Related Articles

The Few & the Many: Free Trade, Outsourcing, & Communication
Have you noticed that some sound ideas get bad publicity? Two I have in mind are outsourcing and free trade.No doubt you could name others, but looking at these two initiatives helps us understand a communication challenge for many companies and not-for-profit organizations.

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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.

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The High Cost of Employee Turnover Among Project Managers
Imagine for a moment this scenario from a frustrated Senior Manager of a large pharmaceutical organization: "Our organization has experienced a large turnover among project managers in the past year. This creates problems providing ongoing quality and service to our stakeholders.

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Four Steps to Better Performance Reviews
Direct reports-people who need direction and leadership-rely on their leaders to give them feedback and mentoring, not just management and evaluations. However, these people who most need their boss's help frequently lack the guidance that would enable them move to the next levels of success-theirs, their team's and the company's.

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Contract Management Software: the Solution to the Problem of Coordination
Charles Petrie, from Stanford, released a short article entitled "The Problem of Coordination," which highlights 4 categories in which businesses find it difficult to connect:InteroperabilityAgent Communication Semantic Unification CoordinationThough this article refers to a specific type of business, its principles are just as applicable to any business, especially when collaborating on a contract. Contract collaboration and management is difficult in any business, and the negotiations can go on for weeks, months, or even years.

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Future Business Success - What Does Good Look Like?
When you know you need to shift up a gear, in any area of your business (or your life for that matter), it's really important to have a vivid representation of what you are seeking.Some call these "Goals", others "Visions" and yet more describe it as a "Mission".

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Are You Ready to Sell Your Business
Make Sure You Understand Your Motivation for SellingAre you thinking about selling your business?This simple one-question quiz will help you to better understand your motivations behind this thought. A better understanding of your underlying motivations will help you make the right decision.

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Unveiling the Value of Your Expertise
All of us have knowledge, expertise, and experience that others can benefit from. This is one of the reasons we play some of the roles in life that we play: leader, trainer, teacher, coach, mentor, and more.

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Reducing the High Cost of Absenteeism
Employers pay a high price for absenteeism, often more than they may realize, in terms of both financial and production losses and employee morale. Managers may view the tasks of finding a substitute employee as a short-term inconvenience; however, absenteeism frequently has more serious long-term effects.

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Middle-Aged Managers, the Forgotten Digital Divide
The digital divide is defined by the role computers play within widening social gaps in our society, as the condition of one group having an advantage over another group in regard to computers, technology skills and Internet access.This is usually thought of as being a divide between the white middle class and minority communities; but there is another often overlooked class of nonusers, the middle-aged corporate manager.

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The Art of Motivation and Need Fulfillment
Industrial/clinical psychology and applied psychiatry have made tremendous strides in understanding human behavior. New discoveries and applications toward understanding human behavior are being announced with increasing frequency in these inexact sciences.

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Operating on Perpetual Overload?
Check Out Your E-HabitsAnother week has ended. And, despite moving at the speed of light, you've once again barely made a dent in your more important goals or projects.

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Implementing Change
There are different reactions that individuals experience during time of change. Understanding the emotions of an individual may better help them get through the period of unexpected change.

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Gossip And Rumors And Hearsay, Oh Why?
In the Wizard of Oz, it was "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" Many organizations today are singing a slightly different tune: "Gossip and rumors and hearsay, oh why?"It is estimated that gossip and rumors within a company can cut productivity by as much as 50%. Of course this translates to lower profits and can negatively impact the company in the long-term.

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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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ISO 9001 Registration - 8 Steps for Success
You've made the plans, built the quality system and conducted the audit. So how do you register your company as ISO 9001 conformant? And how can you be sure you're getting the most value for your investment? Here's how the process works.

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Innovation Management - the Root of the Problem
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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Can Your Corporate Policy Pass the Monkeys, Bananas, and Water-spray Experiment?
Five monkeys were placed in a cage. A banana was hung on a string and a ladder was placed below it.

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How to Create a Trusting Manager-Employee Relationship
BUILDING TRUST AS A MANAGER: 1. Be reliable.

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Running Successful Meetings - The Key Steps To Getting It Right
We all complain about meetings which are a waste of our time and the truth of the matter is that so many are exactly that. We've also seen the "corridor" meeting that takes place afterwards where it seems the real decisions are taken, or the agreed decisions are overturned.

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