Great Expectations: Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
As the year draws to a close, we invariably begin to reflect on what we did in the past eleven or twelve months. We compare our successes with our shortcomings. We think about things that didn’t turn out quite the way we expected; and we start thinking about how much more dedicated we’ll be next year than we were during this one. On a personal level, diets and fitness regimes are at the top of the agendas of most people. At a corporate level, the ambitions are a bit more serious. Profits are seen to be too small, in most cases, and costs too high. These perceptions set the scene for...
Read MoreFor Executive Women Seeking C-Suite Success
What do these people have in common? Marissa Mayer – Yahoo Meg Whitman – Hewlett-Packard Patricia Woertz – Archer Daniels Midland Indra Nooyi – PepsiCo Pam Nicholson – Enterprise Holdings They’re all women, of course. And they’re also all CEOs. Beyond that they’re very different, except for one important thing: Once they were in a situation just like the one you’re in now. At some point in their career, each of those successful women had to decide if she wanted to commit herself to the time and effort to rise to the C-Suite. It’s a big...
Read MoreTime Management: It’s More Than Avoiding the Urgent
There are probably very good reasons why the time management system that contrasts the important/unimportant and urgent/not urgent is the most popular. For one thing, it can be simple and easily understood. Like so many management models, it can be explained in a simple two-by-two fashion. Another reason the model is popular is that managers have found that it helps them to establish their priorities and, as a result, to get more done. Even when things are ticking over as they should, there never seems to be enough time to do what’s important, never mind anything else. A third reason may...
Read MoreKeep Your Eye on the Ball
Over time, many companies lose their way. They reach a point where they no longer know who they are, where they are going, or why. They start out to do one thing, but then they gradually migrate into something else. And most of them do so for all the wrong the reasons. Some organizations do this by deliberately leaving behind their original products. Time’s online magazine has cited companies such as Xerox, Nokia, and Apple as examples. Other companies deliberately pursue a new path, but realizing their mistake, retreat back into familiar territory. Several years ago, The New...
Read MoreOrganizational Resistance to Organizational Change
As a discipline, the management of organizational change has been in existence for more than 50 years; yet we are no closer now to making it effective than we were then. Nearly three-quarters of all such endeavors fail miserably. Not only do companies fall well short of their financial targets, but untold psychological damage is done, both to those who lose their jobs, and those who don’t. Traditionally, the blame for all this has been laid at the door of employees. The presumption has been that the leaders “did the right things,” but that try as they might, managers couldn’t get the...
Read MoreWhy People Hate Performance Appraisals
Suppose you had a service that, with subtle variations, was offered by nearly all of your competitors. And suppose that despite your best efforts, only five-percent of your customers were satisfied with the results that got from using it. Would you continue to offer it just because your competitors did? Those statistics are not about any particular service. They were actually taken from a study done on the use and effectiveness of performance appraisals. And if truth be told, these evaluations probably cause more angst than any other in organizations. In addition, they are ineffective...
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