People Are Our Greatest Cost – Honest Banker Shock!

You know when you hear a Chief Exec say, “People are our greatest…” and you are thinking yeah, yeah I know – ‘ASSET’. Except on the Today programme I heard the CEO of RBS (rumoured to be looking at 20000 redundancies) say, ‘People are our greatest cost’. Cognitive Dissonance or what! Life is complicated though.  [...]

Management Lessons from Frazer Irving

Had the privilege of attending my first Creative Networks event at Leeds College of Art.  Frazer Irving – a wonderful illustrator talked about his career – from which I took the following: the seeds of your future are often sown early just because it sells does not mean it is good – heroin is not [...]

Twitter and the Progressive Manager

Why should progressive managers engage with twitter? Well this post and video pretty quickly summed it up for me. http://tinyurl.com/b4enb5 Early days for me using twitter – but so far it looks promising! I am going to twittering some management tips and twitter about community based enterprise and how to develop it! Any of you [...]

The Joy Of HP Technical Support

Why do so many IT companies get the basics of customer service wrong? I have been buying HP gear for a long time.  I have always found it to be expensive (well not cheap) but reliable and robust. Recently an HP desktop PC refused to start up.  I rang technical support as the machine was [...]

Could 121s be good for you too?

The modern world of virtual social networking and relationship through e-mail could be bad for your health.  And more face to face communication could be the antidote – according to Dr Aric Sigman writing in Biologist, the journal of the Institute of Biology. According to Dr Sigman we have NEVER spent less time in face [...]

The Advantage of Social Enterprise

Rob Greenland over at The Social Business has written a piece about how the ‘table’ that social enterprise has fought so hard to get a place at has collapsed.  I am assuming Rob means the table where policy is thrashed out and funds are allocated. The high political table. The table of the bureaucrats and [...]

Autofocus Time Management System

This looks like it might well be worth a try.  Upsides – simplicity, low cost. Potential downsides – not going to work well to develop ‘To Do’ lists for specific environments. Video is about 9 minutes and needs sound. Or you can just check out the website – with some really simple getting started instructions [...]

Ten Steps to Better Management

Step 1: Clarify, negotiate, and commit to your role as manager. Many management jobs will have changed priorities in response to the current economy. Check with your manager that you are doing what is best for the organisation. Check with your conscience that you are doing what is best for you and your team. Check [...]

Managing for an Entrepreneurial Culture

Organisations fall somewhere on the spectrum between bureaucratic and entrepreneurial. The bureaucratic end of the spectrum is characterised by control, compliance and dependence.  Dependence on the boss to come up with the right plan at the right time. In the bureaucracy we do as we are told.  In the bureaucracy advancement comes from compliance and [...]

Performance Management, Performance Reviews and Appraisals

I was asked by a manager yesterday to help to clarify the difference between performance management and appraisal.  I don’t think I did a great job  so I thought I would try again! Performance management is a system with four parts: Specify the desired level of performance for the thing you are trying to manage [...]