People orientated skills
1. Master of communication and public relation
2. Recruiting and promoting
3. Develop and maintain stakeholder relationships
4. Selling and leading change
5. Provisioning for the team
6. Develop, engage, and trust
7. Valuing results and people
8. Valuing work life balance
Personal skills
9. Have a vision of your legacy
10. Embrace abandonment (letting go of the past)
11. Define the mission, values, […]
Mark Twain once said that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you know that the rest of your day will be better because the worst is behind you. After all, you’ve already eaten a live frog, what’s the worst that could happen?
Far too often we dread a task, perceiving that […]
As managers climb up the management tree they need to ask themselves how far can my leadership go? Could I become a general manager or even a CEO? To help answer this question you need to see how much leadership is in your DNA and how much you are prepared to commit to rectify shortfalls.
My interest in […]
Stephen Covey in his book First Things First observes that great leaders appear less stressed and seem to have more time on their hands than the rest of us. He drew a time-management diagram, pointing out that far too often we are firefighting in the ‘urgent and not important’ quadrant. We should instead allow such […]
The pursuit of growth through takeover or merger (TOM) has made a small, select group of executives, investment banks and consultants very wealthy while diminishing the wealth of a vast number of shareholders. Why do so many TOMs fail to deliver the perceived synergies and cost savings?
Synergies. First of all, the synergy calculations are […]
The belief that the month-end report is useful. It is too late to change anything, the horse has bolted, and management should know the number if they have been provided with key daily and weekly information. The M/E finance report should be a one pager (A3).
The belief that there is a magic number to aim for. Accountants […]
Recently, I wrote an article “Time’s Up” for ACCA Global. It was about time management and it clearly struck a chord, due to the higher than normal correspondence with readers. Here is an extract:
Stephen Covey in his book First Things First observes that great leaders appear less stressed and seem to have more time on […]
I have been writing about performance measures for more than 20 years. In all that time, I have only witnessed minimal advances in the way companies go about using them. All too often, the assessment of measures are treated as an afterthought.They are regarded as a box-filling exercise to demonstrate that we have achieved a […]
There is a major problem with reporting. The writers often do not understand enough about the science of reporting. In addition, too many reports have been prepared monthly, which is far too late for prompt action. The reporting framework used in an organization must accommodate the requirements of the different levels in the organization board, […]
Many organizations that have operated with key performance indicators (KPIs) have found the KPIs made little or no difference to performance. In many cases this was due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues. Organizations often begin to develop a KPI system by immediately trying to select KPIs without the preparation that is indicated in […]