Monthly Archive for July, 2009

  • How Can I Build Networking Skills?

  • Conversing with perfect strangers is not easy. Even those known as outstanding networkers had to learn how. Their secret, they tell me, is preparation. Before you go to an event where you will have an opportunity to meet with people whom you don’t know but whom you would like to know, you should think of [...]

  • How Can I Better Organize My Workspace to Maximize My Productivity?

  • Your goal is to keep the most accessible areas in your office, like your desk and middle shelves of your book case, least crowded, and the least accessible areas, like the very top and bottom shelves of your bookcase and lowest file drawers, most crowded. Begin by creating an in-basket for mail and everything else [...]

  • How do I Determine What to do First?

  • List all those tasks you need to do and prioritize them according to one or more of the following criteria: Which jobs and deadlines are mandated from above? These are important assignments, but not always urgent. On the other hand, if your manager is pacing up and down in front of your desk waiting for [...]

  • How Can I Eliminate Procrastination?

  • The first step in overcoming procrastination is to identify its cause. If due to low self-esteem or a tough project, then prepare an action plan to deal with it. If fear of taking the wrong step is behind the procrastination, seek out others familiar with the work to discuss your ideas. Then you can pursue [...]

  • Do I Have to Suffer From All Those Interruptions During the Day?

  • Reducing the number of interruptions often demands an adjustment in attitude; that is, you need to accept responsibility for controlling the interruptions in your work. Admittedly, you won’t be able to control them all. But there are ones that you can. For example, you can’t control when someone calls you, but you can control whether [...]

  • How Can I Ensure that Ethics and Integrity aren’t Just Values Listed on a Sheet of Paper?

  • You need to consider values like ethics and integrity like goals critical to your organization’s success. More important, you need to translate those values into behaviors—your own and those of your employees. This makes them more than words strung together, particularly if you incorporate the behaviors tied to the values into performance evaluations. Since your [...]

  • How Can I Ensure that I Get Credit for the Work I do?

  • If you want your performance appraisal to reflect your accomplishments, then you should go to your next performance appraisal with a written list. If your manager isn’t likely to remember each and every staff member’s efforts over the quarter or year, this will ensure that your personnel records make mention of them. You can add [...]

  • How Can I Minimize Intrusions on my Personal Time?

  • You can argue against this practice but you can’t avoid it once it becomes policy. You can minimize intrusions on your time by making plans before you leave to ensure that most critical issues either are already handled or will be handled by others trained to do so. Teach them what they need to know, [...]

  • How Can I Balance the Demands of the Workplace with my Family Obligations and Personal Interests?

  • Truth is, we can’t have everything. Rather, we need to determine what we want, then "rightsize" our lives to achieve our wants. That may entail something as extensive as toggling between intensive focus on work and intensive focus on a nonwork life, giving all of ourselves to our jobs for a time, then cutting back [...]

  • I Seem to Work from Crisis to Crisis. What am I Doing Wrong?

  • You may have to look at the assignments more closely. A lot of managers carry such heavy workloads that they habitually plunge into one assignment after another without any thought as to how the tasks should best be handled or what work they should do immediately (think "urgent") and what work can wait. They are [...]

  • How Can I Deal with Workaholism?

  • Some people fall into the "all work, all the time" pattern and find it hard to get out. Without close family ties or friends to draw them away from their work lives, they may become so consumed that they never develop outside lives. Their work becomes a crutch, one that isn’t very sturdy given the [...]

  • How Can I Reduce Stress Due to Work?

  • Actually, you have two concerns: controlling your own feelings of burnout and minimizing the stress your employees feel. As an effective manager, you should provide employees with the information they need to do a good job. You should give regular feedback. You should say "thank you"—regularly. You should involve your employees in decisions that affect [...]

  • What do I do if I Discover a Project Just Won’t Work?

  • Not every change you lead or support succeeds. There always comes a time when you have to fish or cut bait. If the change effort not only isn’t working but the results anticipated are unlikely to occur, then it is time to cut bait. More important than the fact you have to kill a project [...]

  • How Can I Get my Team Through a Period of Change Overload?

  • Continuous change can lead to severe employee burnout. Some symptoms of burnout are that change loses its importance, and employees grow tired of going from one new program to another. It seems to them as if it is more important to management to implement a change quickly than to conduct a realistic assessment of its [...]

  • How Can I Create a Culture that will Encourage Flexibility and Innovation?

  • Surviving in today’s world of change requires a culture that encourages innovation. As a manager, you need to develop a "possibility mindset." What does that mean in terms of specific behaviors? You have to demonstrate a willingness to hear out employees’ ideas and be an initiator yourself, looking for opportunities for positive change. When people [...]

  • I’ve Seen Change Inaugurated, Then Things Return to Before the Change. How Can I Avoid Slippage Back into Old Ways?

  • Success carries a hidden risk. Having achieved excellent results through effective change, the change agents lapse into complacency. They don’t monitor the project to ensure that new policies and procedures continue to be practiced or follow-up plans are initiated. Such slippages can be prevented by developing stretch targets to move the change continually forward. These [...]

  • How do I Involve Employees in Change Efforts Without Abdicating my own Authority Over the Final Decisions?

  • All managers have a distinct leadership style. Some managers practice a command/directive style, leaving their staff little opportunity to influence the plan. These managers tend to do no more than let everyone vent their displeasure with the directed change and then expect them to get on with it. Managers who tend to be extremely supportive [...]

  • How do I Motivate my Staff to See the Opportunity that Comes with Change?

  • You shouldn’t promise something you can’t be sure you can deliver—like a raise or a promotion. Focus on what the change is expected to do. If that might open up opportunities for advancement, you may mention that but as "one possible result," nothing more. Turn the change plan itself into an opportunity by pointing up [...]