The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is one of the best-selling books of all time with 13 million copies published in 37 languages. It is written in story fashion about a young man searching for an effective manager that he can work with. He finds mostly managers who just care about the organization and its results not about the people. He also finds managers who care about the people but their organizations suffer due to lack of attention to organizational goals…
Tag: management (Page 1 of 2)
There are a lot of theories about what makes successful teams and we have a tendency to go far afield to look for answers that sometimes can be right under our noses. You will read stuff like successful teams communicate well with each other, the team members respect each other, the team has fun, etc. While this may be true, this is more about how a successful team behaves than what made the team a success in the first place.
One of the facts about management that seems contrary to conventional wisdom is that most managers are really “nice” guys who do not like confronting their subordinates and holding them accountable. These managers consider this part of management to be a real hassle, something they would rather avoid. They believe this is an unnecessary evil and something they have to put up with as part of the heavy burden of management. Managers who think like this of course are never really going to be able to hold any one accountable. Then there is the mean-spirited manager who is completely task oriented, and who does not give a damn about people. Managers with some degree of balance between their concern for people and concern for holding the same people accountable for their performance are unfortunately a bit of a rarity.
So how does a manager strike a balance and make the process of confronting subordinates about their behavior or performance a bit easier and less stressful for both parties?..
Making mistakes is everyone’s right. However, learning from one’s own mistakes and learning from others’ mistakes is essential. Like everyone else, managers also make a lot of mistakes so here is a list of the top 5 management mistakes that managers need to avoid…
Based on a web article entitled “The Future of Management is Teal”.
The way organizations are structured and run today is essentially outdated. Disillusionment and lack of engagement are commonplace and most people regard their work as filling in time and unexciting. Managers try different incentives from training to monetary rewards to company retreats without getting any lasting, positive outcome. So is a new kind of organization the answer?
Imagine that you are approaching a traffic light and need to make a decision whether to stop or move full speed ahead. This becomes easier to decide when you are given sufficient information – the light is red, orange or green. But how do you decide if the traffic lights don’t work for some reason. Now you need to process different bits of information about the traffic that’s coming from the left, the right, the pedestrians…
Read any book about organizational success – whether in a multinational or a small business – and the key to organizational success is related to something business-like: leadership, sales, customer care, profitability, etc. Any reference to recreation and fun is almost always as an add-on. For example, a company retreat with balloons and treasure hunts once a year or a sports day or a company lunch once a quarter. HR managers lecture line managers on the need to have such events so their fun-starved staff can get a chance to “loosen up”. Yet staff engagement remains low….
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