Three steps to avoid micromanaging

Help people get on with it.

Here’s a quote from management professor, Henry Mintzberg: “The manager does not leave the telephone, the meeting, or the email to get back to work. These contacts are the work.”

Most managers will relate to that. On the one hand, the flow of interruptions, requests and enquiries is a source of constant frustration. On the other, constant communication is at the center of successfully running any team or any business.

What’s the right perspective on this? 

Click to read more ...

The Successful Exit

To take more with you, leave more behind.

When they broadcast emergency procedures as you taxi down the runway, the idea is to show you how to exit in the safest manner. It’s meant to be the most orderly solution. In any given circumstances, the fewest people will get hurt and the optimum number will survive.

A successful business exit is not a lot different. If you put together the right plan and execute it in an orderly manner, you leave all parties in the best possible shape.

Click to read more ...

Staying bootstrapped

Keeping cash flow strategies green

Want to reinvent your business? A popular strategy is to return to the startup model. It reinvigorates the enthusiasm and drive that characterize a business launch, spurring innovation and idea generation. 

We see it in notions like “skunkworks” and “idea labs”. The track record, however, is patchy. Ideas emerge, but they often lack traction in the marketplace. Plenty of great innovations are still born; they are long on vision but lack financial discipline.

Click to read more ...

Why you need to collaborate

It’s not just good for everyone else

Collaboration gets a lot of traction in management commentary. Wherever your look, we are encouraged to form alliances. Even Harvard Business Review recently devoted an entire issue to it. Everyone, it seems, wants to work together.

Teamwork, as collaboration was once known, has always been a key to success. What has shifted is the preparedness for greater collaboration across traditional boundaries.

Diversity has been acknowledged – not for its political correctness but for the fact that cross-fertilization of opinion and perspective leads to more robust decisions.

Click to read more ...

Want to be more productive? Trim the to-do list

Ever get that feeling you can’t do it all?

You’re right. You can’t. When most of us build a “to do” list, it becomes  an inventory of ideas that physically just can’t be done in the time we give it.

I plan a month in advance. I write all my brilliant ideas on a white board and stand back at look at it. I think “wouldn’t that be a great result?” If I stop there, it’s not long before it’s a rod for my back. There are just too many things on it.

Either consciously or sub-consciously, I know I can’t do it all. The list clutters my mind. It creates distraction, which in turn leads to procrastination. The end result is inertia. No wonder I can’t do it all.

Click to read more ...