The Manager's Resource Handbook
Tools, Resources and Guides for Managers and Business Leaders. Real Advice from Real Bosses.
Examples and Tradeoffs of Different Performance Metrics in Business Metrics are a core component of any small business that is looking to grow and strengthen over time. If there is one thing that holds true for any performance measure, however, it is that metrics drive behavior – good or bad. Deciding what to measure is of utmost important because no
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How To Create Your Management New Year’s Resolutions Welcome to a New Year! The beginning of a new year offers the closest thing we ever get to a fresh start as a manager, allowing us to recalibrate expectations of ourselves and our employees. It also marks a great time for business leaders to set the next 12 months off on the
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When I first started managing people, I used to think the idea of setting performance goals was, well, rather silly. I just thought that employees were responsible for doing the work assigned to them and completing tasks in their queue. That was how my own bosses had approached employee performance, so I just thought that was normal. Fortunately, it did not take
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10 Management Decisions That Drive Business Success Making financial decisions is not limited to just those managers who work in the Accounting department. For both small business and large corporations, whether we realize it or not, every manager and business leader makes decisions on a daily basis that affect their organization’s costs, finances and performance. We at MRH like to refer
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Managing and Mentoring The Leaders that Work For You We recently posted an article about the art of mentoring, which primarily centered on coaching junior staff who are just beginning their careers. We wanted to go further into the topic of mentoring, but focus on a different group. As your career advances, your organization gets larger. Eventually, you get to
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How Great Businesses Fail and What We Can Learn From Them We all know that there is one constant in the business world: things are always changing. Every day, there are new technologies, legislative decisions and geopolitical events that shape the world around us. The pace of such change continues to accelerate, and throughout it all we see businesses come and go. How, in such
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Every manager has that first day on the job. And no matter how many years of work experience he or she may have, most first-time managers quickly realize they have a lot to take in. (We’ve all been there!) As we learn, we are bound to have our screw ups, it’s normal. The good news is that we can always
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18 Things To Do As a First Time Supervisor Great job! You’ve moved up, and now you have entered the world of management! Your first 6 months as a new boss can be eye-opening, to say the least. There’s a lot to learn, a lot to do, and you need to set the tone for your new organization early on. And what about all
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Writing SMART Goals for Employees (With Examples) A colleague once told me “I have a really important goal in life…I want to climb Mt. Everest, someday.” While he was absolutely serious in his demeanor and spoke at length about why he wanted to do it, the short conversation revealed he had never done any climbing before. Further, he had hardly done research into
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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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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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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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Learning How a Simple Game Makes for Better Business Have you ever played that children’s game of sliding tiles contained within a frame? Most of you probably have. But for those who have not, the objective of the game is to place the pieces in a specific order, perhaps arranged by color or number. What most people don’t know is
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Setting Goals in a Matrix Organization Must Centralize Purpose Ever feel like you’re on an island in the office? You know, everyone seems to be battling for their own needs and there’s a constant demand for your help, but rarely an offer of assistance in return? If so, it is a classic example of what happens when a business gets sloppy
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Every year, companies establish goals and objectives for their business. Some firms may plan further out – as far as 5 years – in order to obtain a certain sales targets and other corporate metrics. Unfortunately, many businesses stop there and lack a strategy for how they will actually achieve the goals. As a result, the lofty numbers on the
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How to Change the Culture of a Team Two years ago, I took the management role for an organization of about 40 people. My predecessor had been asked to leave the business as the team’s performance had gradually been on the decline. My task was to turn the team organization around – no small feat as an outsider to the organization
» Read more I recently sat through a regional meeting for a large corporation, during which a series of presentations were made. At the conclusion of the meeting, the regional manager got up to share a short set of slides that were presented at the annual corporate summit she had recently attended. The company has been undergoing a series of transformations
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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
» Read more 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
» Read more How to Grow Your Small Business We recently worked with a small company to assist with their business development struggles. The CEO described his company’s situation as “able to perform well when we can actually get in the door.” The company employed about 20 employees and worked in the IT services industry. MRH conducted an evaluation of the business, focusing
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