My previous posting asked, “Are you a bad boss?” I then offered a number of bad boss behaviors (poor emotional control, indecisiveness, micromanaging, etc.) for your consideration. Well, I apparently missed a few. I have gotten some notes (from people, I assume, who are bad bosses themselves, who are recovering bad bosses, or who at
Are you a bad boss?
An old adage says, “People don’t leave their companies, they leave their managers.” There are lots of reasons an employee may leave a company . . . higher pay, better hours, shorter commute, etc. . . . but in many cases, a bad boss is in there too. Think about your own work experience and
Entrepreneurship by the numbers. How do you measure up?
The September 2015 issue of Inc. magazine is devoted to the “Inc. 500 – the 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America.” Over the next several postings, I’ll try to glean some wisdom from the leaders of the Inc. 500 companies . . . try to discern what they believe made them successful. But first,
“What crucial conversations are you not holding, or not holding well?”
Joseph Grenny is a New York Times best-selling author, a keynote speaker, and a social scientist who is passionate about good communication. More precisely, he is passionate about what he calls “crucial conversations” . . . those conversations that are necessary, but are so fraught with real or imagined danger, or carry so much emotional
Be decisive. Get focused. Take a nap.
Successful people have always been, and continue to be, studied, researched, and analyzed endlessly. Why? Because we want to learn what makes them tick. We want to find out what they do (or don’t do) that makes them more successful than the rest of us. I recently read two online articles, each describing a characteristic
Best Places to Work in Illinois 2015
As it has for the past 10 years, the Daily Herald Business Ledger has published a list of the “Best Places to Work in Illinois” for 2015. The “Best Places to Work” program is managed by the Best Companies Group (BCG) of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. BCG administers this program not only in Illinois, but in many
“At the end of the day, you bet on people, not strategies.”
The Filene Research Institute is a think tank aimed at helping credit unions find ways to operate smarter, more efficiently, and more effectively. An acquaintance of mine who manages a credit union shared one of Filene’s reports with me. The title of the report is “Attributes and Skills of Highly Effective Credit Union Managers,” but
“Networking is rubbish; have friends instead.”
I attended a meeting last week . . . the same one I attend every month. At this particular meeting, we began talking about networking events, asking one another what events we attend, which ones produce useful referrals, which ones do not, and so forth. In the context of our discussion, a “networking event” is
Outstanding organizations have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
Mission, vision, and values are the three legs of a stool we call “culture.” The leg we call “mission” is about purpose. It answers the questions, “Why are we here? What are we doing and why are we doing it? Who are we trying to serve?” Without a shared sense of mission, an organization is
Don’t manage change. Lead it!
In their book, “Blue Ocean Strategy,” authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne offer some advice for successfully introducing change. The advice they offer is in the context changing marketing strategy, but their advice is really valid for any significant change within an organization whether you’re making operational changes, organizational changes, policy changes, or other.
