If you miss meetings, always feel rushed, don’t know where the time goes in the day, or experience other indications of being overwhelmed, consider scheduling some slack during your day. If you book your day 100% every day, you’re always going to be overwhelmed. Or, worse, if you treat yourself as a worker attached to a queue of never ending…
Are you managing the wrong thing?
Far too often we worry about managing a product or a service. Hence the designation Product Manager, Project Manager, or Customer Service Manager. We’re trying to manage the quality of the product or service we provide. Managing the product is splitting up and dolling out work–micromanagement–instead of letting people do that. It’s translating output to input, and only providing knowledge…
EBay should focus on innovating after PayPal spin off
Once EBay completes the spin off of PayPal, and now their Enterprise unit, they should redouble efforts on actually innovating in the online market place experience. After nearly two decades of being in the business of helping buyers and sellers come together, they should’ve figured out quite a few things that they seemingly haven’t figured out. They allow bidders (buyers)…
It’s never enough to be good at what we do
If all we have in work is excitement about what we do, the skills we’re applying, eventually we’ll get good at what we do. And, bored with it, because then we’ll realize we’re not doing anything good with it.
Being productive with negative emotions
On my way back from New Jersey this week, two individuals from some religious organization approached me. They were polite and inquisitive about my religious affiliation. It had been a while since someone approached me to discuss religion so I found it rather interesting to reflect upon what they were saying. They got to the inevitable discussion of right/wrong, good/bad,…
Life is either…
It’s a shame to go through life thinking that life is simply what happens to you. There are many pressures and influences that might make you think that life is out of your control. But it’s not. Life is either what you let happen to yourself, or what you make happen to yourself.
IBM Reveals Lack Of Confidence In Their Own Management
You can’t make this stuff up, IBM Researchers Try to Measure Employee Well-Being Using Technology. This is why it’s so important to think about what you’re doing before you start doing it. You don’t need to wait to see what will happen. You already have countless humans that are adept at detecting nuisances in their environment, they’re called employees. Perhaps,…
Customer service and sales stupidity at Staples
I was just at Staples tonight shopping for a few things to add to my office. I found a small filing cabinet/drawer combo that would work really well next to my desk. But they were out of stock, and of course the person working went into some spiel about how I could have it ordered, that it might only take…
Fruitless perfection
Here’s a way to visualize why perfection is a fruitless pursuit.
“Good enough is good enough.”
“Success, not perfection”
Alan Weiss
Do no harm: when initiator is not authorizer
When a customer comes through the door, especially if you’re a consultant, it’s a good idea to know why they came in the door. When a customer comes through my door, I like to know why and then I like to know who initiated that person coming through my door. For example, if someone asks me to present a two…