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The Leadership Alignment Model
Some time ago we had the privilege of working with a major UK government department to help them redefine leadership and to reappraise how they develop and encourage leaders. Faced with considerable challenges by the environment in which they operate and by their political masters, this department has decided that leadership is one of the keys to the achievement of the vision laid down by its chief.

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Five Key Strategies for Making Your Nonprofit Business More Effective
I love tennis both as a spectator and a weekend player. I also believe that effective nonprofit organizations are an essential part of vibrant, engaged communities.

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Never Hire Anyone Dumber Than You Are!
In a previous life I was a Navy Pilot. Great life, great people to be around.

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What Personal Assistants Really Want
What would happen if the personal assistants in your organisation were away for a week? How would it affect the running of your business or department? How would it affect you?personally?If you are fortunate to have a personal assistant whom you heavily rely on to assist you, in most instances you would find yourself run ragged if they were absent for longer than a day.This week I spoke with two clients who were in the situation where their p.

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10 Fundamentals for Effective Meeting
Here are ten fundamental concepts that characterize an effective meeting.Definition: A meeting is a business activity where select people gather to perform work that requires a team effort.

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Keeping and Motivating the Best Employees
Keeping and Motivating the Best Employees In "You Win With People" we talked about the need to hire the very best people to build your team.  Now that you've done that the question becomes, how do you keep them, and how do you keep them motivated.

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Managing Performance: Don't Let Slackers Bring Down Your "A" Players
As a manager, it is your job to ensure that the work gets done effectively. Coaching and discipline are unpleasant tasks.

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Getting the Most from Appraisals
Does your organisation have one of those annual 'occasions' that few look forward to: the annual appraisal or performance review? How do you look forward to it? I wonder how people talk about it before and after?Are appraisals worth doing? If done properly - yes. If done poorly - no!!!Why have appraisals? When carried out properly they can achieve a number of benefits for all parties.

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Creativity Management and Time Pressure
There is a pervasive belief that time pressure stimulates creativity. This is both true and false.

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What is Data Visualization?
Data Visualization is InteractiveHave you ever booked your flight plans online and noticed that you can now not only view seat availability but also choose your own seat? Maybe you have notice that when you want to look up information online on another country, you may find a website where all you have to do to get political, economical, geographical, and other information is drag your mouse over the area of the country in which you are interested.Maybe you have put together a business presentation consisting of multiple levels of complex marketing and budget information in a simple display which allows you to review all aspects of your report by simply clicking on one area of a map, chart, or graph.

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Knowing versus Doing - Execution In The Workplace
Have you ever worked with someone who always seemed to have the answers; who always seemed to know what should be done; who could always quote the experts view on a certain situation, but for some reason, just couldn't perform as expected?Working with a client last month I was struck by the fact that my client was already very knowledgeable about the issue that we were discussing. As we talked through the situation it was clear to me that my client was well read on this subject.

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What are Your Best Practices?
Best Practices StudiesThese studies can be defined as inquiries into the skills and methods of your high performers to recognize their achievements, document their methods and skills and then share this information with team members to improve overall performance. The responses generated from your study may hold the solutions to a variety of team challenges in the Call Center.

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An Honest Look at Your Business
There is a difference between being comfortable and being in apathy.It is very comfortable to have a smooth running organization when you have a team that knows what to do and does it.

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Leaning Toward Change
Seduced by the publicity surrounding the impact of Lean on organizations, it's no surprise that people new to Lean, upon hearing or reading such information, are anxious to implement a continuous improvement initiative in their organizations.What has received little publicity, however, and often frustrates Lean implementation, are the employees on whom Lean is often inflicted, albeit unwittingly.

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10 Critical Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Consultant
Talk to as many consultants as you can before hiring one. Even if you have one person or firm in mind, interview at least a few others as a sort of due diligence.

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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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Management Apathy
I recently received a most interesting phone call.When I answered the phone, I immediately recognized the name of the company as one of the most visible distributors in our construction supply industry.

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Creativity and Innovation Management - Money Doesnt Do It
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.

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Protect Your Organizations Proprietary Information
The other day one of our overseas clients called in a state of near panic, to ask a question. At issue was whether they had unwittingly violated U.

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Setting Clearer Performance Expectations
The annual performance review.Stating this phrase guarantees some reaction for anyone who has ever had one, or had to give one as a supervisor or manager.

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