In Business Everyone s a Politician
As this article is being written, it's another election year and politicians are busy touting their ideas, wisdom, and qualifications. Well, we're all politicians -- especially in management. Organizations are political as well as economic entities, and you better hone your political skills to thrive in the business environment. THE ENVIRONMENT Organizations are political minefields for the naïve and uninitiated. Many careers have been abruptly or permanently derailed due to the political ineptness of the incumbent. It requires savvy, skillful human relations to move up the corporate ladder, and recognition of, and appreciation for, the political landscape.
The Art of Time Tracking
Recording time for a business is a key metric that should be collected regularly to ensure that the very best in processes are being followed. A business cannot even begin the hope of process improvement and the nirvana of project management that brings a new job in on time and within budget if the management team have been lax about the collection and measurement of time. Typically, business and project managers collect time using timesheets. The idea behind this simple technique is that each staff member writes down on a piece of paper just how long it's taken to complete a particular task or job.
Improving Employee Commitment - 8 Ways to Describe and Encourage Loyalty, Dedication, and Devotion
A lot of changes are happening in your organization. Turnover is high, productivity is low, and morale is mediocre. But management has a new attitude, changes are occurring, and things are getting better. However, your organization's success depends on employees being loyal, dedicated, and devoted. In other words, everyone has to be "committed" to doing a great job. Your task is to tell your employees what it means to be committed. If this scenario is familiar, you want to give employees specific examples of behaviors that represent commitment. The following eight behaviors can help you do that.
How to Ask For Measures That Matter
You sit before the monthly report, which might be an inch or so thick, and you contemplate whether it's the best use of your time to paw through the pages to check if there's anything useful in there for you. Past experience tells you that the report is full of many measures graphed in all their splendor, but virtually none of them pique your interest, help you make the decisions you barely have time to give enough thought to as it is... How can you make your measures more like adrenlin and less like anaesthetic? Grab a BIG red marker and cross out every measure or chart or section that you all but never read, get any insight from or value.
So You Reckon It s Not Measurable, Eh?
In business, we often talk about results like productivity, efficiency, loyalty, engagement, well-being, innovation, effectiveness, outcomes and customer value. And you're right - it's just not obvious how to measure fluffy results like these, meaningfully. But that's not excuse not to measure them! If they are results really worth having, they are results worth measuring. The problem is actually not in the measuring, it's in the fluffy way we articulate our results. So you have to come at that problem of measuring the seemingly immeasurable from a different angle. Here are my top tips for how to reposition yourself and finally see how you can measure those intangible results: Describe the result in a sentence, and use words that are simple but very descriptive.
Discover Why the Public Internet May Not Be Best For Mission-Critical Applications
Over the past 15 years or more, businesses have experienced the trend of driving operational computing and communications down. The trend has been do more with less $. The recent drop in Computer hardware pricing over the past 5 years has fueled this reduction even further. Now every business can have an enterprise quality computing environment and telecommunications solution that is better than what most Fortune 100 companies ran their business on 10 years ago for a fraction of the investment. In addition to this with the proliferation of high speed internet at extremely low monthly fees the attraction of utilizing the internet to run business application over the internet has been huge.
Removing Business Costs - Seven Deadly Sins to Avoid
Cost removal is just another form of change. Yet we see companies in every sector making the same mistakes time and again. So here are seven deadly sins of cost removal that it will pay you to avoid. Cutting costs across the board A flat rate budget cut typically does more damage to the high-value, high-revenue parts of the business than you ever recover from cost savings. Worse, costs you cut like this will creep back within two years. Think instead about the causes of your costs and remove these instead. Wimping out Fear of the impact of cost removal is no excuse for not doing it. Uncomfortable conversations now are much better than redundancy conversations later.
Do You Want Fries With That Management Style?
I've written many times about my vast experience in the fast food industry, not as a worker, but as an often mistreated customer. Each story typically involved bad food, apathetic employees, horrible customer service, and a vow never to return. That vow usually ended up in the dumpster when my craving for a chicken burrito got the better of my logic and principles. This time I'm talking about fast food for a different reason. There are lessons to be learned from those who toil behind the counters of America's fast food joints. Working in the fast food industry is not easy, it doesn't pay very well, and it's often a thankless job with long hours and little rewards.
Learn to Focus on What s Important and Farm Out the Rest
How many times have you looked around your small business and said, "There just isn't enough time in the day to get everything done! " Welcome to the biggest realization you will ever make as a small business owner, my friend: there are only so many hours in the day and there isn't a darn thing you can do about it. So, instead of beating yourself up at the end of the day over how much you didn't get done, you should learn to make better use of the time you have. Your time should be spent doing only those things that help build your business and increase revenue, not mundane tasks that could be handled by someone else.
Giving 300 Percent
If you've heard it once, you've heard it one hundred ten times--that overused cliché urging you to give 110%! But, times change and 110% is no longer good enough. If I am in a leadership role I want 300% from my people. You should, too. This isn't about inflation; it's about a better way of thinking about motivation and employee productivity. But, if giving 110% seemed hard, then wouldn't 300% be nearly impossible? Not with the right kind of leadership. Let's take a look. When people show up to work, you already have 100% of them. You have their physical bodies. Let's call this their hands.