Category Archives: Functional Skills

Podcast: Managing for Weakness – a mis-management myth

Shifting your focus from weaknesses to strengths is a powerful step towards being personally more effective and building a more effective organization.

This podcast is based on an earlier blog posting: “Managing for Weakness – a mis-management myth”. This … Continue reading

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Managing for Weakness – a mis-management myth

The Myth Managers spend a lot of time worrying about the weaknesses of their employees. “If only I could get her to perform better we would have a really great team.” And countless more along that line. Companies have performance … Continue reading

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It’s Always Your Fault – taking responsibility for personnel – Podcast

Become a more effective manager by taking responsibility for your personnel.

The podcast is 4 minutes long. This is a podcast version of the earlier posting here.

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It’s Always Your Fault – taking responsibility for personnel

Attracting, selecting, training and mentoring, and pruning human resources are among the most important tasks a manager confronts. Almost everyone agrees that, at the top level of organizations, managers need to be devoting a significant portion of their time addressing … Continue reading

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Managers – Don’t Answer That Question!

The miraculous practice of not answering subordinates’ questions. A counter-intuitive strategy for high performance, yours and theirs.

The podcast is 6 minutes 34 seconds long.

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Customer Engagement in Product/Service Development – new hints from Nokia

It is widely accepted that the more closely tied, integrated even, customers are in your development process for new products and services, the more likely success will follow. An April 13, 2008 article in the New York Times Magazine, “Can … Continue reading

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Book Review: Outside Innovation by Patricia Seybold

May 5th, 2008 The transformation of “customer driven”, “customer-centered”, “customer-defined” from just empty buzzwords in the latest management books to central values, key strategic skills is continuing. Patricia Seybold’s 2006 book Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s … Continue reading

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Getting the Right Things Done – the manager’s focus

Peter Drucker wrote a charming little book in 1967, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting Things Done. I have now read it numerous times and each revisit rewards me. Just this morning I was speaking with a manager … Continue reading

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Customer-Centered Business – Peter Drucker and Web Marketing

Drucker Recently I have been returning to Peter Drucker‘s work, specifically The Practice of Management (originally published in 1954, the current edition is HarperBusiness, 1993). On page 50, Drucker says the following: “What is our business is not determined by the … Continue reading

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Job Shops, TPS, and Intuition

Recent work with a client brought home to me again the interplay of TPS (Toyota Production system) and intuition. We were working on developing a job scheduling system in a classic job shop environment. We had worked out a rough … Continue reading

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