-appraisal you might say: “Why don’t you start by talking about the XYZ project?” (Pick a topic that the employee will feel comfortable with, a success rather than a failure.) “It seems to me that the PDQ project was harder than we expected. What’s your perspective on that?” “I know this sort of thing is hard to do. Start wherever you like. I’m eager to hear what these past six ...
On the Road to Assertiveness
Learning to be assertive takes time, courage and the ability to recognize the situation for what is really is.
Performance Evaluation: How To Create Change
STEPS TOWARDS GIVING A GOOD APPRAISAL INTERVIEW: Give specific feedback. Statements such as, “You’re doing a good job” and “You’d better shape up” are almost without value unless accompanied by specific feedback on what the employee is to continue doing or to stop doing. If you evaluate with the word “positive,” describe how the employee manifests that characteristic. If you say that the employee “shows initiative,” talk about specific occasions on which the employee did indeed take the ...
Making a Decision to Outsource: Driving Factors
Most executives view offshore outsourcing most of all as a source of cost reducing. The greatest savings are expected to come from lower labor cost and reduced project timelines. However offshore outsourcing also creates new challenges and expenses for the organization involved. Those may include vendor selection costs, legal costs, costs of transition and many others. That is why despite the evidence of possible major up-front cost savings many outsourcing vendors have yet to prove that ...
What Cross cultural Training Can Do for You
International business is more complex than ever before. Success in every sector is now seen in global terms. Yet success in working with colleagues from different cultures is no easy goal. In order to connect, we have to communicate effectively and we can only do this in an atmosphere of mutual respect, understanding and trust. Cross-cultural training helps you understand the underlying cultural values that drive behaviour—you first understand your own cultural background and then other ...
Activities Vs Results
You have two employees, one that comes to work early and is always the last to leave. They always seem to be busy rushing here and there. The second employee doesn’t ever work late unless asked to and really doesn’t seem to be that busy. If you had to choose one, which employee would you rather have in your company?
Secret Grant Money!
The art of researching, writing and being awarded grants has evolved into a competitive sport in recent years. There is one area, though, that gets very little attention.
Alcohol And Events
Naturally alcohol is an important part of many events. People associate having a few drinks with relaxation and enjoyment.
What Is The Cmmi?
WHAT IS THE CMMI? The CMMI is a model for improving and appraising the performance of development organizations. It stands for "Capability Maturity Model Integration". It is published and developed by the Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. The CMM (the original version of the CMMI) was originally commissioned by the American Department of Defense to help them qualify software vendors' capabilities. From there it quickly evolved into a powerful tool to guide process ...
How To Know When You're On A Winner
How to know when you're on a winner with sales managemnt changes The catchword today for business is flexibility. With changes in suppliers, customers, and the processes connecting them altering almost daily (or so it seems) the future clearly belongs to the organisations which can adjust to change quickly and effectively. The good news for Call Centres is that, unlike more traditional sales organisations, the modern Call Centre has the equipment in place to measure this easily. Instead ...
Delegation For Business Leaders - How Letting Go Works
To create the time for the specific role of a leader, as much as possible of the day to day delivery must be handed over.
Get It Done! Soft Skills Not Hard Tools Are Required
If your organization has people, then interpersonal skills are needed. I work with companies that are on a path they call the lean journey. Whatever you call it, it’s based on the Toyota Production System. Some manufacturers embraced it and it became known as Lean Manufacturing, expanded into the Lean Office or Lean Enterprise. During this transformation the approach became focused on tools, but Toyota’s approach is about people. The focus of Lean Manufacturing training has been on technical ...
I Said Pareto Chart… Not Potato Chart!
Does this sound familiar? You were hired for the new management position. You were tasked to turn the numbers around. You take some time reviewing the current situation. Now it’s time to take a look at the current processes and get your staff together to analyze the data. You tell them that you want to brainstorm; work on a few mind maps, whip out a couple Ishikawa’s to get started and then have them bring Pareto charts relative to their respective functions.
Economics Neglected Branch
It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at. Ludwig von Mises
Book of Lists Marketing for Pressure Washing Companies
The American Business Journals produces a Book of Lists each year in their many markets, it is wise for pressure washing companies to use this book of lists to find new clientele. The book of lists, lists the top companies in size in all industry sectors. Since pressure washing companies clean almost anything, it behooves them to use the book to selectively target the top companies to do business with.
Setting Direction Within an Organization
FINDING DIRECTION: An organization can’t succeed without direction. Direction means having clear goals and guidelines; set goals and guidelines for staff to follow. When staff direction is needed, you must provide effective procedures for everyone to follow. Have guidelines and goals firmly set to keep the gray areas to the absolute minimum. It’s up to you, to keep the departmental goals and that sense of direction so that it is not allowed to be buried beneath the workload.
The 6 Steps to Six Sigma
Step 1 Get the proper level of Six Sigma expertise at the executive level of the company. If the top leaders don’t understand the advanced six sigma principles, the company has no shot to attain total quality. This will probably require a hefty budget, entailing the hiring of several high-priced consultants for long periods of time. The consultants need to observe and gather data about the companies operations, and show the executives how to interpret the data. Step ...
Make Change Easy Get Involved!
There are wild variances in how much involvement organisations are brave enough to offer their people in change. From those organisations where they just ‘tell’ (sometimes by text message even!), to the most enlightened extreme, where they enable wholesale contribution to the change process.
Teamwork Training: Learning to Build a Successful Team
Teamwork is a process that can be experienced outdoors and well as in the workplace. A lesson learned in one environment can be applied equally well in another. Teamwork: We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Us, a book by Dr. Steven Stowell and Matt Starcevich, describes actual teams that have participated in a variety of outdoor teamwork training programs. These programs have been as long as five days and as short as one. Each account has been chosen as illustrative of one of the ...
Big Company Intelligence on a Small Company Budget
Information is the lifeblood of the economy. That’s especially true for businesses, because the ability to identify current customers and locate new prospects makes the difference between boom and bust. So how do successful companies do it? Through targeted market research, which usually means arcane computer systems, large staffs, and six-figure budgets.
Outsourcing the Sales Function
Small to medium companies that want to increase sales or profits and find it is possible to outsource sales should - do it! At this point most business owners and executives either become overwhelmed with doubt or fear.
Instantly Uncover Your Corporate Culture
Best Definition of “Corporate Culture” If you ask 10 people to define “organizational culture,“ you will get 11 different answers! Fortunately, from my consulting and writing on leadership and organizational change, I created my definition of organizational culture: “Corporate culture is how every employee knows she or he must act – even if no one is watching.” Knowing your company’s culture proves crucial for multiple reasons, including: + Only ...
Understanding Every Aspect of Your Organization
GET TO KNOW YOUR ORGANIZATION: If you don’t understand an aspect of the organization or a procedure within it, ask. If you still don’t understand, ask again. Question until you are sure you understand the topic. It’s easy to feel your questions aren’t sophisticated enough, especially when you work with people who have been doing what they do for years. Start with basic questions like “What does our organization do?” “How does our organization do it?” “Who needs our product?” “Who does what ...
Big Company Intelligence on a Small Company Budget
Information is the lifeblood of the economy. That’s especially true for businesses, because the ability to identify current customers and locate new prospects makes the difference between boom and bust. So how do successful companies do it? Through targeted market research, which usually means arcane computer systems, large staffs, and six-figure budgets.