4757 Posts Found

When you ask folks what they’d like more from their manager, the answer is almost always they want more feedback. I read it in just about every performance review of a manager that I cover.

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

Exceptional managers know how to deal with situational differences. They don’t bring a single hammer to every problem in front of them. They assess the situation and then they look to their toolkit — or go find new tools — in order to motivate and support that individual.

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

When it comes to setting expectations — for example, assigning a deadline for an upcoming project — always make it a two-way dialogue. Ask your team: “Is this an aggressive but reasonable goal? Is this something we can land?” And it almost doesn’t matter if the answer is yes or no, because what you’re doing is opening up the space to have a further dialogue … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

In the first couple of 1:1s start putting together a written document. How does the report like to receive feedback? Are there things that trigger them? What are the things they want to do more of? What are their ambitions? Where do they feel they need to be pushed? … That helps set the table for how this relationship will go. Invest the time upfront. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marcel Weekes | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

Unconventional project-management approaches are fine in normal times, but they don’t work during transformations, when individual initiatives and portfolios of initiatives require the cooperation of multiple departments and the careful use of scarce resources. Everybody needs to align on one way of doing things—using the same process, accessing the same tools, and following the same cadence for reporting and meetings.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Connor Currier, Cordelia Chansler, Julia Dhar, Kristy Ellmer, Paul Catchlove, Simon Weinstein | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Project Management

Companies have a huge growth opportunity in emerging markets, but only if they have the right approach to get their products onto store shelves and into consumers’ hands.

• Many emerging markets have expanding populations and rapid GDP growth, making them more attractive than developed countries.
• They also pose some challenges, such as highly fragmented retail channels, small-scale retailers, gaps in the skills of frontline sales staff,

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: International, Management

“Move fast and break things” gave speed a bad name. You can move fast and take care of people. In fact, when you’re taking care of people, you can move even faster. People think the only way to fix things is to slow down. It’s not true. Meaningful change happens with momentum.

Content: Quotation | Author: Frances Frei | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Professor Rory McDonald, an expert in disruptive strategy, urges corporate leaders to learn from startups—and preschoolers—as they seek to reinvent their organizations.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Matthew Duffey, Rory McDonald, Tom Fleming | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Strategy

Before you can become a “growth machine” you need to become a learning machine. The first overarching goal is to turn your startup into an instrument for discovering your big growth levers.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management

To unlock a team’s abilities, a manager at any level must spend a significant amount of time on two activities: helping the team understand the company’s direction and its implications for team members and coaching for performance.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Marc Vinson, Monica McGurk | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

To stay focused, productive, and motivated, leaders need to develop their own working rhythms and routines. Here’s how some CEOs do it.

Content: Article | Authors: Gautam Kumra, Janice Koh, Jennifer Chiang, Joydeep Sengupta, Mukund Sridhar | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Management

So whether you’re a manager delivering feedback to your direct report, or sending feedback up the management chain, the best way to make your conversation heard is to make the listener feel safe, and to show that you’re saying it because you care about her and want her to succeed. “If you come off with even a whiff of an ulterior motive — you want … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Julie Zhuo | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Cognitive technologies and business process reengineering could be a match made in heaven, but only if organizations do the work to redesign their processes with cognitive technologies’ specific capabilities in mind.

Content: Article | Author: Thomas H. Davenport | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management, Process

Three interrelated dimensions—business ecosystems, managed services partnerships, and new technologies—correlate highly with company outperformance. Top-quintile companies get more revenues from ecosystems, invest more deeply (and strategically) in their relationships with managed services partners, and go further when it comes to cloud, APIs, advanced analytics, AI, and other technologies. These three dimensions set in motion several salutary flywheels: leading companies use technology to lower transaction costs … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Lang Davison, Parul Munshi, Pete Brown, Wayne Borchardt | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

A new study finds that revealing employee pay unexpectedly influences workplace dynamics in ways never demonstrated before.

Content: Article | Authors: Boris Maciejovsky, David Danelski | Source: Futurity.org | Subjects: Compensation, Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior

For the COO’s productivity mandate, the time to act is always. Six best practices can help.

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Swan, Darryl Piasecki, Tony Gambell | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations

An intelligent failure is an undesired result in new territory. There’s no way you can know for sure whether it will work out without trying it. […] An intelligent failure differs from two other types of failures: a basic failure, which is caused by carelessness or ignorance, and a complex failure, which is caused by multiple factors, none of which would have caused the failure … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amy Edmondson | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Risk Management, Success / Failure

Storytelling is a key business skill. Here’s how to make your narratives more persuasive.

Content: Article | Authors: Craig Wortmann, Emily Stone, Liz Livingston Howard, Michelle L. Buck, Mitchell A. Petersen, Steven Franconeri | Source: Kellogg Insight | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Storytelling

To perhaps oversimplify it, the root of management is to make your team more effective. And the best way to make your team more effective is to be thoughtful and intentional about supporting their creativity and developing a high-trust environment.

Content: Quotation | Author: Melissa Nightingale | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

We hope that the next wave of technology actually frees up managers and gives them more time to be more effective leaders. But there’s a risk that, unguided, we end up in a world where managers spend even less time (as a percentage per employee) on coaching.

Content: Quotation | Author: Bryan Hancock | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Coaching, Human Resources, IT / Technology / E-Business, Management