Category Archives: Functional Skills

ASAP Means “Never”

A Truly Terrible, Over Used Acronym – An Indicator of a Sloppy Culture ASAP – “as soon as possible”, this acronym has been in use for over 50 years. Its use is ubiquitous. ASAP is all too frequently slapped on to every … Continue reading

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Do You Meet with Your Staff Regularly? – make these meetings more productive

A recent article in the New York Times business section, “You’re the Boss: the art of running a small business”, by Paul Downs, “The Comment That Changed My Business“ spoke of this owner’s experience with holding weekly meetings with his employees. … Continue reading

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A Silent Client Is Not Necessarily a Happy Client

Are You Holding Silent Clients in Contempt? Do you think that a client who patiently waits for you to get work done for them without complaining is a happy client? In a world with lots of squeaky wheels and more demands than … Continue reading

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Mastodons and Customer Relationship Management

What might mastodons have to do with Customer Relationship Management? In a recent discussion with the leadership team of a small engineering firm I listened as they reported on their progress working with a medium size firm on the second … Continue reading

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Critical Element Missing from Fast Company 3M Article on Innovation

Fast Company published an interesting article about an old story, 3M’s innovation culture yesterday, “How 3M Gave Everyone Days Off and Created an Innovation Dynamo” by Kaomi Goetz. The article repeats the well-known story of 3M’s policy of giving employees time to … Continue reading

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Why Should You Develop a Business Plan for Going Concern, How to Do It, and How Do You Convert the Plan Into Action?

Why Should You Develop a Business Plan? For every startup the development of a business plan is a  required first step. It is so obvious – business schools have course on writing the business plan and it is impossible to … Continue reading

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The 6 New Management Imperatives by Bruce Temkin – comments

Bruce Temkin has published a free book on his blog[[1]], The 6 New Management Imperatives – Leadership Skills for a Radically Changed Business Environment. Mr. Temkin sets out to define a “new set of skills” for managers. These are the … Continue reading

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Proven Checklist for Business Success – How Do You Put Them Into Action?

I receive a regular email titled, “Management Intelligence…… from Edward de Bono and Robert Heller”[[1]] . Their most recent email was “Management Intelligence: A proven checklist for business success”. Here is the checklist they provided: “DO YOU… IMPROVE basic, measured … Continue reading

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Podcast – Delegation (Outsourcing) and Keeping a Focus on Strategy and Results

Delegation and Outsourcing Share a Common Management Focus on What Needs To be Done, What Are the Results Required, and When?

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Book Review – 12 The Elements of Great Managing and Making These Actionable

The Gallup Organization has been publishing books on management and high performance organizations regularly for quite some time. The encouraging elements in all of them are that they are  based on real data from real people about real work.  I … Continue reading

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