Respect your employees personal time. Please do your best not to “bother” your staff (except in rare, emergency situations of course) outside their work hours with work related questions and responsibility. If you find yourself consistently contacting people outside work hours chances are that there’s a big problem at play. You may have “bottlenecks” within your operations and you should …
Culture of evidence and collaboration
As you and your team go about your daily responsibilities it is important to create the culture of evidence and collaboration. Each team needs to be able to document their performance, progress, accomplishments and contributions. The value of such resource will continue to grow with time as it begins to serve as a knowledge management databases of source. This resource …
Clear responsibilities and structure
Individual responsibilities for each employee must be clearly communicated and understood by both sides, employee and supervisor. These responsibilities mush also be shared with the entire team as well as with other teams they regularly interact with. People need to know who does what and how they contribute to the entire team and the entire organizational mission, strategy and vision. …
Motivating employees
For teams to be effective and efficient people must be motivated to contribute and do their best. Motivating can take various forms and shapes, but it always comes down to the following fundamental concepts: Comfort – people need to feel comfortable at work Variety – people want variety in their work and responsibilities Contribution & significance – their work must …
Benefits of mentoring
Benefits of having a formal mentoring program (which can be implemented informally as well) are overwhelming. They range from knowledge management, transfer and retention; ideas exchange to development of employees and future leaders. Having said that, the most important ingredient for mentoring to be successful is willingness of both parties to participate. You can’t and shouldn’t force it, but rather …
Search committee representation
When selecting representation for a search committee one must keep the position they are hiring for in mind. Focus not only on the operations or functions the new hire will fill, but also include people from other areas of your organization which will closely work with the incumbent. All employee groups who will work for or closely with them should …
Customer centric, employee aware
Truly successful teams are both customer centric and employee aware. In order to be able to provide useful products and services one must design, create and build those with their customers in mind. However, equally important is the need to be aware of the needs of your staff in order for them to be successful. Leadership must provide resources and …
Overworked employees
Overworked employees are unhappy, they make mistakes and they are not contributing at their optimal levels of performance. They are constantly under pressure which has negative impact on their health and lives outside work as well (you do remember that work is only a PART of people’s lives, right?). While I understand that in certain professions and industries one can …
Business & technology are partners, not competitors
Finding that perfect balance between business and technology can be a challenging process. Aligning them together where they are useful to one another, productive and most of all on the same page has proven to be the key to success for many organizations. It’s simple, in order to maximize return on technology investments, organizations must align IT decisions with strategic …
Work and happiness shouldn’t be mutually exclusive
Since most of us haven’t won that elusive jackpot yet (trust me, I’ve been trying) we continue to work for a living. It’s a job to some, career to others, yet a place we all go to to earn money (on average 5 days a week) so that we can enjoy the rest of our lives. Considering how much time …