You just signed a Help Desk Service Level Agreement (SLA) and now think things will get easier. However, you may soon be falling into one of these traps: 1) COVERING THE TRUTH WITH METRICS In some companies, those under the radar of SLA compliance may resort to doing the minimum instead of really solving the problem. This includes closing or reassigning customer tickets just to meet the ticket queue deadline. While a review of SLA monthly metrics may look like the help desk is meeting or excee More..

Never Hire Anyone Dumber Than You Are!

In a previous life I was a Navy Pilot. Great life, great people to be around. People who were all doing great things around the world flying off great big aircraft carriers. In an environment that complex and dangerous, you need to have teams of people working as one, or bad things begin to happen in large quantities. The people onboard aircraft carriers are divided into two groups, those that make the ship float and those that make the planes fly. Those that make the ship float are known as "s More..

7 Strategies for Sustained Innovation

The need for constant reinvention is a given in today's business environment. And while a breakthrough product or concept can catapult an organization ahead of its competitors, in these fast-paced times, that advantage is often short-lived. While major product or service breakthroughs make headlines, it's the steady incremental innovations made by employees every day that give an organization the sustained growth it needs. Sustained innovation comes from developing a collective sense of purpos More..

Ask almost any business leader how to most effectively develop people and build teamwork and you'll hear, "tap into employees' strengths." Yet when it comes to their own careers, many managers still focus the majority of their personal development efforts on shoring up areas of weakness. Sometimes this is due to well meaning critiques by superiors. Other times managers moving up the career ladder try to emulate those who have gone before. While all managers need to hone their communication and More..

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Top 7 Methods to Empower Employees

How many times have you asked someone to do something like "draw up a plan for such and such project"? Your employee completes the plan, but then you say, "That is not what I wanted" or "That is not how you do it". And so the employee thinks: you didn't tell me exactly how you wanted it done. If you find yourself having back and forth misunderstandings with your employees, then you might have a communication problem. And this could be creating bad feelings, low morale and inefficiencies. To rem More..

The Leaders Fallacy May Be Howard Deans Undoing

Howard Dean's tenure as chairman of the Democratic National Committee will be fleeting unless he avoids a common leadership trap I call it, the "Leader's Fallacy". Leaders adhere to the Leader's Fallacy when they believe their enthusiasm for a particular leadership challenge is automatically reciprocated by the people they lead. However, in leadership, automatic reciprocity is an illusion. Just because you as a leader are motivated, doesn't mean that the people are motivated too. Howard Dean i More..

Argue Your Way To Business Success

"Jack" (not his real name) is a vice president of a publicly traded company. Recently, Jack's stress and anxiety levels have been high enough to impact both his working and his personal lives. (I'm using an alias because he's concerned about his story becoming public - for good reason!) What, exactly is Jack stressed out about? It's not just another case of burnout and he's not worried about losing his job. Rather, Jack is convinced that his company is adopting the wrong strategy. And he's not More..

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Training is in the Eye of the Beholder

This article relates to the Training competency, commonly evaluated in employee surveys. It comments on the value of training to both the company and its workforce. The Training competency investigates how your employees perceive the available training opportunities and quality of training. Growing an organization's internal knowledge base is crucial to the success of any business and ensuring a growing knowledge base means investing in the training of your employees. A Gallup poll conducted in More..

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: The Responsibility for Job Security

This article relates to the Job Security competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. This competency evaluates how your employees view their job security within your organization. In today's often volatile or contingent labor market, it's crucial to understand the level of security your employees feel about maintaining their jobs. Studies show that employees who do not feel secure in their jobs are less likely to be committed to best assisting customers. Evaluating this comp More..

Provisioning/User Management System Upgrades: Part II - Building Awareness And Building Approval

Somewhere in the world is a person who wants to see their provisioning/user management systems get a sorely needed upgrade. But they seem to be getting nowhere. The technical requirements are unarticulated. Key decisionmakers in the company are not aware this is needed. And the "project" is funded and without resources. How can someone who has the responsibility but not the authority get this upgrade to the next level? This article will provide practical guidelines on how to build awareness an More..

Provisioning/User Management System Upgrades: Part I -- Ten Reasons Why Not To Do An Upgrade

Tommy Sherman daily monitors a helpdesk-provisioning queue for a large company. The current provisioning/user management system was written with homegrown software. It has not had a major update for several years. Each day, he is getting more and more frustrated. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot keep up with the increasing workload. New employees are screaming for their system ids and have no way of checking their id creation status. Existing employees are demanding timely updates to their More..

Meaningful Diversity: Creating Cultures of Inclusion

In the fitness room the other day, I caught a glimpse of amovie trailer on television. A father spoke veryopen-heartedly with his son about his work as a fireman. Heacknowledged the fear that welled up in him when he lookedinto a small, dark room filled with life-threatening heatand flames, and described the instinct to run in theopposite direction. He had to pause in a safe hallway andassess the situation, the father explained, consciouslyremember why he had chosen his work - and why he must g More..

Effective Email Communication

Email, when used properly, can generate additional direct sales and leads; can be used as a tool to communicate with your existing client base to let them know of upcoming events which may affect them; and as a means of ongoing promotion for your business. The following is a list of simple guidelines and tips that will help you become an effective email communicator. Please bear in mind that many of these guidelines assume that you have never established any prior dialogue and, as you become mo More..

Spotlight on Productivity: How to Overcome E-Mail Overload

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by e-mail? Have you ever spent more of your day wading through your e-mail than managing your work? Are you looking for ways to spend less time creating, managing and answering messages? Discover how to overcome e-mail overload and be more productive by writing more effective e-mail messages and reducing the volume of e-mail. Write Effective E-Mail Messages Start improving your e-mail effectiveness by creating and formatting easy to follow content, and by using pre More..

Planning Your Recruiting Efforts Can Help You Find Great Employees

Today, companies have an ever-expanding list of options available to them when it comes to sourcing new employees, from advertising in newspapers and trade journals to powerful, cost-effective recruiting options available through the Internet. Unfortunately, the growth in the number of recruiting options available has made the competition for top candidates even more fierce. So how do you break out of the pack to find the people that you need? Like most other business activities, a successful r More..

Why Businesses Need to Start Nurturing Collective Wisdom

COLLECTIVE WISDOM CAN BE AN effective tool for solving the problem of knowledge deficit, or the underutilization of organizational knowledge. If you are a small, medium or large business, and you don't have a method in place for harnessing and managing your organization's collective knowledge, you may be losing opportunities for significant revenue enhancement. According to a study by the Delphi Group, less than 20 percent of knowledge available to an enterprise is actually used. Furthermore, I More..

Medical Collection. How Organized is Your Office?

At one time or another, all of us have experienced the frustration of waiting in a doctor's office. It seems as though every time we go to see the doctor or the dentist we end up having to wait for a ridiculous amount of time, and then when we finally do get in, we are only "treated" for a few minutes and then sent on our way. I have always wondered why that is the case. If the doctor is only seeing each patient for a fraction of the time that the patient had to wait, then what are they doing be More..

Business & Family Safety and Health Rating

For good reason, practically every endeavor in life is rated. I've seen ratings on who or what's #1 in business, industry, NFL, NBA, MLB, person of the century, athlete of the century, technology, restaurants, university, neighborhoods, travel destination, best looking, best movie, best book, etc. It doesn't stop. In fact, there are multiple ratings for the same #1 spot because of varying value systems. Of course, each of us has our independent rating to see if it's in agreement with the masses, More..

Five Overlooked Ways To Hire Winners

Here is a true story. My dentist did a "clinical" evaluation of my teeth. That is his fancy way to say he looked in my mouth and starred at my teeth with his own two eyes. He found no cavities in his "clinical" evaluation. I felt happy and relieved! But then he took a quick x-ray. Lo-&-behold, the x-ray immediately spotted a cavity hiding under one of my fillings!! In other words, what you see is not always all you get!!! An objective x-ray found a lot more important information than a hi More..

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Boot Camp

Service Level Agreements, or "SLA's" are tricky but useful mechanisms for managing the risk of an on-going relationship with IT service providers. Unfortunately, most SLA's that show up in service contracts as worthless, cosmetic paper additions. SLA's can be extremely powerful tools to help you and your service provider get the most out of a relationship. What is an SLA? A service level agreement (SLA), in its most basic form, is a contractual commitment to meet specific goals. If, for exampl More..

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Finding The Perfect Balance

This article relates to the Work/Life Balance competency, which investigates how your staff feels with regard to the balance between work and personal life. It explores issues such as priority of family and hours on the job, also covered in this competency. Organizations that enjoy a high satisfaction level in this area will normally exhibit a low rate of absenteeism and experience higher employee retention. Evaluating this competency is helpful in understanding issues relating to a workforce th More..

Profound Knowledge

We all are on a quest for knowledge. Whether its information that will make our lives easier or just small packets of data that in a trivial way allows us to sort out "why things are the way they are on this planet." As intelligent beings we are constantly receiving and sorting information, in most instances, we are overwhelmed. Therefore, when relevant information arrives that is meaningful, concise and thought provoking, we have a tendency to reflect on this data for the principles and guidanc More..

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11 Strategies on How to Work in An Open Plan Environment

Many work environments now are open plan, with only a few senior managers having offices of their own. This style of work can have great benefits for team building - fostering cooperation and collaboration and can be wonderful for developing the social aspects of teams, but on the flipside, it can drive some people crazy and be damaging to productivity. Most open plan offices require large numbers of people to learn to work together in very close proximity, which can present challenges, particul More..

Creative Writing - business principles produce more quality work, faster

Maximization methodologies have long been used in business to produce quantities of quality ideas, faster. Creative writers who want to rapidly produce quantities of quality work should apply these same principles. a) Waiting for inspiration creates less output than forcing inspiration. Simply engaging in the task generates ideas. By defining the work process, the author can frame the mind for the coming task and trigger the mind into searching for ideas on multiple cognitive levels. Creative More..

Close the Performance Gap

One of the most difficult and emotionally draining situations you face as business owners or executives is employees not meeting your expectations. How can you handle it if they are not keeping up their end of the employee contract? Begin by taking a look at your team. Do you have the right people? Before you hire someone, think about the culture of your company, the team that you already have in place and your particular style of management. If you have a very structured environment, then you' More..

The Professor Makes A Minus Power Move

If you think the power move has costs, consider the alternative. We are talking -- four friends -- bringing one another up to date on our personal and professional lives. David is department chair at the university; he is depressed. "Bummed out," he says. "I find myself withdrawing, caring less and less about the department, the school." We are stunned; just a month ago David was so enthusiastic about the possibilities he saw for creating a dynamic department. This is a man who deeply cares ab More..

Uncommon Common Sense - Know What is the Most Important Thing in Your Business

Over 3 of my meetings with 3 business owners last week, what really shocked me was how uncommon common sense was. 2 out of 3 I spoke to do not know what is the most important thing in their business. They keep on trying on other things that are not important. As we know, every business has ONE most important thing in their particular industry. You need to do well in your most important thing and the rest will take care of itself. For Manufacturing: Most important is your quality consistency and More..

Spinning Gold from Straw: Low-Cost Employee Retention and Motivation Tools in a Changing Economy

New York, NY, February 25, 2005 - Employee retention and motivation?why should employers care? A storm is brewing. National productivity was up 3.9% in the second quarter and 1.9% in the third quarter of 2004. At the same time, the unemployment rate was up 5.5% in October 2004. "Productivity is up, but fewer people are doing more," said Jennifer Loftus, SPHR, CCP, CBP, GRP, and National Director of HR consulting firm, Astron Solutions. "In addition, the number of 25-34 year old workers will dec More..

Good Idea Generation - A Process

It seems incongruous that good idea generation can be a process or that a process may lead to insight. However, if you examine the behaviour of people who regularly generate good ideas - such as creatives in advertising - you will find that common patterns of behaviour do emerge and it is possible to make insight more likely. Below are just some elements of the good idea generation process: a) Creativity is often triggered by the need to solve a problem. People who generate good ideas tend to More..

Necessary Tasks You May Want to Delegate

As a business owner, time is of the essence. Running a business is demanding. You are either performing the day-to-day administrative work or you're working in your business, attending to your customers or clients. What is the best use of your time? The answer is simple. Your time should be spent doing what you do best. The day-to-day administrative tasks can be delegated. It's so much easier to review work than to do it yourself! Here are some suggestions to get you started. 1. Secretarial ser More..

Benefits of Virtual Assistance

A virtual assistant is an individual who provides business services to other professionals. They're considered virtual because they perform their services from a remote location. Communications with their clients take place through telephone, fax, email, and snail mail. As a business owner, you can save time, money, and energy by hiring a virtual assistant. Best of all, you'll have more time to do what you do best - running a business! 1. You do not need to provide a physical workspace A vir More..

Telephone Techniques: Boost Your Productivity With Effective Phoning

One of the things that most impacts people's productivity is not being able to focus on completing one task at a time - we are so overloaded with tasks and interruptions that it requires great discipline to avoid spending the entire day responding to other people's agendas. Telephone calls, both making and receiving them, are one of the greatest disruptions to the flow of the day and to our ability to concentrate on the task at hand. And the use of mobile phones, while a great asset to our busin More..

Get More Impact From Your Annual Conference

How can you get more attention for your conference and your association? Use some of these Power Marketing? tips and ideas. It won't cost much. It just takes a creative approach. The payoff can be huge. First, see everything as a marketing opportunity. Second, enlighten all staff and every member to realize their responsibility in marketing the association. Third, read "Secrets of Power Marketing". There are many ideas here. If you are already using some - wonderful! Try some new ideas this yea More..

Culture Management and Creativity

Many concepts in the fields of managing creativity are very much applicable to culture management in general. The same concepts that foster creativity and innovation also maximise human capital potential, increase productivity, reduce costs and maintain competitive advantage etc. Some of the many commonalities between culture and creativity management follow. a) A culture of psychological safety and freedom. A culture that limits experience, information and expression and allows relatively few More..

One Thing You Cant Hide

One of the most important of all motivators at work is consideration. Employees report that the best managers they ever had were people who cared about them as people and as friends. These managers took the time to ask them questions about their lives, and to listen patiently while they talked about the dilemmas and problems and situations in their families. The more that the employees felt that the boss liked them and respected them, the more empowered and motivated they felt. Caring Is The Ke More..

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