Management Articles & News
Effective Sales Territory Management
How you prioritize your sales territory management activities depends upon whether you are managing a territory that has existing customers, or whether you are building your customer base from scratch.
Make a Difference Sweat the Small Stuff First
My background is in retail management - yes, running stores, from tiny ones you couldn't swing the proverbial cat around in, to huge three floor jobs. Yet there are some guiding principles which, like Giuliani did for New York, that make a difference on a smaller scale. Guiding principles which make a huge, possibly unseen difference to your customers and no less so to your employees.
Stop Going to Meetings 10 Questions to Ask Before Attending a Meeting Get More Productive
We get invited to attend so many "meetings" but do we need to attend them all? Use these 10 questions to assess if you should attend that next meeting invitation.
Tales From The Corporate Frontlines: Job Security in Today's Workplace
This article, Job Security in Today's Workplace, is part of AlphaMeasure's compilation, Tales from the Corporate Frontlines. It tells the story of a manager who decides to look for ways to bolster the morale in his company when it crashes after an extensive layoff.
Feedback Make it Descriptive
Have you ever heard yourself say to a team member - "You're really great" - "You're a star" - I think you're brilliant" - "You're doing a great job!"
It's Not Always What You Say
A major source of communication breakdowns is incongruence between the words that people say and the nonverbal signals that they send, largely because we lose sight of the fundamental truth: You cannot not communicate. Every second that we are in the presence of another, we are constantly sending and receiving messages, often silent, nonverbal messages that can either augment our communication effectiveness or detract from it. These non-word symbols are the first things we notice about ...
Don't Hire Squirrels to be Your Top Dogs
Bad hiring decisions cost organizations, both in dollars and lost opportunities. But getting the right people in the right places doing the right thing is not easy. It requires painstaking efforts and objective information. Mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, and growth all require an unprecedented need for information about how to hire top performers and a framework for assessing the competencies required to lead people during extraordinary times. Therefore, hiring the right people ...
5 Ways of Increasing Business Profits
The economy may finally be turning around and showing signs of a rebound. Interest rates have begun to rise and the stock market is recovering from the lows it experienced in the last couple of years. Is your business ready to take advantage of these improving times? Can you translate these improvements into increased profits? You can. Read on…
Who Do You Talk To?
Many of you reading this will be running businesses, or parts of, whether they are your own or not. This means that you have many things to deal with on a day to day basis plus trying to do the long-term thinking needed to lead and run the business. You probably find yourself being very busy, possibly working long hours and, if you are honest, being reactive most of the time. When do you get (or make!) time to really think about your business or the way you are operating personally? ...
The Myth of the Management Team
Every business has problems. That is why the average life span of a large industrial company is 40 years. Some are learning disabilities where companies are not prepared to learn from their mistakes. They insist on doing the same thing every time. Even when problems occur no one examines the cause of the problem. The problem is an embarrassment that should be swept under the rug and forgotten rather than be used as an opportunity to learn. Handling these dilemmas and disabilities is the ...
The Leadership Alignment Model
Some time ago we had the privilege of working with a major UK government department to help them redefine leadership and to reappraise how they develop and encourage leaders. Faced with considerable challenges by the environment in which they operate and by their political masters, this department has decided that leadership is one of the keys to the achievement of the vision laid down by its chief.
Organizational Culture and Creative Blocks – the Similarities
Few Decision makers see the link between between creativity and innovation management, as performed by MBA’s in firms, and creative endeavours such as screenwriting. In fact, there are very strong linkages.
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma is a highly disciplined process focused on satisfying customers by delivering nearly perfect products and services. In today’s competitive market, consistently maintaining satisfied customers is essential to growth and success. Major corporations such as GE, Motorola, Honeywell and Ford, have demonstrated significant savings and increased profits by implementing Six Sigma processes in their business.
Dialogue vs. Discussion
Have you ever sat in a meeting where everyone is busy giving their point of view and trying to prove why they are right? Where no one is actually listening or trying to understand other individuals’ points of view. The alternative meeting format is where everyone listens to and agrees with the meeting leader. No one contributes or adds ideas, they are just compliant.
Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Coworkers Collaborate to Complete Successful Initiative
This short story, Coworkers Collaborate to Complete Successful Initiative, is part of AlphaMeasure's compilation, Tales From the Corporate Frontlines. It illustrates how important cooperation, collaboration, and communication are to achieving the common goals of a successful organization.
Leadership Style: What Makes A Good Boss?
In today's competitive environment, companies realize that a good boss is one who can identify and build on the talents of the staff and knows how to retain top performing employees. Take this quiz and see if you are a good boss.
Creativity and Innovation Large Firms Versus Small Firms
There is a pervasive assumption that small firms are more creative and innovative than larger firms. That is, they identify problems and generate ideas (creativity) and idea select, develop and commercialise (innovate) those ideas to a greater degree than larger firms. However, there is a large degree of untruth to this assumption:
Smart Hiring: What Makes the Right Employee?
Good hires do not happen by accident or luck. In this economy, employers are finding a large pool of available workers. But finding the right employee for a position is still a challenge. Few managers, when asked, can describe "right." Others can't agree on what qualifies one to be qualified, at least in measurable terms.
Two Critical Success Factors in an ITIL Implementation
Any IT manager who wants to pursue the IT Service Management journey by implementing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) needs to understand two very important factors well in advance.
25 Great Ways to Find the Right People and Not Break the Bank
Are you trying to hire dozens of hourly workers or a senior executive? Where do you look and how do you get the word out? There are many ways to find the right people besides placing want ads.
Three Ways to Transmit Loud and Clear
The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart. --Benjamin Franklin
Communicating When A Crisis Strikes
How would you handle communication if your business or practice got into a crisis situation? I was pleasantly surprised when my Internet service provider responded competently and quickly to a technical crisis. And, we can learn to communicate more effectively by studying its response. The crisis occurred when hackers attacked its system at the same time that the company was upgrading its systems to meet increased customer demand. And while customers experienced no dramatic ...
Let the Professionals Help You Out Outsource
As your website grows in terms of attracting more footfalls, generating more business, and providing more content; it will demand more time and attention from you to continue performing. As a businessperson, it is advisable that you concentrate on your core competency, which is the reason why you created the website in the first place.
Four Steps to Better Performance Reviews
Direct reports—people who need direction and leadership—rely on their leaders to give them feedback and mentoring, not just management and evaluations. However, these people who most need their boss’s help frequently lack the guidance that would enable them move to the next levels of success—theirs, their team’s and the company’s. Too often leaders are not prepared or trained to conduct an appraisal that stretches performance and ensures their direct reports’ development. Instead, the ...
Make Them GLAD You're Their Boss
Criticism has the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved or reduced, but it is capable only of harm when there is something to be built. --Carl Jung
Score the Rainbow's Pot of Gold: Become the Boss That No One Wants to Leave
Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Peter Drucker
Resolve Differences
Resolving conflict doesn’t come easily to too many people. Most of us want harmonious relationships and smooth interpersonal interactions. However, we know that disagreements and conflicts are part of any dynamic organization. They arise because people care about their jobs and want to produce good results. Conflict is not always negative, however. Sometimes it should be encouraged when discussion and debate can generate creative, innovative approaches to issues or decisions. Conflict ...
When Business Becomes A Battlefield
“We have to be careful it’s like a minefield out there” “I like to lob the odd grenade into the meeting to shake things up” “You have to watch your back all the time with her” “We need to attack whilst they are in a weak position” “There was blood all over the carpet after he had finished with them”
Quality Staffing: Stop Placing the Wrong People in the Wrong Jobs
You can possibly teach a turkey to climb a tree – but it is a lot easier to hire a squirrel. Quality staffing means selecting the right people with the right skills for the right jobs and at the right time. A good hire can take the weight of the world off your shoulders. A poor one can eat up your time and energy and weaken an entire team. So, why do so many leaders place so many people in so many wrong places? Here are five key reasons.
Peak Performance
Peak Performance. It means being at the top of your game, feeling supremely confident, feeling like everything you do is effortless and acheives its goal, feeling resilient and detached from the outcome, being in the flow, being in the zone, feeling relaxed, feeling happy and joyful, having a sense of clarity and certainty about everything that you do, feeling a sense of fullness in your life, indeed feeling fulfilled.