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Three Great Hiring Habits I Learned from a Remarkable Manager

Jun 9, 2011

One mis-hire can poison the workplace pond, tarnish your reputation and impact your team’s/firm’s ability to execute. Do this a few times and your mistakes will likely knock you out of the hiring game and potentially into the cozy confines of today’s crowded unemployment lines. Unfortunately, the average manager isn’t very good at assessing talent and making the right call. Here are three great hiring habits I learned from a remarkable sales manager:

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Hold It! Don’t Accept that Job Offer Until You Consider These 5 Points

Jun 1, 2011

A good friend brought me up to speed on her career challenges recently, and after listening and empathizing with the unfortunate events that led to the recent job loss, I asked her what she had learned in the process. Her response included some good nuggets of hard-earned wisdom that we can all benefit from. Here are 5 points to consider before jumping In to that cool new job:

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Management Excellence Toolkit: Better Design for Workplace Discussions

May 23, 2011

Getting to a good decision on big issues is challenging. Navigating the discussions leading up to a decision however, often resembles something on the difficulty of slogging through the Amazonian jungles in search of a mythical lost city made of gold. If you survive the process, you are bound to come out a very different person. It doesn’t have to be so hard.

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Trust, Performance and Your Success

Apr 28, 2011

Much of who we are and what we do in our professional lives is built on an unforgiving foundation of trust. Trust is hard earned and those bestowing trust do so slowly, carefully and tentatively, all the while testing for reasons to pull back and guard this precious personal asset. True trust is rare in the workplace. It’s also critical for high performance.

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The Millennial View-Don’t Be: “Young & Distracted”

Mar 22, 2011

Millennials love communication and technology. It’s one of our greatest strengths and it gives us an invaluable skill to present to employers and teach to others. Sometimes stories surface on Millennials who become easily distracted with this talent causing them to lose focus on what really matters – their careers.

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Management Excellence Toolkit-Part 4: Improve Your Estimating and Forecasting Effectiveness

Mar 16, 2011

Your decisions define you as a leader and a manager, yet we spend very little time in our busy lives finding ways to improve our abilities in this area. This Management Excellence Toolkit Series will help you recognize the challenges and pitfalls of individual and group decision-making and offer ideas on improving performance for you and your co-workers. In this segment, I focus on the issues surrounding forecasting and estimating errors, and I offer a number of ideas to improve performance for these important activities.

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Management Excellence Toolkit-Part 3: How to Frame Your Decisions for Success

Mar 9, 2011

Your decisions define you as a leader and a manager, yet we spend very little time in our busy lives finding ways to improve our abilities in this area. This Management Excellence Toolkit Series will help you recognize the challenges and pitfalls of individual and group decision-making and offer ideas on improving performance for you and your co-workers. In this 3rd Part of an on-going series, we tackle the issue of properly framing issues to improve idea generation and decision development.

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Management Week in Review for March 4, 2011

Mar 4, 2011

Every week, I share three thought-provoking management posts for the week. Fair warning: I take a broad view of management, so my selections will range from leadership to innovation to finance and personal development and beyond. This week’s selections feature content on reinventing management, the strategic and practical implications of upgrade plans for consumer electronics products and some guidance on improving our decision-making by better utilizing outside advisors. Enjoy!

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Management Excellence Toolkit Part 2: Mind the Decision Traps

Feb 16, 2011

Part 1 of this series emphasized the importance of developing, updating and referencing a Decision Journal as part of your program to improve your decision-making effectiveness. In Part 2, we focus on understanding a bit more about how we make decisions, and I introduce the topic of decision traps.

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Management Excellence Toolkit: Part 1-Create a Decision Journal

Feb 9, 2011

Your decisions define you as a leader and a manager, yet we spend very little time in our busy lives finding ways to improve our abilities in this area. This Management Excellence Toolkit Series will help you recognize the challenges and pitfalls of individual and group decision-making and offer ideas on improving performance for you and your co-workers. In Part 1, I offer guidance on creating a Decision Journal for key and strategic decisions to monitor your effectiveness over time.

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