Blog
When Good People Make Bad Decisions—and How to Make Good Ones
Treat every decision about “Yes” and “No” as a choice about investing your time and energy. Like making an investment decision, you should follow a due diligence process.
How to Raise Your Standards and Start Holding People Accountable…Even If You Never Have Before
It’s never too late to lead with authority: Even if you’ve let things slide for years, you can reset expectations and take charge, starting today. Accountability starts with ownership: Admitting past leadership mistakes builds credibility and opens the door for real change. Consistency is key: Clear, repeated communication and follow-through are essential to shifting…
How Chain Operators Can Retain Talent Without Overspending
Every manager knows who the indispensable superstars on their team are. (If you don’t, you really should.) And most of those managers also know that in order to keep those superstars on the team, they must recognize and reward them accordingly. But what if there simply aren’t any more resources—money or otherwise—for a manager to leverage, even with top performers they can’t afford to lose?
How to Handle the 8 Most Common Chain of Command Problems
Building a great one-on-one management dialogue with every boss is a lot easier to accomplish in a workplace with stable and clear reporting relationships and direct lines of accountability. But as we all know, in the real world, such workplaces are rare. Some level of chaos is much more common. Every day, I hear…
Want Innovation? Start with More Boundaries.
The best people you manage want freedom to maneuver at work. They want some latitude when it comes to their schedule, where they do their work, whom they work with, what they do, and how they do it. The problem is that every task, responsibility, and project has parameters that constrain every employee’s freedom. …
Soft Skills: What role are you going to play?
Whether you are in a large complex organization with lots of resources or a tiny business where you are the chief cook and bottle washer, the most important element in bridging the soft skills gap is the human element. If you are not an active champion of high priority soft skills behaviors in your…
What Is Undermanagement Costing You?
I’ve said it before: undermanagement can be difficult to identify. And yet, it is the number one cause of the most common preventable problems in the workplace. How is undermanagement going unnoticed? There are two factors at play here: managing people is getting harder, and there are seven key areas of management with which leaders…
Bad Managers Hide in Plain Sight
The last twenty years have been a time of radical transformation in how we all work. Advances in technology have led to greater flexibility, convenience, and comfort for legions of people now able to work remotely. Improvements in diversity, equity, and inclusion have expanded the talent pool for employers and created opportunities for employees. Whole…
To Be a Go-To Person, Accept the Hard Realities
I’ve been studying go-to people for decades now. Whenever I work with organizations, I ask everyone, “Who are your go-to people?” And I pay attention to the individuals (or types of individuals) whom others cite most frequently and consistently. Go-to people come in every variety and work at every level and are found in…
Don’t Let Diagonal Working Relationships Hold You Back
The collaboration revolution has ushered in a huge increase in interdependent working relationships where lines of authority are not clear, along with the rise of so-called “self-managed teams” and the thinning out of management ranks in many organizations, all of which flatten hierarchies and widen the spans of control for managers. In this environment, the…