The War for Talent – and the option for pacifists!

Another copy of People Management drops onto the doormat and once again I am reminded about the potential for Human Resource Management to help negotiate the credit crunch.  My favourite piece of advice -  ‘Look for ways of saving money without laying people off’! – Just wrong in so many ways.  How do ‘membership magazines’ [...]

How Not to Inspire a Green Revolution – or anything else

I awoke this morning to hear the following rallying(?) cry on the Today Programme: ‘We need nothing short of a green revolution…if we are to hit European targets on climate change’. I didn’t catch the speakers name – but the last reason that we need a green revolution is to hit European targets. In fact [...]

Management is a Team Sport

I get to work with a lot of businesses.  Some of them are successful.  Very successful. And all of the successful businesses have one thing in common – a successful management team with diverse talents.  Between them they are able to produce a great product or service, market and sell it brilliantly and have in [...]

Making Progress in a Mature Team

I came across a particular challenge recently working with a public sector manager who led a pretty high performing team. The team which is pretty mature and stable were acknowledged to be doing a good job – but the manager was finding it hard to find ways to further improve performance. One of the challenges [...]

Whack a Mole Management

If you have been to one of my training sessions there is fair chance that you have heard me rant about whack a mole management. Whack-a-mole is an arcade game in which you try to hit ‘moles’ that pop up randomly on a board using a rubber mallet. Every time you hit a mole, you [...]

Why Managers Fail

This is the title of an interesting blog post by Lisa Haneberg – author of High Impact Middle Management – which has much to recommend it. She offers a top 5 list of reasons why managers lose their jobs: Fail to build positive and trusting relationships. People don’t like working for him or her (micromanagement [...]

121s, Covey, and Priority Management

Another reason why 121s are so powerful dawned on me this morning.  And it relates to the Stephen Covey Priority and Time Management Quadrants shown above. 121s almost compel you to focus on quadrant 2 type activities. Quadrant 1 stuff has to be done almost immediately- it can’t wait for a 121.  And who is [...]

Affirming Feedback and Praise

I meet a lot of managers who confuse praise with affirming feedback. Affirming feedback is a tool used to: make someone aware of a specific behaviour or action that they have taken, understand specifically the positive nature of the impacts of that behaviour or action, increase the chances of further examples of that behaviour or [...]

10 Ways to Make Your Employees Love You

This is the title of a great blog post written by Alison Green.   Now I am not sure that we necessarily need all employees to love us but I bet that her list (which I have paraphrased below) contains some insights and clues into how most of us could become MUCH better managers. Don’t shout, [...]

Top Quote

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Antoine de St. Exupery What are you teaching your team? Really?