management

Rethinking Employee Rewards, Part 1

I surveyed ten of my colleagues from different high-tech companies about the state of employee rewards programs at their company. One colleague told me about the outstanding reward programs where he works. The other nine colleagues told me something much different. Their feedback is easily summarized as follows: “Our reward programs are pathetic!” What’s the [...]

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The Wise Use of Extreme Introverts

The social awkwardness of an extreme introvert — a loner– confounds most extroverts. Extroverts prefer using social interaction as a big part of the problem solving process while a loner prefers solving problems without social interaction. Can a loner be a contributing member on a collaborative team? Yes. But I need to qualify my answer. [...]

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Dealing with Method Zealots

Has a member of your team become completely concerned about how something is done rather than whether it is done? Is it a problem when someone is completely focused is on how something is done? What do you do about it? A good starting point for exploring these questions is a quote from John Gardner’s [...]

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What Type of Team Are You Managing?

Is your team more like a basketball or a track team? What’s the difference between these types of teams? Why is the difference important? I have been a member of many basketball and track teams. Being a successful member of a track team is different than being a member of a successful basketball team. Basketball [...]

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Selling Your Ideas to Management

Workshop Do you wish you could break through and communicate better with management? You aren’t alone. Employees do their best to share their ideas with busy managers. But they rarely receive feedback about the interaction. In this workshop, we will simulate interactions with management and provide feedback about the interaction. Behind closed doors,managers complain that [...]

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Dancing With Independent Employees

How would your management style change if all your employees were financially independent and their objective was to master their craft while contributing to society? Think about it. Employees would be free to choose whether to stay or go. Oppressive management styles would result in empty buildings. Once upon a time, I had a manager [...]

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Safety Check

You have heard repeatedly that an agenda is a vital ingredient to a successful meeting. But little is ever heard about safety in meetings—the environmental variable that determines whether people participate or merely observe. How do you measure safety? What actions are available to leaders for creating a safe meeting environment? First published in the [...]

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Clarify the Story

Talking to upper management about information technology resource consumption can be a tricky proposition. Resource consumption is complicated but upper management demands a simple story that makes business sense to them. This article explains how an effective manager of a storage management group frames the conversation.

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Don’t Tell Doreen

Jarrett, Doreen and I were on the verge of a closing a big sale. We had crafted the Statement of Work (SOW) for two weeks and had finally reached the point where it satisfied both the customer’s desires and the needs of our company. But at the last second, before the document was sent to [...]

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Make Results Predictable

Your organization is in chaos. You want to create pockets of stability. What do you do? Make the results of meetings predictable. Winfrey is the manager of a geographically dispersed software development team at the XYZ Corp. Ellsworth, her manager, assigns Winfrey the management responsibility of hosting a biweekly training conference call. The objective is [...]

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