Do you find you’ve too many conflicting priorities? One of the dilemmas for small business owners is that the more work you get, the more likely you are to prioritize more tasks. This leads to a schedule conflicts whereby you cannot complete deliverables on schedule, releases get pushed out, and staff become demoralized. How to […]
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Did your boss ever ask you this question? One of the dilemmas for managers is the tendency to delegate down and avoid asking others for feedback, especially on how they can perform their job better. The risk in doing this is that you stop others from sharing what you need to hear; as a result, […]
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Jul
It sounds like a contradiction to encourage others to make mistakes, doesn’t it? But if your company doesn’t allow others to do so, how are they going to challenge their assumptions about what works or what could be improved? No one criticizes a child for falling off a bike when it learns to cycle. It […]
Performance reviews are a Catch 22 if you work for yourself. Who’s going to review your progress and tell you what you need to hear? Work for someone else? When’s the last time you got a performance review that really made a difference? If you don’t get peer or performance reviews at your company, here’s […]
It’s easy to go wrong with bullet lists. Should it have a period at the end? Should it start with a capital letter? Here are some guidelines to make things simple. Bullet Lists v Number Lists When do you use bullets instead of numbers? Use number lists to: Identify a sequence of actions to be […]
Ever wanted to speak French? Or Italian? Or maybe Spanish, so you could travel to South America and have more than Buenos Dias? Or Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese. Most of us never start. It’s too hard. But, if I told you that all you need is 100 words and then you can get by – […]
Can introverts make successful managers? We all know what the stereotype CEO looks like. Tall, charismatic, impressive, and evoking authority. It’s easy for extroverts.That’s the stereotype. Reality is a little different. A quick scan of the top CEOs in the US shows a surprising number of introverts in executive positions. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Bill […]
I feel many of us are at saturation point with business books. We’ve read so many that, instead of getting new ideas, they drain us of energy and offer few new ideas. You know when you’ve read a new business book and thought to yourself: I’ve read that before? It happens to me so much […]
What’s the real problem with asking for a raise? After all, you’ve worked hard all year. Why shouldn’t you get a little extra for the hours you’ve put in? Maybe it’s related to guilt, low self-esteem or other factors, such as education, gender or race. In either case, we all know what it’s like to […]
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Jul
Sometimes looking back gives us a little more perspective. The Romans were the first to build roads. Real roads. Networks. They connected Constantinople to Seville and London to Carthage. All paths lead to Rome. If that isn’t impressive enough some of those roads are still in place today. Think about this. They built the roads […]
