Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
Congratulations! You have a New Employee!…And it Just Happens to Be Your Boss. The idea of it sounds ludicrous. You have a large staff, countless projects and relentless customers to take care of throughout your day. And then you realize you have to add one more load on top of it: managing your own boss. Sad but true, if you
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Remember when your Project Manager came in the conference room last month, his forehead pulsating, as if he were just itching for a fight of any kind? We’ve all had those people in our office, reminding us of the great scene from Monty Python – “The Argument Clinic.” Maybe there is pressure from higher up to get results, or perhaps it
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How to Create an Executive Summary Raise your hand if you have ever sat through a presentation and walked away not understanding its core message. Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever asked an employee to give you a project briefing, only for them to bury you in data, facts and graphics. Finally, raise your hand if you’ve ever picked
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8 Workplace Remodel Tips for Managers Doing it Themselves A workplace is more than just the four walls that surround people. Rather, a modern workplace is an environment in which ideas are born, where breakthroughs are made, and where profit is generated. Impressive campuses likes those of Apple or the trendy refurbished factory that now houses a Brooklyn start up
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Managing Crisis in the Workplace None of us had any idea that it was the first day of what would become a 10 month, $25 Million investigation. It was late in the afternoon on a cool fall day when the Quality Assurance Manager and the Operations Manager came to my office with a concern over a product defect that had
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How to Be a Boss and a Friend A former mentor of mine once told me that there are two highly uncomfortable relationships that one inevitably encounters in his or her management career. The first of these relationships was the one you have when your former boss ends up working for you. That is, the person from whom you once
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Common Product Development Mistakes to Avoid and How to Steer Clear Several years ago, after doubling down on our investments, running wild with our tests and sprinting through patents to make sure we would be the first to market, we were finally ready to present our new technology to our target customer – a major global airline. After spending $3
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…And How to Avoid Them One of the best feelings we as managers and business leaders experience is seeing our businesses grow as a result of our effort and hard work. For large companies, these emotions may result from watching a steady (or not-so-steady!) increase in stock price. For smaller companies, such feelings can emerge when we simply gain a
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A Manager’s Guide to Promoting Staff and Knowing When It’s Time Promoting your employees entails a lot more than just giving them more pay. Promotions are about developing your staff, rewarding performance, building a succession plan for your business, and managing the overall advancement of your workforce. Further, these days, employees seek advancement – whether inside or outside your company – so
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9 Ways You’re Hurting Morale… And Don’t Even Know It Every manager among us is busy. We have a job vacancy to fill, we have expense reports to approve, we have a staff meeting to run…and after all that, we have our own work to do. So, where in all of that do we keep employees motivated, performing at a
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Overcoming the Legacy of Your Predecessor Maybe they retired. Perhaps there was some restructuring. Maybe they left the firm, or simply got promoted. In any case, the old boss left, and you were hired to take over. Even for experienced managers, the transition into a new management role is tough and may feel like an uphill battle to win over
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How to Become a More Effective Manager Management effectiveness is not just a trendy phrase, but a true attribute and measure of how well managers perform at their jobs. In this case, we’re not just talking about results, but the whole package – essentially, how our employees see us as leaders. We’ve all had some really bad bosses. But, many
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A Basic Outline to An RFP Response When conducting business between companies, typically referred to as business-to-business or B2B, most opportunities and contracts are generated through a process of bid solicitation. Businesses looking to outsource services will often issue what is known as a Request for Proposal (RFP) to seek information from various vendors and suppliers who they believe can do the
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Estimating the Cost of a New Hire Fighting for resources is a frustrating problem we’ve all dealt with as managers and business leaders. Every one of us has said it at one point or another: ‘Too much to do, not enough people to do it.’ Justifying more staff is certainly difficult, but it is possible when you create a
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Is Your Training Plan Being Cut Year After Year? Read On… It’s a battle out there, folks. Between a fragile economy, steep competition, and the rising costs of business, it seems like we as managers spend as much time cutting costs as we do planning our budgets in the first place. The first step in trimming a budget, of course, is to limit what
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Promoting Skill Development of Your Human Resources Employee development is a hot topic in today’s human resource and executive management circles, and rightly so. Companies are investing more and more time and energy into building organizational strength through the capabilities of their employees. It’s been said for some time that a company’s greatest asset is its people. And now, firms have
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Finding Your Way in Business When The Odds are Against You Nothing is going your way. Cash is drying up. You’re not sure what to do next. No one else seems to have answers, either. All you get are more questions. A business turnaround is one of the most complex and challenging experiences a manager or business leader will ever go through
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Hitting Your Metrics: Reducing the Impossible to the Possible Every year, companies and businesses establish their annual goals and performance targets. At some point in time, responsibility for achieving those objectives is placed into the hands of managers and individual teams, sometimes, with minimal direction. Though just about every organization has a standard set of metrics, many managers still struggle to map
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Tips for Conducting a Technical Design Review When it comes to the product development cycle and a phase gated design process, holding robust technical design reviews is critical to a project’s success. While there are various types of design reviews that lend themselves to different technologies and industries, the most common and universal examples include the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and Critical Design Review
» Read more Writing Employee Performance Reviews Doesn’t Need to Be a Drag Writing performance reviews of your employees can be extremely aggravating. As managers, we are busy. We correct behavior we don’t like when we see it, so taking precious time away from customers and emails can seem like a waste of our time. But performance appraisals are actually one of the
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