Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
How to Manage Arrogant Employees There is a reason why employee development is a constant topic among management teams. After all, in addition to being responsible for getting a job done, we as managers are also tasked with the growth and development of our employees. This part of the job, though, is especially hard when we have an arrogant employee who doesn’t
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How to Manage in Chaos It was late on a Friday when an employee came by my office to check in before he left for the weekend. The office was mostly empty by this point, and he was one of the last to leave. It had been a busy week and we had hardly crossed paths over the previous five days. This employee was one
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What is the Difference Between Management and Leadership? Much has been written about the difference between managers and leaders. It’s an important discussion because they are in fact, not the same thing. Further, a conversation explaining the difference between management and leadership to our employees can greatly benefit an up-and-coming staffer, who is considering future positions in your organization. Let’s take
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I recently read a newspaper article about World Cup football, which was great because it listed all the funny pairings of nations in various matches. The article went into detail about various styles of play, which got me thinking about how such different countries work together. Having spent most of my career working overseas with clients and colleagues, I have witnessed
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How to Create Business Metrics Our world revolves metrics. Businesses track financial investments to see how they grow. Professional and weekend runners alike continually push themselves to shave seconds of the time it takes them to run a mile. And some people monitor their vehicle’s gas mileage to help determine when they need an oil change. Metrics, after all, are used to measure
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A recent article by Professor Karan Girotra at INSEAD University discusses 4 myths to a technology growth strategy. The entire article is a great read, but Myth 1 “It’s about a BIG idea” caught my attention. Having spent my career in the technology and engineering fields, I’ve seen several different approaches to technology growth. In some instances, the growth strategy could be described
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Preparing to Work In a Different Culture In today’s business environment, working with international partners, customers, or suppliers is inevitable. Sometimes an international project will be brief and short-lived; in other instances your working relationship can last several years as you accrue thousands of frequent flier miles. Perhaps you will even end up on an expat assignment for a couple of years. Regardless
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How to Grow With Current Customers: A Case Example In Sales and Marketing, we spend a lot of time pursuing new customers and new channels of growth. But we frequently lose sight of the sales potential right in front of us. Our best customers are often our current customers. And for this reason, we should always treat our current buyers with
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Identifying What Customers Value Think about the last time you went into a store prepared to buy something, but eventually left empty-handed. What was the reason you, as a customer, did not make that purchase? There are many possible answers to this question; maybe it was too expensive, the quality may not have been to your liking, or you simply
» Read more Why Your Employees Need to Learn the Local Culture As technology advances, the world gets smaller and smaller. Email, conference calls and WeChat offer us instant communication to opposite ends of the globe. Whether you routinely jet set to far away places to meet with your customers, or you never leave your comfort of your office, working alongside people from another culture
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In 1972, American Bobby Fischer won the World Chess Championship by beating Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. It was a match publicized worldwide as the battle between two superpowers. While both nations had massive nuclear arsenals, this particular battle was fought with figurines on a game board. Now, while I know who Bobby Fischer was, I admit that I
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Managing people is a complex business. There are personality differences, business pressures and customers to face on a daily basis. Tip #6 discussed how good leaders need to show their human side. As a leader of people, it’s important to tap into the human element of curiosity. Plenty of literature exists supporting the notion that a learning organization is the best model for
» Read more An article I read today by Rosabeth Moss Kanter over @HarvardBiz summed up what I believe to be the epitome of good management. In the article, Kanter states the following: “Good management is a series of well thought-through actions including phases, communications, checkpoints, customer-impact-testing, metrics, contingencies, and feedback loops, designed to produce specified results on time and on budget, based
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Management is inherently ambiguous. As a business leader, we make decisions throughout the day on a variety of matters. Issues arise through email, during a visit to our office or on a phone call, and our decisions impact the business, the people and the customers. Because of the impact, decision making is a particularly challenging aspect of management, and it is here where
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How to Hold Employees Accountable and Get the Results You Need Among the many challenges first-time managers and business leaders face, learning how to hold employees accountable is perhaps the most difficult skill to master. Holding employees accountable is essential because the results managers are expected to deliver depend on the performance and contribution of their individual employees. Thus, managers
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How Emphasis on Fundamentals Leads To More Successful Business I was recently working with a large multi-billion euro corporation that ranks high on the Fortune 500 list. Unlike small companies, this firm is publicly traded and has a stock price that has done very well for quite some time. In the eyes of investors, it had all the right chemical make-up of
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All things being equal, a manager who maintains a positive attitude, even in times of adversity, will get more out of their team than the manager who casts a shadow of negativity. In Tip #5, integrity was discussed as the standard to which good managers hold themselves. The next tip is often a byproduct of integrity – a positive, can-do attitude.
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Earlier in the Management Success Series, we talked about integrity and the importance of being honest and open with your team. But as we discussed, we as managers cannot always fulfill promises no matter how hard we try. And while integrity can remain constant, the business environment can be difficult to navigate. We as managers can make mistakes, and that’s what makes
» Read more How to Present Information to Your Target Audience We’ve all experienced it. We ask for an update and our employee who sits just three offices down writes you an email that takes them an hour to write, and you 20 minutes to read. Or, we get 4 attachments full of data and numbers that clog our inbox. The concept of audience is taught
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Using Business Partnerships To Fuel Growth When it comes to new markets and expanding your small business globally, you will likely face an uphill battle. You may struggle with start-up costs, you may have distribution challenges, and you may have gaps in knowledge of the specific market you target. These issues are difficult enough by themselves, but are even further magnified when
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