This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com. Many articles and books have been written about succession planning and how important it is for company longevity and shareholder protection. But most of the advice focuses on the selection of and transition between CEOs and assumes things like a fully functional board and a fairly robust organizational structure. In many privately owned and operated businesses, though, it’s tough just to predict what will happen next quarter, let alone years into the future, and when you’re the CEO, there may […]
Very few decision-makers operate completely independently — even CEOs usually have to answer to a board. So unless you’re a sole owner, or a sole employee, you need to appeal to many different audiences to get support for your initiatives, as well as people’s participation or compliance. In fact, even if you — and perhaps your team — know exactly what you want to accomplish and why, you won’t get far without organizational buy-in. If you don’t deal with them […]
Unless you’re the sole decision-maker, you need employee support for your decisions. Even leaders must rely on networks and coalitions, along with informal ways to collaborate, coordinate, and share. Yet at the same time, at every level and in every kind of job, more and more people in the workplace are feeling detached, not cared about, or not recognized for who they really are. Everyone does better when they feel that they matter and that they’re noticed — and the […]
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com. There’s no perfect test (yet) to discern who will be the best possible hire. Even after preparing thorough job descriptions and formal assessments covering everything from personality to hand-eye-coordination, it’s a challenge to sort through the way people present themselves in interviews and in their resumes. During the screening and interviewing process, employers can be distracted by multiple kinds of bias and their own personal taste and preferences. It’s also easy to fall into […]
“Conflict costs businesses a ton of money,” management guru Steve Caldwell observed while interviewing me recently. Caldwell is a team leadership coach, the author of Manager Mojo: Be the Leader that Others Want to Follow, and the creator of the podcast Manager Mojo, where he highlights commonsense solutions to management and leadership issues. These lightly edited excerpts from our conversation create a through-line from the reasons for conflict to tips for reducing the disruption and expense that conflict causes. How […]
Let’s say, you’ve been working hard, minding your own business, and suddenly you learn that you’re going to have a new boss. Maybe your old boss is leaving, or perhaps you’ve been reorganized. Whatever the reason for the change, you’re worried — which is both reasonable and practical — about how you and your new boss will get along, whether your work will be disrupted, and if your career will suffer or be supported. On top of your purely personal […]
An up-and-coming manager at one of my client companies asked for help with a longstanding employee. Over time, his behavior had become problematic for other employees — and sometimes for customers as well. In addition to making more and more mistakes and creating conflict with co-workers, he had begun ignoring his manager’s feedback and doing juvenile things like claiming he didn’t have time to get his work done while blatantly engaging in social media and other online diversions during work […]
This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com. As your business grows, so do its needs for talent and skill. But, over time, your business’s needs may outpace the skills of your founding and core employees, and your very success can become a barrier to scaling and continuing success. The needs of every growing business will vary, but after working with privately held and family-owned businesses for 30 years, I’ve seen certain patterns come up again and again. If your employees aren’t also […]
No matter how high our hopes are for a newly promoted manager, things often go remarkably wrong. Sometimes it’s the new manager’s attitude or belief. For instance, I’ve worked with a previously responsible employee who viewed his promotion as justification to stop handling details, because they’re for “lower-level people.” Another newly promoted employee saw her promotion as validation of her work and herself as she was, and decided she no longer needed to learn new skills. Promotions can also bring […]
When you’re lucky enough to employ someone who has the capacity to do superior work and then grow past the job, but you haven’t got an appropriate outlet for them, it can be a challenge to keep them in the company, let alone within your work group. One of my clients got in touch recently to discuss what to do about two very different team members who’ve told him they are interested in growing beyond their current roles. Case 1: […]