Management

Customer Relationship Management Software

2010-11-13T20:32:00.000-08:00

By Syed Ali

A small business competitive advantage has always been the ability to react and respond far faster to business conditions than a larger organization. Some consumers actually prefer to deal with a small business because they have a perception of a more personalized “better” service than from a larger company.

They are in some cases, prepared to pay a premium for that service. One reason for this is that in a smaller business, the decision makers are closer to the customers and have a more direct link to the trading pulse.

For short term decision making, this “intuitive” feel for what is actually happening gave managers and owners the ability to make decisions such as dropping a stock item, identifying a buying trend long before their counterparts in big business or simply physically being there to give a customer a refund if they have an issue. Many providers of customer relationship software, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, have recognized that there is a market for this solution across the spectrum of businesses.

As technology has taken hold and information is flying around faster and faster, larger businesses have been able to respond to market conditions much more rapidly and this small business “competitive advantage” has been eroded over time. Using technology, big business has been able to develop and deploy Customer Relationship Software solutions at a huge cost, way beyond the means of small to medium sized companies.

Traditional reporting methods always had a major fault – they were out of date by the time they got into the hands of whoever needed the information. They look back at what has happened but they do not give you “what is happening now” information.

Customers increasingly expect that their suppliers will know who they are and what their needs are, while those staff in customer facing roles will want to know what a customer is talking about when they call to say “We didn’t get our delivery yesterday as promised!” At this moment it is not only the customer that is demanding a better service, it is the poor customer representative wishing they could deal with the customers issue and have the information to make a good decision.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM takes the view that a good decision in this context means one that the customer likes and brings them back again!

If a customer service representative who has never had contact with the customer before can say something like “We dispatched it to you as promised with FedEx but we’ll chase them up and call you back right away.” Does that not go a long way to mollifying an otherwise irate customer? What does that do for your business relationship with that customer?

Consider which business you as a customer would be happier with; a company that resolves your issues with a “We’ll get back to you when we know what’s happened” after you call to find out why your delivery didn’t turn up or one that contacts you beforehand to say “We did send this out to you yesterday but we are calling you to say it will be late because our delivery truck was struck in traffic, it is on the way though and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

This is what a Microsoft Dynamics software solution can deliver – the ability to be forward thinking, to be proactive and not reactive to customer situations so your customers see and feel they are getting a good, if not exceptional service.

A customer perception of a business is largely based on how well they believe they are taken care of after they purchase your product or service. With a Microsoft CRM software solution there is an opportunity to enhance your business image and reputation in the minds of prospects and consumers by ensuring that everyone in your business is in a position to deal with customer issues promptly, effectively and knowledgeably whether they are initial enquiry, pre-sale, delivery, or post-sale issues.

As the market for Customer Relationship Software solutions has developed, scaled down versions of enterprise class CRM solutions have been developed specifically to meet small and mid-range business’ needs and their check books. Implementing a Microsoft CRM solution in a small or medium sized business empowers them to recover the competitive advantage differential they have by natural reference to their size and proximity to their customer base. Out goes the rolodex and in comes the networked PC, and now a customer can be tracked from being a prospect, through to becoming a qualified sales opportunity to order and from there on as a valued business customer. At the same time everyone within that business can access the information when they need it (usually when the customer is on the phone), whatever they are doing, sales, dispatch, customer service or management, and wherever they are, at Head Office or on the road with a cell phone and laptop.

About the Author: Syed Ali, is the lead CRM consultant for a Toronto based company. His company offers, http://www.crmsoftwareprovider.com, Microsoft CRM Syed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email :asyed@cqsolutions.com

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Why Do Almost All Projects Run Late?

2010-11-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

By Samuel Okoro

Activities classed under the term project are so diverse that it is sometimes difficult to appreciate commonalities among them. For example, social activities like the organisation of parties, picnics or weddings are projects. Construction work like building a bridge, developing a housing estate, power plant construction, expansion of a fibre optic network also constitute projects. So do producing a movie, developing software, launching a marketing campaign for a new product, implementing an ERP system or the relocation of a family from one city to another.

For each of the examples mentioned above, the following hold true:

The objective is a unique, non-routine outcome.

The effort required to achieve the outcomes desired is temporary. That is to say projects have a start and finish date. This is in contrast to operations which are ongoing. The non-routine nature of projects accentuates the impact of uncertainty. In spite of the many unknowns, executors of the project must make three commitments at the outset. These are commitments as to content or scope, commitments as to delivery date and commitments as to cost.

In spite of these commitments, the existence of a rich and detailed body of knowledge on how to manage projects, and the availability of purpose-built project management software tools, almost no projects are delivered on time. Unless there are major trade-offs in content and/or cost. Why is this the case?

Enter the human factor.

Project Time Estimates

The uncertainties involved in projects mean that time estimates used for planning are just that, estimates. What does estimate mean? It means that the time given for each project task is an average number. But wait a minute. Using truly "average" figures for time estimates would mean that chances are fifty-fifty that the task will be completed early or late. No one will give an estimate that has a fifty percent chance of failing.

So what actually happens is that the estimates are padded to account for uncertainty. The level of padding depends on how badly the estimator has been burned in the past when he/she provided inadequate "cover".

In addition for padding provided by each task performer, there is also an overall padding by their boss. For example if three resource persons working on various tasks in a project estimate 5 days, 7 days, and 3 days as their respective task completion times, will their manager report an estimated completion time of 15 days to his own boss? Highly unlikely. He most probably will offer 20 days and only very reluctantly allow it to be negotiated down to 18 days minimum.

If as described above, project times are already padded from the start (through padding of each task and further padding at each level) how come most projects still end up finishing late? There are two psychological mechanisms at work that thwart individual attempts to protect the project against uncertainty and cause all the safety provided to be wasted.

Student's Syndrome

At the conclusion of a lecture, a professor informs students that they will be taking a test on the material taught in one week from today. What is the typical reaction of students? They will protest that they are not ready, that the time is too short... If the professor relents and gives an extra two weeks for preparation, do students immediately begin to study for the test? They do not, if they are typical students - until the night before exam.

In projects, having padded the time estimates, resource persons will typically delay (probably busy working on things unrelated to the project) to the latest possible moment before commencing work on the project task. And while they're working Murphy strikes. Since the extra time was already consumed by Student's Syndrome, the task is finished late. The next dependent task is forced to start late.

Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's law states that work expands to fill the time available for it. What is the implication for completion times of project tasks? Assume that a particular task estimated to take 7 days actually is completed in four days, does the performer deliver it to the next resource person? Not likely.

Because the time estimates given are negotiated numbers, reporting an early finish of a task means that future estimate given by the project worker will be trimmed by the manager. To avoid this possibility, rather than report early task completion, the worker is likely to spend the extra time performing checks and adding nice to have "bells and whistles" not strictly required by the specifications.

Result? Extra time gained is wasted.

Integration Requirements

In most projects, the final stage is an integration of the outputs of several previous paths. Assume in a particular project that the final stage is the integration of the results five paths. Assume again that the time estimates for each of these five paths is such that there is an 80% chance of on time completion, what is the change that integration will commence on time?

For the integration to commence on time, all the five paths must be complete. The chance that one path is completed on time is 80%. The chance that two paths are finished on time is 80% X 80% which is 64%. The chance that four paths are finished in time for integration is 64% X 64% or about 40%. The probability of all five paths being finished in time for integration to commence is about 33%! More likely than not, integration will commence late. Considering that in real life, projects are far more complex and integration will typically involve far more than five paths, it is no wonder many projects fall victim.

Multi-Project Environments

A further killer of time in multi-project environments (software development companies, construction companies, engineering departments) where more than one project is going on simultaneously and resources have to be shared between the projects, is multitasking.

The resulting lack of focus, combined with constant "set up" requirements leads to late delivery of all the projects being worked on.

Conclusion

We have shown that original project time estimates are padded to protect against uncertainty. However, a combination of Student's Syndrome and Parkinson's Law lead to a frittering away of the enormous safeties embedded in the estimates.

In addition the need for integration in most projects, and the incidence of "bad" multitasking in multi project environments lead to added delays, virtually guarantee that projects are delivered late.

About the Author: Samuel Okoro is the CEO of Leapfrog Alliance Ltd, a management training and consulting firm that helps organisations to reduce costs and improve quality through better business processes. His personal passion is to help move Third World business to world-class levels. For further details please visit http://leapfrogalliance.com

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What Is Performance Management?

2010-11-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

By Trevor Marshall

Nowadays, a great significance is being given to Performance Management, as companies incorporate them in their effective management strategies. However, a lot of people find this process a complicated one, mostly because of the many options that it offers – on the organization, a specific department/branch, a product or service, and on employees, among others.

In order to minimize this confusion, the items below will give you a general idea of what Performance Management is all about as well as the activities that are involved in this process.

What is Performance Management?

Performance management is a process that provides both the manager and the employee (the person being supervised) the chance to determine the shared goals that relates to the overall goals of the company by looking into employee performance.

Why is it important?

Performance Management establishes an outline for employees and their performance managers to assess and to come to an agreement on certain concerns and aims that are in accordance with the overall structure of the company. This enables both parties to have clear objectives that would help them in their work and in their professional growth.

Who conducts Performance Management?

Performance Management is carried out by those who oversee the performance of other people – work/team leaders, supervisors, managers, directors, or department chairs.

What are the processes involved?

Below are the phases of the Performance Management process:

1. Planning

This phase of Performance Management process includes establishing job descriptions and identifying the employee’s essential functions as well as defining the strategic plan/s of the department or the company as a whole.

Job Description

A job description is used to advertise a vacant position, which typically specifies the following:

- The specific functions, tasks, and responsibilities of the position - The amount of time needed to act upon each function - The qualifications needed (skills, knowledge and abilities) to perform the job - The physical and mental requirements of the position - Salary range for the position - To whom the position reports

Job descriptions should be disclosed to the employee as soon as he or she is hired. Note, however, that job descriptions are listed using words that make it difficult to measure the employee’s performance. They are in contrast with competencies, which list the skills needed in performing such tasks and are described using terms that can be measured.

Strategic Plan

In effect, a strategic plan tells you three things:

- Where the company is heading in the coming year/s. - How the company is going to get there. - How the company will know if it is already there or not.

Included in a strategic plan are the following:

Mission statement – the primary reason why your department (or company) exists.

Goals – associated with the mission statement, they determine the results that will advance said statement/s.

Strategic initiatives – specifies definite steps that must be taken to accomplish each goal. It is a dynamic process, usually examined during periods such as one or two years.

2. Developing

This phase of Performance Management process includes developing performance standards, which offers a scale that describes how a specific job should be performed in order to meet (or exceed) expectations. They are explained to newly hired employees and are later used to evaluate work performance.

Performance standards are generally outlined with the help of the employees who actually perform the tasks or functions. There are a number of advantages with this approach:

- The standards will be suitable to the requirements of the job

- The standards will be applicable to actual work conditions - The standards will be easily understood by the employee (and performance manager as well) - The standards will be acknowledged (and received) by the employee and the performance manager

Standards of performance are usually in the form of ratings (1 to 5, A to E) that are used by performance managers to rate the employee’s actual level of performance.

3. Monitoring

This phase of the Performance Management process includes monitoring employee’s work performances and giving feedback about them.

As the basis of feedback, observations should be verifiable: they should involve noticeable and work-related facts, events, behaviors, actions, statements, and results. Feedback of this type is called behavioral feedback, and they help employees improve and/or sustain good performance by precisely identifying the areas that the employee needs to improve without judging his or her character or motives.

4. Rating

This phase includes conducting performance evaluations. This is the critical aspect of the Performance Management process, especially because it is important for performance managers to arrive at an unbiased assessment.

A performance appraisal form has the following features:

- Employee information - Performance standards - Rating scale - Signatures - Employee performance development recommendations - Employee comments - Employee’s Self-appraisal

Why conduct performance appraisals? It provides an opportunity to improve performance in the future not only for employees, but for managers as well. Performance appraisals enable managers to acquire information from employees that will help them make employee's jobs more productive.

5. Development Planning

This phase of the Performance Management process includes establishing plans for improved employee performance and development goals. This advances the overall goal of the company and at the same time increases the quality of work by employees by:

- Encouraging constant learning and professional growth. - Helping employees maintain the level of performance that meets (and exceeds) expectations. - Improving job - or career-related skills and experience.

In closing, Performance Management is a process that, when executed fairly and effectively, can improve the quality of the company’s workforce, raise standards, increase job satisfaction, and develop professionalism and expertise that would benefit not only the employees but the entire organization as well.

About the Author: For more great performance management info and advice check out: http://www.performance-mngt.com

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Different Types Of Business Management

2010-11-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

By Naz Daud

Business management combines an interesting mix of theory and practice, and it is a particularly good topic for management and entrepreneurial types to study. Finding a business management style that suits your personality and the nature of your business is both important and worthy of time investment, as being self-aware and being able to identify strengths and weaknesses of various approaches will enable more effective personal development and ultimately more effective management.

While many have their own individual business management styles, these are traditionally broadly categorized into three main classes of business management approaches.

Autocratic Management

Firstly, there is what has come to be known as the autocratic approach to management, which installs more trust in the leadership as opposed to the individual staff. This involves pulling rank and leaves employees in no doubt as to whom the management is or what decisions are being made. Rather than engaging employees within the decision making process, this business management style typically concerns businesses that require direct, effective leadership to produce results, often under pressure of working in a tough environment. Upon hearing the term autocratic, many tend to visualise a dictatorial approach to management. While that is perhaps the case, it is seldom as strict as this and it is often a necessary management style, for example in the armed forces or in a high-paced trading environment, where there is no margin for deliberation and group consideration.

Democratic Management

Alternatively, there is a business management style known as the democratic style, where employees are effectively engaged in consultation before decisions are made. While some consider this to be more motivating and more enjoyable to work under, it does nevertheless have its own disadvantages. Giving employees a say may undermine the authority of the management, and may ultimately cause inefficiencies in the decision making process. It is also time intensive, and perhaps not as effective in larger organisations with thousands of employees. While of course at a board room level this kind of decision making goes on everyday, it’s one that works most effectively in slower paced business where decisions can be fully deliberated and considered.

Laissez Fair Management

An alternative to those two business management styles and the third main category is what’s known as the laissez fair management style. This is by definition a more hands-off approach to management, which puts the trust of running the business within the hands of employees themselves, and allows a greater degree of autonomy than would otherwise be the case. While this is strong in creative industries, some business people find that this style of management can lead to a fragmented approach to doing business and is less organised and perhaps less professional.

Whichever business management style you liken yourself to; there are advantages and disadvantages of that approach. What’s important is not that you recognise which of these categories you fall under, but rather that you’re aware of the improvements that can be made to make your management more effective and efficient while also improving the relationships you share with employees at all levels of the organisation.

About the Author: Naz Daud - CityLocal Business & Franchise Opportunities http://www.citylocal.co.uk/ http://www.citylocal.co.uk/frontend/franchiseinfo.php?cityid=79 http://www.citylocal.ie/ http://www.citylocal.co.uk/cities/Dundee/news/article/921/ http://www.citylocal.co.uk/cities/Dundee/news/article/922/

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Surveys Are A Very Effective Management Tool

2010-10-31T00:37:00.000-07:00

By Martin Day

If your perception of conducting surveys is that they can be a useful exercise but are too time consuming to prepare, cumbersome to deploy and require considerable resources to process the numerous responses into a meaningful report it is perhaps time to think again.

Online surveys turn what was once a time consuming, resource hungry, cumbersome process into a low cost, quick, easy exercise that delivers real-time reporting.

Ease of Design

Out with the word-processor, now there is a quick and easy way for almost anyone to create surveys using a simple menu system that allows surveys to be created in minutes and with the ability to add additional questions and modify and move existing questions around.

Ease Of Delivery

Once a survey has been created it is deployed through the internet or organisations intranet making it instantly available to anyone with access to the internet.

Ease of Promotion

There are a number of easy ways to invite respondents to participate in a survey such as sending an email that contains a link to the survey or linking to the survey from a suitable website.

Ease of Participation

Online surveys don't just make it easy for the publisher as most respondents find that, when compared against the traditional pen and paper survey, completing a survey online is quicker and easier and from the publishers point of view a lot less prone to mistakes such as respondents missing out questions or multiple responses being entered against single response questions.

Ease of Survey Management

With an online survey the publisher can see in real-time the response rate and summary results.

Ease of Analysis

At the end of the survey the response data is ready for detailed analysis, the information can be loaded into a spreadsheet or third-party analysis program where the respondent data can be sliced and diced.

Appreciating the Ease

Once the ease of the total life cycle of conducting a survey online has been appreciated by business managers they will begin to recognise the multitude of new opportunities that exist.

The costly annual employee satisfaction survey can now be done quicker and cheaper allowing the exercise to be conducted bi-annual or quarterly ensuring any employee problems are identified and dealt with early. There is also now an opportunity to conduct smaller and more targeted ad-hoc surveys on a departmental level or a niche area of the business improving employer/employee communications.

A survey can be used to help deliver a management message and measure the employee support and concerns of introducing new initiatives, something a simple one way memo style directive cannot do.

Survey's can be used as a marketing tool as the survey explains the benefit of a product or service and gathers the response from potential customers.

ROI today

Technology too often delivers better ways to perform certain tasks but with a Return on Investment that often requires 'investment' first and the 'return' later. Many of the available online survey services such as www.surveygalaxy.com have not only turned a cumbersome task into a cinch, but reduced the cost down to a pinch, giving you a return on investment from day one and opening up a world of possibilities and further savings.

With the opportunities that online surveys bring it is a tool the smart manager will always have to hand in their personal tool box.

About the Author: Martin Day is a Director of Survey Galaxy Ltd a web site that allows anyone to create, design and publish online surveys. For more information please visit http://www.surveygalaxy.com

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What Is The Productivity Management System�?

2010-10-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

By Heidi Richards

“Success is about deciding what’s important versus what’s irrelevant in your life; it’s about self-motivation, self-discovery, self-confidence and enjoying the rewards of achieving your goals.” Heidi Richards

This is part three in the PMS - Productivity Management System™. This is your to-do list of processes and steps you must take in order to fully realize your goals. Once you have crystallized exactly what it is you wish to accomplish, it is important to know which steps you must take and in what order so you will set yourself up for success.

Action begins with proper planning. Writing down the tasks you must take to achieve your goals (step-by-step) will help you to be a success in the areas of your life you focus on.

Set reminders and deadlines. Schedule deadlines and reminders in the same way you schedule appointments and celebrations. Use a calendar, daytime planner or a contact manager software program to help you schedule the tasks and deadlines for each.

By now you should have filled out thePMS/GPS - Productivity Management System™ for Goal Planning and Setting chart to help you to put your total plan together. If not, you can download it at http://www.speakingwithspirit.com/freearticles.asp.

Think in logical order - each major step should support the next step in succession

Be specific - write out the objectives in as much detail as it takes to fully understand what needs to be done

Set a deadline for each major objective you must complete

Break down each major task into smaller tasks with shorter deadlines.

Review your goal plan regularly. Perhaps the most important step in the goal management process is reviewing your goals. For most people, the most common reason for failing to achieve goals is omitting the review step. Reviewing your goals keeps them fresh in your mind, and keeps you motivated and focused on what is important. Review also allows you to make adjustments and change your goals when necessary. One of the best ways to review your goals is to look at your goals chart daily, see what steps you need to take and “do it!” Putting the goal in the forefront of your consciousness, makes you think about it often. It helps you to better manage your time.

Remain flexible. Plan for flexibility and change. Be ready to change course when and if necessary in order to accomplish your goals.

Be willing to sacrifice small things for the bigger, nobler accomplishments. Be patient. Incubation time is often necessary in order to attract the right events, resources and people who can help you to achieve your goals.

Reward yourself. When you accomplish a goal, celebrate! Reward yourself in ways that make you feel good about your accomplishments. When you do, your subconscious recognizes the positive reinforcement and tells you that if you did it once, you can do it again.

What do you expect out of life? By now, you should be able to answer that question by taking and use goal setting to power your life. Now you know the steps you need to achieve your goals. Using the PMS - Productivity Management System™, you can and will increase your opportunities for a more meaningful life. When you plan your goals, create and manage your plan of action and visualize your success, you will do whatever it takes to become a master goal achiever! Dream big, and believe that almost anything is within your reach. Because it is!

The article is based on the PMS – Productivity Management System™ a system that was developed to help you set and accomplish your life’s goals. When you join the Women’s ECommerce Association, International, you get the complete system including the PMS/AST™ Action Steps and Tasks Chart – based upon the steps referenced in this article. Go to www.wecai.org – Basic membership is FREE.

About the Author: Heidi Richards is the author of The PMS Principles, Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business and 7 other books. She is also the Founder & CEO of the Women’s ECommerce Association, International www.WECAI.org (pronounced wee-k+) – an Internet organization that “Helps Women Do Business on the WEB.” Basic Membership is FREE. Ms. Richards can be reached at Heidi@speakingwithspirit.com.

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10 Ways To Be a Better Manager

2010-10-24T01:28:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=M_James]M James

If you're a manager who is struggling to reach deadlines, have ever increasing targets that are harder to reach, and unproductive staff, then perhaps the problem isn't with everyone else, perhaps the problem is you.

Here's how you could be a better manager

1. By being better at communicating with your staff, you'll be able to make sure that they understand what you want from them, and they need from you. You'll also know when a phone call, email or visit in person is most suitable, and most effective.

2. You want your workers to be more productive. How are you going to achieve this? Do you need to shout at them, force them to work late, or take away privileges? Or will you do as much as you can to help them, and get your hands dirty too?

3. If you workers are more productive, are they also more efficient? Perhaps you can make them more productive by removing red tape and other things that might be slowing them down.

4. What about improving your time management? Could you make better use of your days? Do you need to travel to all those meetings? Do you need to read every email the moment it arrives in your inbox? How much of your workload could you realistically delegate?

5. How are your people skills? Do you take criticism well? What do you staff really think about you? How often to you talk with other departments, suppliers or customers in order to try and make things quicker and easier for all concerned?

6. How much value do you place on staff training? Should your staff know everything they need to know before they start? What about as and when the industry or technology changes? How can they best help you?

7. Are you open to advice and ideas from your staff? Have you tried implementing any schemes, and how can you make them effective? What about going back to the floor, and spending some time actually working with your staff, and seeing the obstacles that they come up against?

8. Are you good at spotting and dealing with staff issues? Are people late because they are lazy, or because they have problems at home? What about colleagues that just don't get on?

9. Are you making the most of technology? What about for communicating with people in different offices, or in different countries? How much of your production line can you automate, or manage with technology? What about laptops, or smartphones for your field based staff?

10. Why not invest in a management training course? It will teach you lots of skills, and even if you've been a manager for years, you're sure to learn something that will help you be a better manager.

Now you know how to be a better manager, what's stopping you from taking a Management Training Course today?

Find out more about the benefits of a Management Training Course, and see how Sales Training can help your workforce, at SalesTrainingIntl.com today.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-You-Can-Be-a-Better-Manager&id=3261110] How You Can Be a Better Manager

5 Ways For Leaders To Communicate Change And Achieve Positive Outcomes

2010-10-21T06:03:00.000-07:00

By Marcia Xenitelis

I am often asked about the role of the CEO or leader of any organization in employee communication. My opinion is that no matter what the issue is, even if it is just business as usual, having a good communicator as a CEO is critical to impact the culture of an organization in a positive way.

Lets start with looking at some scenarios. These can include a merger or acquisition, an organizational crisis, announcement of annual financial results, corporate social responsibility or even trying to create a culture of innovation.

My contention is that no matter what the issue, here are 5 ways that your CEO can communicate with employees and achieve positive outcomes each time. Most of the methods listed below involve face to face dialogue to ensure the greatest engagement.

1. Staff Forums – Otherwise known as “Town Halls” these are opportunities for the CEO and Senior Management team to visit employees in all locations and address the real issues and concerns of staff as well as communicating the big picture. Employee communication tips include handing out cards to attendees so that the questions can be addressed after a break in proceedings, tailoring the presentation in part to the unique situation in the particular region the CEO is visiting and following up any issues that cannot be answered at the time.

2. Site Visits – These are an excellent employee communication tool for the CEO to find out specifically from the frontline exactly what the issues and concerns are of a particular region or department. The key is not only to spend time with the leadership team but also to sit with employees and find out what they are working on and inviting them to suggest innovative ways of doing things differently. CEOs' rarely spend time communicating with employees and this is one way to break down perceptions and encourage two way communication.

3. Employee Achievement – Another way the CEO can communicate change is to support and encourage employees personally for their achievements. These maybe directly related to the issue at hand and by taking time out to recognize high achievers or change agents it sends a strong message to all employees that the CEO will reward those who support and are engaged in the change agenda.

4. Leaderships Forums – One of the smartest things an CEO can do during times of change is to communicate with his / her leadership team. I have always found that employee communication strategies need to be pitched at different levels and with different strategies to suit the role and expectations of the employees. When we think of change it is the leadership team that will drive it, from regional managers, state managers to frontline supervisors it is important that the CEO communicates face to face with the leadership team to be very clear about his or her expectation of them during times of change. One employee communication tip here is that face to face one on one meetings be held with the direct reports to the CEO and the next level down; it is a very powerful tool and has maximum impact.

5. CEO Blog – Finally where would we be if we did not mention some form of technology driven communication tool. A CEO blog is very effective if it is used to support and report on the transformation process whilst the employee engagement strategy is underway. For example the CEO has one on one meetings with the leadership team, he / she then reports in the Blog on the key messages and expectations. The CEO begins visits to each region and reports back on the Blog the key observations and achievements of employees and so on. Employee communication tools to inform are always a back up and support to the real communication taking place, the employee communication engagement strategies as listed in points 1 – 4 above.

The methods suggested above also achieve another goal often neglected in employee communication. As this is the opportunity for the CEO to find out what people at all levels of the organization really think about a particular issue, it will cause the CEO to think differently next time about the importance of employee communication and will ensure that change communication is addressed at the planning phase of any major organizational change.

About the Author: Marcia Xenitelis,a recognized authority on employee communication & business transformation has spoken at conferences around the world. For more information on types of employee communication strategies you can implement to engage employees visit http://www.employeecommunicationtips.com

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The Five Functions Of Management

2010-10-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

By Jon Slocum

You may have used the word ‘management’ thousands of times at personal level in the context of leading a hassle-free life. Today this term is used at commercial level too. It has entered all spheres of human life and its popularity has reached an unavoidable stage. This can be accounted with the needs of the present socio-economic structure of every society. Management has been in great practice in the recent past though it is true that earlier it was practiced at a very subtle level. Now it has become a profession and one of the most over-rated characteristics in the economic sector. At personal levels also management has become an essential virtue. This is the reason that more people are taking tips to manage their life with efficiency and pleasure. It cannot be denied that all this has happened for betterment as significant progress is witnessed in all the economic sectors as well as personal domain.

In economic terms, you can describe management as the process of leading and directing all the parts of an organization or a business. It is basically done through an analysis and application of recourses (human, financial, strategic and intellectual). Management is an art to get things done correctly at right place and on right time. You can realize management as a very intrinsic quality that needs to be displayed with confidence at various extrinsic levels. There are many organizations, institutes and consultancy firms that offer management studies, training and tips. However, it entirely depends upon your observation and learning ability to make the best use of the studies. Following guidelines with discipline is a key factor in growing as a good manager. There can be nothing better than self coaching and it can only be accomplished when you are confident of yourself.

Management is a skill that is polished through regular practice and up-gradation. Understanding of the situation and determining the advantages and disadvantages is a primary task in management. An experienced manager will listen to suggestions and find a well-thought solution to some issues or problems. Management is also an art of balance between personal thoughts and influencing factors. Apart from personal management, every other form of management has to be directed towards group interest. Here lies the success of a manager and organization as a whole.

It would be beneficial to know that there are five functions of management. They are planning, organizing, leading, coordinating and controlling. You can understand that there is a need of dynamism for effective management. All these functions are directed towards the six separate branches of management that are categorized to facilitate the studies and application of management. Human resource, Operations management, Strategic management, Marketing management, financial management, and Information technology management

The one who manages various departments is called a manager. Every person is not blessed with this art of management but he or she can be a better manager with a disciplined approach towards learning management. Managers are responsible for all the planning and application of strategies. In an organizational set-up there is a hierarchy of managers who take care of all the management activities within and outside. CEO (he/she is the topmost authority responsible for the success and failure of the company. Sitting at the top of any management, every policies and activities pass through a CEO. Understanding the work of a CEO can give a complete insight to a management activity. Vice president, marketing (he or she is responsible for marketing strategies, advertising, promotions, sales, product management and pricing), Marketing managers and Promotion managers follow the footsteps of a CEO.

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Knowledge Management Processes

2010-10-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

By Lucas Rodríguez

Knowledge processes cannot be managed following the standard business process management paradigm. In the following article some guidelines are given for organizations willing to better manage their knowledge processes.

In the last few years a lot has been written about Business Process Management, and about technologies supporting it such as BPMS, SOAP and Web Services. Most of these theories, tools and techniques refer to processes of a highly structured nature.

Typically, BPM theorists and practitioners have focused on highly structured processes, like back-office processes of industrial or administrative nature. These processes are highly standardized and repeatable, produce a consistent output and are likely to be automated in part or end-to-end (STP). All process instances are executed in a very similar way and it is easy to draw a flowchart detailing the sequence in which tasks are executed. It is also possible to formalize the business rules that guide decisions, normally based on the evaluation of some process variables.

But recently other kinds of processes have caught the attention of process management specialists. They are known as knowledge processes, or knowledge-based processes. Knowledge processes can be defined as "high added value processes in which the achievement of goals is highly dependent on the skills, knowledge and experience of the people carrying them out". Some examples could be management, R&D, or new product development processes.

Knowledge workers carry out these processes by taking into account multiple inputs (generally a wide set of unstructured data and information) to perform difficult tasks and make complex decisions among multiple possible ways of doing the work, each one implying different levels of risk and possible benefits. They are dependent on individuals and it is not possible to automate them.

One example of a knowledge process is "Marketing a new product". The same steps are followed each time a new product is launched (benchmarking competitors, deciding pricing strategy, planning promotion, etc...), but it is the experience, knowledge and intuition of the people that drive the process to success.

- Multiple inputs to the process exist - Some of them would be competition, lifecycle stage of the market, brand image, budget, etc... - Complex decisions are made - There are many possible ways to achieve the process objectives (reach planned sales, leverage brand image, etc...) - Each decision implies different levels of risk and potential benefits - It is the responsibility of the worker to choose the best one (low price strategy, aggressive advertising campaign, etc...)

There are three main characteristics that make knowledge processes different from highly structured processes:

- Focus is on communication instead of automation

The key to process improvement is to clearly communicate process definitions (the way in which the company wants the processes to be carried out) to the people in charge of their execution (through training, process descriptions publication, etc...). The better process participants understand the process definition, the higher the probability that the process is carried out according to it.

- They are better implemented through obtaining buy-in than through imposing directives

They are more difficult to implement through discipline than administrative human-centric processes (although some discipline is needed). It is better to focus on obtaining buy-in from the people affected by the processes through early involvement, communication and expectations management. It is a known fact that knowledge workers are reluctant to change their habits. Some say knowledge workers don't like following procedures because they feel it limits their creativity; but most of the time they will be happy to follow a procedure as long as they see value in it, perceiving that it helps them work better and produce a better process output.

- Process definitions are high level descriptions instead of rigid workflows

Processes can only be defined up to a certain level of detail, and it is difficult to provide low level work instructions or to automate decisions. Because they cannot be formalised in detail, process simulation is rarely possible. Decisions are highly subjective and too complex to be expressed in a formal language, as they are taken based on intuition and not on rigid business rules.

It is extremely important to continuously improve knowledge processes, by creating an environment through which they can evolve. This can only be achieved through coordination of diverse disciplines such as knowledge management, change management, expectations management, etc... It is crucial to establish an adequate process context (the combination of technologies, procedures, people, etc... that support the processes). The process context must incorporate feedback mechanisms, change evaluation procedures, process improvement methods and techniques and must be flexible, in order to be able to incorporate enhancements in an agile but controlled way.

If the process is instantiated frequently and the instances are homegeneous, it is possible to create great process models that dramatically increase the efficiency of the process. The best way to ensure process improvement is to generate an environment in which people are motivated, enthusiastic and passionate about process management.

Most of the time, knowledge processes are collaborative. By performing a process collaboratively it is possible that each task is carried out by the most specialised, experienced and knowledgeable worker in that specific area.

Having a net of relations within the organization is a very important asset for people executing knowledge processes.

In the last years some organizations have emerged with the aim of creating professional communities around specific disciplines such as Software Development (SEI, ESI, etc...), Project Management (PMI), Business Process Management (BPMI), IT Service Management (ITSMF), etc... One of the objectives of these groups is to develop a body of knowledge that compiles the discipline's best practices in the form of reference frameworks, methodologies and maturity models. These assets should be considered by any organization interested in knowledge process management.

It is usual that knowledge processes take the form of projects to manage their execution. If the output of the process is a unique product, managing work as a project will result in obvious advantages.

There are certain guidelines that can help an organization willing to improve their knowledge processes:

- Provide process description on how to approach work

Try to figure out the best way to carry out a knowledge process, by making the best practices existing in your organization (or in your industry) explicit. Publish process definitions in a format that is easy to consult and understand.

- Provide tools that facilitate and standardize work

Decide which tools are best to help knowledge workers carry out their work. Involving all affected knowledge workers in the process of deciding which tools will be used is very convenient, in order to obtain user buy in. It is a good idea to choose a champion for each tool who will master its use.

- Assign owners to processes

Choose a person with leadership skills and the appropriate level of responsibility and influence and make him/her accountable for continuous improvement of the process. Give him/her a clear objective to achieve and an incentive to reach the goal.

- Encourage feedback for process improvement

To ensure that the flow of information between executors and the process owner is fluid, encourage people to contribute to process enhancement through incentives. Use your imagination to reward contributors (consider not only monetary incentives).

About the Author: Lucas Rodríguez Cervera is founder of Nevant – Process documentation software a company specialized in delivering process solutions to knowledge based companies. They pioneered this concept with metoCube. http://www.nevant.com

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Innovation Management � The Importance Of Failure

2010-10-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

By Kal Bishop

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.

There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that investment in developing and commercialising those ideas will not be wasted.

However, one of the most important aspects of the above process is dealing with failure. This is important as most innovation attempts result in failure and many, many more ideas require reengineering, remodelling or rethinking before they can tread the path to success.

There are a number of benefits of failure, including:

a) Valuable competencies are learned. Ridley Scott had a commercial failure with Blade Runner but went on to make some of the most successful films of all time.

b) Valuable customer needs are established. Often user needs are inadequately analysed but come into sharp focus when a product is in market and not selling.

c) Technical competencies are established. A firm may learn exactly what technical deficiencies it has when a product fails to materialise in the desired form.

d) Cultural or emotional obstacles may come into sharp focus. The metric system is not used in the USA but dominates throughout the rest of the world.

These topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http://www.managing-creativity.com.

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

About the Author: Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached on http://www.managing-creativity.com.

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Managing Innovation � Some Ideas Are More Successful Than Others

2010-10-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

By Kal Bishop

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.

One of the useful methods of valuing ideas is to compare the type of idea with those types of ideas that have previously been most successful.

Franklin (2003) notes that some kinds of ideas are more successful than others. He notes six types:

a) Need spotting – involves actively finding an answer to a problem.

b) Solution spotting – involves finding a problem for a solution.

c) Market Research – ideas generated as a result of market research.

d) Random event – moments of serendipity when people stumble across answers they weren’t looking for.

e) Mental invention – pure random ideas with no previous knowledge of how they may be implemented.

f) Trend following.

Of these, the random event was the most successful (92.9%) with least failures (7.1%). However, this type of idea requires previous knowledge or experience on some level – for example, an individual who has worked in an environment previously may utilise that tacit knowledge to solve a problem that becomes evident later.

Very close to the above is solution spotting with an 87.5% success and a 12.5% failure rate. Again, this idea type requires previous knowledge: the innovator consciously seeks a problem to apply that knowledge to.

Kal Bishop, MBA

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Five Easy Steps To Become A More Constructive, Productive Human Being

2010-10-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

By Cole Carson

Procrastination, lack of motivation, disorganization – they get the best of all of us sometimes, and keep us form being as productive as we should. Sometimes we sit back and look at things and wonder how on earth we’re going to get them done, or what we can possibly do to make ourselves more efficient. The good news is that it’s actually very simple to be a productive, efficient person. All you have to do is know how to get started – once you do, the rest will come to you! For this reason I’m going to give you five easy steps to become a more constructive, productive human being.

1. Make sure that you are very aware of the things you need to have done. Everybody knows the most important aspect of productivity is the end result. Becoming a more productive person starts with recognizing what you want to get done and what needs to be accomplished. And this could be anything, from jogging an extra mile to starting up your own business. Just make sure that you know what your goal is. You can’t take on something you can’t see, and you can’t accomplish any goal that isn’t clear in your mind.

2. Now that you have your goals in mind, write them down. It may seem like a waste of time, but this is significant. Three things commonly prevent people from reaching their goals: They either can’t recognize what needs to be done, they can’t keep track of what their goals and what all they need to get done, or they tend to procrastinate. We’ve already dealt with the first problem, and now we’re tackling the second. When you write your goals down, you fortify your commitment to them, and you also have something you can refer to in order to make sure you don’t become distracted or confused.

3. Now for procrastination. Let’s not kid ourselves – it’s really simple to get distracted when it comes to our responsibilities. Often we can’t help but think of the things we want to do instead of what we need to do, and unless there are severe consequences for delaying our tasks, it’s easier to indulge in pleasure than in work. How do we solve this? First, make sure not to overwork yourself. Give your project everything you have, but make sure not to push yourself too hard. If you do, the work it takes to accomplish something begins to seem less and less desirable, and the urge to procrastinate grows stronger. Instead, set yourself to a loose pattern of work and pleasure. Make a commitment to work certain times, but make sure to schedule in time for the things you enjoy doing. If you aren’t missing out on the things you like to do, you aren’t as likely to avoid your responsibilities for them.

4. Of course, once you’ve got a list of your goals, you have to actually start working toward them. Obviously this requires a certain amount of self-discipline and will on your part; and no article here will make that happen. But I can offer you a good piece of advice. I like to think of an old Chinese proverb that says, “It does not matter how slow you move, so long as you do not stop.” This is a very wise and important piece of information to take note of. – Make sure to get something accomplished each and every day. - No matter how big or small. Getting in the habit of getting things done is a great way of keeping up productivity.

5. Make sure to take note every day of exactly why you’re aiming for these goals. Nobody has a goal without reason, and the rewards these goals bring motivate us. Why is it you want that big promotion? Maybe it’s to buy that beautiful little sports car, or to not have to worry so much about financial problems. Think about these throughout your day; keep in touch with the things that motivate you. These are what will keep a person moving forward even when they thought that all of their will was gone. A motivated person is incredibly powerful, and is often able to complete anything they set their minds to.

There is not actually much distance between success and failure. Often, the only differences between the two lie within your attitude and your planning. Make your commitment and take it seriously, and make a schedule that you can live with which won’t cause you to become over-burdened. Make sure you keep your project moving forward, and never forget the reasons that you started in the first place. Keep all of these in mind, and you will be amazed at what great feats you can accomplish.

About the Author: Cole Carson is a successful entrepreneur and network marketer. He specializes in the fields of nutrition, motivational literature and coaching, and sales and marketing. Goji Health Juice is the most incredible nutritional discovery! - http://www.goji-dog.com

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Best Practices In Project Management

2010-09-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

By Simon Buehring

As both an active project manager and a project management trainer, people often ask me what are the fundamental aspects to successful project management. Whilst there have been many great books written on the subject, I always summarise what I believe to be the best practices at the heart of good project management.

Define the scope and objectives

For any project to be successful you need to understand what the project is supposed to achieve. Suppose your boss asks you to organise a campaign to get the employees to donate blood. Is the aim of this to get as much blood donated to the local blood bank? Or, is it to raise the profile of the company in the local community? Deciding what the real objective is will help you to determine how you go about planning and managing the project.

The project manager also needs to define the scope of the project. Is the organisation of transport to take staff to the blood bank within the scope of the project? Or, should staff make their own way there? Deciding which activities are within the scope or out of scope of the project has a big impact on the amount of work which needs to be performed during the project.

An understanding of who are the stakeholders is also crucial if you are going to enlist their support and understand what each person expects to be delivered from the project. Once you've defined the scope and objectives, you will need to get the stakeholders to review them and agree to them as well as agreeing who should be on the list of stakeholders.

Define the deliverables

To achieve the desired outcome from the project, you must define what things (or products) are to be delivered by the end of the project. If your project is an advertising campaign for a new chocolate bar, then one of the deliverables might be the artwork for a newspaper advert. So, you need to decide what tangible things are to be delivered and document in enough detail what these things are. At the end of the day, someone will end up doing the work to produce the deliverable, so it needs to be clearly and unambiguously described.

Once you have defined the deliverables, you will need to have the key stakeholders review the work and get them to agree that this accurately and unambiguously reflects what they expect to be delivered from the project. Once they have agreed, you can begin to plan the project. Not defining the deliverables in enough detail or clarity is often a reason why projects go wrong.

Project planning

This is the time when you define how you will achieve the desired outcome of the project embodied within the objectives and definition of deliverables. Planning requires that the project manager decides which people, resources and budget are required to complete the project. You will need to decide if you will break up your project into manageable phases, decide which products will be delivered in each phase, and decide the composition of your project team. Since you have already defined the deliverables, you must decide what activities are required to produce each deliverable.

You can use techniques such as Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) to help you to achieve this. You will need to estimate the time and effort required to complete each ctivity, dependencies between related activities and decide on a realistic schedule to complete the activities. It's always a good idea to involve the project team in estimating how long the activities will take since they will be the ones actually doing the work. Capture all of this into the project plan document. You also need to get the key stakeholders to review and agree to this plan.

When developing the project plan, a project manager is often under pressure to produce a plan which meets the (unrealistic) expectations of some of the stakeholders. It is important here that the project manager comes up with a realistic schedule - one which he/she thinks is realistic to achieve. You will be doing nobody a favour if you succumb to pressure and agree to deliver the project in a totally unrealistic schedule.

Communication

Even the best made project plans are useless unless they have been communicated effectively to the project team. Everyone on the team needs to know exactly what is expected of them, what their responsibilities are, and what they are accountable for.

I once worked on a project where the project manager sat in his office surrounded by big colour print outs of his latest plans. The problem was, nobody on his team knew what the tasks and milestones were because he hadn't shared the plan with them. Needless to say the project hit all kinds of problems with people going off and doing the activities which they deemed important rather than doing the activities assigned by the project manager.

Tracking and reporting project progress

Once your project is underway and you have an agreed plan, you will need to constantly monitor the actual progress of the project against the planned progress. To do this, you will need to get reports of progress from the project team members who are actually doing the work. You will need to record any variations between the actual and planned cost, schedule and scope.

You will need to report any variations to your manager and key stakeholders and take corrective actions if the variations get too large. There are lots of ways in which you can adjust the plan in order to get the project back on track (rearrange the order of tasks, assign tasks in parallel if the variation is small, or add more staff to the project or reduce the scope if the variation is very large).

All projects require the project manager to constantly juggle three things: cost, scope and schedule. If the project manager increases one of these, then one of the other elements will inevitably need to be changed as well. So, for a project which is running behind schedule to recover so it can be delivered to it's original planned schedule, the budget might be increased by employing more staff (although this invariably never achieves the desired result of reducing the time left to complete the project), or the scope will need to be reduced. It is the juggling of these three elements - known as the project triangle - that typically causes a project manager to tear their hair out in frustration!

Change management

All projects change in some way. Often, a key stakeholder in the middle of a project will change their mind about what the project needs to deliver. On projects of longer duration, the business environment has often changed since the start of the project, so assumptions made at the beginning of the project may no longer be valid. This often results in the scope or deliverables of the project needing to be changed. If a project manager simply accepted all of these changes into the project, the project would inevitably be delivered late (and perhaps would never ever be completed) and would inevitably go over budget.

By managing changes, the project manager can make decisions about whether or not to incorporate the changes immediately or in the future, or to reject them. This increases the chances of project success because the project manager controls how the changes are incorporated, can allocate resources accordingly and can plan when and how the changes are made. Not managing changes effectively is often cited as a major reason why projects fail.

Risk management

Risks are any events which can adversely affect the successful outcome of the project. I've worked on projects where some of the risks have included: staff lacking the technical skills to perform the work properly, hardware not being delivered on time, the control room being at risk of flooding in a major thunderstorm and many others. Risks will vary from project to project but it is important to identify the main risks to a project as soon as possible and to plan the actions necessary to avoid the risk, or, if the risk cannot be avoided, to at least mitigate the risk in order to lessen its impact if it does occur. This is what is known as risk management.

Do you manage all risks? No, because there could be too many to manage, and not all risks have the same impact. So a simple way is to identify as many risks as you can, work out how likely each risk is to occur on a scale of 1 to 3 (3 being the worst), estimate its impact on the project on a scale of 1 to 3 (3 being the worst), then multiply the two numbers together.

The result is the risk weighting. A high risk weighting is the most severe risk. Just manage the top ten risks i.e. the ones with the highest risk weighting. Constantly review the risks and constantly be on the lookout for new risks since they have a habit of jumping up at unforeseen moments.

Not managing risks effectively is also often cited as a major reason why projects fail.

Summary

So, in a nutshell, these best practices are the main things that I would expect all project managers to do. They are applicable on all projects big or small. Project management is not rocket science. Applying best practices on your project cannot guarantee that your project comes in under budget, on time and exceeds all the expectations of the stakeholders, but applying them will certainly give you a much better chance of delivering your project successfully than if you don't apply them on your project.

About the Author: Simon Buehring is a project manager, writer and trainer. He works for KnowledgeTrain which offers project management training courses in the UK. Simon has extensive experience within the IT industry both in the UK and in Asia and can be contacted via the KnowledgeTrain website at: http://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/

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Performance Management - The Importance Of Recognition

2010-09-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

By Chris Herrmann

Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria. Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager: pays attention to their work provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop judges their performance objectively

Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.

Appraisals

Traditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet their boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis. Your appraisal form is "the" document that is held on file as a record of how good, bad or indifferent you might have been. For some, this may be the only time in the year that they receive plaudits and even these may be guarded comments because of the close link in everyone's mind between appraisal and pay rise despite repeated denials. Too much praise might raise expectations of a large pay increase. Poor performers, however, frequently receive far more than their fair share of management attention throughout the year.

If paying attention to our employees is one of the greatest motivators, when did we decide that high performers need less motivation than poor performers? Of course they don't! Many of the top performing companies in the world have introduced regular coaching and mentoring sessions to supplement the appraisal system and to give all employees a regular, sometimes fortnightly, opportunity to talk about their job, their performance against their objectives, their motivation and their aspirations.

Coaching

Often you can see situations where managers act as spectators. Their behavior plus the words they use along with their body language would not be out of place at a soccer or baseball match. They would be sitting in the stands eating a hot dog, throwing down a beer and belting out criticism at the players (their staff) on the field. There is almost no connection between the manager and the staff other than they just happen to be sitting in the same building.

This image is used to point out the profound difference between the 'manager as coach' and the 'manager as spectator'. A coach works individually with players, helping them to overcome setbacks and obstacles to progress forward. They know and understand how their players respond to different types of motivation and how their family life and health impact their performance.

The majority of coaching is done on a very frequent basis. You simply don't wait for the big match to deliver your advice to the team in the way the 'manager as spectator' does. You work very closely with everyone in the team, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your defense and your strikers before they are tested under pressure.

About the Author: Published by http://BoomerangAwards.com. Empowering business using technology and an ancient primeval technique to create a new employee recognition and reward program. Obtain your FREE report "20 Tips To Running Successful Recognition And Reward Systems" at http://www.BoomerangAwards.com

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The Job of Management

2010-09-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

By Benedict Smythe

So, after years of working as an employee, you are finally a manager in your own right. You definitely want to perform your tasks well, and are already keyed up for optimum performance. But how do you start?

Management is different from being an employee

First off, you have to realize that the days of working at your old tasks are over. A management position requires a whole new level of skills that are very different from what you might have been used to in the past.

Some of these skills involve the following:

Good Planning

Much of your tasks will involve charting courses, laying down policies, and setting goals. This means that you will not be receiving tasks like you did before, but will be assigning them.

Be discriminating

With the bulk of your experience, you should now be able to know the potentials and the limits of one person’s performance, and what might be properly considered as “achievable” goals. Make sure to pick goals that can be realized or achieved, and set a reasonable time limit. Nothing is more irritating or frustrating than goals that are beyond deadlines or simply cannot be met.

Once you’ve done this, start planning in greater detail what should be done, over specific increments of time in the process of achieving those long-term goals.

Organizing

Next, identify the resources available to you for achieving your goals. Maximize those resources which you do have, and plan for the acquisition of others which you might not currently have.

The ability to maximize the resources available to you involves, first off, the identification of possibilities. What can you use to accomplish which tasks? Which person would be best to perform certain tasks and duties?

Next, take good care of the resources available to you. Take good care of the people working for you. Make sure that they are sufficiently motivated so that they perform at their best. Minimize inter-office politics and conflicts as best you can, acknowledge and reward well-performed tasks.

Take care of equipment and materials necessary for your goals. If you need hired skills for cleaning or maintenance, then do so. Sometimes they can even be less expensive than eventually having to replace destroyed and irreparable equipment. Moreover, factor in these expenses early on.

Leading or Motivating

This appropriately involves your adeptness in human relations. If you were once engaged in personal politicking or even backbiting, now’s the time to stop. Nobody likes a manager who gets embroiled in personality politicking.

Instead, it would be best to devote your energies towards affirmative motivational behaviour. That is, acknowledge and encourage fruitful and creative efforts, diffuse conflicts by good and rational communication, lay down appropriate standards in the beginning, and be clear to people that you expect those standards to be met.

Controlling, monitoring and evaluating

Check against your initial plan constantly. Are you making good progress? Are there areas where you would have to adjust your initial expectations? Are there areas where you can afford to raise levels or standards of performance without jeopardizing the overall performance?

Evaluate areas of concern and work to rectify insufficiencies or mistakes. Consistent and periodic evaluation can help prevent greater mistakes later on.

About the Author: Benedict Smythe recommends PDL Courses for training in most professional skills including assertiveness skills and Supervisory Management skills http://www.pdlcourses.co.uk/ http://www.professionaldevelopment.ie/

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Brainstorming Session Issues

2010-09-20T04:54:00.000-07:00

By Kal Bishop

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.

One common method in the problem identification and idea generation phase is the use of brainstorming. In fact, it is not unfair to say that whenever managers have a problem to solve, they are likely to herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct (usually an ineffective) brainstorming session.

There are a number of reasons why people hate brainstorming sessions. Further, there are a number of reasons why proper brainstorming management yields superior results.

a) Brainstorming dilutes ideas. Many individuals who think that they may be onto the something find that their ideas become diluted as a result of compromise.

b) The sum of ideas produced by individuals acting alone is greater than the sum of ideas produced by those individuals acting in groups. Thus proper brainstorming management includes asking participants to address the problem and generate ideas before the actual brainstorming session.

c) Large groups produce negatives such as groupthink, evaluation apprehension and status deference which causes people to shut down.

d) Idea generation is a cognitive process and relies on the team leader having the skills to elicit that cognitive activity from individuals. Often team leaders are assigned that role for other reasons.

e) Large groups are often dominated by higher status and more forceful personalities, thus lessening the impact of other participants. Often team leaders do not have the skills to manage all people.

Kal Bishop, MBA

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The Role of an Effective Management Team in Ensuring Success

2010-09-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

By Matthew John Williams

A team can be defined as grouping of individuals keeping in harmony to accomplish a common purpose. Each and every individual within such team is mutually accountable for the performance, approach and meeting of the assigned goal. The progress of any business is largely dependent on the individuals performing as a unit or team. Consequently the concept of an effective at the zenith of any organization has grown immensely popular over the years. The internet has also provided a global platform wherefrom any business organization can think of building an efficient freelance.

Any organization without a guiding or rather a managing body at the back is like a child without parents. The responsibility of any management team is to enforce discipline at the forefront because discipline itself is a virtue. A team not only generates a sense of unity among the individuals but also increases the overall performance with individuals operating as a single unit. From this point of view any organization should focus on at least employing a freelance management team if a full-time seems virtually unaffordable.

In order to build an effective management team it is immensely important to eliminate non-team behavior at the top. Implementing policies and corporate strategies are not the sole aim of any management team. Managers should not decide or exercise personal judgments over the members of the team. On the contrary a team that sets goal based upon the opinions and ideas from the associated members is the best example of its kind. Even a freelance wherein individuals might not be present in-person can prove to be a success on the basis of the team members being accountable for collective results.

A team comprised of members mixed effectively according to their individual skills can bring about maximum benefits for the organization they are working for. The team should be flexible enough to shift the leadership roles among the members according to the situation. Freelance management teams whose members are proficient enough in their particular domain and can simultaneously act as a unit is a great alternative for any organization which is looking for a low cost managerial assistance.

Whatever be the efforts that any management team puts behind to achieve any objective, it can fail until and unless the requirement of the then market condition is properly analyzed and plans are implemented accordingly. Even for a freelance management team it is essential to study the scopes and ascertain the nature of problems that may arise in the course of action. Therefore for the smooth running and for success or failure in broader sense, the role of an effective management team is undeniable.

Matthew Williams is the contributing writer of Freelancemanagementbank.com. He is specialized in writing articles about freelance management.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Role-of-an-Effective-Management-Team-in-Ensuring-Success&id=3254088] The Role of an Effective Management Team in Ensuring Success

How Important Is Time Management?

2010-09-13T01:09:00.000-07:00

By Raymond Le Blanc

With more and more demands falling on us all as we strive to meet the needs and demands of those that are important to us is should become very evident that proper time management is essential to meeting any goal or objective that we have. This is true whether we are talking about what is on our agenda for the day or for our life.

It may seem like an incredibly boring topic that one would not want to waste what precious time they have reading about it. Well, if you want to live a fulfilling life, one that you can enjoy and have the things that you want in, you better sit down for a few moments and read this article.

Time management goes beyond just managing time. It is about making sure that you are getting the most value you can out of your time and that you are using that time to improve your quality of life. What you need to do is become a master of time. By doing this you become the master to your life. Every moment of time you waste, is a moment of your life that you have just thrown away.

Proper time management is the foundation to all habits professional or personal. You must make a conscious decision that it is important to you that you plan your time, your life around what it is you want and or need to accomplish. Until you make that decision you are going to spend each and everyday feeling like you are falling farther and farther behind. Face it, there are only 24 hours in a day and you need to sleep. While technology is amazing they have yet to figure out a way to make our day longer then 24 hours.

The key to proper time management is priorities. Take the time right now to write on a piece of paper everything that you need to get done before you go to bed. Go ahead…alright, you have your list. Now take a moment and put a star next to everything that has to get done now, what are the most important things on the list?

Okay, if on your list you have more then one starred item take a moment and number those from most to least important. This is your list of priorities. I know that you have other things on that list, but all you are going to focus on right now is what you just said was the most important.

Once you have your priorities you need to know how much time each one is going to take. Just because you have your list doesn’t mean that life stops so that you can take care of them. Is there something on that list that has to be done everyday? Ok, set a time aside everyday, the same time that you can get that task done.

Remember the key here is not perfection. The key is that you are using your time in the most effective manner possible.

About the Author: Raymond Le Blanc is an author of several non-fiction books including one on time management & goal setting. http://achieving-objectives-made-easy.com

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6 Requirements For Making Organizational Changes

2010-09-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

By Arlyne Diamond

Today's rapidly changing technology, the economy's roller-coaster ride, the constant mergers and acquisitions among companies, upsizing, downsizing and resizing, and, of course, our country's response to terrorism have forced almost all of us to change, in some cases almost daily.

Adapting to new demands is an important mechanism for both personal and organizational survival. Individuals and groups that do it well seem to be more successful than those that resist and accept the inevitable slowly. But change is so difficult and is almost always resisted.

Many ingredients are required to move from the present to your organization’s desired change. The process takes time, vision, role modeling, symbols and benefits for all involved. During the necessary incremental transitional changes, motivators and training are necessary. The organization must create an environment that fosters new learning and behaviors -- that "persuades" employees to change.

6 Requirements For Making Organizational Changes In Individuals, Teams, Departments and Divisions:

1. Motivation is essential

Before your employees are really motivated to work at change, they must be convinced of the personal and professional benefits to themselves, as well as to their organization. In addition, management must realize that work will slow during the transitional process. Often temporary help must be brought in or overtime authorized to help get the more mundane tasks accomplished. Learning is often awkward, requiring a great deal of practice before new habits are automated. Practice, of course, means making mistakes and taking time to correct them.

Because of these factors, commitment is mandatory at the highest levels of the organization. Upper management in particular must create a clear, realistic vision. All too often, organizations develop vision statements that are too vague or idealistic. The vision must be something people can buy into. It must be "symbolized" with a theme, and it must have its champions at the highest level of the organization.

Once realistic themes have been developed, upper management must create a mission, goals and objectives specific to individual departments. Then management must sell these missions, goals and objectives to members of the various departments.

2. Procedural and cultural changes require working with the latest tools of persuasion, negotiation and learning.

Persuasion needs a user-friendly approach. User-friendly in this context means giving employees an opportunity to vent, to express their own ideas and to make mistakes. It means that managers involved in the process must remain positive and approachable, and have an encouraging demeanor.

At this point managers should coach and encourage rather than criticize or punish. Self-righteous, critical or condescending behavior will only frighten people back into their old tried-and-true behaviors. In helping employees adapt to new conditions, managers must not assume an “I'm right you're wrong” stance. Workers immediately will become defensive. Moreover, they will tune the managers out, become argumentative or passively resist the changes they're being asked to make.

3. It pays to reward success.

Remember, success builds on itself. By rewarding success, you will create internal champions from among those who are higher risk takers and more aware of the value of the new outcomes. They will become your role models and persuaders. Others will follow them more easily.

4. Promote changes with workshops

Part of the change process involves conducting teambuilding and management development workshops to promote change, get input on needs and work with different management styles.

Keep in mind that people respond better to workshop exercises that have "face validity" -- that is, whose content is related to the work people actually perform. The workshop should combine process and content. Participants must be encouraged to learn more about one another personally, and to build a level of trust. They should be given content-specific tasks to perform together. This will enable them not only to improve their actual working conditions and move toward the desired process or cultural changes, but also to work more effectively with each other in the future.

5. Launch the change management program

While smaller companies and organizations might be able to just dig in and start the process, in larger organizations it may be necessary to create some drama. Thus the firm might want to develop a large-scale kickoff program involving as many people as possible

This all-day affair should be exciting and motivational, and encourage the participation and ideas of all attendees, who should be provided with a means of ensuring their ongoing involvement in the process.

6. Alignment is necessary

Too often, alignment behind a company's goals, objectives, values and beliefs is taken for granted. This is a potentially fatal mistake. So starting from the top, the highest levels within the organization must agree on the values and desired cultural changes. Then they must communicate these and get a buy-in at other levels of the organization. You must ensure that the words and slogans being used have the same meaning across all levels.

When all is said and done, change can be exciting, and if managed correctly, it will be a vital component in the vitality and continued growth of your organization. So go for it!

About the Author: ArLyne Diamond, Ph.D. can help your organization successfully institute changes within your organization. For more free organizational change and growth tips that will help your business experience vitality and continued growth, go to: http://www.diamondassociates.net/articles

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Management By Walking Around - Recognizing Your Most Important Asset

2010-09-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

By William B. Piker

Your employees are your most valuable asset. Not only is it your employees who create your finished product or service but it employees who are the face of your business for your business or organization. Yet many employers feel that employees are easily replaceable - the system led assembly line style replaceable worker style of management. One worker is the same as the other it is reasoned up on the top floor. Replace on number or unit with another it’s as simple as that. “That replacement unit will be on the factory floor /order desk / car shortly”

Yet at the end of the day it is these dedicated workers – not upper management who produce the firm’s services, products and profits. When employees leave for a new employer the reason is seldom deals with money – salary and benefits, but rather with feelings of not being appreciated, or their talents not recognized and being used to full potential. In the end it all comes down to treating employees with the appreciation and recognition that they rightly deserve.

What are some of the traits and practices that an effective manager can utilize to handle these events and cut them off ahead of time at the pass? The key is pro-action not bolting the door and forming committees after the horse is long out of the barn.

First get out in the real world. Enjoy getting out from behind the desk, or the top floor and practice “MWBA”, that is management by walking around. There is nothing more instructive and insightful than actually seeing what transpires in the real world , customer’s concerns , the interaction of your employees with your customers and the functioning of your business in the trenches at the “front lines’. You may actually be amazed at how different it all is compared to what is presented to “head office”. As such you will have obtained a much better idea of your employee’s problems and perceptions and as well have obtained a better vision of the skill sets and attributes of individual employees.

Next in line is the power of appreciation. For jobs well done or events performed it never hurts to send a personal note- as opposed to a form letter. A personal note – especially a handwritten note shows attention to detail and great appreciation.

In addition if positive customer comments arrive – either by phone or letter it’s always a wise idea to pass the positive comments along to the relevant party.

Next in line is how you relate as a manager to your employees. Make it a specific point and practice to “practice random acts of kindness”. Take time to thank people, you might reward staff by little spiffs like sports events tickets, restaurant vouchers and the like. Often suppliers will pass these along as gifts or trials to their accounts but somehow these spiffs only get to certain groups. Make the point to spread these around. After all they did not cost the firm anything and they are in appreciation for your business to said supplier or vendor wishing you to try out and evaluate their product or products.

Lastly people live to be part of something. They buy Pepsi cola rather than sugar water and thus pay a premium to be part of the “Pepsi Generation”. ”.It is your responsibility to develop what might be called a “company culture” or a “family environment”. Most people and employees want to be involved and be a part of something greater than “just their job”. Most major companies such as Disney and Starbucks do this. The employees feel themselves to be part of something greater than just their solitary job. It might be said that they are part of “the team” or alternatively “the family”.

In the end this all takes effort on the part of management. However on the other side when you consider the cost of training – finding staff , interviewing , training costs , lost sales and profits from inexperienced staff as well as lost sales due to contacts lost with employee turnover – it all makes a great amount of sense to do everything you can to retain your employees. It may sound difficult; the concepts may be off base to your current management mindset. However in the end it all comes down to common sense and basic appreciation and recognition of your employees as human beings and valuable members of the enterprise. It never hurts to sincerely thank someone. It never hurts to ask.

About the Author: William B.Piker http://www.ace-training.net http://www.jerkbossesihaveknown.com http://www.aceemploymentservices.net

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The Myths Of Management

2010-09-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

By N Pollice

Up until about 1995, most leadership books that were written were really about management. The message was leadership and management were one in the same. A good manger was thought to be a good leader. The simple truth of the matter is that leadership and management are as different as day and night. Managers do things right. Managing is about maintaining systems, processes and procedures; in other words, management is about managing the work environment and controlling those workplace elements that we can control. Leaders on the other hand do the right things. Leadership is about influence; dealing with those things that we can't control. Things like people. Leaders understand that leadership is about getting people to do those things that you require them to do, when they are not obligated to do it. When we exam the overall scope of the leadership position we see that good managers maintain corporate direction and good leaders change it. Both roles are very different.

THE POSITION MYTH

It's not the position that makes the leader, it's the leader that makes the position. I have two clients in Southern Ontario who forced their respective presidents out of office. Both thought that it was time for a change - a fresh start so to speak. What was the result of their dismissal? Some key people followed them out of the company and so did some customers. Some remaining managers made it their mission to teach their employer a lesson in diplomacy and treatment of employees. They became very nonchalant in their day-to-day dealings with employees and company shareholder value fell dramatically. What took place is that the Law of Leadership became evident. These two Presidents may have lost their positions but, they did not lose their ability to lead because, they maintained their ability to influence.

THE PIONEER MYTH

John Maxwell a well-known author, visionary and ordained minister, speaks about the misconception of being a pioneer. He states that we often think that anyone who is out in front of the crowd is a leader. They must be! How else would they have assumed this position? The truth of the matter is that your ability to lead has nothing to do with being out in front, taking charge. There have been several leaders in business who were out front, taking charge of the situation and the people that they thought they were leading allowed them to do what they wanted to do. When these leaders fell short, their people were nowhere to be found, nor were they willing to accept responsibility. The true test of your leadership comes down to having people follow you and their willingness in accepting responsibility and accountability for their actions by acting on your vision and trusting your decisions. You don't always have to be the "Lead Dog" in the race.

THE SAVIOUR MYTH

Uncertainty tends to lead to increased fear. As fear levels rise, it is normal for people to focus on personal security and safety. People will withdraw, become more self-serving, and more defensive. Employees tend to focus on smaller and smaller details and it becomes more difficult to work together, and nearly impossible to focus on the bigger picture. Because of increased fear, many people turn to leaders with unreasonable demands. We want someone to rescue us, to save us, to provide answers, to give us firm ground. Leaders are pushed to get out of this corporate mess, even if it means surrendering individual freedom to gain security. But the causes of insecurity are complex and systemic. There is no one simple answer and not even the strongest leader can deliver on the promise of stability and security. Corporations instead, terminate the leader and continue searching for the perfect one. Organizations still charge the leader to provide solutions and when s/he doesn't, we then sacrifice them to atone for the sins of the system. Leaders don't always have the answers; they have a lot of questions just like the rest of us.

THE KNOWLEDGE MYTH

It has often been said by many a great business leaders, "knowledge is power". Most of us believe that since power is the essence of leadership, those who are desirous of becoming a leader must possess a great deal of knowledge and intelligence. This isn't quite accurate. I have worked with some of the smartest engineers and accountants in the food industry. These people were so far ahead of the rest of us with their ideas and value added thoughts that I was in awe of their intelligence. However, as leaders they were absolutely terrible. Their ability to inspire others didn't even register on the chart. Being a good leader is much more than just being brilliant. It is a real life skill and not everybody posses it nor are they cut out to exercise it.

About the Author: About Canadian Management Centre: With over 40 years experience; http://www.cmctraining.org Canadian Management Centre has earned the reputation as a trusted partner in worldwide professional development and http://www.cmctraining.org/reg/category.asp?sid=0&cat_id=6 management education that improves the immediate performance and long-term results of over 12,000 Canadians every year.

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The Importance Of Business Change Management

2010-08-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

By Naz Daud

Management is crucial in any business, and the management of change is particularly important. How you manage your business is important in determining its success. Even if you put your heart out in what you do, if you don’t manage your business well, then there is nowhere to go but down. You may be passionate about what you produce or manufacture but if your staff feel that you don’t manage them all too well, then there will be no support from them, and that’s not good news for you.

Always re-evaluate your business management from time to time. Are you doing it the right way? In order to do so, you must be open for change. Improving one’s management requires great skill and knowledge. A lot of people actually need some training in order to better manage their business. Let me tell you how you can improve management in your business by embracing change.

If you feel that your business needs some improvement, then you know there has got to be some change in the way you manage things. If you think your business is changing from doing well to not being able to meet its goals, then you know that you also need change to reverse the situation and meet higher goals for the business. Understanding what kind of change you need is the key to a great transition. You don’t change your way of management overnight. You also don’t change in just a short time. You need to plan it out, just like planning out a business of your own.

In order to improve management of your business, you must understand the dynamics of change. For you to manage your business differently, you have to take things one step at a time. Firstly, you need to know that when you start changing about how you manage business and your staff. You will initially feel awkward and self-conscious when you start the change process. Few people like change, particularly if they have been used to a stable environment and doing things the same way for more years than they care to remember.

Perhaps that is part of the problem: things have been done the same way for too long and your business is falling behind others that are adopting good management techniques and quality managements systems in a modern world. Such systems are more relevant in online business as in a traditional offline company due to the speed that the internet is moving at. Unless you roll with the wind, you will get stuck and your business will become stagnant.

However, do not change just for change’s sake. Determine HOW your business or management style should change. Analyze your business and determine where things are going wrong. There are business tools available to help you such as cause and effect analysis, turtle diagrams, fishtail diagrams and so on. You should determine what changes will be effective once you have identified at least some of the problems, and then put the required changes in place.

Remember, it has already been stated that most people do not like change, and therefore tend to resist it, particularly employees who have to implement the changes you have proposed. Good management will understand that the way to overcome this is to involve the employees in the analysis and proposed changes, and if possible lead them to propose the changes themselves.

In fact a good manager should have to impose nothing on employees since they will have been led to proposing all the changes necessary to improve a company themselves. That is good management; a manager that has to impose changes is a bad manager who does not understand the psychology of employees.

Try to understand that when changes are imposed, your employees’ initial reaction would be to focus on what they need to give up. This may not be a good thing for you. But in order to manage your business better, you must direct you and your staff’s attention to what they have to embrace and how it can benefit them and the company. Turn their attention from the things they have to say goodbye to, to the things they have to welcome. This is made easy if the staff and workforce have agreed to or better still, suggested the changes themselves.

Nevertheless, no matter who suggests the changes, people can only handle so much change. If radical changes are required, implement them in small amounts: otherwise your employees will react even though they themselves were responsible for suggesting the changes. Too much change is as bad as none, so make sure that you don’t overwhelm your employees with too many major management changes at once.

Change is good for a business, but it can be bad if the workforce feels that they have been omitted from the decision making procedure. Make them part of it and you will have a better chance of implementation. That is good management at work, and a call for change can be handled the right way or the wrong way. Good management knows the right way, and understands the importance of the management of change.

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Coaching Is Effective Team Management

2010-08-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

By Daryl Yew

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

Yours sincerely Daryl Yew

About the Author: Daryl Yew is an aspiring motivator who just discovered the internet. He wishes to harness the power of it to help more people in the world recognize their own true potential. Motivator or not, he believes people need to believe themselves first to make the difference. http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-19983

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The Fundamentals Of Project Management

2010-08-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

By David Sanders

Any project can only be successful if the people behind the project implements proper project management skills or hire a reputable and dependable project management group.

Project management may sound like a complicated term and it really is as it involves the process of organizing the different factors involved in creating and completing a project.

All projects should start out with a good plan so that the project creator would know the things required for the project to proceed as well as the necessary timeframe within which these requirements must be accomplished. The project plan should identify the scope of the project and the people accountable for the various aspects of the project.

The plan should include the costs involved in managing the project including the costs involved in hiring human resources and materials for the project. A good and realistic plan will enable the project manager to fulfill the project requirements on time and in an efficient manner.

Like every other project, a project management plan should include a good plan for human resources as they will be the best resources the project manager can have. Another important aspect is the communications plan not only between and among the project manager and the employees or workers. It should also include a good communication system with the outside world.

The project manager should be more wary of a good communication plan especially if the project has a very great impact in a certain community. If this is the case, the project manager should also make sure to include a public relations plan as well as a communications plan in cases of emergency or negative reaction from the public.

Risk management should be one of the most important aspects of the project plan. The project manager should avoid being reactionary whenever emergencies or negative publicity comes up. To avoid this and to become proactive he should establish a contingency plan for possible situations.

One of the most challenging projects to handle or to manage is a software project because of the technical emergencies that may happen, the sudden changes in costs and the sudden changes in technical people involved in the software project.

However, a project manager should always be prepared for any eventuality for any type of project he is handling. The best thing to do is to prepare a very efficient project management plan so that he is not caught unaware of very important aspects of the project.

About the Author: The author is a regular contributor to http://www.pmlessons.com where more information about http://www.pmlessons.com/sitemap.html is available.

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How To Manage Creativity And Culture

2010-08-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

By Kal Bishop

Many concepts in the fields of managing creativity are very much applicable to culture management in general. The same concepts that foster creativity and innovation also maximise human capital potential, increase productivity, reduce costs and maintain competitive advantage etc. Some of the many commonalities between culture and creativity management follow.

a) A culture of psychological safety and freedom. A culture that limits experience, information and expression and allows relatively few members to contribute to decision-making is not taking advantage of the immense pool of available talent. Just as idea-generating sessions are conducted in environments that limit judgement, in order to elicit the contribution of all participants, so that philosophy should be extended throughout the organisation permanently.

b) Motivation is more important than natural ability. This is similar to possessing high intelligence – one must be motivated to apply it and improve it. Human capital is optimised when participants have high intrinsic motivation and i) synergistic extrinsic motivators are present to facilitate the task and ii) non-synergistic facilitators are minimised. Further, specific motivators such as i) gap between ideal and real self, ii) degree of enjoyability, iii) degree of challenge, iv) feasibility, v) degree of self-determination, vi) recognition, vii) material reward, viii) time pressures, ix) project numbers and complexity and x) competition versus collaboration etc need to be measured and monitored.

c) Team structures. The group structure affects individual productivity. Individuals working alone, when motivated, have high output levels, but suffer from path dependency, parochialism and a lack of intellectual cross-pollination. Pairs reduce some of these tendencies and as groups get larger, negatives begin to outweigh the positives – group think, status differentials and deference, politicking and the restriction of information are just some examples.

d) Competency and tacit knowledge mix. Without a varied tacit knowledge and competency mix and a collaborative approach, a number of things happen: i) groups significantly under-perform and ii) the gap between individuals increases. Competitive advantage is lost in the group, team, department and eventually the organisational level.

These and other topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased at http://www.managing-creativity.com

Kal Bishop, MBA.

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You are free to reproduce this article as long as the author's name, web address and link to MBA dissertation is retained.

About the Author: Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller.

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Performance Management Best Practices

2010-08-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

By Mike Beitler

Recently the Aberdeen Group completed a study on performance management. They found that companies with best-in-class employee performance management systems produce 50 to 70 percent more revenue than those that don’t have a good system. That finding gets my attention.

We also know, from earlier studies, that top performers are four times as productive as the weakest performer in an organization.

Bob Rogers, the president of Development Dimensions International (www.ddiworld.com), has said, “The majority of the workforce is randomly trying to achieve success without any real understanding of how success is measured for them in the organization.” The need for an effective employee performance management system is clear.

An effective employee performance management system establishes goals and measures results regularly.

A major performance management problem in organizations today is ignoring poor performance. Ignoring poor performance tells everybody that mediocrity is acceptable. In a hyper-competitive world this is deadly. The negative impact on even the top performers is only a matter of time.

Typically, managers can identify poor or mediocre performance, but they choose to ignore it. Very often these managers have past experiences when they did not receive positive support from higher management when they attempted to confront poor performers. A lack of high level support leads to a culture of “looking the other way.”

Senior leaders in the organization set the tone for performance expectations. Developing managers throughout the leadership pipeline requires training and rewards for effective performance management. Managers must be trained and evaluated on their ability to provide feedback to employees about performance. Developing employees is a critical task for all managers.

Organizations must make the role of every employee clear. At Dell Computer, the company’s “The Sole of Dell” program shows how every employee contributes to the success of the company. Michael Dell believes individual accountability begins with his role and the roles of senior management.

Every organization must make performance expectations and performance measurements clear. Only with clear expectations and measurements can we compete in any field.

About the Author: Dr. Mike Beitler is the author of "Strategic Organizational Learning". Read 2 free chapters from the book online at http://www.strategic-organizational-learning.com

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What Is Customer Relationship Management?

2010-08-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

By Owen Andrew

What is customer relationship management?

Customer relationship management, or CRM, refers to reliable systems, processes, and procedures that allow companies to better manage customer relationships. It is a corporate level strategy that focuses on creating and maintaining effective communication with its customers. Ideally, a sound CRM strategy should develop an end-to-end process that encompasses sales, customer service, and marketing.

A successful customer relationship plan can manage all business-related operations and interactions with customers simultaneously. It often includes special software programs, called CRM programs, which aid companies in tracking and organizing their customer base.

Customer relationship management is just that: learning ways to manage the happiness of your customers by giving them what they want, increasing the effectiveness and profitability of your product or service by adapting them to customer preferences, and creating communication channels between sales reps, sales managers, and the customers they serve.

What are some ideas for successfully implementing a customer relationship management strategy?

There are numerous ways to successfully implement an effective CRM program. Here are some ideas that will start you thinking about the ways you can create a richer and more truly customer based culture. You can improve, adapt and reform your customer relationship plan by such methods as:

•Providing product information and support via a hotline or a website. This would allow customers to better use and understand specific products or services, and get any technical answers they need;

•Creating custom applications that offer point-and-click customization, real-time analytics, ease of use, tracking of all contact points between customer and company, and fast online and offline access to data;

•Implementing a mechanism to quickly schedule and manage follow-up sales calls and create clear, well-built information pipelines and channels of communication;

•Creating a simple, easy and intuitive user interface that is friendly to computer experts and neophytes alike. Thus, even those reps who feel uncomfortable using a computer could easily go online and check out statistics and other information;

•Devising a quick system for correcting service problems before they affect other customers, answering customer questions or complaints, and handling any other problems that might arise.

How does customer relationship management actually improve a company's relationship with its clients?

CRM improves relationships between customers and companies because it allows a company to meet the needs of the customer by keeping track of their interests and improving products and services accordingly.

For example, if a company implements a customer relationship management technology program for a specific product, they can track how much the customer uses the product and how much they repurchase it, allowing the company to grow and adapt the product to the customer's needs.

Used correctly, a solid CRM program can increase customer loyalty, decrease the customer turnover rate, decrease marketing costs, and increase revenue and profits. Essentially, it greatly improves the way your company and sales reps or other professionals do business with customers.

What technical functions should a customer relationship management program have?

A CRM program should have the ability to interface with users through mobile phones, internet, and other similar communications channels. It should also take into account workflow and have the ability to assign sales requests, sales opportunities, and other such assignments to groups or an individual. More importantly, it should be scalable and easily expandable over a very large or small scale.

This means that as long as the customer relationship management system is properly programmed, everyone from the smallest business to the largest corporation should be able to implement an effective CRM strategy.

Implementing an effective and efficient customer relationship management system is the best way to increase consumer confidence in your product or service and stay in touch with your customers, thereby increasing the effectiveness of your product or service.

About the Author: http://Salesforce.com is the world's first on-demand application service and a giant in the field of CRM. With over 24,000 customers, over 500,000 subscribers, and a 97% customer satisfaction rate, http://Salesforce.com continues to lead their field. To find out more about them, please visit http://www.salesforce.com.

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The Best Way To Approach A Win-Win Negotiation.

2010-08-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

By Akhil Shahani

Do you realize how much time we spend negotiating with others in our day to day life? Whether it is sealing a high-powered deal at work, pleading with a traffic cop on a perceived violation or simply getting your ten year old to finish his homework, negotiations are found wherever relationships exist. Negotiating a way out of a conflict is probably the best way to handle a potentially tricky situation; but it’s required as much when you’re trying to strike a bargain at the local flea market. Love it or hate it, you just can’t ignore it.

The popular perception is that such discussions generally run on parallel tracks, with each party trying to secure the maximum advantage for themselves. While some negotiations may well favor one party, a win-win negotiation works towards securing mutual benefit. The win-win negotiation technique is employed when there is a desire to maintain a long term, harmonious relationship. The objective is to ensure that both parties feel good about the outcome, once the deal is struck.

A win-win negotiation is based on the premise that the stance of the negotiating parties is rarely as opposed as it appears to be at first glance. It thus seeks to find and exploit common ground, and build an amicable solution that aims to maximize joint outcomes. If you’re thinking that sounds a lot like motherhood and apple pie stuff, think again. A win-win negotiation is for real, and we’ll show you how!

Believe in it. Get into the groove by wanting to reach a mutually beneficial solution. Experience shows that the outcome is strongly influenced by the way the two parties approach the negotiating table. Keep the other party’s interest in mind, along with your own. If things are deadlocked, consider allowing low impact concessions – something that brings them value, without taking too much away from you.

Define your needs. When you plan your negotiations, take some time to think of your most important needs, as well as those of the negotiating party. Some people approach a discussion with the sole intention of “winning” every point – hey, that’s not how it works. If you have a clear threshold in mind, you’ll be able to devote your energies towards making the discussion work, rather than maintaining the score! This is also called a Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) – an alternative scenario should no conclusion be reached. In a win-win negotiation, it is important that the end result betters the BATNA of all partners. A word of caution, here – don’t give away your minimum position too soon, or you might end up on the losing side of the bargain.

Don’t get personal. Bringing personalities into it is an absolute no-no. Remember that the goal is to solve a problem, and driving people away by launching personal attacks will get you nowhere. Stay objective at all times, leaving your ego and emotions at home. If the other guy is letting off steam, let it blow over. You’ll probably strengthen your position that way.

Stay in the game. A win-win negotiation is most likely to be a process, rather than a one-off event. There might be a past to it, and you can certainly expect a future. Therefore, be prepared for iterations, with proposals and counter proposals trading back and forth, till final agreement is reached. It’s important to devise a clear strategy beforehand.

Set the stage. Reminding the other party of failed discussions in the past is not the best way to approach what you hope will be a win-win negotiation. Steer clear of the blame game too. Choose your tone of voice, facial expressions and body language with care, as indeed the actual timing and location of the meeting. Last but not least, give the other speakers your undivided attention, and impress them with the sincerity of your intentions. A successful win-win negotiation is but a handshake away!

About the Author: Hi, I'm Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. If you like to work smart, check out http://www.SmartEntrepreneur.net . It's full of articles and resources to help you start and grow your business successfully. Please visit us & download our special "Freebie of The Month"

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Organizational Structures Types

2010-08-05T04:23:00.000-07:00

Author: Mark Thomas Walters

It is typical within an organization, though it will depend on its size, to find regional managers (who manage a geographical region that the organization operates in), divisional managers (who manage a particular division within an organization e.g. human resources, finance, sales, etc.), and departmental managers (who manage the departments within the divisions).

The way regions, divisions, departments and people link together and interact is set out in a management structure (sometimes also referred to as an organizational structure). The two main types of such structures are flat and hierarchal.

Organizations that have few or no levels of management that intervene between the workers and the leaders are employing what is known as a flat management structure. A flat management structure promotes the involvement of staff in the decision-making process by decentralizing said process.

A flat management structure can help to speed up decision-making, as it promotes real-time suggestions and commentary from the front-line workers, and eliminates middle-management. This structure promotes frequent communications and results in a more personal relationship between staff and leaders of the organization.

Within a hierarchal management structure each person is charged with reporting to, or dealing with, a specific manager, who then takes information up (or down) the chain. In this structure, each body within the organization, except one, is subordinate to an immediate supervisor.

Such a structure is best visualized as a pyramid, where the height of a person depicts their status, power and influence, and the width of that level represents how many people or business divisions are at that level relative to the whole. The highest-ranking people are at the apex, and there are very few of them. The base may include thousands of people who have no subordinates.

The benefit of a hierarchal structure is also its primary limitation in that it will reduce the level of communication that goes directly to the top. The hierarchal configuration, however, is the most prevalent for large corporations, governments, and even organized religions.

Flat management structures will typically only work well in smaller companies, or within smaller defined units of a large organization. Once an entity reaches a certain size, this type of structure will not work as well and could end up having a negative impact on productivity. Certain financial responsibilities may also require a more conventional structure, and some theorize that flat organizations become more traditionally hierarchical when they begin to be geared towards productivity.

An organization's complexity can be related to its size and how widely distributed it is geographically, and it is this complexity that governs which management structure is most beneficial to it. In that respect, there is no straight answer as to which management structure is best overall.

Whichever management structure is implemented need to be regularly reviewed to ensure that an organization and all of its subsystems (processes, departments, teams, employees, etc.) are working effectively to achieve the results desired by the organization. Such reviews (referred to as performance management) can be carried out on a general basis, or on units of performance, such as quantity, quality, cost or timeliness.

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About the Author: Find Out More : What">http://1to101.com/Organizational_Management'>What Is Organizational Management?

The Essentials Of Benefits Management

2010-08-01T05:45:00.000-07:00

By Nicola Burton

Benefits Management is an integral concept, typically included in the program management wing of an organisation, entrusted with the task of answering the ‘WHY’ aspect of program conceptualisation and eventual execution. As apparent, being responsible for answering the purpose facet of a project, logically justifies conferring increased attention to benefits management, however this not always happen. Despite being a project priority, the specifics of Benefit Management is often ignored, thus seriously impairing the overall project output levels.

The role definition

Benefits Management is an exercise or rather a project in itself. The aim is to precisely define the desired outcome from a new project or suggested change in an already established project, and is particularly important when working out the investment rational.

The requirement definition

With the role statement defined, the next step in sequence seeks answer to the need of the concept i.e. why is Benefits Management required? To answer this question, let’s first attempt figuring out another important clause – the clause of existence. Why do businesses ever exist, or why do entrepreneurs take the chance of establishing a new business, or why are resources dedicated towards the various projects? In absolutely raw terms, this happens because all are interested in booking profits. However, despite such a clearly established objective, this doesn’t always happen. A number of projects simply fail and even a larger number end up under performing. Why?…because of lack of planning, in terms of the precise benefits expected.

The essentials

There are four key essential aspects of the appropriate benefits management program, without which the efficacy would certainly be questionable. The first fundamental aspect relates to the quantification of the output and thus the derivable benefits. Outcomes would certainly vary with the program definition, however in all circumstances; outcomes ought to be measurable, even if in approximate terms, to enable improvised performance analysis. While defining benefits, both tangible & intangible outputs, ought to be taken into account, for example: in addition to the deliverables, which can be numerically accounted for, crucial subjective aspects like enhanced customer satisfaction should also be marked relevant.

The second essential aspect aligns the project benefits with the business goals. All concerned parties should agree with the expected outcome and thus mutually work towards the realisation of the same goal. The stated is almost mandatory; as only this would help prioritisation at required levels and deal with probable issues of resource allocation. This combined work model, in fact, is one of the key outputs of a successfully visualised and managed program.

The third equally important aspect essentially relates to the definition of realistically achievable benefits. This would not only help successful realisation, but also enable periodic checks for desired continuity.

The fourth essential aspect requires assigning ownership to the rightly responsible personnel. Without this in place, even if the reasons of falter are identified, none can be held responsible, thus rendering the exercise futile.

From beginning to the end

Benefits Management begins with the beginning of the project and continues after the completion, because an important review should occur post-completion of the final stage of the project. Benefits Management as a tool is quite flexible and through the project cycle tends to adapt with the dynamic external influences, for example: during the project, objectives to be achieved might require restructuring. This essentially implies treating the planning process as a continual flow and not a one time task. To encapsulate, it can be stated that benefits are the raw ingredients and the final yield of a project and thus must be incorporated perfectly by way of a well worked out Benefits Management program.

About the Author: For more information on benefits management training courses, visit http://www.afaprojects.com/training_other_ben.asp

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Being A Visionary Is Something The Business World Is Looking For

2010-07-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

By Dennis Harting

The most respected leaders in the business world are those who head up corporations with a vision. That vision is a direct result of the leader's ability to be a visionary. Any leader who fails to do this is destined to ride that company right into the ground. The business world today changes too quickly for businesses to have a passive approach. The C-Level executives must provide their organizations with a vision for the future.

I once was associated with an enterprise that was run by a gentleman who came from the operation's side of the business. Over the years he ascended to the top of the organizational chart. His years spent in operations made him exceptional at handling any issues. Anything that arose he was able to take care of. It almost seemed that he was not comfortable unless there was some problem to be attacked. He could juggle 3 or 4 fires simultaneously. Looking back, I am still amazed at this individual's skill in this area.

However, being the leader of a corporation of this size required a different type of person. As terrific as he was at handling issues, he was equally as poor at creating a vision for the future. This company suffered from a corporate culture that was old and tired. Morale was low which affected productivity. Department heads all had twenty plus years with the organization yet their attitudes were horrific. Nonetheless, years went by before all of this was exposed. This company experienced significant growth for more than a decade using an antiquated vision. Training and technology were not heavily promoted. Ironically, this company operated in a high tech industry. As you can imagine, the exposure came when the economy made a dramatic shift. All the weaknesses were highly magnified. The flaws of the old system showed how ineffective the entire company was. Sales were reduced to levels not seen in almost two decades.

Where did this leader go wrong? To begin with, he broke the first rule of running a company: don't work in the business, work on the business. All his time was spent attending to matters within the course of the business. There was nobody working on the business. Instead of spending a large portion of his time developing strategies, the day was filled handling one detail after another. Secondly, since the focus was within, a major shift in the marketplace was missed. Naturally, this is not the first executive to fall prey to this. Yet, companies today need leaders who are willing to look out into the future and see what things will look like 5 or 10 years from now. Warren Buffet does this before he buys a company. He figures out where the market will be, not where it is presently.

Being a visionary is something that the business world is looking for. As mentioned, the world of business changes too rapidly. With globalization comes a completely new set of rules. Agility is the key factor. The dinosaurs of the past are being gobbled up almost daily. Take the furniture industry as an example. For decades, the largest manufacturers of furniture we located in North Carolina. However, 10 years ago started the shift in production to China. Today, because of the lower cost of labor, most of the furniture sold in this country is made overseas. A visionary leader would notice something like this. Someone who is spending his or her time working in the business is apt to miss it.

If you are in a leadership position, be a visionary. Determine where you want your organization to be 5, 10, and 20 years down the road. What will your corporate culture look like? Are the people in place to make that happen? Are there factors that could cause a major shift in your industry? What are they? How does technology affect your business? Can it be used to give you a competitive advantage? Is the attitude one that will move your organization to the next level? Finally, what skills do you need to acquire to be able to run a corporation that you are creating? It is important that your abilities go at a rate faster than your company.

About the Author: Dennis Harting is the Head Coach at Your Rich Life. He is an acclaimed speaker, trainer, and best-selling author. His international best selling books include Your Easiest Million and The Ultimate Procrastination Handbook. He also has had thousands of articles published worldwide. His programs and more information can be found at http://www.yourrichlifeinc.com.

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Team Building Exercises Have A Great Return On Investment

2010-07-25T01:24:00.000-07:00

By Matt Crick

By most accounts, the term ‘team building’ wasn’t coined until the late 1920’s. So what was happening in organisations before that? What happened in ancient Rome, for example, before gladiatorial combat – did Maximus and co just motivate themselves, avoiding any form of group morale boosting? Undoubtedly not. And, did soldiers before battle not look for unity and strength from their ranking officer? Surely there are countless chapters in history where ‘team building’ (or a concept closely related) has been incorporated to help a group function?

Since the publication in 1927 of the now classic Hawthorne Study (one of the earliest studies of human behaviour in the workplace), the team idea has evolved steadily. Elton Mayo, the Study’s author, realised that the most significant factor to successful team building was creating a sense of “group identity, a feeling of social support and cohesion that came with increased worker interaction”. This formula is just as pertinent today and companies are constantly searching for suitable exercises to create this positive and productive office utopia.

There are many variations of team building exercises that can be used to help improve your company’s internal communications, morale, trust and solidarity. Although these activities are undertaken in the spirit of fun, often they exist outside the office and employers believe that the more elaborate and adventurous actions will be the most beneficial. This can sometimes be the case, but carrying out team building exercises in the office is a much more cost-effective and resourceful way to deliver your message. You really don’t have to scale a mountain while paint balling to achieve cohesion in the work place.

So as a manager, how can you facilitate these internal exercises, and more importantly, what are the options available to get the cooperation of your staff? Having your team members work together in a tangible way is, ultimately, your goal. And the return on investment from this is not something to take lightly. Here are some examples of team building activities that can be carried out in your office. They can help to create an enjoyable work atmosphere, and additionally can also help to improve mental and physical health:

Amazing Secrets is a great, informal icebreaker activity. Each participant writes on a Post It something about themselves that no one else in the room knows. For example they used to play in a band, have appeared on TV, saved a life etc. In their teams/tables each group then guesses which secret belongs to which participant and the winning team gets a prize. This activity reinforces a theme of sharing and discovery and can often produce some surprising information about colleagues that you would never have associated with them.

The Egg Tower is a creative indoor team building activity where teams are issued with a set of newspapers, a roll of Sellotape and an egg. The aim is to build a tower as tall as you possibly can that will support the egg! Teams are allocated two minutes to plan their designs and then the race is on the construct the loftiest tower. Bonus points are awarded for aesthetic design and the best named build. This session can last between five and 30 minutes - be prepared for some toppling eggs!

Crossing the Line is an indoor exercise that introduces participants to the concept of cooperation versus competition. You will need a length of rope approximately 25 foot long (7.5m) and some masking tape. Place the rope in a circle shape and a tape a line down the middle of the circle to create two halves. Then select two volunteers from the group (try to pick the two most competitive individuals as each should have high ego strength). Ask them to enter the circle and face each other; explain that this is an initiative involving power and influence, and that the goal is to use their powers of persuasion, argument and bribery to get the other person to cross completely over the line. The rules are simple in that you cannot touch each other physically and the audience may not contribute suggestions. The duel can last between five and 30 minutes.

Pipe Dreams is not only a fantastic indoor team building challenge, but a good ice-breaker too. It is a rudimentary activity that gets the entire team involved and instantly makes them feel relaxed and united. The teams (can consist from groups of two upwards) have to create something - an interesting or topical object - out of a packet of pipe cleaners, and then give a short presentation of what they have made. The results can be very creative and surprisingly amusing! Expect the assignment to last between 45 to 60 minutes.

Professional team building companies can also offer more tailored programmes. Fresh Tracks is an innovative team building company in the UK that has been providing creative solutions to motivate and develop teams and individuals for Europe’s most forward thinking organisations since 1992.

“The key to successful team building is to make sure that what ever you decide to do there is a reason for it,” says Tom Vaughton, of Fresh Tracks. “At the end of the day the team should come away with tangible and measurable outcomes that will move the team forward and increase motivation, communication and productivity. Quite simply, if a company is going to spend both time and money, there needs to be a return on that investment.”

There are all sorts of resources out there for more ideas and suggestions. The Trainers’ Tookit (www.trainerstoolkit.co.uk), for example, offers downloadable instructions and information on a range of team building activities.

About the Author: Matt Crick is Writing on behalf of Fresh Tracks who are specialists in providing unique team development and team building experiences to organisations and business teams between 12 and 1200. They work with you to design your event so that your team building and development is tailored for your team and fun in the process! Their range of team building and outdoor team development programmes include: conference event management and employee motivational events. For more information visit: http://www.freshtracks.co.uk

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Why Retain Experienced Employees?

2010-07-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

Levels By S. Z. Stevens

Today many businesses are downsizing or what used to be called “rightsizing”. Scaling back or down, with the loss of much needed essential manpower with irreplaceable skills can be seen as almost unforgivable.

Experienced staffs not only have “time put in” but also skills that are virtually impossible to find or hire. These skills may have been obtained through specialized training either not available in the U.S. or may indeed have been obtained by multitudes of years of experience and interaction with people and other skilled workers in your chosen industry. What may well set you apart in your marketplace may be either unique products or a service , or a job done up to certain standards set at a higher bar than other in your workplace industry community or indeed overseas outsourced origin work.

It may be the situation that these workers are set for retirement shortly and all that is being done is moving up the date slightly through “early retirement “offers.

In that case these workers could well use the spent before the standard date to train replacement workers, as they will soon be retiring always and newer workers with their skills are no threat as a replacement to them. Most workers with a professional attitude will view this as a major compliment of their skillet and a major compliment to their contributions both individually and to the firm for time and efforts spent. . Have these experienced workers train new staff. If possible the date set for retirement of these experienced workers could even be set forward.

Downsizing and rightsizing through attrition , financial inducement and downright firing often seems a quick and easy answer to both cost reduction and better financial statements for year end to please both the bank and stockholders and the stock market if the company is publicly listed. This is a complete and utter fallacy for both the health of any corporation, organization or business enterprise and to any authorities or shareholders that the firm or organization has to answer to. Look at the American auto industry and its current state as a good example of this. You would think by all appearances and concerns that the business at hand of the American auto industry is to provide for great pensions and benefits to its workers, and providing extensive bonus packages to its executives. In effect a shell of a company is being left that is neither the health nor scope of the previous size and may not be in a position to pay any of these previous obligations. Indeed not only is the health of the company reduced, its profitability and in the long run the benefits promised to workers who were of long standing.

Indeed by offering hefty retirements as well as inducements to retire management is shortchanging all involved and the productivity and profitability of the firm to all involved. It is much better to keep experienced staff on hand rather than offer them retirement early. All lose.

In summary it can be said that reduction of staff levels whether by firing or early retirement packages serves neither the firm nor the employees well. It is a short sited rather than a progressive approach. Staffing levels should be maintained and experienced workers kept on.

About the Author: S.Z. Stevens Winnipeg Job Shark http://www.winnipegjobshark.com Alberta Job Shark http://www.albertajobshark.com

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Strategic Organizational Learning

2010-07-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

By Mike Beitler

All of us should be familiar with what’s happening with learning management systems (LMS). As organizations move away from a training mindset to a learning and performance culture, LMS will play a central role.

The organization’s LMS should be more than a training documentation system. In a recent article by LMS-guru Elliott Masie, Elliott listed the following expectations for a fully implement LMS:

* a “dashboard” for managers that highlights what their teams and individuals are learning

* an invitation-to-learn system that personalizes and targets individuals based on their current projects and performance goals

* a system to create and maintain a social learning network that enables knowledge sharing throughout the organization

* a system that makes learning recommendations based upon an individual’s preferred learning style

* a system that maximizes the learning power of podcasting, wikis, blogs, and other “extreme learning”

* a system that delivers learning to a wide range of devices, including PDAs and mobile devices, not only to desktops and laptops

* a system that promotes external learning affiliations

* a system that works closely with knowledge management systems

* a system that provides peer reviews of content (similar to the reviews of books provided by Amazon.com)

* a system that can deliver multi-language content, which enables employees to learn in their native language

* a system that will capture informal as well as formal learning

Learning management systems are part of the leading edge of performance improvement interventions. Learning and development departments are now expected to significantly reduce time to competency. LMS will help reduce that time.

In the future, learning will be delivered through an increasingly wider range of channels. M-learning (mobile learning), including laptops, MP3 players, mobile phones, will become a key element in today’s efforts to embed learning in the work process itself.

Take a look at some of the latest innovations from the three leaders in LMS at Learn.com, NetDimension.com, and GeoLearning.com.

About the Author: Dr. Mike Beitler is the author of "Strategic Organizational Learning." To read 2 free chapters from the book online go to http://www.strategic-organizational-learning.com/

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10 Tips To Improve Your Team's Effectiveness

2010-07-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bruce_E_Bell]Bruce E Bell

Are you having trouble getting your team to meet company goals? Is your team lacking energy, creativity and motivation? Are you stressed, overwhelmed and feeling the need to work long hours just to hold your department together? It doesn't need to be that way you can take control of the situation. You can get your team working effectively towards a common goal and you can gain back your personal time. Work is important and you want to exceed company expectations but having control of your time to pursue personal interests is just as important. You want to be there to see the kids grow up and have time for that significant other (Yes honey I meant you and not golfing)... but you also want to have time to shave a few strokes off that handicap as well. Whatever your interests are you need to find balance. Work on implementing these 10 steps and you will improve your teams performance and gain back your personal time.

1) Improve the Atmosphere

As a leader you alone have an enormous impact on the morale of the team. You set the example for your team. Not just by what you say and do but also by what you allow. Make it clear to all team members that at the work place everyone needs to be treated with dignity and respect with no exceptions. You need to be aware of how team members communicate with one another. Often their tone and body language say more than the words spoken. It is common to have 3 or 4 team members creating a negative atmosphere for the entire group. They also tend to be the same team members involved in the majority of conflicts. Don't allow it to happen. Often these team members are unaware of their impact and a quick discussion will resolve the issue. If not it becomes a performance issue.

Join your team in the lunch room whenever possible. It opens the lines of communication when the team members get to know you better and see your personal side. Your title as manager alone is enough to scare some of your team. Spending time with them will help to put them at ease and to feel more comfortable bringing work related problems to you.

Give praise and positive feedback often. Make it a part of every day to recognize the things that your team is doing right and be specific with your praise. As a management person it is easy to get caught up in what needs fixing but if we only talk about problems it is not a very energizing environment.

Morale issues and team member conflicts are unproductive and can waste a lot of your time. As a leader you have direct control of the morale. Take responsibility and make it a priority.

2) Open Communication

Improving communication with your team is key to getting your time back. Always have an open door policy. Ensure that your team knows that they can come and talk to you when they have concerns. Act on those concerns quickly and get back to the team member with the action you have taken. When you do this you will create an atmosphere where the team members feel valued and as it ripples through your team you will find that you are more likely to be aware of the small problems and can take action before they become big problems. You will also see you team start to bring to your attention suggestions and ideas on how they can improve the work place.

Despite your efforts to create an atmosphere where anyone can come and talk to you there will always be some team members who just don't feel comfortable talking to the boss. These team members can still be a great source of ideas or may bring up concerns that you are unaware of. Set up a system to solicit information from your team in an anonymous way. A simple way to do this is through an exercise called a 5-15. Give the team 15 minutes to write the 5 things they like about the company or job and 5 things that they feel need improvement. They do not need to put their names on the lists. This can be done in a group but do not let them discuss their individual responses so that you are getting everyone's input and not just the few that may be more vocal. In just 15 minutes you can get great suggestions to improve the workplace and again find out about those small problems in time to fix them before they are big ones. Summarize your list of needs improvement areas and develop a plan to get them corrected. Hold a meeting with you team to let them know what actions you will be taking as a result of the 5-15 exercise.

If team members feel they cannot bring concerns to management because they won't be dealt with you will have morale issues. When a team member can't bring concerns to management they will discuss it among other members of the team. This creates a negative atmosphere and turnover. If you want to save yourself some time improve the communication.

3) Who Works for Whom?

Often management is frustrated because they see their team as not listening or following direction. Team members appear as if they are not putting much effort into their job and they keep doing tasks incorrectly. Frustrated managers say "this group just doesn't listen or seem to care." Chances are there is a reason your team is not performing at a high level. Your team cannot work for you until you work for them. How do I work for them I thought they were supposed to work for me? As a manager you need to stress the importance of proper training. You need to build that solid foundation for new hires or they will never meet your expectations. As a leader it is your job to give them every chance to succeed.

Put systems in place to ensure training is completed properly and in a timely manner. Often we get caught up in putting out the days fires but you need to follow up on new hires progress. Consider having a "Buddy system" and pair a new hire up with a team member who has a positive attitude and performs at a high level.

Set out clear expectations early. It is a lot easier to train properly from the start than it is to turn around poor performance. Whether you are directly responsible for the training or not make sure you check in regularly.

When you bring a new team member into a positive atmosphere, give them clear expectations and train them correctly you will reduce turnover and improve productivity. The added time put in to get the team member off to a good start will save you time in the long run. More time means more golf and that's a good thing.

4) Attitude is Everything!

We all know as a manager we need to lead by example and come to work with a positive attitude everyday. What we fail to do is expect that same positive attitude from everyone on our team. Whether it is a management person or an hourly team member the expectation is the same. This is part of creating a great working environment. We've all experienced that team member who complains about everything and will never be happy. They are a drain on the morale and usually a source of conflict. You might think that "He does a good job otherwise. That's just who he is." But that's not fair to the rest of your team. They deserve to be in a positive environment. You need to let any negative team members know how they are impacting the team and what your expectation is. You may also need to deal with this as a performance issue. It is easy to look at the results of their work and say they are a great employee but if they can't interact with your team in a positive manner you will be continually resolving conflicts.

When interviewing one of your main goals should be to try to identify whether this person has a positive attitude as well as the skills required. This can be hard as most applicants get prepared for an interview and are on their best behaviour but don't accept general answers when interviewing. Probe as much as possible and get the applicant to be specific.

Because applicants rehearse interview situations you may want to add a few interview questions to your phone screening. The applicants are not as prepared to answer your questions and you may get a more truthful response. Always check work references for applicants. The past often predicts the future.

Remember having a positive attitude is a requirement for all members of your team. You will have a fun and energized team and a lot more time for yourself.

5) Who Knows More?

Often as managers we think we need to be the source of all the ideas. The truth is we just need to get the best ideas implemented and if you are not listening to your team member's suggestions and ideas you not using the best. You probably have people that work in a specific area of the business everyday. They are the experts of that part of the business. This goes back to the open communication. You need to encourage your team to continually think about how they can improve their part of the business and to share that with the management team. When you start to act on just a few of their suggestions you will see the momentum build.

Sometimes we let our egos get in the way but if you can create a culture where the best idea wins and not just those of management your team will be more engaged. If you keep telling them what to do and don't ask for their ideas you will lose out on your greatest resources and that's the thoughts and ideas of everyone at the workplace.

Always make sure you give credit to whoever came up with the best idea. Don't try to pretend to your boss or anyone else that it was your idea. Acknowledge these people in meetings and encourage the entire group to start thinking about how to be more profitable, provide better service, be more efficient or improve the working atmosphere. You'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

6) You Need Successors

If you want to save yourself time, help build your business for the future and impress the executives you need to have successors. What is a successor? They are the people that you and your management team identify as having potential to advance in the organization but to be successful it goes a lot further than just identifying them. As a manager one of your most important responsibilities is to be able to grow your people. You will stand out from the other managers when you are able to provide qualified people for available positions within the organization.

To be truly successful at it you must be able to give your star performers away with no adverse affects on your department. Many managers hate to give their top performers away but if you have been proactive and have someone ready to step in and fill their shoes it can be one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. The only good way to lose a team member is to a promotion and when you play even a small part in helping that person reach their goal it should bring a smile to your face.

How do I get these successors ready for the next step? If your organization hasn't already done so you need to develop a list of core skills that are required for each position such as confronting direct reports, planning, organizational skills, team building etc.

Once you have a list of core skills you need to talk with the potential successor and find out their career goals and through discussion identify the core skills that this individual needs to develop. Then you can create a development plan which shows what success looks like (ie the skill is fully developed), give them actions or different responsibilities to help them get there and have a way to clearly measure the progress. The manager then has to follow up and have regular check in times to keep them on track with their development but if they are a real successor most of their development plan will be self driven.

If you are working within a growing organization having successors is invaluable. You help the company to grow and your department doesn't miss a beat. You never get caught having to fill in for other positions because you are proactive and that saves you time. Growing successors is rewarding, great for morale, helps to build the business for the future and will get you recognized by your boss. It's a must.

7) Delegate

When you delegate effectively it frees up your time to focus on the big picture aspects of the job and be more effective. It may even allow you enough time to get an extra round of golf in each week. Many managers hang onto to many tasks because they are easy and they feel comfortable doing them, or they think they can get it done faster than someone else. You need to look at what you do on a daily basis and ask yourself is this task something I personally need to do? Does this task add value or could I benefit the organization better by focusing my attention elsewhere?

It is easy to get caught up in the day to day routine but your job as a manager is to be focused on the big picture and make your business more profitable. Sometimes delegating might take additional time in the beginning if you have to train someone but once you're through the training you may never have to complete that task again. Think of the time you'll save. Usually the person you are delegating to welcomes learning a new responsibility. Pick some of your successors to delegate to. It will also help with their development. When people stop learning and growing they look for other employment where they can grow. Delegating new responsibilities to the right people will keep them learning and free up your time.

8) Planning

Even though you have freed yourself up of some of the time consuming daily responsibilities by delegating you still find yourself running from one fire to the next to keep your department going. Now that you have some extra time you can even resolve many of these daily distractions that take you away from the big picture. You need to drill down and find the root cause of these fires that keep popping up. You'll find most of them can be avoided if you dig deep enough and develop long term solutions rather than just throwing a bit of water on it today.

When you are able to stop working on today's problems you can start working on the future. When you are looking into the future you can lead the business instead of the business pulling you in every direction. To be an effective manager you need to be aware of your future business trends, budgets, sales goals and be putting plans in place now to be prepared to meet those organizational goals. Most businesses have seasonal trends and times of the year that are far more profitable. Put plans in place to maximize these peaks in business. This is where most of your opportunity is.

When you give yourself the time to plan effectively and be working in the future you will save your self time, have less stress and maximize your business opportunities.

9) Hold Them Accountable

Holding team members accountable can be the hardest part of the job but it is absolutely necessary. Many managers allow poor performers to continue because they are uncomfortable confronting people but if you allow poor performance to go unchecked you may soon end up with an entire team of poor performers. Other members recognize when people aren't pulling their weight and maybe not all but some will say "if he doesn't have to do anything why should I?"

The key is to stay on top of individual performance issues and address them immediately. First determine that it really is a performance issue that is the team member's responsibility and not failure to train properly or lack of direction. Once you have determined that the performance issue is the team member's responsibility you need to address it. Always remember to discuss the specific performance issue and never attack the person's character. It is recommended to have another management person witness when corrective action is being given and to always take notes.

It is important to be fair and consistent with your expectations of all team members but at the same time you may need to vary your approach with corrective action to match the individual. Everyone has different personalities. Some people get very emotional at the thought of doing something wrong and others may be argumentative. Use your knowledge of your team to anticipate the various challenges you may face due to these individual personalities prior to giving the corrective action. You want to plan your conversation with the end result in mind being they understand the issue and are willing to correct it. Then develop the best approach based on that individual's personality. This is not favouritism. It is knowing your people and taking the right approach to get the desired results. All the time you still have the same expectation of performance but a varied approach may be necessary to reach that goal.

Often just a few team members will drag down the performance of the entire team and waste a lot of your time. Address performance issues immediately to save yourself time in the long run.

10) Have Fun

You want people to enjoy their work by providing a challenging job in a great atmosphere but most people spend more of their awake hours at the office than they do at home so you also need to encourage your team to have some fun. Try scheduling 1 hour a month for a fun activity for the entire team if possible. Have the management team join in. It is a great way for the team to get to know you in a more relaxed atmosphere. This doesn't have to be extra work for you. You can have a fun committee plan each event and even use a successor to plan and organize it to help in their development.

Everyone wins when you have a fun atmosphere at work. As a manager you need to be a supporter of that fun. You'll see improved productivity, reduced turnover and better morale. Usually that means less work for you in the end.

If you can implement these 10 steps into your workplace you will have less stress, better results and more personal time. You deserve to have time for your own hobbies, to watch the kids grow up or spend time with that significant other (Sorry honey this time I did mean golfing).

I have always been a results-driven person; at the same time, many of my friends and colleagues have commented how "lazy" I am. Being both results-driven and somewhat lazy, I always look for the best and easiest method to reach my goals. This is why I wrote The Lazy Manager. It is a book to help you work smarter and not harder and will help you improve the communication and morale within your team.

Bruce Bell has over 15 years of management experience improving the atmosphere, culture and communication in the workplace as a way to increase morale, customer service and profit. He has consistently taken on problem stores and turned them into top performers. As a trainer and mentor of new and experienced managers Bruce has given them the tools and confidence to be effective leaders in an often very demanding field.

Bruce Bell

Author http://www.thelazymanager.com

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?10-Ways-to-Improve-Your-Teams-Performance-and-Gain-Back-Your-Personal-Time&id=3344582] 10 Ways to Improve Your Team's Performance and Gain Back Your Personal Time

How To Improve The Management Of Your Business

2010-07-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

By Halstatt Pires

All companies have business processes that can be improved. Most companies can benefit from automation or further automation of solutions.

Improving Management of Your Business

Improving business processes is all about a work flow plan, often graphic, and implementation of automating and organizing work processes. It is also a way of defining software architectures and applications. Business process solutions help an enterprise monitor human and automated processes. It can also serve as an enterprise application integration (EAI) tool. Business process management solutions help you identify areas of your business that can be automated and used to apply business rules and guidelines. In practical terms, it acts like a virtual machine that executes process models rather than software code.

Business process solutions take business data and determine how the information is used to perform a task. By creating an overview, a business manager can plan and improve an existing business process. Some solutions also send data through a test set of tasks to ensure that a business process is being followed. These solutions permit a business manager to visually describe, control and trail the flow of a work process. Process solutions generally involve computer systems and software to automate a process.

Technologies used to implement process management solutions include work flow charts, BP-XML languages, ERP (Enterprise Resource Management), software development and EAI (Enterprise Application Integration). ERP is a set of applications that can cover financials, manufacturing, human resources and back-office business administration utilities of an enterprise. It is a business management system that integrates all components of the business as well as planning. On the other hand, EAI software operates as a center that interprets data and messages between different applications.

Improving and automating business processes is the path to gaining huge productivity. These management solutions monitor business presentation by defining a series of tasks that must be performed to attain a defined strategic goal. There are three obligatory requirements - flexibility, reliability and security.

A good solution must help in continuous process enhancement, but managing the huge amount of these processes becomes more and more difficult as organizations become highly complex. Process management solutions give you the capability to satisfy and retain your customers and also maximize your joint venture returns with other businesses.

Remember that business processes define your business, and they can also present your organization with a competitive benefit. If you can make your processes efficient, you will reap better customer relations and profits.

About the Author: Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company in San Diego. Visit http://www.marketingtitan.com/internet_marketing_articles to read more internet marketing articles.

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=51883&ca=Business+Management

The ABC's And More Of Management

2010-07-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

By Wally Bock

It is part of the great business guru tradition to create an acronym of the first letters of significant words to spell out another significant word, like "success." This list is not in that tradition.

But I often feel like the people who go for all the cute acronyms are more concerned with acronyms than wisdom. So, I'll just make a list, starting at the beginning of the alphabet.

A is for "Accomplish the mission through the group." That's one of your jobs. Your other job is caring for your people.

B is for "Behavior." Behavior is what people say and do. The only behavior you control is your own. You use it to influence the behavior and performance of the people who work for you.

C is for "Consequences." Consequences are tools to help you influence behavior. Use positive consequences to encourage people to try something new or to continue doing something that’s difficult. Use negative consequences to encourage people to stop doing things you don't want.

You'll note that there's no "D." A lot of other letters are missing, too. I don't have any important concepts that go with those letters. I realize that violates another one of the great guru traditions: having something for every letter of the alphabet.

I thought it was more important to concentrate on the most important concepts. Besides, it often seems like those other writers are struggling hard to get the single bed blanket of their message to cover a double or even a king-sized bed.

E is for "Expectations." You need to set clear and reasonable expectations for the behavior and performance of the people who work for you. Getting good at this is a lifetime effort.

F is for "Feedback." Feedback turbocharges performance. Give frequent and usable feedback to the people who work for you. Seek out as much good feedback from as many sources as you can for yourself.

L for "leadership" might have been here if I thought that all the discussions and distinctions about what and who are leaders and managers were important. They aren't. Whether we call you a leader or manager or supreme commander or Oscar, you've still got the same job. Debating what to call you is a distraction.

P is for "Performance." Performance is the measurable result of work. Pay attention to performance and behavior because you can observe and describe them.. Forget about invisible things like motivation or attitude.

S is for "Show up a lot." This is so simple and yet it's one of the most powerful things you can do. Show up a lot and you learn about your people and they learn about you. Show up a lot and you have lots of opportunities to coach, counsel, correct and encourage. Show up a lot and people get used to you.

T is for "today and tomorrow." Your job isn't just about today. You should also be doing things that will help tomorrow's job get done. Planning helps you accomplish tomorrow's mission. Training helps your people grow.

Y is for "your people." One of your jobs is to care for your people. We started this list with accomplishing the mission and we end it with caring for your people. Both are important, just like on this list, they bracket everything else.

There aren't a lot of letters here, but there aren't a lot of truly important management concepts either. Master the important stuff. Then, if you have time and interest, move on to the rest.

About the Author: Wally Bock coaches individual managers, and is a popular speaker at meetings and conferences in the US and elsewhere. Check out Wally's Working Supervisor Support Kit (http://www.threestarleadership.com/supervisorsupportkit/).

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=191853&ca=Business+Management

How Do We Keep Our Competitive Edge In Our Business?

2010-07-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

By Alicia Marie Fruin

Does the economic climate have you feeling threatened? With all of the changes brought on by the arrival of the information age, do you feel left behind? Most of us do feel uneasy and a little behind the eight ball. Sometimes it seems we have to run as hard as we can just to stay in one place! Everything is changing so fast that what we learned yesterday could very well be outdated tomorrow.

So how do we keep our competitive edge in our business?

The fundamental strategy of a high achiever is their focus on being learning-based. Being a learning-based person means that you take education, training, and self-development as the foundational piece of your plan to achieve your goals.

Maybe learning is key?

No matter what we do, no matter where we go, owner or employee, now more than ever before, we must stay sharp…continue to study, learn and remain curious. Everyone in our business, everyone, every day will stay engaged when we emphasize and encourage learning. Learning is the key to innovative, creative, out of the box solutions. It is not enough for us as leaders to stay abreast of our industry, attend training programs or read books. We need all of our employees playing at their very best to stay in the game of business.

The irony is that the issues that are creating so much potential for anxiety like the economy, global business, changing cultures and technology are potentially the learning opportunities that can potentially propel you forward.

Consider the unprecedented wealth of information available on the Internet, in seminars, webinars and books. When I feel threatened by the economic uncertainty and by all of the new knowledge and capability that's emerging, I just make a point to learn something new: e-commerce, business principles, or how my industry is adapting to the marketplace. Learning anything that will keep me thinking ahead and tweaking my existing business is so very gratifying.

How do you maximize what you are learning? Focus on the top 5 areas:

People - training, coaching, developing, and managing effectively.

Money - how to project, manage, budget and leverage.

Business Development – web 2.0, promotions, retaining and recapturing customers etc.

Operations - process, systems, functionality of the business.

Personal growth - learning about yourself will make you better at all of the above.

When I have that insight or acquire that new understanding or capability I feel stronger, I feel resourceful, like I gained a little ground in the marketplace. Maybe today I put the heat on somebody else? My competitive advantage…me.

Give it a go, and then share what you learned with your employees. The only thing better than knowing that you just got a little smarter is knowing that your business did too. Learning is everything.

Alicia Fruin

So how do we keep our competitive edge in our business?

Maybe learning is key?

How do you maximize what you are learning? Focus on the top 5 areas:

People - training, coaching, developing, and managing effectively.

Money - how to project, manage, budget and leverage.

Business Development – web 2.0, promotions, retaining and recapturing customers etc.

Operations - process, systems, functionality of the business.

Personal growth - learning about yourself will make you better at all of the above.

Give it a go, and then share what you learned with your employees. The only thing better than knowing that you just got a little smarter is knowing that your business did too. Learning is everything.

Alicia Fruin

As owner of Profit Consulting Co., Alicia has become a leader in the field of coaching, consulting and training for small business. She has designed more than 100 custom training programs for hundreds of business owners in a variety of industries across the country. In addition, Alicia has coached managers, presidents and sales professionals on how to build a business truly worth having!

About the Author: Alicia Marie applies almost two decades of business ownership experience, as well as a wealth of sales and marketing knowledge, to help her clients tackle the business challenges they face http://www.profitconsultingco.com

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Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=324150&ca=Business+Management

How To Decide On Who To Promote?

2010-07-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

By Wally Bock

Good leadership development begins with selecting people for their first leadership job so that the odds are good that they will succeed. Here are some pointers.

Promote people who are already engaged. To me, "engaged" means that someone pitches in with energy and attention when there's work to be done. Engaged also means that the person is doing all the things we expect everyone to do such as showing up on time in appropriate attire, cooperating with others, etc.

After that, look for aptitude for the specific work of leadership. People in leadership jobs are responsible for the performance of a group. It's a specific kind of work. If you promote people with the aptitude for the work, they can learn the skills they need.

Promote people who have demonstrated that they can make decisions. People responsible for the work other others have to make decisions routinely.

Promote people who have demonstrated that they will talk to other people about performance and behavior. People responsible for group performance need to do this every day. They need to set expectations, check for understanding and follow up to make sure that the understanding translates into action and performance.

Leaders need to encourage, but they also need to correct and counsel. Not everyone is willing to do this part of the job. It's the cause of many of the slugs that are allowed to continue working and the teams that are dragged down by them.

Promote people who have demonstrated that they're willing to be rewarded based on the performance of their team. One key job of a leader is accomplishing the mission through the group. Not everyone is comfortable with a situation where they're judged based on what other people do.

Watch how your potential new leader acts in a group. If the group succeeds are they willing to point out the contributions of others? Or do they complain that "it's not fair" that they be judged on group performance when their own performance was stellar?

Promote people who have demonstrated that they enjoy helping other people succeed. This is a key part of the leader's job. Do others routinely ask your potential leader for help? Does he or she willingly give it?

Liking to help others is important if you're considering setting up a true apprentice program for leadership in your company. In that sort of environment bosses are expected to take on a mentoring role for the people who work for them.

Promote people who have made a conscious and considered choice to engage in the specific work of leadership. This is very important. Leadership is a specific kind of work. In addition to the important aptitudes, individuals should make a conscious choice to do the job.

Lots of people without aptitude try for leadership positions because they're the only positions in their company that provide a career path with significant opportunities for increased pay, prestige and preferment. This is less likely to happen if you have an alternative career path for individual contributors.

Promoting people who have the aptitude and attitude to succeed as leaders is the first step to putting together a Leadership Apprentice program that develops leaders who will be effective at all levels in your organization. Future CEOs and other senior leaders will come from the pool of people you decide to place in their first leadership position. Choose well.

About the Author: Wally Bock coaches individual managers, and is a popular speaker at meetings and conferences in the US and elsewhere. Check out Wally's Working Supervisor Support Kit http://www.threestarleadership.com/supervisorsupportkit/.

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=202422&ca=Business+Management

How To Create Transformation In Organizations

2010-06-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

By Marcia Xenitelis

There are two distinct ways to use employee communication; one is to inform employees about what is happening in an organization, the other is to engage employees in the process of change. In this article we are going to highlight 3 case studies that demonstrate clearly the different techniques and approaches to ensure that your employee communication strategies bring about transformation in your organization.

Employee Communication Case Study 1: At this telecommunications manufacturing plant, the company decided to involve employees in the organizational changes that were taking place. The company is involved in high technology and has approximately 1,900 employees. After a senior management workshop it was decided that a customer service change programme be developed.

One of the methods introduced was the round table concept. The communications team organised for 18 people from a specific area to have a 90 minute meeting with senior managers. However, the key to the success of these meetings was that the employees did most of the talking and the senior managers, most of the listening. The organization planned to learn from these meetings what the barriers were to success and customer satisfaction. Over a 10 week period, 50 round tables were scheduled. At the completion of this exercise, approximately one third of the total of the organization’s workforce were involved in the round tables. Participants in the round table programme were selected from every employment level with a balanced representation of gender and race.

Patterns in the issues that were raised began to emerge and senior management began to take notice of what were to become the main elements of the customer service change programme. What was critical with this approach was that soon after the round table program of 10 weeks, employees began to actually see their suggestions adopted, and changes taking place. To supplement the face to face meetings with managers, a bi-weekly newsletter was produced. Each issue was 2 pages in length and included a dedicated space for employees to make suggestions to managers for improvement in customer service.

Employee Communication Case Study 2: This hospital wanted to cut costs and at the same time ensure that patients were not adversely impacted by the changes. It was also a major provider of healthcare in a small community so it was essential that the reputation of high quality care was not reduced.

So they sought feedback using focus groups, telephone surveys and also contacting the carers. Three key attributes in patient care came up as the main contributors to patient satisfaction. The hospital staff concentrated on improving these 3 areas whilst still reducing costs. Cross functional teams were established with employees volunteering to take part. An employee with strong project management skills was selected to lead each team. A list of options to improve the experience of the patients was presented to management with details of costings and timeframes for implementation. Agreement was reached on the changes and the senior management team ensured line managers were not blockers to the changes.

Employee Communication Case Study 3: The main objective of this strategy was to educate staff in reading and understanding the company financial statements and how they directly related to the work that they were doing. The other minor objective was the need for employees in other departments to understand how what they did impacted on the remainder of the organization and the bottom line.

Employees from all areas were encouraged to review the company books and financial statements. An extension of this policy was to talk with all employees in groups and discuss what the figures meant, specifically how they related to the work that they were doing and then to the big picture of the organization’s profitability. The strategy was more than an attempt to educate the workforce; rather it focussed on action plans when the budgets and finances were off course for their particular area. The staff would then look at their operations and how they could do things differently to remedy the situation. This method included training on understanding financial reports, which has the benefit not only of learning how to read the financial statements of the organization but also what action the team in each department could take to change the financial outcomes. Copies of the financial statements were distributed to employees once there was recognition that they would understand what was being conveyed. By understanding and teaching employees the direct relationship between their work and the financial results of the organization they are more inclined to understand the message.

Finally the role of the communicator is to ensure that all employees have understood the key message and that it means something to them. Employee communication is all about using a variety of methods and techniques to ensure that no matter how complex, long term or risky the message is, the desired outcome for the organization will be achieved. Employee engagement and employee communication are uniquely connected and by combining the two outstanding results can be achieved.

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Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=205679&ca=Business+Management

Effective Risk Management

2010-06-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

By Elizabeth Newberry

So, you’ve started your own business. You saved the money, carefully constructed a business plan, thoroughly studied your potential consumers or clients based on their needs for your product or service, rented a space from which to work, hired a few people, and posted the “Open” sign on the door. But wait –more goes into business management that just planning your business, hiring employees, and selling a product or service. As a business owner, you need to consider risk management and insurance.

The steps of risk management and purchasing insurance are some of the most important steps when it comes to business management. Risk management involves considering the kinds of damage to your business or employees that could occur, taking the necessary steps to help ensure these kinds of damages don’t occur, and how to handle these kinds of damages in the event that they do occur.

First, you need to figure out what kinds of accidents could happen on your job site that could cause damage to your business or injuries to your employees. Your roof could spring a leak, causing water damage to your computers and an employee to slip and injure himself. You could end up with faulty smoke detectors, causing your business’s structure to burn and your employees to suffer smoke inhalation. Get creative with your scenarios – you never know what might happen.

Next, think about all the precautionary measures that need to be taken in order to prevent damage should any of these accidents occur. Keep close watch on your building’s structure, and make repairs as needed. Train your employees on how to act in the event of an emergency.

Finally, purchase adequate insurance for your business in case precautionary measures and employee training don’t work.

The steps for effective business management include more than just producing a sellable product and making money. Be sure to include the steps of risk management and insurance, too.

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Using Policies And Procedures To Do The Right Things The Right Way

2010-06-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

By Chris Anderson

Managers know the difficulty of getting people to do the right things the right way. And employees need their expertise and understanding of the way things should be done. But how do you get it across so it actually sticks? The answer is well-defined policies and procedures.

Quickly Convey What’s Right

Managers can convey the exact way things should be done with policies and procedures, and they can do it faster than ever with pre-written documents. This speeds an organization’s standard operating procedures project effectiveness to get results.

Create Strong Operating Procedures

Departmentally-focused manuals provide an excellent opportunity to create strong, consistent Standard Operating Procedures across multiple functions. This includes added savings of time and resources. Departments that benefit with improved results include:

• CEO Management - Build an effective management procedures system based on best practices for the entire organization • CFO Controller - Simplify the job as a CFO or Controller, and speed the development of comprehensive Accounting and HR manuals

• ISO 9001 Quality Manager - Create ISO 9001 quality policies and procedures manual with prewritten policies, procedures and forms • Human Resources Manager - Create HR policies and procedures manual with prewritten policies, procedures and forms • Security Manager - Create complete facility security procedures and disaster recovery plans

Customize to any Business

When researching effective solutions, the content should be well-researched and follow industry-standard formats. Moreover, the applications such as MS Word-based standard operating procedures documents should be easy to edit and simple to customize for any business or organization.

Utilize Essential Procedures

Management should have a solution to implement their entire policy system with essential procedures in one concise, consistent format. And they can do it effectively and efficiently because pre-written documents:

• Saves research time • Improves procedure writing • Speeds policy development • Eases document editing • Enhances policy knowledge • Simplifies implementation

The Right Documents

Business owners and executives should select a pre-written policies and procedures package specifically created for a particular management scope. And choose the one that identifies their role and needs.

Chris Anderson has over 18 years of sales, marketing and business management experience working with business process design, software and systems engineering. He is also co-author of policies and procedures manual products, producing the layout, process design and implementation to increase performance. He is currently the Managing Director of Bizmanualz, Inc. Visit: http://www.bizmanualz.com

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Effective Leadership And EffectiveManagement

2010-06-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

By Benedict Smythe

Some of the more traditional concepts of leadership and management have now evolved to encompass factors that years ago would have been unthinkable.

Executive management, in particular, involves good leadership style. Years ago, leadership might have been thought to involve nothing more than being the most visible and the most powerful. The traditional thinking is that this in itself is sufficient to warrant leadership – that is, the right visibility and power is a good reason for leading other people.

Nowadays, however, the concept of leadership has grown with the times. Being powerful and visible is simply not enough to ensure good leadership.

Effective leadership

Nowadays, people ask a lot of questions, as they rightly should. Hence, “Is this a good goal of the company?” “Are we sure that the policies implemented are appropriate and workable?” “Is this really a good strategy?” “Are the defined goals attainable?”

Being a good leader, you are not expected to say “We do this because I said so, and I’m the leader.” Nothing will work to lose you converts faster. People have different kinds of leadership styles, and while one style might work for some, it might not work for everyone.

The common thread in all of them, however, is the leader’s ability to address questions and criticisms. And the best way to do this is by having a solid rational footing to begin with. This means that the basic trait people appreciate in a good leader is the ability to make rational and intelligent decisions.

Good social skills

Because leadership mainly involves the “ability to lead or to direct people” towards a predetermined goal, much of the skills expected of a good leader or manager is their ability to navigate social relationships successfully.

This can involve a host of many different skill sets. For example, can you persuade people to your point of view without resorting to threatening or aggressive behaviour? Can you issue commands or instructions and reasonably expect them to be followed – without having to resort to making unhealthy demands? Are you sufficiently clear in your communication with people? You’d be surprised at how much potential conflict and disagreements are actually the result of poor communication and misunderstandings.

After all, the main focus of leadership and being a good leader is people. Hence, effective leadership involves effectively dealing with people.

Good management is effective leadership

The ability to properly manage a group or organization is equivalent to being an effective leader. Why? Because managing groups and organizations mainly involve being able to direct the efforts a particular group of individuals.

You might think that being a manager, your main concern is really the welfare of the company or the organization as a whole, and your sole purpose is achieving goals, without regard to the welfare of people. After all, you pay them sufficiently for the work they provide. Thus they have no sufficient cause for complaints otherwise.

There is no way of getting around the fact that good management and leadership involves dealing with people. And all of us being humans, unique personalities and sensibilities are involved. This means that you would have to deal with a host of variable factors that have to be balanced, managed and directed in order to ensure optimum performance.

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Educating Management Is Key To Business Success

2010-06-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

By Mark Walters

Everyone arrives at a website that has management education information. Some help manage businesses. Some teach small business owners how to succeed. Others are communities. At first the new business owner passes these by. The day will come when all business owners stop and consider joining one of these groups. Unfortunately, if that day doesn’t come, the business owner statistically reduces their chances of success.

Management education is the key to small business success. But, according to some statistics only 36 per cent of small business owners take any professional development advice, courses, or read books. This could explain why most small businesses will go under in the first five years.

Too many small businesses are poorly funded with insufficient working capital to allow stable, controllable growth. The business owner’s lack of education and development leave them unable to manage their time and money effectively.

Compare this to large companies where all managers typically receive professional development training on a quarterly or yearly basis. In fact, many large corporations now run their own ‘in house’ Internet based schools. The correlation between education and success has been proven time and again.

Not all types of education are equal. Not all training venues are equal.

Where To Seek Advice

The net is a viable source of free information. Some good, most bad. The best rule of thumb is to follow the success rates. Find a website that offers advice. Then, check them out. Do they own a company? Are there employees? Can you find a business location? Phone the company, ask a few questions.

Do you really want to take advice from a business that has not reached a level of success where they need office space, staff, or even a business phone? The next step is to Google the guru’s and company’s name. You want to see hundreds of references to that company, proving that they are successful and respected by other people in the industry.

Types of Education

There are several types of business management education the small business owner needs.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT skills are needed to learn how to increase productivity, manage time, keep projects on track, and understand business law. A business manager can take this type of education free on the net, by reading books, and by hiring a life coach.

College courses will probably not afford the information needed by buying a ‘get started’ or ‘how we succeeded’ package from a proven success.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT is an art more than a science. All business owners need to take crisis management courses. The confidence that you can handle an emergency effectively and efficiently is often enough to help the business owner ride out the most traumatic down turn, or devastating situation.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT is the ability to bring together all types of people, and resources. The objective is to create a time table, and a budget, that includes contingencies for emergencies and problems. The objective is to make sure that projects are finished before their deadlines.

ACCOUNTING is vital, even if the business owner never plans to take charge of their own bookkeeping. Millions of business owners have been robbed, and even ended up in jail for tax fraud, because they could not read a general journal.

No one can create effective cash flow charts and projections without first understanding how to manage a set of books. A small business owner may use one of the bookkeeping programs that ‘does it all.’ However, without a basic understanding of accounting procedures the numbers mean nothing.

Learning the basics of accounting will help the business owner translate their balance sheet into a business building, success creating, management tool.

COMMUNICATION STYLES teaches business managers how to get their point across without causing problems. Most clients are lost by someone who does not understand the basic concept of ‘communication styles.’

MARKETING can be the most confusing, and yet most powerful tool in a business owner’s arsenal. It is the one thing that will help them know the difference between an opportunity and a scam. Without a basic understanding of the concepts of marketing, it will be almost impossible to start a business without buying a ‘get started’ or ‘how to succeed’ kit from a business management success and mentor.

About the Author: Mark Walters is a third generation entrepreneur and author. He offers free training and investing videos designed to speed you towards financial independence at http://www.cashflowinstitute.com/videosignup.htm

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Leading By Example

2010-06-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

By Johnny Cyreous

The best side to learn leadership from is not the management side, but the employee side of the manager/employee relationship; for by being forced-fed an education about management from management, you often learn the wrong tenets and greed driven philosophy other detached managers want you to know, whereas learning leadership from the employee side drives you passionately to learn what not to do from the pain of experiencing bad management practices.

The first thing I learned about management from my experience as a trainer is that most managers are poor leaders. This is not entirely because of their lack of passion or desire; but it has more to do with the lack of time that front line managers have to learn correct leadership principles. For the most part, managers or supervisors are thrown into their given roles and expected to perform with little training involved and once they are in their roles they are caught-up in the madness of the “machine” driven by unreasonable demands to meet targeted results from out-of-touch C.E.O’s or company heads, resulting in managers playing a catch-up game in which they never get caught-up. In fact, most management or supervision is so far removed from what true leadership is that a book could be written on the subject entitled, “Managers are from Mars, and Leaders are from Venus”.

The most important quality which stands in glaring contrast from the two groups is the quality of leading by example. In fact today’s quote featured on our website, http://cyreousquotes.com is something Albert Schweitzer once said. Eloquent in its simplicity the saying goes, “Example is Leadership!”

If you want to teach an employee good working habits for example, you can elect to draw up a list of things for that employee to do. Heck, you can put your employees all in a room for a day and cover the material and call it training if you wish; but that is not going to get the best results. That is tantamount to telling your teenagers what to do. You see how far that has gotten don’t you? Telling people what to do just doesn’t work. Here is what will work - leading by example. Instead of always beating that drum about attendance, weather it is showing up late for work or missing days, set the example yourself by being the first one in and the last to leave each day and don’t miss a single day from work. You heard me, you can’t miss a single day.

Herein lies the explanation as to why many managers don’t succeed; it is because doing what they say and saying what they mean seems too difficult. You can’t miss a day? That’s right! The only way your leadership will work is if you can prove it can be done. You see most of American doesn’t believe you can have perfect attendance; which is why attendance is the #1 cause of employee termination in this country. It is the single biggest problem leading to a company’s lack of performance, customer service breakdown, lost profits, communication problems and a whole lot of other related problems. Because of this, attendance is the #1 issue with employers.

Don’t think that just because you haven’t been spoken to yet that your boss hasn’t noticed your missed days, or showing up 15 minutes late every morning, or leaving early before your shift ends. Believe me when I say this, as sure as the sun rises each day supervisors know precisely when you are not there and they have duly noted your lack of enthusiasm for the job. For most employees, the subject is never brought up when they are fired. Other excuses are offered and employees never learn that it was their attendance that was the issue that led to their termination

For this reason I always counsel workers to go beyond the call of duty. Give the employer more than they expect. Wow them! If you keep a perfect attendance record, I guarantee that you will impress your employer. Your example will be one of a leader and in affect you will be acting in the role of a manager by doing what a manager ought to. Your raises and promotions will come quicker than most and your new position of power will give you the opportunity to lead others by example.

This applies to every aspect of life, no just work. If you are a spouse, your leadership is needed. If you are a parent your leadership is needed. You see in many homes the duality of the dysfunctional families when parents tell their kids to say no to drugs, but they do this while they are puffing on a cigarette or drinking a martini. The cliché “Do as I say, not as I do” is far too well known. This is not leadership. You must lead by example if you expect success.

Today as you take on the world, remember that you are a leader. As a leader you must lead by example. Remember Schweitzer’s easy-to-remember words, “Example is leadership!” If you do and you practice it you will be empowered and you will succeed! Take that to the bank!

About the Author: John Cyr is a retired workforce development trainer and motivational consultant who writes articles and editorials under the pen-name Johnny Cyreous, or Cyreous. He maintains a website of quotes by famous people and advocates his method of teaching at http://www.cyreousquotes.com.

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Process Mapping: A Method For Raising Employee Motivation And Effectiveness

2010-06-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

By Leslie Allan

Business pundits have recognized now for a number of years that a motivated employee is a productive employee. This is true across international boundaries, as major research studies have shown. Studies conducted by research houses such as Towers Perrin, BlessingWhite and Gallup Consulting consistently reveal a strong correlation between the level of employee engagement in an organization and its ability to meet its business goals.

There are many organizational and personal factors that contribute to an employee’s commitment level. One powerful but often unused method for raising employee motivation and effectiveness is mapping business processes. Process mapping entails identifying and representing in simple graphical form the steps used to deliver a product or service to both internal and external customers. Mapping processes is a central activity in all quality initiatives. And it’s no wonder. You can’t improve what you don’t understand.

Many organizations continue to struggle with poorly defined and communicated processes. How an invoice is processed, customer complaint handled or engineering drawing approved in many organizations depends more on who does it and what day of the week it was done on rather than on sound business reasoning. With this lack of process and role clarity, employee motivation takes a tumble as personal idiosyncrasies and political maneuvering take over decision making.

Moreover, research indicates that less than 20 percent of product defects and service problems are due to non-random factors, such as malicious employees, machine breakdown and poor raw materials. The other 80 percent or more of problems is due to systemic deficiencies with processes. So, although mapping your business processes is relatively simple to do and involves no costly capital expenditure, it pays huge dividends in business efficiency and employee commitment.

In helping companies, both large and small, map their processes, I have played a part first hand in pushing the twin levers of clarifying business processes and motivating employees. Below are some key pointers for maximizing this natural synergy between defining processes and engaging employees.

Involve employees who actually do the work in the mapping

Employees who do the actual work are in the best position to know the detailed steps in each process. They are also most familiar with the common roadblocks and bottlenecks and the key contacts in the organization to get things done. Managers will need to step right back from wanting to be seen as “experts” and give frontline employees a voice. So, tap in to the enormous wealth of experience that walks through your doors each morning and walks out again each night. Start by explicitly inviting your employees to join the new process mapping teams.

Getting your employees to map their own processes is a powerful morale booster. Apart from mutual goal-setting, there is no more powerful method that I know of for engaging the hearts and minds of employees. I have seen employees’ eyes light up during briefing sessions in which I offered them the opportunity to identify and remove the roadblocks to them doing a great job. Most employees are tired of the day-to-day fire fighting that comes with many jobs. At one briefing session, employees were so enthused that they all volunteered to join the team!

Identify process objective and inputs and outputs

This is where work starts to take on new meaning for employees. For each process, get the process mapping team to ask why it is performed and what the expected results of each process are. Not only does this help to focus attention on removing non-value add activities, it also gives employees a sense of purpose in their working life. Instead of work being a disconnected set of meaningless activities, employees begin to appreciate that everything they do helps to achieve a larger goal. So, Joe Worker no longer just removes boxes from one shelf to put them on another. He is maximizing the use of warehouse space and reducing pick times so that the warehouse team can deliver widgets to their customers faster and cheaper.

Then ask each team to identify the inputs to each process and the expected outputs. Doing this will clarify for them what each process needs before it can begin. It also clarifies what customers of the next process will get before they can begin. For example, agreeing that widget assembly cannot begin until the joining screws are supplied will eliminate a lot of idle work in progress.

Identify Customer and Supplier requirements

Next, get each team to work out who the suppliers and customers are of each process. This step is critical as it identifies who the team needs to work with collaboratively to maximize business results. If a process does not have a customer, then eliminate it as it has no useful purpose. Every employee working in a process should serve either an internal customer or an external customer or both. Each team should then ask of their customers what it is they want from the process, in terms of quality, turn around time, and so on. For example, the internal customers of the purchasing team may require orders to be fulfilled within two days unless placed on backorder.

Conversely, the team needs to clarify what it is they need of their suppliers, both internal and external, to perform their process effectively and efficiently. A purchasing team may require other departments, for example, to fill in all fields of the Purchase Order prior to submission.

Seeing how their own local processes fit into the wider organizational processes and goals allow employees to view the “big picture”. For many people, this is incredibly empowering and motivating. Through engaging customers and suppliers and taking responsibility for the complete process, employees, supervisors and managers will all start singing from the same hymn sheet.

Identify a Process Owner for each process

For each process, get the team to specify one Process Owner who is responsible for the process end to end. Where processes flow through departments, as all major processes do, the Process Owner will need to have sufficient authority and credibility to make decisions spanning these departments. I know of no more effective way of dismantling the silo walls that get built separating departments. With communication lines opened up, your employees will feel enabled to get the job done more efficiently and effectively.

Distribute the process documents

Once the processes have been documented, ensure that they are easily accessible to all who need them. All of your organization’s efforts will be wasted if the documents are hidden in someone’s bottom drawer. Fix them to operator machines, post them on the corporate intranet or place them in a loose-leaf binder on each officer’s desk. Put them where people do their work and make sure that they are accurate, concise and easily understandable. Train all employees in how to read the process maps and keep them up to date. Your newly motivated employees will quickly become disengaged if they cannot use the documents.

Convey management commitment and train your teams

Although mapping business processes will not cost you much in capital expenditure, it does require concerted effort. Get the management team to show visible support and commitment to the project. Activities here include holding regular project progress meetings and rewarding the most productive teams. Teams will loose faith and energy quickly if management support is seen as piecemeal or being given grudgingly. Team leaders will need to be able to organize effectively and manage their time, along with possess the necessary interpersonal and analytical thinking skills. Each team will also need a mix of abilities; people who can think creatively, bond the team and follow through on tasks, to name just a few. Where these skills are lacking, they will need to be learned. Do not skimp on training the teams and their team leaders. This is a very wise commitment, as such teams have proved to be a fertile ground for developing the next line of leaders.

Use as a basis for further improvement

Business Process Reengineering was a big buzzword in the 80s and 90s. A common objective of such reengineering efforts was radical technological implementations that required significantly less manual steps in the new processes. In these cases, the consequent ruthless downsizing led to a dramatic downturn in employee morale. What is not so well recognized is that through engineering their processes for the very first time, organizations can dramatically improve employee enthusiasm and business efficiency.

There is a lot to be gained from initially mapping your organization’s core processes. Every team that I have worked with has uncovered many areas for improvement. One team dramatically reduced the incidence of lost inventory items whilst another substantially improved the pass rate of electronic circuit modules.

Once you have mapped your key processes, they make for excellent induction and training resources. However, their utility does not stop there. The process maps will now serve as the agreed baseline for ongoing process improvement. Turn your process mapping teams into continuous improvement teams and watch your employees remain emotionally engaged with the organization and motivated to continue working towards a common organizational goal.

About the Author: Leslie Allan is Managing Director of Business Performance Pty Ltd, a company providing practical online information, tools and resources in a range of business areas. Read useful articles, download free resources and subscribe to their newsletter from their website at http://www.businessperform.com

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The Measurement And Management Risk

2010-06-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

By Laurus Nobilis

Entrepreneurship is defined as set of different activities that consist the business development. These activities are starting with idea, project development, evaluation, investment, development, start-up, expansion, harvesting, re-evaluation and cycle improvement. All these activities are important for sustainable development of the business.

But during this step-by-step business process, there are many situations where the whole process can be jeopardized by incidents that may have more or less influence. The whole process is planned in the best manner. But regardless how perfect the execution plan is, there is a certain possibility that some occurrences will deviate plan from it's path until a certain extent. The possibility of incident occurrences that will deviate execution of the plan is defined as a Risk.

The Risk is the part of every business. There is always a chance that something will happen that will change the development of plan. Since the Risk is inevitable companion of the business, it is necessary to manage Risks, in order to prevent negative occurrences and to alleviate consequences, if they appear.

The measurement and management of the Risk is not tangible as other business indicators, therefore it cannot be calculated precisely. In order to expect the unexpected, it is necessary to use subjective judgment in conjunction with structured analytical tools. During the Risk analysis three main area are in the scope of the Risk Analysis Tool:

* Occurrence - This indicator expresses possibility of Risk to happen. Higher the possibility, the higher is the rating.

* Impact - Shows how big impact the Incident will create in case that happens.

* Detection - Failure to detect the incident before happening is increasing the Risk. This indicator shows detectability failure. More chance of detection failure means higher grade of the Risk.

These three factors of Risk analysis are rated from 1-10. The Total Risk assessment is expressed as a multiplication score of Risk factors:

Risk = Occurrence x Impact x Detection

This is the analytical tool for a Risk assessment. This tool should be used systematically in a Risk assessment process. But how should we expect the unexpected in a relevant manner?

The recommended flow of Risk assessment process is:

1.) Start Risk assessment process before Business Planning.

2.) Organize workshop with mid and top level managers of different functions.

3.) Train participants about structure of the Risk universe. Brainstorm possible Risks of the business. Write down all potential risks.

4.) Rate all risks according the Risk Analysis Tool. Every participant of the workshop should vote from 1-10 for Occurrence, Impact and Detectability for every identified Risk.

5.) After compiling of all data create Risk Analysis Report. Based on this report, prepare plan of preventive and corrective measures, according the importance ranking of every risk.

6.) Start next Risk assessment workshop with re-evaluation last Risk Analysis Report.

This approach is giving you the chance to anticipate potential Risks and to be prepared for the situation of incident occurrence. It is true that Risk analysis is still the game of expecting of unexpected, but with this model you will be better prepared and less vulnerable for the potential incidence occurrences.

About the Author: Laurus Nobilis has 11 years of experience in FMCG business. In 2007 he has started the http://www.biz-development.com web site dedicated to development of managerial skills. He also runs http://www.my-introspective.com a Personal Exploration and Development Guide.

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Defining Corporate Culture

2010-05-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

By Janine Sergay

Corporate Culture Defined

A basic definition of organizational culture is the collective way we do things around here. It involves a learned set of behaviors that is common knowledge to all the participants. These behaviors are based on a shared system of meanings which guide our perceptions, understanding of events, and what we pay attention to. As Sun Tzu, a Chinese military general from 3000 BC, indicated in his explanation of strategy, culture forms an integral part of any organizational strategy. It consists of Tao – the created and shared beliefs, values, and glue that holds an organization together, and it also involves the very nature of the organization. Culture is about individuals in a group sharing patterns of behavior. There is no cultural absolute. Because culture is relative, we have the power to create a culture that is the best fit for an organization’s future direction.

Observing Culture

Culture plays out in a variety of ways. We can identify the specifics of it from how information is communicated, feedback is given, performance is managed, and projects are co-coordinated within the organization. It is reflected in the way the corporation or institution is structured; whether work is conducted cross-functionally or within silos, how the hierarchical levels are set up, and the types of job titles used. Culture is often defined by the systems that are used, the processes that are followed, and the rituals, symbols, and stories that abound in the organization. It is even reflected in how meetings are held in an organization.

Corporate Culture as an Obstacle

When working towards company goals or when trying to effect change in the organization, your organizational culture can be the very thing that trips you up. If insufficient effort is put towards identifying aspects of the culture that may impact on what you are trying to achieve, then insufficient actions will be taken to circumvent obstacles in a timely manner or harness the way things are done in an opportune direction. This is best explained through an example.

An organization espouses that “people are our most important asset” as part of its new philosophy. However, employees witness a senior executive being escorted off site with his belongings by security guards after being laid off. They receive an e-mail explaining where they will be sitting and who they will be reporting to in the future restructure – with no fore-warning or personal contact. Training and development opportunities for employees are stopped in order to cut costs. Actions that consistently reflect a certain core culture will more effectively emphasize to employees what the leadership’s true values are than any widely publicized statement. If a direction is truly desired, then all actions that will reflect the required culture need to be considered and instituted accordingly.

Aligning Culture for Success

Once a strategy is set for the organization, the way deliverables are produced in the organization needs to be examined and challenged. This is to ensure that every process is geared towards achieving the strategy.

Every component of the corporate culture needs to underpin what is required from all stakeholders in order to realize the strategic goals. There must be a reinforcing stream of communications. All the actions in the organization need to translate into the cultural realities. A culture can be created or reinforced through the use of socialization. Avenues for socialization abound in functions like selection, placement on the job, job mastery, the measurement and rewarding of performance, and recognition and promotion. Reinforcing a culture can emerge through the stories told and the folklore propagated and, most importantly, through the adherence to chosen important values. The key to the success of the above is to ensure that the culture you wish to socialize others into is an ideal one, necessary for breakthrough performance in your work area or organization. If it is not, then you need to involve everyone in the evaluation and creation of a more suitable culture.

Strong Leadership is Required

One of the surest ways to align the culture to the organization’s strategy is to apply leadership practices that are also aligned. The leaders, at all levels, need to know what the required culture is and then determine ways of establishing practices and procedures in all operations that will closely reflect the desired culture. They also need to role model the very behaviors they wish exhibited by everyone in the organization and provide the necessary support to others that will enable them to function accordingly as well. Particular attention also needs to be given to all communications.

Leadership needs to be front and center to create a corporate culture that works.

For a graphical view of the Cultural Paradigm, click here, http://www.sergaygroup.com/what_is_corporate_culture.html

About the Author: Janine is an organizational strategy and development expert who has helped myriad individuals, teams, and organizations across a wide range of industries for more than 20 years. She has hands-on experience at every managerial level. http://www.sergaygroup.com

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How To Set Up And Conduct Effective Meetings

2010-05-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bill_Truby]Bill Truby and Joann Truby

The greatest time waster in most organizations is ineffective meetings. Yet meetings are important. To be a successful organization, information flow is critical. Additionally "face time" is important to support and perpetuate good relationships and teamwork.

How do you determine when to have a meeting? Does the calendar dictate it? Do you call a meeting whenever you seem to want it or need it?

There are two reasons to have a meeting: 1) Information flow and 2) Perpetuating relationships of partnership or teamwork. The first is sometimes overlooked or "over killed." It is overlooked when managers assume employees can get the information they need, or should take the initiative to ask for, if they want to know something. It is "overkill" when a manager brings everyone together to discuss or listen to information about everything. Both ends of this spectrum are ineffective and inappropriate.

Individual employees are seldom willing or secure enough to ask for information. Further, an employee does not know what he or she does not know. A manager has a broader perspective and can provide important information an employee isn't even aware about. Further, effective meetings give a manager an opportunity to provide and employee "purpose and context" of his/her work and help the employee feel more a part of the organization. Knowledge of the bigger picture can give an employee team member a sense of "we."

Meeting's objective. When you send invitations to attendees, make sure you put two items:

The meeting's objective, and The meeting's agenda

Every meeting should have a clear purpose and expected outcome. Also, everyone who attends a meeting should know before arriving what the purpose of the meeting is and what outcome they will walk away with.

Agenda. The agenda of a meeting is determined by the type of meeting. The labeled "type" of agenda item determines how that item is treated. For example, if an agenda item is one that requires discussion, the outcome of the discussion is stated clearly ("outcomes" like: getting input or opinion, brainstorming, gathering multiple perspectives, etc.) and a time frame associated with the discussion assigned.

Problem Solving. Used when change is needed, or to attack a problem. The "decision maker" or "decision making process" needs to be present and clear so as to solve the problem. State how long the attendees will deal with the problem - Until it is solved? For a specific period of time an if it can't be solved, tabled, delegated, delayed? Discussion. A group of people discussing an idea or topic stimulating others in the discussion to an ever broadening and meaningful perspective. Decision Making. To choose from previous or currently developed alternatives. It must include the ultimate decision maker(s). Planning. Future oriented problem prevention, details about a specific process or plan, or goal setting. Reporting and Presenting. This can be very effective in making sure everyone hears the same information at the same time. Reporting, however, can often be a misused agenda items at a meeting. Consider whether information could be done one to one or in written form or in advance so as to not waste the time of people who may each have a different pace when it comes to assimilating information. Feedback or Input. When many people express their opinions or suggestions to one or more individuals about something that has occurred, an event that took place, an idea - anything the attendees could give meaningful feedback or input to. State the purpose and context (why we're talking about this and how it fits into the bigger picture) so as to have meaningful input. A facilitator is helpful to stay on track and a recorder is particularly important. State the time frame as to how long input will be received.

Prior to a meeting, the meeting leader can ensure success by checking on the status of action items from a previous meeting and asking each meeting contributor if he or she needs any preparation support.

Also, prior to the meeting, the meeting leader would prepare any handouts including an agenda to distribute at the meeting. There can be space left on the agenda for last minute items to be added.

Decide on the list of attendees. To state a simple fact: Everyone should attend a meeting that the meeting pertains to. That leads to greater efficiency. However, that needs to be balanced against the logistics (e.g. geography, difficulty in finding a time slot that works for everyone) and diversity of the audience (when you have people with different degrees of expertise, it is hard to tailor conversation to everyone appropriately).

Decide on the meeting format. An efficient meeting is one where there is absolute accountability to the meeting process. Efficient meetings are often run quite rigidly with crisp adherence to the "rules." When the rules are lax, the meeting goes on any number of tangents, clarity is lost, people are commenting (endlessly) or expressing opinion on insignificant topics. Time well spent in a rigidly run, efficient meeting often allows for plenty of time to visit, express opinions, have fun interaction or just enjoy each other's company. Inefficient meetings that are allowed to drag on or deal with meaningless banter, often frustrate the participants and can do damage to the interactions.

A discussion process. Success for the communication of each agenda item that demands interaction can be enhanced if there is a clear process for discussion. The following process helps focus people and be on the same page. Further, it results in "closure" eliminating loose ends.

For each agenda item that needs discussion:

State - briefly state the issue or item of discussion including what type of agenda item it is, it's purpose, and the expected outcome of the item. Educate - explain the issues that surround that item and the reason for it being on the agenda. Give the purpose and context for the agenda item - the "why" for the "what" and how it fits into a bigger context. Discuss - within the time parameter assigned, without judgment or limits, openly discuss the item, listening to all input about the subject. Close - come to closure regarding this agenda item by making a decision or setting a clear next step that involves an accountability trail: "What, by whom, by when?"

The "State" and "Educate" phases of this process are done by the responsible person for the agenda item. The "Discuss" portion is lead by the responsible person engaging in discussion with all of the participants. The "Close" portion is done by the person responsible or accountable for the agenda item. It may be the "Close" is done by a vote or a person with authority "calls the play." In any case, the process allows for the agenda item to be clearly prepped, include broad input and participation, then creates closure - never leaving loose ends.

Every item in every meeting must clearly find it's reason for existence and it's "end" or "next step" closure.

Follow-up. An effective meeting has clear follow up. At the end of the meeting, the leader would summarize all of the action items - any "to do" - illuminating the contract of expectations: What? By whom? By When?

Sometimes the meeting leader is not the person in the company directly accountable for the action item or for the person performing the action item. In those cases it is especially important to determine the accountability trail. Who is doing the action, who is the person performing the action item accountable to. What resources, if any, does the person need to implement the action item. Part of the follow up is to notify other party's not present about items one of their subordinates is doing.

Another aspect of follow up is for the meeting leader to prepare and disseminate meeting minutes to the participants, including members who could not attend.

Meeting management checklist

Pre Meeting:

Prepare a meeting agenda Decide on attendees Determine an appropriate date, time and place to hold the meeting Schedule space and arrange for the room setup and supplies Invite attendees informing them of the meeting's date and time, place, duration, objective and agenda. Prepare formal agenda including agenda types Prepare handouts if necessary Obtain, arrange for or schedule any supplies, equipment or refreshments needed

At the meeting:

State purpose of the meeting and review time frame for the entire meeting Preview the agenda including type and person responsible Assign supportive roles if necessary (timekeeper, recorder and facilitator) Call for any additions to the agenda Determine who is not at the meeting and ask for volunteer "partners" to connect with the absentee Follow the agenda items using the following Discussion Process (State, Educate, Discuss, Close) Reviewing any action items and clarifying accountability trails

Post meeting:

Disseminate meeting minutes to all members including absentees Notify accountability person(s) about their subordinate(s) who are responsible for certain action items

Ineffective meetings may result in significant losses of time. You will help your business become more successful if you follow the best practices for meetings. Additionally "face time" will help support and promote good relationships and teamwork.

Bill and Joann Truby, are authors, consultants and speakers, who are focused on helping individuals achieve personal fulfillment and organizations increase their performance. They are the founders of Truby Achievements: http://www.trubyachievements.com.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Business-Meeting---How-to-Set-Up-and-Conduct-an-Effective-Discussion&id=3100988] Business Meeting - How to Set Up and Conduct an Effective Discussion

Where Is Businesses Management Headed?

2010-05-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

By Mark Walters

Every year analysts take a look at the business world. They measure the trends, validate what is new, evaluate what is disappearing. Some new trends have a real significance on the business world and will define success in the coming years.

Some current trends are the increase of eco-awareness and the number of new businesses popping up to meet new consumer needs. Eco-consultants for the home are learning their trade while passing on their skills. This is one business that is changing almost daily.

The disappearance of down time and down space is the next trend. The message ‘The office is closed...’ anymore. They expect the office to be open 24/7. They expect to be able to talk to someone whenever they click the button on the website, or telephone the office. The work at home, remote, and virtual offices are eliminating the term ‘down time.’

Radical Transparency

The Internet and more particularly blogs have given birth to Radical Transparency. Businesses are revealing their secrets online. Their CEOs are admitting when they do not have the answers. The blog reports when they are facing financial difficulty. In the old days businesses hid their secrets. Today, business owners are working and living among a world of customers who are as business savvy and able to read between the lines as the business owner is.

There are many stories of CEOs and business owners who saved their business by offering full disclosure. They won their client’s respect and confidence.

Personal Responsibility

Two decades ago the boss was the boss. He did as much or as little work as he wanted. His secretary or personal assistant did the major part of the workload. The manager took long lunches, attended meetings, and was often emotionally abusive.

Today’s bosses are learning about horizontal responsibility, and self-actualization of their employees. They hire life coaches to help them learn the ‘7 habits of successful people’ and keep them on the path to success.

A Small World

The concept that ‘The World is Local’ has been growing for several years. It is now possible to be in Japan one day and Germany the next. Small business owners can talk with a supplier in Africa and one in Asia at the same time.

VoIP telephone service has made unlimited long distance the norm. Satellite has linked the globe’s network in ‘real time.’ We can read the newspaper online, watch thousands of local television shows via our computers, and watch video streaming from our competitor in Australia. It is easier for people to meet locally. The cell phone has made us instantly accessible.

However, local products and services also are more desirable. Consumers want to be part of the wide world. They want the world at their door. But, they prefer locally made products over imports. This gives small business owners an edge over the international corporations.

Queen Trumps King

The boys club is quickly becoming extinct. The shift in power is forcing businesses to think twice about their management and marketing practices. Women make most of the purchases. Statistics say that women make 60% of all purchases – without consulting their husbands. That is why you now see children saying Vroom-Vroom in car commercials, and women selling legal services.

Power is shifting from men to women. Hotels now have rooms that are designed just for women and offer amenities that are not found in other rooms, such as chenille blankets, ionic hair dryers, and women’s floors will have extra security and women only lounges.

Management is shifting too. High powered women start their own businesses, and bring down the companies who wouldn’t promote them. This is forcing management to become more ‘women friendly.’ The world is too competitive to turn away talent just because the professional is a woman. Businesses need every edge they can get and that means hiring the best, even if it is a woman.

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Employee Engagement And Retention Management

2010-05-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

By Jerry H.Hall

Employee retention is largely based on satisfaction. If organizations can determine why employees are not happy, it's likely that organizations can prevent them from leaving the company by changing practices, culture, and sometimes even the management style. The success of the organization is largely dependent on its ability to retain top performers - don't ignore their concerns. That mistake is just too expensive to make.

"You can't expect people to be committed, to be loyal to an organization, to be engaged in an organization, [or] to want to stay in an organization if the company doesn't care about them." - David Sirota (2005)

Organizations ought to analyse and determine the retention factors relevant to each of their respective employee groups. This is important because proper planning, focus and strategy execution can then be carried out accurately to address the problem. Thus, for each employee category, information gathering is essential and among the sources are current and former employees. They should be approached for their perceptions on reasons and benefits to remain or leave the organization.

Employee surveys are common with the intranet and online questionnaires. Nevertheless, the areas of focus should be on commitment and retention factors. It is essential that exit interviews and follow up surveys are being improved to bring more accurate and beneficial information. In addition, by providing high level of attention to the employee retention management, a strong organizational culture can be built and maintained to achieve success.

The need for motivated employees is business survival, according to many studies.

Motivated employees are essential components to adequately changing and adapting to the fast-paced environment of today business world. Satisfied employees are more productive thus helping organizations prosper as a result. To be effective motivators, managers need to understand just what makes their employees tick, and what gets them going within the context of the roles they perform at the company. All the functions a manager performs, motivating employees is arguably the most complex. This is due, in part, to the fact that what motivates employees is constantly in motion. For example, research suggests that as employees' income increases, money becomes less of a motivator. Also, as employees get older, interesting work becomes more of a motivator.

It has also been noted that there are very few research details that have been done about the local scene on retention management. Thus, it is recommended that researches on the Malaysian employee retention in industries such as public healthcare, private hospitals, manufacturing or plantation would be an interesting topic.

About the Author: Jerry H.Hall has an interest in Career Change Management related subjects. If you are interesting in finding out more information on Career Changes, please visit this successful Career Change site: http://CareerChange.smartreviewguide.com

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Why Should You Outsource?

2010-05-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Henderson

Outsourcing is a word that is on every pair of lips lately. We know it pertains to the corporate world, but what are the benefits of outsourcing... really?

Outsourcing is nothing more than plucking away a part of your processes and operations and entrusting them to a professional team that is not in your company and whose main task is to do this work for you. But when used correctly, there are many benefits of outsourcing.

Long reserved to big companies, outsourcing is now available to smaller companies thanks to the Web. With globalization threading paths through avenues opened by the World Wide Web, task and processes are now outsourced every day through information superhighways the world over. The Internet provides the access, so why not make use of the benefits of outsourcing? There are a good many reasons to become an advocate of outsourcing.

- Effective use of human resources

Almost every company will start small, with a few employees. Yet, the competence needed to run a company and the many tasks and processes behind this operation is the same, whether for a small company or for a very big one. True, the size of the workload will differ sizeably, but it still remains that all these functions will need to be attended to.

Benefits of outsourcing allows for such task management while retaining the small workforce. Tasks that will take away from the main purpose of the company can be outsourced to companies that actually specialize in the given area. Employees in the company can thus focus on the main purpose of the business and their own area of expertise. Other employees are then not needed to look after the aspects that the outsourcing recipient is taking care of.

- No need to set up a full section/department where not necessary

Following upon the above benefit, it thus goes further to show that a company needs not go into unnecessary procedures and provisions. Where previously a whole department might have been needed, some of the benefits of outsourcing allows for not needing the proposed department any longer. This goes a long way in reducing costs, whether fixed costs attached to running a department, investment in infrastructure, and overhead costs.

The job entrusted in outsourcing will also be dealt with by a team that specializes in the task, thus providing top-notch results and efficiency.

- No need for extensive training

One thing that hampers a lot of companies is the need to train new employees, especially when setting up a new department. If the work is outsourced, there is then no need to train new staff, which goes further in reducing costs. This just adds to the benefits of outsourcing here is that employees do not need to be trained constantly, as a specialized team will be dealing with matters and the employees themselves need only focus on their core competence.

- No time wasted

More benefits of outsourcing is that the team that will receive the project is already ready to go and can deliver work at a quick turnover rate. No time is wasted in setting up a team and training them as to what is expected of the project.

As you can see, there are many benefits to outsourcing by allowing others to do what they do best while you focus on other tasks at hand. My advise? Take advantage of these benefits.

So... part 2. What are some more benefits of outsourcing your projects as opposed to you trying to do everything yourself?

- Economies of scale

Other benefits of outsourcing is that it allows a company to have access to economies of scale. Where previously it might have taken a long time to run a department efficiently, allowing economies of scale over a long period, outsourcing means the company immediately has access to a trained team who are only waiting for the signal to tackle the project.

This allows the company to both save and not need to redeploy operation costs on the price of their commodity/service.

- Better management of costs

Outsourcing allows for better management of costs, as it has been shown above. Lots of fixed costs, investments and overheads are eliminated when outsourcing is being used.

- More money to inject back

The money saved through better management of costs can be re-injected in the company immediately. The company can thus show more profits and can also run more efficiently through a better allowance of funds... therefore providing more benefits of outsourcing.

- More attractive to investors

A company that constantly re-injects money in itself and shows good profits will ultimately be attractive to investors. The benefits of outsourcing here can help a company stabilize its costs and even diminish its costs in many instances.

- Focus on core business

When outsourcing is taking care of the nitty-gritty details and the hum-drum tasks of a company, the company itself can allow itself to focus more on its core competencies, thus emerging stronger and more focused in its delivery.

- Reduce risks

Plain and simple... benefits of outsourcing allows for reducing risks. The teams that handle outsourcing are better equipped to dealing with the risks inherent to their area, as opposed to the company that is not specialized in said area.

- Access to same facilities as big companies

Outsourcing makes no distinction between a big company and a small one. Projects are handled the same way, which allows every company access to only what the big guns could pretend to earlier.

- Reduce risks of technical obsolescence

More benefits of outsourcing also helps to diminish the risk of being technically obsolete. There is also less risks of needing to chase technology. Outsourcing ensures that it is each team that has to take care of change in its given area, not the company.

- Offshore outsourcing can reduce costs and other advantages

Outsourcing to another country can imply lower costs if labor in the other country is cheaper.

Another benefit of offshore outsourcing is the fact that work may continue on the outsourced project if the other country operates on a different time zone. This can increase the speedy delivery of projects and results.

- Faster deliveries and better consumer satisfaction

Outsourcing teams get on the job the minute it comes to them. When they have finished, they send it back to the company. As simple, and as speedy, as that. Faster deliveries of results can also lead to improved customer satisfaction if customers' needs are being met successfully and speedily.

- Access to specialized services

Outsourcing can also prove to be a strategic decision. Other benefits of outsourcing is that it allows access to a load of specialized competencies which a company might not be able to provide on its own. By outsourcing, it can thus regroup a wealth of services under its belt.

There are many benefits to outsourcing. But let's just put both of these reports (part 1 and part 2) on hold and just cut to the chase here...

Why do I outsource and recommend outsourcing? Well, it makes my life easier and I am more productive. You see... there are many benefits of outsourcing. For one thing, when I let others do what they are good at while I focus on other important things that need to get done which I am good it, then I win because I get twice as much done which in the end makes me more money and gives me more time...

Plain and simple... end of story.

About the Author: Matt Henderson, owner of MyOnlineSuccess, is an affiliate marketing guide and coach for beginners. Let Matt show you the benefits of outsourcing while he shows you the same method he uses to succeed online when you visit http://www.myonlinesuccess.com

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Sound Business Management Incorporates Marketing Practices

2010-05-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Chris_Kennelly]Chris Kennelly

Included within the business management framework is that of the marketing aspect, and one should seek to optimize the efforts being made to gain additional market share within their respective sector. Marketing, as any savvy business owner will know, encompasses a wide range of activities and options that may be considered for practically any business under the sun. However, one of these marketing types is often overlooked or even disregarded within the business management process, and that is the network marketing opportunity. This should in effect be included within the marketing plan of the business, and all due allowances should be made accordingly.

One of the key issues to success in network marketing though, is the process of keeping the goals and objectives simple yet effective. This is said as many tend to complicate issues, and keep looking for the best possible practices and solutions, without actually putting anything into practice. Network marketing can really be considered from two different perspectives, which include that of well known multilevel marketing strategies, as well as that of the social approach of marketing, which involves business practice and marketing away from the office and within social, and quite often sport environments.

This part of network marketing, the social aspect is often times associated with wasting one's time on the golf course and so forth, however when one views it from the relationship building perspective, one will truly appreciate the extent to which it can be used to benefit the company and potential business opportunities. This type of marketing within the business management strategy can also be referred to as the value added word of mouth advertising strategy and forms the basis for some of the most powerful marketing that any company can engage in or benefit from.

The other view of network marketing, as previously mentioned is that of multilevel marketing. This so called business model is primarily based upon the commission structure, and monies earned by the main recruiting member. This can be likened to that of a company with a sales force earning predominantly commissions, however that would in effect fall under a different viewpoint of staff and sales management within the business management context.

Therefore in focusing upon the networking aspect from a social perspective, the business owner or manager may engage within the local community via a range of prospective approaches. These include the already mentioned sport related strategy and can be extended into various sports or social gatherings specifically within sectors that will benefit the business by such exposure. Additional involvement within the local and extended communities may further provide opportunities for the business, which can take the form of general business presence within the chosen community and building up from there. Quite often business management techniques that display unique and 'out of the box' solutions for their marketing strategies end up discovering value added benefits from trying these different strategies and options.

Sound Business Management incorporates marketing practices and techniques in additional to regular business activities. Visit Business Goods & Services for great business resources.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Business-Management-and-Network-Marketing&id=3314603] Business Management and Network Marketing

Tips For Effective Crisis Management

2010-05-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

Site Management By Simon Wright

Keeping the media, employees, the public and other stakeholders informed during a crisis can be the toughest challenge that communicators face. Companies that don’t have a communication strategy may suffer heavy and, in some cases, severe damage, according to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by ACE, Cisco Systems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG, is based on a global survey of senior risk managers.

It found that 84% executives believe the threat to their companies reputations has increased significantly over the past five years. Four out of five companies surveyed said that threats to corporate reputation are rising and that crisis management is the area most companies need to strengthen in order to mange reputation risk. But only 10% of respondents said their organization is excellent at managing crises; 11% admit they are poor or worse, and 44% say they are adequate.

To improve their performance, organizations must learn how to communicate with customers and the media when things go wrong. “Reputation threats represent the biggest risk to business according to this survey,” said Daniel Franklin, editorial director of the Economist Intelligence Unit. “But because it is hard to categories and measure, many companies lack a formal strategy or management structure to manage reputation risk effectively.

“Companies that have a communication strategy that enables them to respond quickly and effectively to bad news events, and which address issues openly and proactively, often emerge with their reputations in tact and even enhanced,” added Franklin.

During the Crisis One way to keep all parties likes media, employees, the public and other stakeholders, informed is through a dark site, an emergency site that launches the minute a crisis hits. Filled with the latest information about a crisis, a dark site is an effective way to reduce press calls and control rumors. But it only works, of course, if the site’s set up before crisis strikes. Speed is crucial when crisis strikes; creating pre-filled templates containing approved language is key to handling a crisis successfully. Other content should include leadership statements, facts and figures, as well as contact pages.

Warfield’s team brainstormed all possible disasters (environmental and business) and possible audiences to determine what to put on the dark site. But they soon realized it was “a challenge to get approved language for different emergencies. Many didn’t exist, others were just hard to find.”

Take, for example, an ammonia plant leak. In parallel to creating the dark site, Warfield was working with Bayer’s local HES (health, environment, safety) group on an ammonia leak drill. The group had all the data and information on what to do in the event of an ammonia plant leak, plus background information on ammonia, but the information was not all in one place.

“We had chemical data sheets, siren and Berkeley Fire Department response levels, what information the employees need to know depending on the level of the leak, and when and what to notify our neighbors of—all in different manuals,” Warfield explains. “There were no comprehensive write-up or response documents.”

Similarly, Bayer took part in the City of Berkeley’s planning process for a pandemic plan. “When it came to who the responsible group within Bayer would be, and ultimately who we would need to coordinate regarding messaging, there was internal politics regarding which department should take on the responsibility,” she says.

Tip: Don’t underestimate the time it will take for company executives and community groups to agree on who’s responsible for what information on the dark site.

What’s on the site?

Speed is crucial when crisis strikes; creating pre-filled templates containing approved language is key to handling a crisis successfully.

Warfield has pages built and ready to go live with minimal editing in the event of an emergency. “We have our pandemic content, ammonia leak and shelter information in place, plus content and templates created for letters from the leadership.”

Other content includes leadership statements, facts and figures, as well as contact pages. “Right now, we are focusing on natural and business emergency content for employees, neighbors and press,” adds Warfield.

Additionally, Warfield is taking advantage of free social media tools like YouTube and Flickr to post images of buildings and b-roll of facilities.

Looking back, the biggest surprise, says Warfield, wasn’t in the technological or business hurdles, but in the one place they felt most confident. “While all our plans look good on paper, we would have had to do a lot of legwork doing research on basic background information and getting text through review in the middle of the crisis, when our attention should be elsewhere,” she says.

What’s a placeholder site?

There is a Web site that inhabits the twilight zone between a regular site and a full-blown dark site but is still dedicated solely to crisis management. The placeholder is always active and holds general emergency information or resources.

About the Author: Simon Wright is Co-director of Gatehouse Group, UK's leading internal communication agency, provides global services for internal communications, internal comms, internal comms research, audit, jobs, and employee engagement. Visit us at http://www.gatehousegroup.co.uk for more information.Thank you.

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What Makes A Good Manager?

2010-05-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

By Carole DeJarnatt

What makes a good manager? If you are presently a manager you probably ask yourself this question frequently. If not and you are being considered for the position, take heed to the skills that are needed to be all you can be.

Why would someone who is presently a manager think or worry about what it takes to be a good manager? In all positions of life, whether work related or personal, we should want to put our best position forward for everyone to recognize. If you are recognized as a good manager, you have skills several people in the business world do not possess. Good skills lead to good referrals for promotions or opening doors for other positions of influence.

Not too long ago I had a supervisor of a call center ask me for suggestions on how to improve in their position. At the time I was the director of a department of 17 regional area representatives. Here are some of the suggestions I gave:

1. Listen—Listen to everything your subordinates have to say. That does not mean you have to agree with them but have an ear for listening. I strived to keep to listen to everyone whether what was heard was good or bad. It gave them a feeling of importance if you showed interest.

2. Share—Keep everyone updated on department and company developments. If asked to keep confidentiality, you can share the department goals and progress the department is making on a weekly and/or monthly basis in their achievements. Sharing is communicating. You must communicate with your people on a daily basis. I emailed frequently and communicated via telephone weekly. I have to say I think they preferred the telephone over the email. Everyone loves the personal touch!

3. Engage—Let the group be involved in the decision-making process. When it comes to working with department decisions, engage the team and let them share their thoughts and ideas with you. I recommend conference calls if people are in distant locations so everyone is able to have an input. Again, that does not mean you have to agree but you are listening to their suggestions. If you choose to overrule that is your decision as a manager.

4. Interact—As often as you feel necessary, schedule a time away from the office for lunch, after-hours social, retreat, or training. It is important that the department feel you are as much a part of them as you are their supervisor. I had worked with people in the past who felt it was not good to intermingle with the people they managed. I believe it helps you to know the persons work ethic, personality, integrity, and also made me more accessible to them. I believe almost everyone I supervised would tell you I treated them as an equal. I do not believe in the superiority complex.

I believe every person has something to offer. It is up to the manager/supervisor to find and reveal the qualities. If after finding the qualities and they do not fit what is necessary for success in the position, the manager has to do what is necessary to correct the mistake. Every good manager is willing to admit they make mistakes. The best manager is the one who corrects the mistakes!

About the Author: Carole DeJarnatt is the President of Alliance Advisors, Inc., a business advisory and coaching service for development and implementation of strategies to grow and enhance businesses for greater success in their future. For more information, visit the company website at http://www.AllianceAdvisorsInc.com.

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The Objectives of Management

2010-05-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

By Tom Feinberg

In any organization effective management is essential for success. Therefore, on the path to success, understanding the functions of management is the first step. In an attempt to contextualize these functions I will use my workplace as an example. I will describe the four functions (planning, organizing, leading and controlling) as they relate to the company as a whole, as well as their relation to my supervisor and myself.

For the past six years I have worked at the Plaza Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Plaza is an off-strip property employing approximately 1,000 workers. The business encompasses gaming, lodging, and entertainment, as well as food and beverage operations. As financial controller I report directly to the CFO and have a hand in all aspects of the casino business. Not only do I need a thorough understanding of gaming laws and regulations, but an understanding of the gaming sector in general and Nevada’s Gaming industry in particular. My position serves as a liaison to upper management, as well as between departments.

On the corporate level planning is primarily conducted by the property’s General Manager and Director. They, along with consultants and department heads, plan the company’s strategies. This is accomplished through focused meetings conducted in an open format. Upcoming promotions or advertising campaigns are generally decided in this manner. For larger scale decisions, which could affect the stability of the company, topics are taken directly before the board.

When the executives decide on a plan of action they expect it to be carried out. The task of organization falls to the department heads. They are mid-level managers in charge of specific areas (food, beverage, security, marketing, etc.). It is up to the department head to schedule workers and instruct them. This step is where the plans begin to go from concept to action.

When dealing with a large number of employees strong, focused leadership is essential. By communicating their plans clearly, and stating specific goals, top management is the first rung in the ladder. Department heads then take that focus and pass it along to the workers.

Controls are instituted and maintained through a cooperative relationship between upper and middle management. While upper management ultimately has the last word in setting standards and practices for the company, it is up to the department heads to ensure those standards and practices are maintained.

As CFO my supervisor is responsible for ensuring the company’s financial stability. In doing so he develops plans for large-scale acquisitions, as well as managing the company’s assets and liabilities. This is accomplished through monthly meetings with the board of directors, as well as more frequent meetings with the company’s attorneys and consultants.

In his position, my supervisor relies on others to handle organization. If costs are getting out of control he may call on a department head to revise their ordering process, or offer bids to a larger number of suppliers. Essentially, the plans he formulates are passed along to those managers who are directly affected.

My supervisor has always taken a keen interest in displaying strong leadership. He has repeatedly mentioned building employees up to their full potential. By providing a stable environment where employees’ work is valued and appreciated he has established a strong team dynamic.

Control is established through thorough oversight within the department. My supervisor stays abreast of all the functions of the office. While he may not be able to review or direct individual employees, he ensures anything that passes his desk is concise and accurate.

I accomplish the planning function of my position through meetings with both the CFO and the company’s Internal Auditor. In these meetings we discuss various methods by which the reviewing and reporting of financial information may be improved. Additionally, I meet with the CFO to discuss improved revenue forecasting and budgeting plans.

Once plans have been established I meet with the accounting staff and assign their respective tasks. This entails weighing each individual’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as any current projects they may be working on. Ultimately it falls on my shoulders to ensure that the goals are met according to plan.

Being younger than my subordinates, and much newer to the company, resulted in some early resentment. By rolling up my sleeves and working just as hard as my staff, if not harder, I was able to gain their respect. I found that by showing my staff exactly what I expected from them I was most likely to receive it.

I establish control by developing clear guidelines by which my staff should perform. This in turn demands a clear and focused plan from me. The result is a greater level of trust both on my end and theirs’. Having set rules and a clear goal makes working together easier and more efficient.

In order to improve morale and generate a company wide focus I would improve communication between top management and front line employees. Often plans instituted by top management loose some of their focus by the time they reach the front line employee. A company-wide program to improve customer service may reach the front line employee as simply a mandate for faster response to customers. As a result the diluted plans do not accomplish the intended result. This can become frustrating to both the executives and the workers.

By communicating the company’s workplace plans and strategies to the front line employee through a newsletter or general memo everyone could be kept on the same page. The entire company could work toward the same goals, thereby accomplishing their goals more effectively.

The functions of management are evident in all levels of an organization. Each stratum may perform the functions differently, yet the appropriate implementation of these functions plays a vital role in an organizations success.

About the Author: Tom Feinberg has spent more than 15 years working as a professor at the University of Maine. Now he spends most of his time with his family and shares his experience about essay writing. Tom Feinberg is a right person to ask about custom essays. http://www.customwritings.com/custom-essay.html

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What Is The Difference Between Leadership And Management

2010-05-04T09:07:00.000-07:00

By Freelance Writer

Leadership vs. Management; what is the difference? Leadership theorists and researchers suggest that there are clear and convincing differences between the two. By understanding the differences, we must first define the terms. While reviewing a wide variety of thoughts, opinions and theories, I have concluded the following:

LEADERSHIP tends to involve visionary thinking, belief that with great risk comes great reward, achievement of goals by inspiring followers, motivational and possessing the qualities that mirror the organization’s mission and vision.

Whereas MANAGEMENT tends to involve direction of day-to-day operational tasks, management and maintenance of budgets and deadline oriented, directing teams to achieve goals by establishing objectives.

In defining the terms, we realize that management is operational, task oriented, budget conscious and mindful of deadlines, and leaders are inspirational, motivational, visionary, big-picture and long-term focused. Leaders lead people and managers manage tasks.

Research, although often contradictory, generally concludes that the most effective leader possesses a strong and balanced combination of both effective management and inspired leadership.

As I take a moment to revisit my career path, I know that I have encountered many respectable managers and a few good leaders, but seldom have I encountered a true leader, who encompasses the positive qualities of effective management and inspiring leadership. I realize that for many, their lives have become focused on managing the day-to-day this-and-that, trying to find balance between the job, the spouse, the kids, the bills, the cat, the dog, but where is the inspiration? Have we become a society of managers that lack effective leadership skills? And if so, how can we become inspired in our careers and in our personal lives and find balance in both? I have learned that when we are inspired, we are energetic and enthusiastic about what we do. Inspiration is something that we must seek out when it is absent from our life.

As a Human Resources Consultant, I have encountered an extensively vast number of individuals who possess unique and wonderful qualities. As part of development, I have been trained to seek out these qualities and advise on development plans for individuals who may fit the mold of tomorrow’s leaders. Although few and far between, I encourage these individuals to follow their passion. If an employee has the core qualities of a leader, yet he is actively disengaged in his current position, where might he better fit in? What is it that inspires him? These are the questions that we need to be answered. If one is inspired, then it is likely that those around him will also be inspired. A true leader exudes energy and an organization can enjoy the benefits of increased productivity, profitability and employees who find fulfillment in their careers.

Human Resource professionals of the modern age know that we play a key role in developing the workforce of tomorrow. For those aspiring leaders, listen to your heart, turn your passion into a career and go forth and conquer!

About the Author: By Lisa Cieslica, PHR of National PEO, Arizona, http://www.nationalpeo.com/ - Human Resources Consultants: http://www.nationalpeo.com/ provides HR services to hundreds of companies including PEO services. Please link to this site when using this article.

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What Is Meant By "Conscious Business"?

2010-04-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

By Steve Bernal

There is a growing trend among small businesses and corporations who are utilizing the conscious business model — and succeeding. These companies illustrate how incorporating conscious business principals can and does increase the bottom line.

S0 exactly what is meant by “conscious business”?

Here’s how the Conscious Business Institute (http://consciousbusinessinstitute.com)describes this model:

“Conscious Business is primarily about people who are aware of the impact each of their habits and actions has on their environment. It is about people who live their lives based on the knowingness that everything is interconnected. It is about people, who know who they are — who know about their strengths and weaknesses and who desire to live and work with joy, creativity, ease and love instead of fear, power and domination.”

My perspective is that conscious business is a way of doing business where the creation of value is considered the foundation for creating wealth. Value is defined here as contribution to both the individual and the common good.

It is business infused with values that include integrity, generosity, honesty and service. These values are at the core of conscious business and are in essence the foundation upon which all business success is built.

Ultimately, conscious business is a way of doing business that recognizes and embraces the interconnectedness of Life. It is being socially and environmentally responsible. A conscious business operates with heart and soul and seeks to be aware of its impact on the lives of its employees, its customers, its community and the world.

The wonderful thing about this approach is that it operates in harmony with the life principle of giving and receiving. As you pour your time and energy into creating value for the benefit of the community and the environment, your business becomes more profitable than ever as the return current of sales and profits multiplies.

Conscious business practices and strategies are other-focused, which means you have happy customers and happy employees — the best recipe for business success. In essence, your business expands when you aren’t looking!

On the other hand, when your business focus is solely on creating profits, you can miss out on the beauty and unity of working with and for others. This kind of tunnel vision can create sleepless nights and stressful days and it can be a mental, emotional and spiritual drain on your psyche. More importantly, this behavior is often ineffective.

If you find yourself spinning your wheels and racking your brain, it might be time to start integrating conscious business practices into your company’s working philosophy.

Start placing your focus on making the world a better place and being the person you have been called to be. Look for ways to create amazing value for your customers as well as for your employees. The results will pleasantly surprise you!

By placing your focus onto others and your world, your business will naturally succeed. That’s the beauty of conscious business.

Spend some time adopting conscious business methods and then sit back amazed as your business takes off!

About the Author: Steve Bernal over his 25 year year career has been an entrepreneur, business owner and consultant to Fortune 500 companies. Steve is the founder of http://www.Bizlightenment.com , where you can find Conscious Companies across a wide spectrum of industries and professions.

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How To Implement Six Sigma

2010-04-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

By Frank Lucer

One of the problems that businesses and other organizations cope with when deploying a six sigma project is poor planning. Often, the goal becomes paramount and distracts management from laying the proper groundwork that ensures success. In truth, if integrated haphazardly, a project that has the purpose of improving quality can easily fail to deliver expected results. Below, I'll explain how the groundwork of a six sigma strategy should be laid in order to increase the likelihood that it will succeed. We'll explore planning, training, and other issues that play a significant role in make sure your quality improvement initiative is successful.

Planning Your Strategy

Before initiating any six sigma project, a lot of planning need to take place. In fact, the level of planning that you conduct before launching your project can have a huge influence over the results your efforts yield. First, you'll need to determine which business processes have inefficiencies or defects that can be fixed. They'll need to be prioritized. Part of your strategy for addressing the problems will be identifying strong, analytical project leaders for each initiative. Ask them to put teams together that will be responsible for gathering and studying data, and offering innovative solutions to implement.

Setting The Stage

A large part of your success in deploying a six sigma project will rely upon having the support of senior managers. They don't need to be involved in the day-to-day work of analyzing data and designing solutions, but the employees throughout the organization should know that your initiatives have management support. At this stage, you should appoint someone (perhaps yourself) to communicate project updates directly with the CEO. That person should also serve as a project advocate to the CEO, along with other department heads.

Training The Troops

As with most training programs, black belt and green belt training is critical to your project's success. Unfortunately, senior management is often wary of spending limited resources in this area. Their thought is that preserving limited capital by scrimping on training expenses won't have an impact on the initiative. In fact, it will. You may need to approach management to "sell" the idea of sending your team leaders and their respective teams through black and green belt training. The investment is worthwhile; having troops who understand the approach of lean flow process management is essential.

Role Of The Black Belt

The six sigma black belt has a few different roles to play. They need to guide their teams (typically comprised of green belts) and provide help when necessary. They should also be available to support their team members by mentoring them with a top-level perspective of the project. This might include identifying their skills and weaknesses, and adjusting the areas in which they contribute. While black belts should be involved in the minutiae of the daily tasks, they provide unique value in their ability to manage the efforts of their teams.

Encouraging Buy-In

Even though six sigma is a process-oriented strategy that relies heavily upon analytics, its success requires the involvement of employees. That includes those in senior management positions as well as the troops in the trenches of daily operations.

The underpinnings of six sigma are built upon the concept that creative answers and innovative solutions can come from any area of an organization. That means that every employee becomes a valuable resource to tap; and that's why you must encourage their buy-in. Because the strategy and its deployment is perpetual and has a continuous impact on businesses, employees are often the best people from whom to solicit ideas.

About the Author: This information on six sigma and lean processes is provided by BMGI (http://www.bmgi.com), a leading education and consulting firm in the lean six sigma field.

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Talent Management - Are You Part Of The 49%?

2010-04-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

By Mike Beitler

When three leading magazines (Harvard Business Review, Business Week, and Training & Development) all have cover stories about talent management the same month, it is safe to say you are looking at a hot topic.

Talent management (the recruiting, training, and retaining of good workers) has had many names over the years, but it is certainly not new. While the topic is not new, how we think about it has evolved over time.

As early as the late 19th century, business organizations turned to universities for help developing their employees. In 1881, Joseph Wharton (co-founder of Bethlehem Steel) persuaded the University of Pennsylvania to create an undergraduate business education program. Soon after, Dartmouth and Harvard followed Wharton’s lead.

In the mid-twentieth century, universities shifted their focus from factory workers to executives. As the importance of manual labor declined, universities abandoned the “hard issues” for the theoretical.

As university programs became more irrelevant, business organizations responded with corporate universities (CUs). CUs (beginning with GE’s in Crotonville, NY) offered company-specific training that was relevant to their companies’ real-world practice.

Training of managers and executives outside of the university setting has become quite sophisticated. In addition to executive MBA programs, both executive coaching and action learning are now widely available. Executive coaching offers one-on-one guidance on many of the emotional intelligence or “soft” skills. Action learning is designed to allow managers and executives to work on real problems and to learn simultaneously.

So what’s the problem Mike? If organizational learning has become more sophisticated, aren’t companies more profitable? Not necessarily. These sophisticated training programs are expensive. Do we know the ROI (return on investment) for these massive investments of time and money?

Also, many companies neglect the fact that training is only part of effective talent management. Talent management also includes recruiting and retention.

Is your company training the right people? Training the wrong people is a waste of limited organizational resources. After you have trained the right people, can you retain them? If not, you are simply training good people for your competitors.

During my consulting work, I have often suspected that most companies are not handling talent management effectively. A recent Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study confirmed my suspicions. SHRM found that only 49% of HR professionals believe their organizations effectively identify high-potential employees. That means 51% of companies are wasting a lot of time and money.

Is your organizations part of the 49%, or the 51%?

About the Author: Dr. Mike Beitler is the author of "Strategic Organizational Learning." Read 3 free chapters of the book online right now at http://www.strategic-organizational-learning.com/

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The Importance Of Training KPI's For Effective HR Management

2010-04-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

By Sam Miller

The use of KPI’s or key performance indicators is quite a useful concept that has become popular in strategic management. Over the past years, the practice of management has been becoming more and more based on facts and observations, and it became logical to try and define which parameters could determine performance.

Being able to have quantifiable bases with which to measure various aspects of the performance and condition of an employee, group, or company has become one of the basic principles of sound management. After identifying the various measurable quantities available, it then becomes a matter of choosing the most relevant parameters. The most important of these parameters then became known as key performance indicators (KPI).

For instance, a training KPI is the average number of training hours that each employee has undergone within a specified time period, usually a year. This parameter would be able to roughly indicate the amount of training that an employee, on average, is able to get within that time period.

By considering both the magnitude and the rate of change of this parameter, management would be able to get a clearer idea of whether their employees are receiving enough training. Conversely, if this average number is too small, or if the rate of change is negative – that is, if the number of hours show a decreasing trend – then it might be necessary to route more resources to training.

Another training KPI that might prove useful is the average training cost, per employee, over a specified time period. This cost can then be compared against the average increase in productivity, to see if the training regimen that has been implemented actually worked. For example, a high average training cost together with a low average increase in productivity would seem to point towards an ineffective training program. A lower average training cost, on the other hand, together with a high average increase in productivity would mean that the training program implemented was a cost-effective one.

It can be seen from these examples, then, that considering training KPI’s individually would not always yield accurate evaluations. This is because many of these parameters are actually interrelated, and must be considered together to represent a meaningful way of measuring performance.

It is still important, of course, to be able to identify what these most important training KPI’s are, to be able to monitor all of them effectively. Once data has been gathered according to these known key performance indicators, then the data can be evaluated, in light of the relationships between these KPI’s. A proper selection of KPI’s would help to limit the data to be analyzed to those data that would really be relevant.

In today’s world, organizations are more often than not forced to adapt to changing conditions and a dynamic marketplace. This places more importance on being able to evaluate and implement effective training programs. With the use of training KPI’s, managers would be able to judge better and craft good training programs for the betterment of their organization.

About the Author: If you are interested in training KPI, check this web-site to learn more about training scorecard. http://www.hr-scorecard-metrics.com/

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The Merits Of Business Process Outsourcing

2010-04-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

By D Cobb

You may have heard about the merits of business process outsourcing, but chances are that you may still be not all that sure about it. Initially, you may find it difficult to take a decision in favor of outsourcing obviously because the stakes are high. However, you need not worry unnecessarily because if the right business process outsourcing service provider is selected, it would have negligible risks, well below the 1% mark. However, if doubts still persist in your mind, here are some simple questions that you need to ask yourself...

* As a business owner or manager, do you have aspirations to make it big in the corporate world?

* Do you often think that lack of professional expertise is creating barriers to your success?

* Do you think you need to concentrate more on your core processes such as production, advertising & marketing, business expansion etc?

* Do you think you can deliver more to your customers through expert business process outsourcing services?

* Do you think your business interests, both short-term and long-term, can be promoted more effectively with outsourcing services?

Well if you answer these questions without any prejudices, you will realize that most of your answers will be in the affirmative. It's obviously because over the last two decades, business outsourcing has proved itself as the most effective tool for deriving wide-ranging benefits such as cost savings, process improvements, and increased customer satisfaction. Worldwide, the outsourcing market is currently pegged at around $150 billion and growing continuously, something that provides hard evidence to the ever-increasing popularity of outsourcing services.

The best part is that being new to the world of outsourcing is not a problem at all. All you have to do is contact as many service providers as possible and see what all offers they have, what is their expertise, what is their domain experience, and of course the rates that they charge for their services. When you have considerable amount of information with you, you just need to compare the advantages and disadvantages to zero in on the most cost-effective service provider. After that, you can just go ahead and compete the formalities.

But how to ensure that the targeted goals and objectives are achieved in the desired manner? Well, here are some proven strategies that will help you in your endeavors –

* Constantly monitor progress and provide regular feedbacks so that necessary changes can be made ASAP

* Launch incentive schemes so that motivation and morale can be kept high at the outsourcing end

* Commit only to “payment after delivery” contracts to avoid unnecessary risks and complacency

* Undertake initiatives for improved integration of outsourced services and core business processes in order to improve overall organizational efficiency

* Identify more non-core processes that can be outsourced to create a win-win for your business as well as your service provider

If you manage to do all this in the prescribed manner, you will easily be able to derive the full potential of business process outsourcing services. Success will then just be a step away.

About the Author: http://www.telegenisys.com

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The Impact Of Globalization On Middle Management

2010-04-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

By Shaun Z. Stevens

It is most important to function as a team player at your workplace.

The availability of management information for all employees, the rapid rate of technological change and advances, and the competitive pressures of globalization have all combined to result in unpredictable staffing needs and fundamental shifts in the workplace in terms of the structures and business plans of companies , businesses and organizations.

The shift is away from management directed companies and towards team directed “flat” or “horizontally” managed organizations. This ultimately works to increase individual’s responsibilities. It used to be that lower level employees were there to be “told what to do” by middle management and “to do” and “not to think”. The comedy was that this was all delusional as America grew and the workplace became more educated. The front line worker knows more of what is going on than any sheltered executive at “head office” surrounded by “yes men”. Most companies towards the end of the top down pre globalization era survived mainly through customer interaction with the front line workers.

Companies have changed. Customers and even generally the average person on the street “know more”. Gone are the days where customers are afraid to ask for product comparisons and indeed seek third party references. It used to be that in a Chevy dealership if you asked for comparative product information you were told at the best “This is a Chevy and that is a Ford.” Now at dealer sales meetings dealers are often taught and examined on comparisons between actual completive vehicles on the spot.

People know expect quicker results. It used to be said that it took 7 to 10 years to design a new car and bring it to market. Now it can be routinely done in a year and half. Information is now available much quicker from almost anywhere in the world and from almost any location worldwide from workers at any level. Some say indeed that the pace is too quick and often there is no time for proper deliberation and consultation before decisions are made. Faxes, emails, cell phones, text messaging, blackberries all add to this quickening mix.

As such the current trend is not only towards more prompt results but also for larger. More complex workloads. Multitasking is the buzzword. Contrast this to previous established business models where the worker on Henry Ford’s assembly line was only expected and indeed demanded to turn only one screw and to follow the directions of middle management. Middle managements role indeed was to convey information up and down the ladder. How times have changed. Technology and expectations and education of workers have more than eliminated and bypassed this role.

In the end it is the ability to solve problems quickly, to be resourceful, to use technology to enhance productivity and to manage multiple priorities that will make you an essential part of the new management team along with the willingness to work longer but more flexible hours.

About the Author: Shaun Z. Stevens Ace Employment Job Employment Agency call_kirk@hotmail.com http://www.winnipegjobshark.com http://www.aceemploymentservices.net

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10 Leading Practices To Make Your Presentation Unforgetable? Or Not?

2010-04-10T20:48:00.000-07:00

By Leslie Allan

Over the years, I’ve witnessed hundreds of Microsoft PowerPoint presentations given by many different people. Some presentations were project debriefs, some were training sessions, whilst others were information seminars. And this list of applications is only the tip of the iceberg of the many purposes for which I have seen PowerPoint used. With such versatility, it’s no wonder PowerPoint is the presentation software of choice for most.

I’m pleased to report that with all of this first hand experience under my belt, I am ready to distill for you the 10 leading practices used to make a presentation unforgettable. Here is how you can make your next presentation just that little bit more memorable.

1. Use 10 point font liberally on all of your slides

This neat little trick gives you a key advantage over your competitors. It forces people to occupy the seats nearest you, up close so that they can get every subtle nuance of your presentation. And if the presentation is not relevant to them, you may as well make the best use of their time by testing their vision whilst they are there.

2. Don't tell your audience where you are taking them

Make sure that you launch straight into your presentation. Summarizing first what you will be talking about and what participants will get out of your session is just a big time waster. Furthermore, there is nothing better to generate interest in your talk than shrouding the purpose of your session in mystery.

3. Read every word on every one of your slides

This trick demonstrates unmistakably that you know your subject inside out. Remember also, not everyone can read as well as you, so helping the linguistically challenged will score you extra brownie points.

4. Display your slides throughout the entire presentation

Fiddling around with the “B” key to blank the slides when you think you don’t need them only risks you hitting the wrong key and losing your slides. And then how silly will you look. Most importantly, always having the slides showing emphasizes the preeminent importance of the slides over and above the other trifling activities, such as demonstrations, exercises, answering questions, and so on.

5. Cram as much information on each slide as possible

People are hungry for information and they expect you to deliver as much as possible in the time available. Every square millimeter of space, therefore, is precious. So don’t waste it by not filling it with text or a graphic or anything that you can get your hands on.

6. Display as many slides as time will allow

We all know that some information is good and more is better. And what better way to show your mastery of the subject than to have a slide on every conceivable aspect of it. Aim to show at least one slide per minute. If you start running out of time, simply speed up your rate of delivery. This helps to create a sense of urgency about your topic.

7. Hand out your slides before the presentation

Content is king, so what better way to demonstrate that than by putting the information in people’s hands right up front. That way, no one can be deceived that your presence, approachability, integrity and passion are in any way relevant to the presentation.

8. Do not hand out explanatory materials

What better way to generate discussion after your session than by having people guess what each point on your slide meant in the days and weeks following the event? Handing out extra materials over and above the bullet points on your slides will only spoil the fun. And think of the message you will be sending if such useful information got into the hands of non-attendees. Do you really want to reward those people who were too lazy to attend your presentation anyway?

9. Avoid eye contact with your audience

Make sure you talk to your slides from the start to the very end. Experts master this aspect with a combination of showing their back to the audience and looking down at their notes. Remember, your personality is irrelevant to a successful delivery. So, at all costs, avoid diverting the audience’s attention away from your slides.

10. Use every slide transition effect available

This is your one chance to shine if your content falls flat. By having your slides crashing, twirling, sliding, dissolving, and so on, you will at least demonstrate your proficiency with the technology. What easier way is there to put the “wow” into your presentation?

With the ten tips above, you are now in a position to draw upon the experience of PowerPoint veterans to improve your next presentation. If you find that your presentations have been missing a number of the above best-practices, endeavor to utilize just one or two in your next presentation. When you have mastered those techniques, move on to the next one or two. Over a period of some months, you will have honed your presentation skills to such an extent that you will be regarded widely as a “PowerPoint supremo”. What better testimony can there be to your presentation skills?

About the Author: Leslie Allan is Managing Director of Business Performance Pty Ltd, a company providing practical online information, tools and resources in a range of business areas. Download their training guides, tools and templates from their website at http://www.businessperform.com/html/training_management.html

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If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It

2010-04-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

By Rodney Boettger

In 1996, in the movie Jerry McGuire, actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. made famous the phrase “Show Me the Money!” Ten years later, a variation of that command, now “Show Me the Data!” rings in conference rooms throughout the country. Managers far and wide, at least the successful ones, are looking at the data. Don’t tell me your opinion, show me the data. Can you back it up with data?

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Companies may be able to survive for a while if managers aren’t using data to make decisions, but they will eventually see their demise; likely sooner than later. Those companies to benchmark off are the ones who are not only surviving, but thriving! Pick your favorite phrase: TQM, Process Management, Quality Circles, Improvement Teams, Standards and Measurement departments or any other title you prefer. The function is the same. Look at baseline data – percentages, dollars, hours, quantities – and continuously monitor the performance.

There should not be any task that a supervisor or staff members perform that cannot be measured. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Take a fast food restaurant for example. There are a plethora of areas that can be measured such as days without an accident, customer wait time in line, length of time burgers are in the warmer, amount of money off in the drawers, customer complaints, etc. Graph it out and keep a spread sheet of your figures. Clearly you’re looking for improvement. If there was a decline, brainstorm, find the root cause and then fix the problem.

The process is the same no matter what industry you’re managing. Whether you manufacture widgets, if you are the CEO of an internet marketing firm or if you sell cookies, take a look at all the steps involved in day to day operations. Assign values to the process. Set goals. Review the results on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Remember, if you can’t measure it, you can’t mange it. Charts and graphs are an excellent tool to visually remind you of where you have been and where you plan to go.

In the midst of measuring your subordinates’ performance, don’t neglect to measure and manage your own operations. Don’t think for a minute that your boss isn’t looking at your performance. And if you’re the top dog, you had better be managing yourself well, or you will never succeed at managing others.

About the Author: Mr. Boettger’s consulting firm helps business market effectively without spending more money on advertising through a growth performance guaranteed system. An extensive DIY small business action plan is available free on their website at http://www.7StepConsulting.com

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Best Practices For Managing A Contingent Workforce

2010-04-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

By Elizabeth Rice, SPHR

Over the past few years the number of people joining the ranks of the contingent workforce - contractors, temporary personnel, short-term engagement professionals and project-based workers, has increased dramatically. In fact, the Advisory Council of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) estimates that contingent workers make up over 30% of the workforce. Since 1990 the number of workers employed as temporary employees alone has tripled from 1 million to 3 million, and is expected to quadruple in size to 12 million over the next 10 years.

As organizations increasingly rely on contingent workers, many are finding it a challenge to manage this critical component of the workforce. Some specific challenges faced by companies include: confusion in responsibilities between procurement, which is concerned with price and volume; and HR, which focuses on quality of hire. Moreover, in many organizations, individual hiring managers manage their own contingent workforce needs, resulting in multiple, redundant vendor relationships, non-uniform pricing and tremendous overall losses in time and money.

There are several steps that companies can take to make the best use of contingent employees to ensure mutual satisfaction. First, the morale of the contingent employee is greatly improved if they have access to the same services as regular employees. Things as simple as being permitted to park in the same lot, get purchase discounts, and eat in the company cafeteria can help make the experience for the contingent employee more pleasant. Additionally, companies can go a step further and open up corporate training to contingent workers, allowing them to increase their skill-set and enriching their experience.

Providing contingent employees with performance reviews after the project is completed is another way to improve relationships with non-core staff. Not only does the employee get much needed feedback to improve, but the company also prepares the employee for success in subsequent projects.

While managing the contingent workforce can be challenging, it does pose some obvious benefits. If a company chooses to outsource payroll and HR for their contingent workforce through a third party employer of record, they benefit from standardization of procedures and administration. Because of the economies of scale reached by outsourcers, companies experience cost savings and high service levels. Additionally, because HR administration is handled by this third-party team of experts, contingent workers can begin working on projects immediately without getting delayed by reams of paperwork. Furthermore, many HR outsourcers offer thorough background screening checks and security clearances that are required by larger companies.

Companies also benefit by centralizing their HR administration and eliminating redundant relationships and non-uniform pricing amongst contract workers. For example, many larger companies have decentralized hiring managers that bring on contingent workers for specific projects, without knowing whether that employee has worked in other departments or if the job was completed to the supervisor's satisfaction. Outsourcing contingent employees through a third party employer of record allows companies to have a centralized database where they can see which contract employees have worked for the company in the past and how well they performed. Additionally, many states have laws limiting 1099 contract workers to work no more than 1000 hours per year or risk penalties for misclassification. By having employees centralized through an employer of record, this risk is mitigated.

Once companies understand how to manage contingent workers and provide them the same respect as their core staff of regular employees, it becomes apparent that the benefits of outsourcing far outweigh the risks.

About the Author: Ms. Elizabeth Rice, SPHR, is the President of http://www.innovativeemployeesolutions.com/ Innovative Employee Solutions, a San Diego-based company specializing in payroll and HR administrative services for the contingent workforce. Ms. Rice has more than 20 years of experience in HR and executive management.

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What Are The Benefits Of Using Temp Agencies?

2010-04-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

By Amy Nutt

Trying to find good help is hard in any environment, but when you need to locate a number of employees at once the task can seem rather daunting. This is why 90 percent of most major corporations utilize the services of an hr consulting firm when looking to fill important positions within their company.

In today’s’ high reassure business climate, locating quality help is not something one can take lightly. For this very reason, there are many services that temp agencies can provide for the businesses both large and small. Below are just a few of the perks that can be attained via the use of a tem agency.

Employee screening

Depending on the company, an employer can shift through hundreds of resumes and interview untold numbers of applicants to find someone who is suitable. This can often rob the employer of the time necessary to do things that allow the business to grow.

Also, an employer may not have the experience in ferreting out people who may talk a good game by not be able to deliver on what they promise.

Hr consulting firms not only accept resumes, they test applicants to assure that their skills are on par with what the employer is looking for.

Employee training

This leads to employee training, which is the cornerstone of what temp agencies have to offer. Many applicants and job seekers have certain skills, however, they may have been on jobs where they had to rest o that particular skill. This may make their knowledge of a certain applicable business talent obsolete. On the other side of the spectrum, newly emerging career seekers may have very little training in certain areas. Both of these types of workers can benefit from the training that hr consulting firms offer on their physical locations. This training is often free and the worker is tested to see if the individual is improving or posses enough knowledge of the skill to be a good match for their employer.

Experience in the field of Human recruitment

There are various aspects to applicant screening that an employer may not be familiar with. For instance, a recruiter may be able to assess that a potential applicant has a lot of desirable business traits that need honing. This recruiter will suggest that the applicant obtain training so they can be placed with the right company. An employer, who doesn’t have this kind of time, may see those traits ad hire on the spot, not realizing that the individual may need to brush up on various job skills before they would make a successful candidate for the position.

All the bases covered

Another thing temp agencies offer businesses is peace of mind. While a experienced hr consulting firm takes over the reigns of recruitment, you can set your mind and goals towards other relevant business considerations.

As businesses continue to evolve faster than the speed of light, the need fro temp agencies will remain in the forefront.

Before hiring a staffing agency however, be sure to really look into their history. Do they have a good quality control system? Also, do they specialize in the type of employees you are looking for? The latter question is valid because so many temp agencies diversity and may not understand what you may need from a potential candidate.

In highly specialized fields, like medical or education, you may wish to find an hr consulting agency that caters to job seekers in that market.

Knowing what you want to get out of a temp agency will all but guarantee success in obtaining the kind of workers that will be an asset to your growing business.

About the Author: Temp agency provides professional hr consulting Canada and recruiting services to assist organizations with their efforts to improve performance, productivity, and profitability. When looking for temporary staffing, consider Drake Intl. http://www.drakeintl.com/ca

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Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=331718&ca=Business+Management

The Human Factors That Determine The Success Or Failure Of Knowledge Management Initiatives

2010-03-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

By Colin Mc Cullough

The paper aims to identify the role human factors play in determining the success or failure or knowledge management initiatives.

A growing realisation in both the private and public sector is the worth of human capital as an intangible asset. In a society transcending the boundaries from information to a knowledge society, it is essential to find adequate and successful means of processing and exploiting the knowledge within the heads of its members. Research literature shows a strong link between knowledge management and the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage, because of the tacit nature of an organisation’s knowledge (Gupta & McDaniel, 2002). The growing body of literature on KM has tended to emphasise the technical aspects at the expense of the people management aspects and it is indicative in itself that the vast majority of literature resides within the Information Technology (IT) field (Bank, 1996; Cole-Gomolski, 1997; Finerty, 1997). Scarbrough et al.’s (1999) IPD report provided an extensive overview of existing literature which demonstrated a growing gap in the literature in terms of people issues in favour of a concern with the technological and system aspects. Likewise Johanessen et al. (1999) explore the inadequacy of firms investing in new technology hoping that KM will simply emerge as a result. Instead they suggest it is the employees themselves who will be the impetus behind the transition from functional organisations to knowledge organisations.

Fundamentally frequent KM attempts end in failure. The assumption that knowledge is an object, and can be codified and distributed underpins the linked field of computer science and information systems. As a result of this knowledge management has been closely tied to ICT. Yet even within the computer science fields, it is increasingly recognised that most current software for knowledge management have more to do with new ways of storing and communicating information than with actual ways in which people create, acquire and use knowledge (Milton et al., 1999). Likewise as McDermott points out, using ICT rather than a solution to knowledge management may “represent the great trap in knowledge management” (McDermott, 1999: p. 104).

An analysis of current academic literature on obstacles to knowledge management reveal three main groups of factors – flaws in the organisational process, misconceptions of the role of technology in the process and lastly, and that which I seek to elucidate as a principle component – a large disregard of the importance of the human factor in achieving a successful knowledge-sharing and knowledge managing culture.

A failure to understand clearly the terms of reference (i.e. what is knowledge management?) fogs entirely the picture of what factors can enhance or reduce the chances of successful knowledge management within an organisation. As Thomas, Kellogg and Erickson (2003) point out the view of knowledge management as a passive, fact-storing procedure which ignores the context in which knowledge is embedded and which relies solely on information technologies is a common misconception of the whole process. Soo, Devinney. Midgley and Deering (2000) likewise stress that the knowledge management process is not something simple which can be bolted on to conventional business models as mere storage models.

The vast majority of academic research into knowledge management, concludes, as do Dominguez, Laverde, Lizzaralde and Arregui (2003) that while there is a general difficulty for companies to explain what they mean when they use the term knowledge management, they are in a position to identify common aspects such as the sharing of knowledge and of transforming individual into organisational knowledge. They admit, however, that a lack of clarity over the concept while generating certain confusion, has led to a greater flexibility in its application in the private sector. It simply means different things in different contexts. De Jarnett (1996) states that knowledge management is knowledge creation, which is followed by knowledge interpretation, knowledge dissemination and use, and knowledge retention and refinement. Brooking (1997), however, in his definition stresses that knowledge management is the activity which is concerned with strategy and tactics to manage human centred assets while Quintas et al (1997) in their definition claim that KM is the process is critically managing knowledge to meet existing needs, to identify and exploit existing and acquired knowledge assets and to develop new opportunities. As Ariely (2003) points out even nowadays there is no full consensus on definitions and perceptions of knowledge management. She concludes, however, that the differing definitions expose the problems industry is having with defining and commonly understanding such a combined term. For this reason she favours the definition by Brooks (2000) of organisational knowledge management through correlating the aim of KM in the organisation with those of the organisation. Ultimately the test is the success achieved in enabling knowledge creation rather than managing it. As von Krogh (2000) points out the dilemma can perhaps be best approached by managing the processes relating to the domain of knowledge management rather than presuming to manage the knowledge itself.

Knowledge management is inextricably linked to the sharing of knowledge between individuals and to the collaborative processes involved. The factors and environments which enhance this all relate to the human factor in the KM process.

About the Author: Colin Mc Cullough works in knowledge management in the public sector. He has consulted for a number of comanies including http://www.mv4men.com and http://www.trainingvillage.gr

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Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=6711&ca=Business+Management

Management Skills Blog

2010-02-28T23:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my management skills blog.

I think good management plays a crucual role in the success of any organization. Without it the plans and goals just won't happen.

And from a personal point a view, good managers are always in demand

With this in mind I am going to be posting articles that will help anyone to develop their management skills and effectiveness.