Passion Management (i.e., Leadership)...

“Passion is innovation’s midwife.” Passion management is about excitement and obviously passion. It is managing, in part, through the use of emotion. People do not leave their personalities and emotions in the car in the parking lot. They bring all of it to work. So why not use it? Passion can be transmitted throughout the organization in many ways including email, newsletters, conference calls, videoconferences,...

Don’t Fear Your Competitors...

“The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hands before; he doesn’t do the things he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.” (Mark Twain) This quote...

High leverage tasks vs. Low leverage tasks...

High leverage tasks vs. Low leverage tasks. Shortly after CEO Jeffery Immelt took over the reins at General Electric he estimated that on their best day, GE salespeople spent only 30% of their time in front of the customer. He wants to work that up to 70-80% of their time. My question is what are the salespeople doing if they are not in front of customers? You can travel just about anywhere during the evening hours and...

Are you a slave to your subordinates?...

Are you a slave to your subordinates? If not, why not? The primary role of the manager is to enable the value creation abilities of their subordinates or team, then the role of the manager is, in part, one of servitude to your subordinates. In my customer-centered view, a manager’s subordinates can be viewed as his or her clients. And just as any client they need to be well serviced. The managers must keep close communications...

The hypocritical leader...

The hypocritical leader. One of the major differences between a successful firm and the typical firm has to do with leadership. In many firms top management leads by directives and policy statements and even some by press releases. They talk a good game and give plenty of lip services, and while that may work especially in the short-term ultimately that leadership style is not every effective. You can’t phone in leadership. Executives...

You must have biased employees...

You must have biased employees. Bias is something we as humans have. Although biases can help us categorize things and may help speed up some decision-making, biases are generally seen as negative. Biases help prevent us from having a completely open mind. Having an open mind is especially valuable when the clever manager is concerned with creating new business opportunities. So what do you do? The smartest organizations...

The Law of Crappy People...

I cannot take full credit for originating this idea, but neither can Marc Andreessen (founder of Netscape), from whom I borrowed heavily. In an article from 2000 in Fast Company magazine, Andreessen was asked about some of his management ideas. Of all the ones he spoke about, this idea really struck a cord with me. This is the reason I have adapted and expanded it here. We know that the competition for talent has also...

Fork It Over!...

In 1999 eBay’s website went down for 22 hours under the heavy transaction load. This was made worse as that eBay did not have its own in-house team to fix the site. eBay CEO Meg Whitman identified the best person for the job, Maynard Webb, then Gateway’s technical boss. Once she decided that he was the best she agreed to pay him an annual salary of $450,000 plus 500,000 options. Whitman was getting only $195,000 at...

Management talent is the limiting factor...

In a survey by consulting giant, Towers Perrin 55 % of those surveyed described work in negative term with one third of those surveyed using extremely negative terms. And guess what? Almost all of these problems stated could be virtually eliminated by good managers. But that seem highly unlikely given these same employees have very little confidence in their competence of their managers. Poor managers wreak companies. ...