How to Handle Lateness – It’s Everywhere!

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People, assignments, resources – lots of things show up late. We can do something to turn it around, or, if not, lateness will become a cultural fixture.

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Training for Accountability: First Things First

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On-the-job training should focus first on what people will be accountable for producing and/or delivering. You can add the secondary matters of importance after they are clear about what counts most.

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The Manager’s Golden Rule: Make Production Goals Visible

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Humans aren’t always wired up to Get Things Done. In the swirl of daily life, we need a way to remember which things really matter.

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How to Deal With a “Do-It-My-Way” Person

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Ever have someone try to tell you the Right Way to do something when you’ve already made up your mind what to do? A few ideas on how to end those conversations, and maybe prevent their arising again.

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Explaining Goals & Strategies is Not Enough: Bridging the Vertical Disconnect

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Top executives, middle managers, supervisors, and worker-bees: they live in different worlds and have different purposes. How to create better alignment? Here’s an idea for a productive framework of communications.

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We Want Employee Engagement – But… Engagement in What?

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Employee engagement means communicating what you want them to be engaged in. What is the goal they are working toward? Are they making progress? What is the “accomplishment of the month”? If people are disengaged at work, it’s a clue that there’s not much available to engage in.

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Preventing Change Fatigue: Burnout is Expensive – Communication is Not

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People stop paying attention to an overload of changes at work – unless you take the time to debrief the progress of the change now and then. It begins to look like a swirl of pointless activity until someone says, “Hey! We cut our backlog in half!” Or, “We just saved X dollars on transportation and distribution!” Closure conversations are worth mastering.

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Developing People & Managing Performance… With Meetings? 

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Do team meetings “develop people” as well as 1-on-1 meetings? Opinions differ, as different managers approach “performance management” in their own way.

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Servant Leadership vs. Management

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A friend asked me about “servant leadership”. So I looked it up. No thanks. I’ll stick with managing agreements and engaging people in accomplishing our goals and projects.

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Why Do Some Managers Ignore Poor Performance?

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The work of managing performance is simple and specific. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to make time for that work, or that it is the most fun part of a Manager’s job. But it IS part of the job.

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