Management Information
Success at Work : People Skills : Dealing with New Ideas
Re-organizing, re-engineering, re-training, down-sizing, outsourcing, changing-changing-changing. Organizations today think they need to be constantly changing or they will perish.
Lateral Thinking, Logical Thinking, Applied Creativity
Certain processes enhance creative output and others enhance innovative output. Defining creativity as problem identification and idea generation and innovation as idea selection, development and commercialisation, this article will tackle stages two and three using the three-stage process of lateral thinking, logical thinking and applied creativity.
Creativity and Innovation Directors, Consultants and Managers
Creativity and Innovation is essential for competitive advantage, yet the role of Creativity and Innovation Manager is often not viewed as essential. Organizations without such a role will simply not perform as competitively as their rivals.
Innovation Management - idea selection and valuation issues
Innovation is different and distinct from creativity in that it is idea selection, development and commercialisation as opposed to creativity, which is problem identification and idea generation. The core issue with innovation management is, therefore, how to select those ideas that are most likely to succeed?Ideas have to pass though an idea funnel as most organizations lack the resources to try out all their good ideas.
Creativity Management and Behaviour
What behaviour maximises the chances of thinking of great ideas? What behaviour maximises the ability to nurture ideas until they begin to reveal their potential?To begin answering the above questions we will briefly explore five areas:a) Creativity versus innovation. It is correct that the above questions are separated, as they refer to two distinct disciplines - defining problems and generating ideas (creativity) and selecting those ideas, developing and then commercialising them (innovation).
Creativity Management and Time Pressure
There is a pervasive belief that time pressure stimulates creativity. This is both true and false.
Radical Creativity from Incremental Creativity - large movements from small changes
Positive radical movement is the holy grail of nearly every decision maker. Every CEO wants to radically shift his profit and loss statement into the black, every inventor yearns to find the next killer gadget and every screenwriter wants to make the next significant leap in film.
30 Ways to be a Butt-Head Boss
1. Trust no one.
Creative Writing - business principles produce more quality work, faster
Maximization methodologies have long been used in business to produce quantities of quality ideas, faster. Creative writers who want to rapidly produce quantities of quality work should apply these same principles.
Does Your State Like To Keep Your Workers Compensation Secrets Hidden?
Workers compensation secrets are hidden deep within piles and piles of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. They are sometimes used as high priced paper weights for over worked government workers who may or may not be totally interested in seeing that you find the exact information that you are looking for.
A Rare Leadership Skill: Dealing With People Who Want Out By Offering Crowns For Convoy
As a leader, you'll inevitably be faced with people wanting to leave your team or organization. Dealing with the challenge is critical for your leadership success.
Measure for Measure
Can you imagine playing hockey without a goal? Basketball without hoops and nets? Football without a goal line? Golfing without holes or greens?There may be leagues where it doesn't matter whether anyone is keeping score, but not the big leagues. Champions of the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup, the Masters can only be determined when there is someone keeping score.
Ten Secrets of Super Successful Meeting Planners
Whoever said that being a meeting planner was easy, lied! Rather, it should be classified under the tough and demanding job category. But, along with being tough, it's also fun, exciting, exhilarating, stimulating, and never, never boring.
Improving Your Inter-Company Communications At No Cost
It's all very well having a flashy (and expensive) advertising campaign, backed up by a wealth of positive PR, but if your staff are not all pulling in the same direction this could be the biggest leak in your plan.Want a more in-depth guide to internal and customer communications, plus a CD-ROM with software with advice, additional content and links to helpful sites?Buy 'Marketing your Business' todayFirstly, everyone need to be able to get accurate information, so ensure that you have a good computer network (or better still, a fully-fledged Intranet) and routinely store the latest versions of documents where everyone can access them.
Satisfied Employees, A Powerful Marketing Strategy
Even in today's still uncertain economic times, there are companies who are doing extraordinarily well. Why is it that some companies are thriving while others are barely making it? You can always blame the economy, but is that the only reason? The answer could be as simple as how respected and appreciated your staff feels.
How to Delegate More Effectively
Do this simple excercise, and transform your life.First, Make a list of recurring "to do's".
Creative People, Innovative People
The title implies that some people are and others not.This is a myth.
Innovation, Idea Selection, Valuation
There is no sure fire route to commercial success, but one can maximize the chances of selecting those ideas that are most likely to succeed. Organizations short of R & D resources must implement such processes.
Measuring Creativity, DIY style
Creativity measurement is often required in order to benchmark existing competencies, monitor improvement, increase output and generally provide tangible and useable processes and structures for clients.Individuals can measure their own creativity, the creativity levels of their group, department or organisation.
Organizational Structure, Creativity, Innovation
Organizational structure can inhibit or foster creativity and innovation. The problem with organizational structure though, is that it is resultant of many factors, including history, organic growth, strategy, operational design, product diversity, logistics, marketing, client base, supplier base and so forth.
Organizational Culture, Creativity, Innovation
It can be concluded with great certainty that certain organizational cultures inhibit creativity and innovation whilst others foster it. Some organizations are just better at identifying problems, generating and selecting valuable ideas and developing and commercialising them - this is why those firms tend to maintain competitive advantage and remain leaders in their field.
Teaching Large Companies To Think Like The Little Guys
Q: I am an executive at a large company and in our industry we are seeing a trend wherein smaller companies are gaining market share at an alarming rate. Our CEO believes the reason for this is that smaller companies are more prone to innovation and more entrepreneurial than larger companies.
Are You in Control of Your Practice or Does it Control You?
One of the most common complaints that business owners have today is that they feel their practice is running them and that they're being pulled in every direction instead of really running the business themselves.Well, I'd like to tell you, when I was in practice I experienced the same thing.
Productive Meetings: How to Make Your Meetings More Productive
There's one simple secret to effective meetings: set an agenda and stick to it. The agenda drives the content and outcomes of the meeting and, where appropriate, should reflect the needs of all attendees so everyone has a buy-in and an interest in the outcomes.
Coaching Champions at Work
I saw Brian Kerr (the Irish national football coach) on television not so long ago and it reminded me of a platform I shared with him at a Banking Institute seminar in Dublin. Whilst I was waiting for my turn I listened to Brian and experienced two emotions - admiration and jealousy.
How to Reject a Job Applicant
A Nightmare That Really HappenedOver 10 years ago, when I worked as a manager at a major corporation, I received a call from a headhunter about a magnificent job opening. It sounded like the perfect job for me.
Interviewing Applicants Can Be Hazardous to Your Wealth
1st Fact: Interviewing applicants is the most common way companies decide whom to hire.2nd Fact: Research proves most interviewers do lousy at predicting if an applicant will succeed - or flop - if hired.
Issue Management Methodology for Tracking Project Issues
1. What is an Issue?An issue is an incident, circumstance, problem or inquiry that affects or potentially affects the timely delivery of the project, product or service, it may also impact the quality of deliverables and the cost of production.
Is Your Management Style Assisting or Hurting Your Business?
Many times business owners can have significant differences in management styles that can deter the growth of both the employees and the business.Employees can have differing needs that require differing methods of management as well.
People - You Cant Make Them What Theyre Not
Many business people and managers are spending too much time trying to change the underperforming people who work for them. They seem to believe that if they train people - tell them what to do or even threaten them with the sack - then the performance level will go up.
Rapport - How to Build it with Your Team
I've often heard managers say - "My door is always open,come and talk to me anytime."You have to accept the fact that your team won't always dothat.
Employees - Treat Them the Way They Expect to be Treated
When you have to deal with one of your team who's complaining to you, rather than allowing your negative programmes to take over, get your thinking part in gear and try to see the situation the way they see it. You don't necessarily have to agree with them but perhaps you can empathise with their point of view.
Managing Creativity - An Oxymoron! Not
Interrogated on a beach in Barbados by friends insistent that there was little validity to my speciality, I have felt compelled to answer the most common objections in the field of Managing Creativity and Innovation.a) Managing Creativity and Innovation is an oxymoron!When ideas are required, leaders tend to herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct (usually an ineffective) brainstorming session.
Negative Self-talk is Too Expensive
I'm always fascinated by the people who lift huge weights,particularly in competitions like the Olympic Games. Thereare events for men and women and they get up on stage tolift a bar with huge weights attached.
Resistance - How to Handle It
Do you ever meet with resistance from other people - I betyou do! It might be a customer, a colleague, a member ofyour team or even someone in your personal life. Dealingwith resistance or objections is one of the biggestchallenges faced by business people; so let's consider whywe get resistance and how we can handle it.
Delegate, Dont Abdicate
One of the key skills for the leaders of growing businesses is to 'get' the distinction between delegation and abdication.Many managers and business leaders fall into one of two extreme categories:They delegate too little and try to do it all themselves or they give too much away, abdicating both their responsibilities and the prerogatives of power.
One Thing You Cant Hide
One of the most important of all motivators at work is consideration. Employees report that the best managers they ever had were people who cared about them as people and as friends.
Culture Management and Creativity
Many concepts in the fields of managing creativity are very much applicable to culture management in general. The same concepts that foster creativity and innovation also maximise human capital potential, increase productivity, reduce costs and maintain competitive advantage etc.
Get More Impact From Your Annual Conference
How can you get more attention for your conference and your association? Use some of these Power Marketing? tips and ideas. It won't cost much.
Telephone Techniques: Boost Your Productivity With Effective Phoning
One of the things that most impacts people's productivity is not being able to focus on completing one task at a time - we are so overloaded with tasks and interruptions that it requires great discipline to avoid spending the entire day responding to other people's agendas. Telephone calls, both making and receiving them, are one of the greatest disruptions to the flow of the day and to our ability to concentrate on the task at hand.
Benefits of Virtual Assistance
A virtual assistant is an individual who provides business services to other professionals. They're considered virtual because they perform their services from a remote location.
Necessary Tasks You May Want to Delegate
As a business owner, time is of the essence. Running a business is demanding.
Good Idea Generation - A Process
It seems incongruous that good idea generation can be a process or that a process may lead to insight. However, if you examine the behaviour of people who regularly generate good ideas - such as creatives in advertising - you will find that common patterns of behaviour do emerge and it is possible to make insight more likely.
Spinning Gold from Straw: Low-Cost Employee Retention and Motivation Tools in a Changing Economy
New York, NY, February 25, 2005 - Employee retention and motivation?why should employers care? A storm is brewing. National productivity was up 3.
>[?
Uncommon Common Sense - Know What is the Most Important Thing in Your Business
Over 3 of my meetings with 3 business owners last week, what really shocked me was how uncommon common sense was. 2 out of 3 I spoke to do not know what is the most important thing in their business.
The Professor Makes A Minus Power Move
If you think the power move has costs, consider the alternative. We are talking -- four friends -- bringing one another up to date on our personal and professional lives.
Close the Performance Gap
One of the most difficult and emotionally draining situations you face as business owners or executives is employees not meeting your expectations. How can you handle it if they are not keeping up their end of the employee contract?Begin by taking a look at your team.
The Do's and Don'ts of Giving Feedback
Being able to give effective feedback is not just a good skill to possess in business, it is a great life skill to have. Because when you are masterful at giving feedback, not only can you help your employees to sustain continuously improving performance, you can also improve the performance of the baseball team you coach, the cleaning lady at home, or the performance of your own children on completing their chores.
11 Strategies on How to Work in An Open Plan Environment
Many work environments now are open plan, with only a few senior managers having offices of their own. This style of work can have great benefits for team building - fostering cooperation and collaboration and can be wonderful for developing the social aspects of teams, but on the flipside, it can drive some people crazy and be damaging to productivity.
Developing Your Mission
"The best Leader is one who knows how to pick good people to do what he or she wants done and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." - Heidi Richards -Mission statements describe the purpose of an organization or a sub-group of it.
Employees Commit Corporate Fraud
Imagine the following scenario; Ten years ago you decided to quit your job and start your own company. For ten years you worked hard, made sacrifices, and it paid off in the end.
Setting Clearer Performance Expectations
The annual performance review.Stating this phrase guarantees some reaction for anyone who has ever had one, or had to give one as a supervisor or manager.
Problem Solving - Think Cleopatras Ass
Picture the scene. Anthony pops down to the guardhouse, partly because he wants a break with the lads, but also because he has a problem.
He Hate Me: Turning Their Bad Attitude Into Your Great Results
"He Hate Me" was the nickname of Rod Smart, a leading rusher in 2002 for the Las Vegas Outlaws of the now defunct XFL pro football league. Looking for an edge, the XFL allowed players to put nicknames on their uniforms.
Get Out Of The Stone Age: Give Leadership Talks
160 years ago, the newly invented electric telegraph carriedthe first news message. The message zipped 40 miles in a flash over wires from Baltimore to Washington, D.
Managing Rebellious Employees
Surveys of executives reveal that many companies fall short of their profit objectives due to "people problems." Research for my Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change book found these "people problems" fall into two "r" categories: rebellion and resistance.
Stomp Out Leeches In Your Company
Recently, I felt appalled to see a political candidate running on the motto of "Demand More!" That motto oozes extreme nerve, and implies some people think it is o.k.
How To Decrease Downtime and Increase Productivity
All maintenance activities of the workforce must be documented, this includes breakdown repairs, callouts, preventive maintenance, replacement maintenance, overhauls, and Testing & Inspection work. Maintenance work by production line employees must be included, whether or not the employee is listed as in maintenance.
Profound Knowledge
We all are on a quest for knowledge. Whether its information that will make our lives easier or just small packets of data that in a trivial way allows us to sort out "why things are the way they are on this planet.
Planning Your Recruiting Efforts Can Help You Find Great Employees
Today, companies have an ever-expanding list of options available to them when it comes to sourcing new employees, from advertising in newspapers and trade journals to powerful, cost-effective recruiting options available through the Internet. Unfortunately, the growth in the number of recruiting options available has made the competition for top candidates even more fierce.