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!

Prevent a BIG Management Mistake

What causes worry, stress and anxiety in employees? Unclear job requirements. Here are a few suggestions for improving employee job ownership and satisfaction by creating clear performance agreements.

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.

One Manager is Probably Enough. Two is Likely More than Enough.

Matrix management is dead? Nope – some people are dealing with two managers, as if one wasn’t enough. There are problems with that, of course, outlined here with a few solution ideas too.

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.

The Future of Work – It’s Not All Bad News

Two new views on how to organize workers and give them more opportunities for independent thinking and innovation are summarized in two articles – and these ideas are beginning to change workplaces. Especially as more workers are working at home, the idea of having them operate as “responsible adults” (as one article says) is changing the work of managers. We hope they are listening.

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

All three steps – Alignment OF the people, Production BY the people, and Accomplishment FOR the people – are needed for effective management. Drop out one step and you are likely to diminish or prevent the alignment, the productivity, and the accomplishment. Management isn’t difficult when you break it down to what you want: the people engaged in their work, the job done well, and the real-world satisfaction for all in its accomplishment.

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.