From Good to Great Manager – Part 5 – Knowing What Matters

Great managers know what matters. They know both what matters to the organisation (vision, values, goals, behaviours, strategy in action) and what matters to individual employees.  Their families’ names. Who is terrified of flying. Their favourite hobbies and interests.  Who has expressed interest in a leadership role. They take every opportunity to recognise and appreciate what [...]

PMN Partners With Doncaster CVS

The Progressive Managers’ Network is partnering with Doncaster CVS to launch the network in Doncaster. PMN offers bite sized, fiercely practical, management training to help you succeed. The first training event is free of charge so that you can try it without risk. Would you like to learn a management tool that is guaranteed to: [...]

Great Management Quote

“Great work is not about ergonomically styled offices in different shades of blue and green. It is certainly not about all the processes of human resource management. It is not about leadership – not leadership from above, anyway. It is not about technology. It is about kindling the inner human spirit that makes us the [...]

121s and the Return on Investment in Relationships

Tom Peters encourages managers to obsess on R.O.I.R – the Return on Investment in Relationships. Usually what has to be invested is not cash – but time. And the challenge is to invest that time effectively. For me, without doubt, the most effective tool for ROIR with employees is the 121. These are structured, documented [...]

Boom times or recession: It is all about people

However when the economy takes a downturn it is easy for the tyranny of the bottom line to ride rough shod over effective people development processes. As Gill Corkindale says: “People skills will be more important than ever as we head into the uncertainties of 2008. The threat of recession, global credit squeezes, and political [...]

How to Motivate Your Problem People

Everyone has motivational energy. Everyone acts in ways that they believe will make things better for them, their loved ones or the wider community. Even problem employees are driven and committed — it is just that the direction or nature of their drive and commitment is not recognised or valued in the workplace. In trying [...]

Does your workforce have the right skills?

Currently ‘Skills’ within the workplace is high on the government agenda. Funds are filtering down into regional ‘pots’ that have been allocated to support the up-skilling of the nation’s workforce. David Lammy, Skills Minister commented, ‘Yorkshire and Humber has the highest proportion of low skilled workers in the country because its traditional manufacturing industry could [...]

The Limits of Lean?

Earlier this week I went to ‘An Evening with Simon Hill’. Drawing on his experience of manufacturing industry and Yorkshire Forward, Simon Hill, Executive Director of Business at Yorkshire Forward talked about strategic business improvement using ‘Lean Principles’. Simon chose not to offer a quick reminder of what these Lean Principles are – leaving a [...]

Good Boss Behaviours

As part of a training session on Managing Your Boss I recently asked a group of managers to think about what their best managers did that made them so good.  I got lots of the usual labels (passionate, visionary, inspiring etc) and had to work quite hard to explore what they actually did that made [...]

Better Time Management in an Instant!

Time management has been on my mind for a while now. Early last year I re-read Druckers’ Effective Executive – the second chapter of which, ‘Know they Time’, is devoted to time management. I recommend it highly! For the vast majority of managers that I work with making significant improvements in their time management is [...]