Related Articles

Tales from the Corporate Frontlines: Senior Management and Directional Change
This article relates to the Senior/Top Level management of an organization, and how a huge vision of directional change translates into the day-to-day operation of the company. AlphaMeasure defines senior management as the team of individuals at the highest level who have the day-to-day responsibilities of operating the organization.

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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.

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You Didnt Use Brainstorming to Select Your Measures, Did You?
IntroductionWhen Alex Osborn invented the creativity technique called brainstorming, I wonder if he had any idea just how extensively business would apply it. Almost every meeting employs some kind of brainstorming event, but there's one meeting that really should leave it off the agenda: the performance measure selection meeting.

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10 Ways To Maintain Profits In A Slow Economy
1. Sell more back end products to your existing customer base.

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Creativity and Innovation - Large Firms Versus Small Firms
There is a pervasive assumption that small firms are more creative and innovative than larger firms. That is, they identify problems and generate ideas (creativity) and idea select, develop and commercialise (innovate) those ideas to a greater degree than larger firms.

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Writing and Revising Your Life Story
Change is not simple. Why do we repeat behavior that doesn't work? Those actions that lead to stifling debt, disappointing careers, or stuck relationships? Then do it harder, yet expect a different result? Why is it not obvious that trying to exit an old story by simply writing a "better ending" only recreates the same story, and ensures that we remain in it? That a thousand better endings to an old story don't create a new story? That the past cannot be changed and is a settled matter? That too often, we see ourselves as the victims of the stories that we author and the feelings we create?We actively construct what we think, feel, and experience.

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Creativity Management and Behaviour
What behaviour maximises the chances of thinking of great ideas? What behaviour maximises the ability to nurture ideas until they begin to reveal their potential?To begin answering the above questions we will briefly explore five areas:a) Creativity versus innovation. It is correct that the above questions are separated, as they refer to two distinct disciplines - defining problems and generating ideas (creativity) and selecting those ideas, developing and then commercialising them (innovation).

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Problem-Solving Success Tip: Test Your Assumptions About Everything
Test your assumptions about everything.Assumptions have a way of creeping into all parts of a problem-solving project.

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Accountability Equals Meeting Success
Leslie was the new manager of the group. She was replacing Tom, a well respected manager who was retiring.

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Weaknesses of Wishing
When you're starting a business, you might wish for a lot of things, like having more than enough customers or not having to do marketing. But wishing is weak willed, having no momentum behind it.

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From Boring to Interesting - Making Training Effective
Being a good trainer requires experience and skill. Experience comes from practice and skill from learning the theories, applying them, getting feedback and consciously improving.

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Communication Mix-Up
My friend Delia is the owner of a small private school. This spring her school is experiencing the crunch of reduced enrollment for next September and all staff have been asked to take a six percent salary decrease.

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Building Trust in Your Business Relationships - 10 Steps
There are some simple things you can do with your people to ensure that they start to trust you. As a letter from Mike Emmott of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK says, in April 2005's UK Management Today says:-"Our surveys show that only one in four employees trust senior management to look after their interests"Is that not appalling? How on earth can businesses develop, survive and above all hang onto their best people if they are seen to be untrustworthy?It's horrible.

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Well-Defined Processes - How to Create
Interested in learning how to reduce development time, save money and stay in control? Business professionals can learn how to create well-defined processes with the easy-to-manage Process Approach of Plan-Do-Check-Act.Real Tools for Real Business ProcessIn MBA courses, students come across a lot of buzzwords and the theories behind them.

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Use QA As Your First Step To Outsourcing
Quality Assurance, or QA, is often given short shrift in a software development organization, especially when budgets are tight. When debating the software development budget at one of my software companies, the CEO finally asked, "Well, do you really want to hire a QA guy, or a programmer to add features to the software?"It was a tough choice.

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Get It Done! Soft Skills not Hard Tools are Required
If your organization has people, then interpersonal skills are needed.I work with companies that are on a path they call the lean journey.

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Tales from the Corporate Frontlines:Choosing an Effective Employee Recognition Program
This article relates to the Recognition competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. It tells the story of how one company found the right recognition program by paying attention to employee feedback.

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Magnificent Meetings - 5 Tips for Success
Your impact at meetings will determine in a big way how well you do in your career. In other words you will rise as high as your communication skills will let you.

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Performance Appraisals: Questions for Smarties and Dummies
In numerous programs I've conducted on performance appraisals, with Human Resource people (who are responsible for developing and implementing programs) and with line managers (who actually conduct the reviews) are often foggy about performance appraisal procedures. Here are some frequently asked questions.

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Conference Calling Can Save Your Sales OrganizationTime and Money!
Conference calling can save you money. There is no doubt that in the sales business, every second counts.

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