| You are not logged in | Free Registration | Add to My Google,MyYahoo, Bloglines |
|
|
>>advanced search |
Leadership, management and the Eurozone crisis
One side-effect of the Eurozone crisis seems to be that the age old question – what is the difference between leadership and management – has been thrown into sharp relief. Yes, there is a difference. Just ask the Greeks or Italians. How powerful are your customers?
For too long, customers have taken a back seat to investors. But are they now making their voices heard? Three recent news stories suggest to me that they are. Are you ready for your Murdoch moment?
As corporate crises go, the one engulfing News International is a pretty major one. An organization is never more vulnerable than when a crisis strikes, but some leaders can handle crises in a way that sets them apart. So what do these leaders do that others do not? And how does News International stack up?
Does your organization pass the longevity test?
Of the top 25 companies in the Fortune 500 in 1961, only six remain there today. So what leads to organizational longevity? And what about the iconic companies of today? Will they survive? Do they pass the longevity test? To outsource or not to outsource?
Whatever the numbers might suggest, it is almost impossible to successfully outsource the sharp-end of your business, particularly when that means your interface with customers. Yet many organisations still don't seem to understand this. Texts, transactions and relationships
Today, many people text more often than they talk on the phone. Among teenagers, around nine out of 10 of all phone communications are now text messages. So what's this got to do with management? As Bob Selden explains, the answer is "rather a lot". Respect, trust, confidence and Facebook
If you don't want to see your firm being slammed by an unhappy employee on Facebook, ask yourself whether you have a culture of recognition within your company. Because such comments invariably stem from someone's lack of trust in their employer. And that comes down to poor management and leadership. Money, happiness and motivation
The first thing Clive Palmer did when he bought a loss-making Australian nickel refinery in July 2009 was to raise the of pay of its employees and then ask them how to run the business. The results have been impressive – and so too Clive Palmer's generosity in return. Google and the new management challenge
The biggest challenge for modern organisations is not just how to ensure the best ideas are nurtured. It's also ensuring that the knowledge generated by individuals can be shared and maintained as a real corporate asset and not vanish when somebody walks out the door. What are you worth?
Despite the recession, CEOs continue to pay themselves vast sums while expecting others to suffer - with those CEOs who slashed their workforces the deepest earning the most. As a new report puts it, "CEOs laid off thousands while raking in millions." What's in your knowledge hard drive?
How do you encourage the transfer of knowledge within and across an organisation? Or, to put it another way, what are you learning on a day-to-day basis about how you conduct your business - and how are you passing this experience on to others? Blogging – the hero in all of us
It's understandable that organisations are trying to jump on the social networking bandwagon and an internal blog seems an obvious place to start. But it's easy to get it wrong and end up broadcasting messages that alienate employees rather than resonate with them Who's in charge?
Poor management practices lie at the heart of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. And as with the global financial crisis, it seems that both the regulators and management were unclear about their roles or even about who was meant to be in charge. Does honesty pay?
Barely a month goes by without some new corporate scandal breaking across the media. But do the executives of these companies think that people will not find out what they have been up to? And from a leadership perspective, what type of culture does such behavior engender within an organization? What have we learned about performance management?
What have organisations learnt from the economic crisis about getting the best out of their people? Two contrasting examples suggest that while some have learned a lot, others are stuck in the same old rut. How clean is our language?
We use metaphors in every conversation we have. But there may be more to them than we think. Metaphors can often hide deeper feelings and thoughts. If the issue is really important to us, what's behind these metaphors needs to be understood. Multitasking, marijuana, managing?
If you fancy yourself as a bit of a multi-tasker, I've got news for you. When you multitask, you might think you're doing a lot of work, but you're not doing most (or any) of it well. Why? Because the brain can only concentrate on one task at a time. Service with a smile
You can try whatever gimmicks you like to try to get staff to provide excellent customer service. But good service starts with good management. Unless managers treat their staff the way they want their staff to treat their customers, they'll never get good service results. 15 years in the making
The recession we find ourselves in now was inevitable and it has been brewing for the last 15 years. Why? Because investing has been replaced by short-term trading and the interests of shareholders and staff have been placed above those of other stakeholders. Why isn't good leadership recognized?
He lets others take the limelight. He encourages his people to make decisions. He delegates. He asks for others' opinions before giving his own. Sounds like great leadership to me. So why are so many people sniping at James L. Jones, President Obama's national security advisor? What's your new boss like?
Relationships with a new boss do not start with a blank slate. They are very much influenced by the quality of the relationship with the previous boss and employee expectations of the relationship they are likely to have with the new incumbent. What's the balance of your Trust Bank?
Trust is a critical resource at the moment. But it is all too easy to forget that while trust takes a long time to build, the balance can be quickly depleted with just one careless withdrawal.
Can too much success lead to failure?
A strange phenomenon has arisen as a result of the recession. Because it's the most successful companies which seem to be the ones needing to make the most radical changes in their thinking in order to weather the storm. A lesson in change management
Much of the focus over the election of Barack Obama has been the hope for change that he represents. But for managers, there has also been a great lesson to learn from the smooth transition of power from the outgoing to the incoming president. What's working around here?
The financial crisis and the ever-increasing rate of unemployment highlights the need to foster creativity and innovation. But before you expect employees to be innovative, managers have develop their own creative mindsets. Tough times call for tough leadership
When they're confronted by a downturn, business leaders all tend to take the same short-term, top-down approaches. But in the longer term, they don't work. So how about taking some really tough decisions - like asking the people who work for you what they would do to get out of this mess? Just how important are first impressions?
Before they stepped into their private jets to fly to Washington and beg for billions from the public purse, perhaps the CEOs of Ford, GM and Chrysler should have realized that first impressions matter. 20 is the magic number
What gets rewarded usually gets done. So, when CEOs earn more than 364 times the pay of the average worker, it's only natural they will focus almost exclusively on short term, bottom-line results. There has to be a better way. So what is the appropriate way to pay a CEO? Who guards the guards?
All the discussion about how companies, particularly financial organisations, are regulated seems to be ignoring one glaring structural weakness. That is the erosion of the boundaries between a company's board and its management – between its leadership and management. Did Plato have the answers to Wall Street's problems?
Almost 2,500 years ago, Plato argued that the endless quest for pleasure affects the kind of leaders that democracies produce. Those who do rise to the top are unlikely to be motivated by concern for the common good, but rather by self-interest. Sound familiar? Creating an image – can a speech do it?
The imminent "official" start of the US Presidential election campaign is a good time to remind managers and CEOs just how far the
use of rhetoric, imagery and metaphors can have am impact on how others perceive and act on their message. Tour de Farce or Team de Force?
Do you manage a team or a group? The distinction is an important one, because there's no point in trying to develop a team ethos amongst a group of people who do no real need to work cooperatively together. What's in a name?
Not all business-speak is jargon – some of it can even be useful. The trouble is, there's so much nonsense spoken in workplaces these days that it's easy for valuable concepts to be tarred with the "office-speak" brush. What's happened to trust ?
The Deutsche Telekom spying scandal is just the latest example of an organization in which trust has broken down. So is honesty on the decline in the business world? And if so, why? Are you dead on the job?
Here's a challenge for you. Find someone doing something good today and tell them what a good job they're doing. Because praise is the thing that motivates us the most, even though it takes so little time and costs nothing.
Do you know who your customers are?
Knowing who its customers are is the foundation for any successful organisation. And as the US Federal Aviation Administration has demonstrated, getting this wrong can be disastrous. The aging workforce – a disappearing asset?
Organisations throughout the developed world face two key challenges. How do they keep their best, most experienced and knowledgeable people? And how can they make better use of those who are considering retirement? Is business acumen a substitute for leadership?
If the top of an organisation is full of people with business or technical skills but little grasp of how to manage people, problems can quickly ensue. Because running a business is not just about the balance sheet. What do you get when you pay people to perform?
It may be popular with employers, but individual pay for performance can undermine organisational effectiveness. Because if everyone is out to "do their own thing", the consequences for effective teamwork can be damaging - and sometimes even fatal. Why loyalty pays
Loyalty is something that seems to have been lost in many modern organisations. Corporate decision-makers seem to think that paying people more will gain their loyalty. It does not. All it gains is their compliance. |
|
|||
Copyright © 2000-2012 Management-Issues Ltd. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Contacts | Submission Guidelines
