Business Meeting Tips from 5 Literary Greats

King Lear and Satan offering advice on how to have more effective business meetings? No kidding – there are tips in here from five places you never would have looked. And I’ve seen most of them work in real life!

Managing Remotely: A Few Tips for “MBO+”

Management By Objectives (MBO) was popular not long ago, and has been updated to include a different perspective. It’s not about managing people anymore. It’s about managing the agreements for “performance” in a network designed to achieve a goal. Find out more about “performance” right here.

It’s Not About Resolutions, It’s About Management

Management is not just for people who have a department or team to oversee. We can add it to our personal lives as well. That way, we get some energy from seeing that we are moving in the direction(s) we choose and accomplishing what matters to us. And it’s pretty simple!

Want a Successful New Year’s Resolution? Try Management (Recipe Enclosed)

Want to make a New Year’s resolution that you’ll really keep this time? Maybe put this pandemic to work for you? Use the basics of “results management” to keep yourself on track.

Workers Don’t Just Work – They Also Know How to Think!

Empowering individuals and teams in the workplace is not just about pumping their self-esteem. You can make a toolkit available to support them in productive conversations and improving their abilities to collaborate, plan, test and implement organization processes, changes and solutions.

Management for Accomplishment, 1-2-3: Here is Step Two

Step Two in “Managing for Accomplishment” is Managing for Production: setting up the structures and agreements that establish (a) success metrics, (b) a workable performance network (you’ll learn what that is if you don’t already know) and (c) agreements for coordination and communication in that network. Without this, production is delayed due to missteps – the reason so many projects exceed their timelines.

Management for Accomplishment, 1-2-3: Here is Step One 

Step One on a group task or project: Get people aligned on (a) What needs to happen, (b) Who’s who, and (c) How it relates to its external environment’s rules and requirements.

Managing Performance – From a Distance

Managers are familiar with their own “performance circle” for getting their Departmental or Group goals accomplished. If their “goal team” is now scattered, with members working in different places or at different times, it is time to train those people to see what a manager sees.

Manager Tip: Clarify What You Really Want in Every Work Request

Managers are expected to have other people “produce results” as well as to “develop” them and their performance. Here’s an easy way to get both at once.

The Management vs. Leadership Debate

It’s time to stop the “leaders are special people” conversation and pay attention to what is actually happening throughout the hierarchy of organizations. Putting a halo on the people at the very top, or on people of certain “types” or “styles” is not useful. Management is necessary and valuable, and managers are worth hearing, honoring and supporting.