Have you ever experienced the scenario where a team member is lamenting their colleague’s lack of responsiveness? The email chain has gone back and forth ten times with clarifying questions and still there is no resolution. In your mind, the situation is ridiculous. The people writing the emails are sitting three cubicles away from each… Read more »
Business Management Blog
The Employee Development Path
Directing to Delegating A planned approach to employee development is the most effective way to get things off your plate and onto your team’s. Yet some managers only think of delegating when their work is spilling off their plate and they see no other option but to hand it off. While a more measured approach… Read more »
Bookkeeper, Controller, or CFO?
What Position Do You Need? When starting a business, the leader or a family member often “handles the books” given the sensitive nature of the information and the minimal time required for this task when a company has few transactions to process. While the leader sees this work as mostly administrative, the value of the… Read more »
How to Craft Outstanding Interview Questions
One of the first steps in crafting good interview questions is knowing what you are looking for in a candidate and, of course, this is different for every company and every position. To illustrate how to craft great questions, we’ll assume one of the strengths we want to assess is the candidate’s problem-solving ability. Use… Read more »
The Onboarding Process
The goal of an employee onboarding process is to improve company productivity by quickly increasing a new employee’s effectiveness. The process begins the day the offer of employment is accepted and lasts until the end of the 90-day probationary period. Once the offer has been accepted, it becomes the manager’s job to ensure that the… Read more »
A Different Take on Employee Engagement
Gallup defines engaged employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their workplace. To find a way to measure this, Gallup studied tens of millions of people and determined that just 12 questions (the Gallup Q12) can provide effective metrics on employee engagement. Yes, engagement can be quantified and yes, you… Read more »
The Recognition Gap: Make Sure Your Team Feels Appreciated
The recognition gap is the space between the amount supervisors think they meaningfully recognize their employees’ accomplishments and the amount the employees perceive that recognition. Carolyn Wiley’s research reports that “while 80% of supervisors claim they frequently express appreciation to their subordinates, less than 20% of the employees report that their supervisors express appreciation more… Read more »
Five Not-So-Stressful Tips to Resolve Customer Complaints
While much has been said on how to avoid complaints from your customers, they will still happen. Assuming you’re a good person trying hard, being told you aren’t delivering takes your lizard brain from zero to sixty in a flash. You are under attack! Your heart starts pounding, blood flows from the extremities, you feel… Read more »
The Human Factors that Determine ROI on a Change Initiative
The goal of change is to deliver whatever the desired outcome was that precipitated the change. No company implements a new software system just to complete the implementation. Project management criteria such as on time or on budget are necessary but not sufficient for a successful change initiative. Companies implement software to realize financial gain,… Read more »
Communication: The Leader’s Role in Change Management
The goal of a communication plan (in change management) is to create awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement with each of the audiences that will be impacted by change. An effective communication plan builds awareness of the nature of the change and communicates the risks of not changing. It enables sponsors to interact with employees, formalizes feedback… Read more »