Sometimes, I think that businesses have the wrong attitude towards competition and the “competitive landscape”. I’m a very competitive person, but I don’t care about my competition – not in the way other companies seem to obsess about theirs. Perhaps it is where they see themselves and their attitude towards business strategy. Leader or Pack...
Although perhaps not officially a “generation”, the term Generation F is being used to describe the wave of people entering the workforce who have grown up with social networks and Facebook in particular. There’s been a lot of written about these Millennials (the official term) and their attitudes to work but the impact that social networking has...
It may seem to you like nothing more than semantics, but there is a significant difference between these two words – reactive and responsive. Reactive is in the heat of the moment. It is knee-jerk. It is emotional. Fight or flight. When you react you are typically using your “lizard brain”. You lash out. You...
Journaling is a technique used for personal development and self-improvement. It involves keeping a daily diary / journal to record your thoughts and feelings about your life at that particular moment in time. These are not necessarily “dear diary” moments, but they can be. The main point is that it provides an opportunity to let rip....
I’ve been involved in a few discussions recently on whether we have customers or clients. For some, this may be a mere matter of semantics – saying that the terms are interchangeable. But I think a business needs to be consistent in their reference and we haven’t been. Customer vs Client – what is the...
I came across an article in Inc. Magazine last month on Servant Leadership that really hit the mark for me. The basic premise is summed up by a quote from Kent Keith, CEO of Greenleaf Center of Servant Leadership: “I think the simplest way to explain it would be to say that servant leaders focus...
A lot of managers don’t know how to delegate. They understand the task and are able to explain what needs to be done ok. They allocate the task to a capable person just fine. They even set a time frame for completing the task exactly as you would expect. But in the end, they don’t...
Sometimes you get an employee who is smart, creative, passionate and pretty darn good at what they do; but they are also arrogant, obstructive, demoralising and high maintenance. This is the prima donna employee and despite their benefits, they are not worth keeping. I’ve had to deal with many prima donna employees during my career...
When I was researching for this post, I visited the wikipedia page on “Job Satisfaction“. I was actually surprised by how much academic research has been done on this subject. I was also surprised that so much of it has been over-complicated. In my opinion, the amount of control you have over your working day...