Most managers are severely undertrained. I’d like to do something about that.
A good manager creates more engaging work, aligns a person’s goals with business outcomes in a way that leads to everyone winning and is the catalyst to turning businesses into a force for good. These are some tools, essays, frameworks and stories to help.
Create a Hiring Process
However, hiring is difficult and time consuming. There are a dozen or more job boards in the US alone that are supposed to help connect employers and employees, but most of them send…
Better Decision Making Under Uncertainty
he reason being, algorithms to find optimal solutions rely on the expected value of the decision. It requires assigning a utility value, a dollar value, or some metric to a possible outcome then…
Smooth Out Operations, Create Flow
The ideal state of a system is that which consumes the least energy. In physics, that looks like the path of least resistance. In other domains, systems that require the least amount of…
Define Communication Processes
By stepping back from the discussion and listening to how people are forming their conclusions, better ideas will emerge. Finally, understanding how information is being interpreted differently will show you how to persuade…
Get Alignment With A3 Reporting
the purpose is to ensure rigorous thinking around sharing the most useful information to get alignment and buy in from cross functional teams.
Celebrate Learning, Not Failing
What matters more than what phrases a business uses, though, is what actions are taken. Setting out to fail, as a strategy, is going to bring failure.
Create a Hiring Process
Looking at similar job postings across companies, it’s easy to see that most JDs are just copy and pasted off one another. The same vague, fluffy language surrounding the duties of the job…
Start With the End in Mind
As the wise Baseball coach Yogi Berra once stated, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” When taking on any new adventure, project, task, job, etc., having…
Put on the Six Thinking Hats
Part of this exercise, known as the six thinking hats, is becoming a character by way of being assigned a “hat.” By playing the part you’re assigned, you’re free from being judged personally…
Learn to Learn (as on organization)
The evolution of corporate knowledge adds a layer of context that makes information stick better long term.
Workstation Design & Organization
Standardize: Establish a system to keep the above 3S’s consistent. Keep consistency between workstations.
Kanban Communication
Kanbans are another tool from Toyota’s pull based manufacturing system. Originally, physical cards acted as representation for the need of an engine component, and were passed to the relevant department when
How Managers Can Ensure Changes Last
Creating a culture of continuous improvement, having a change agent, incentivizing new process adherence, giving employees a stake in the decision making, putting the new processes in writing…
Managers, Continue “Doing the Work”
These are all important aspects of a manager’s day, however, the more time a manager spends doing these tasks, the less time they spend with the customers.
Give Away Information, Build Familiarity
If your business can educate customers (and potential customers) for free, you’ll build better relationships and funnel in more customers. If ACME services and installs new HVAC equipment, they should give out free…
Systematically Collect Feedback (and use it)
Capitalizing on the best features by making them even better to use will delight power users. Speaking of delighting users, try and go out of the way to delight 30-50% of customers, especially…
Create Your Own Measuring Stick
Being able to measure customer satisfaction is a must for all new managers. Without paying customers, there is no business.
On Quality Management
Quality is as important to manage as it is hard to define. Having the tools and frameworks at the ready is critical.
What Is Management?
The cute one liners that define management leave out all the details of what one actually does as a manager. To be an effective manager, step one is figuring out what you are…
Reflection form: Copy and Paste this for your own reflections
Yearly reflections are a great exercise for course correction. If you kept doing what you did this year, will you get where you want to go?
Systematically Collect Feedback (and use it)
Feedback from customers / clients is the only way to understand what their perspective on your business is. Collecting it is a must do activity.
Define a Measuring Stick for Satisfaction
Every industry will have a different standard for customer success rankings. Net Promoter Scores are the most common, but it will vary from business to business.
Theory X and Y for Managers
Managers, like employees, can fall into two main buckets, known as Theory X and Y. The challenge for managers, though, is aligning everyone in a productive way.
On Creativity and Management
Creativity is vaguely defined on purpose. Too rigid of a definition would deflate the meaning entirely. Similarly, management is a loosely defined title (or set of responsibilities) within most companies. It follows, then,…
Train the Whole Team to Hire Well
Most hiring managers suck at hiring. We could do much better.
Document Processes With Spaghetti Diagrams
Improve work flows with spaghetti diagrams
Don’t Automate Yet.
It’s better to understand and eliminate than automate that which does not need to be automated.
Give Away Information, Build Familiarity
People buy products and services from those they trust. To build trust, you have to build a shared understanding. That shared understanding is easiest to build by giving away information for free. From…
Create a Skunk Team
Excerpt from The Pocket Guide to Making Stuff Better When an organization gets large, it often, by necessity, becomes bogged down by the requirements to keep itself moving. Too much red tape, too…
The Pocket Guide to Writing a Resume
A well written resume is the difference between getting invited in for an interview and never hearing back from the company of your dream. Crushing the resume game is crucial to getting into…
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