What’s your relationship to management metrics? It’s normal not to be able to answer right away. You’ll find yourself somewhere on the spectrum of metrics-obsessed to metrics-phobic. It doesn’t matter where you are on the spectrum. What matters is that you can learn about yourself and your business or department wherever you are. People think…
Many want to become a better manager, but don’t know how. Management is one of those things people feel like they should know how to do well, despite that it’s the most difficult aspect of business that most people receive little to no training for. Especially if you already are a manager, there’s an assumption…
Our world of fiction is filled with evil characters who seek to dominate the world, immerse it in darkness, let loose destruction and mayhem, and do other “evil” things. While such stories can be entertaining, they contribute to an already less-than-responsible world and complicate accountability. Here’s how…. The vast majority of people have good intentions.…
Paul was afraid, but that wasn’t the problem, as you’ll see. He needed to have a tough conversation with Sheila, an employee of fifteen years. Sheila needed to either change or leave. She was his wife’s best friend, one of his first employees, and surely had the best intentions. But her negativity was a poison…
Over a decade ago a general contractor in serious trouble came to me for business coaching. Let’s call him Dave. His revenue was down two straight years. He broke even the year before, but nine months into the current year, his net profit was negative four percent. Burning cash by the wheelbarrow, he had five…
The toaster won’t turn on. You fiddle with it for a minute or two. You start locally. But, when that doesn’t work, you think bigger. You move from content to context. First, you check if it’s plugged in. Then you go further out, “Hmmm, maybe the circuit is blown.” You do this all the time.…
Last week I wrote about The Simplest Path To Employee Engagement. In case you missed it, here’s the punchline: engagement comes when an individual uses their job in their own healthy self-interest to become more the person they want to become. That’s the context. One of the best examples of content you can use to…
Employee engagement is perhaps the greatest problem facing workplaces today. Statistics show it’s only getting worse. Many of the problems that well-meaning leaders and managers struggle with are actually only symptoms of deeper engagement problems. You may not even realize it’s there. Employee disengagement can be an invisible kind of friction that drags everything down.…
I often hear owners/managers say: “There are no good people out there to hire.” “My people don’t care as much as I do.” “My people won’t do what they’re told.” People problems are among the top three biggest complaints among managers next to money and time. I’ve heard the same frustrations for fifteen years, and…
In last week’s article, I asked you to complete the sentence “I will be happy when…” as many times as you could and I promised you a breakthrough. Here’s a hint: it’s about overwhelm. This is where you have that breakthrough, but it won’t work if you haven’t yet done the assignment. Don’t read on…