What Causes Project Failure?

Posted on October 3, 2008
Filed Under Communication | Leave a Comment

I read a great post today from Management-Issues.com discussing what leads to project failure within organizations:

“New research carried out by training company VitalSmarts and professional services firm, The Concours Group, has uncovered five crucial issues –what they term ‘crucial conversations’ - that have an enormous impact on whether high-stakes business initiatives succeed or fail.

The study, “Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution“, suggests that when even one of these crucial conversations fails, a silent crisis plays out in a deceptively simple dynamic that results in initiatives failing 85 per cent of the time. The result of this failure sees projects going over budget, missing deadlines and failing to meet quality and functionality specs. Team morale is inevitably damaged in the process.”

Read the full article “Silence - the root cause of project failure.”

Access the survey results here.

Some key findings include:

How strong are your communications skills? How strong is your organizational leadership? Read more about how to strengthen leadership communication to increase efficiency and productivity in your business.

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The Employee Motivation Fairy

Posted on October 3, 2008
Filed Under Creating Change, employee motivation | Leave a Comment

Having trouble motivating your employees?

Have you had great ideas to improve your organization that you were sure would be immediately embraced by all employees?

Were you left wondering why the idea withered on the vine lacking the enthusiasm and support you had anticipated?

You’re not alone. Whatever the change initiative was, based on industry experience, chances are less than 50/50 that it was implemented as planned and that you attained the expected results.

None of us have a motivation fairy or the ability to immediately read our employees and understand what it takes the get them moving. However, we can help. Read our brief on “Creating Contagious Organizational Change.”

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Corporate Lessons and Success Strategies Learned From the AIG Buyout

Posted on September 19, 2008
Filed Under Investment Bank Lessons, Tips for Success | Leave a Comment

The current water cooler buzz seems to be ringing with the financial distress surrounding AIG, Merrill Lynch and Lehmann Brothers. What business lessons can be learned from the respective companies’ financial disappointments, and how can you turn what may be deemed a failure into a lesson of success for your business?

As evidenced in this recent New York Times article, invariably poor monetary decisions can definitely be costly to any company, even the preeminent.

In the midst of Bank of America’s gain following Merrill Lynch’s bankruptcy, the United States’ mortgage banking and credit calamities continue. Take a look at another recent media broadcast describing monetary corporate dissolve.

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Warning Signs of a Control Freak Employee

Posted on September 16, 2008
Filed Under Corporate Team Building | Leave a Comment

This is a great column from the Atlanta Business Chronicle column The Human Element giving some warning signs employers need to look for to avoid allowing controlling, insubordinate employees to gain too much influence and discourage inter office team building and collaboration:

“We all know micromanagers who need to back off. But just as often, I see employees who refuse to accept accountability and supervision. They want absolute control of their turf and will resist, sabotage and badmouth any supervisor who wants to integrate them into an effective team.”


Read the full article “Don’t let turf controllers work behind the scenes.”

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What Motivates our Employees?

Posted on September 16, 2008
Filed Under employee motivation | Leave a Comment

As employers, it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the rush and chaos of each day - running our businesses, problem solving and staying in the black. We know the key to long term success for any business depends heavily on employee enthusiasm, dedication and motivation, but we can often lose sight of what motivates us and ourselves as people, and let the demands of our businesses take the place of what is truly important in life. As leaders in our businesses, we have to always be conscious of the fact that, at the end of the day, we are all human. The best way to motivate our employees and win their loyalty is to also remind them that we respect who they are as people, and appreciate the values and priorities that motivate them. This video gives a great example of some of the things we can’t lose sight of in either our personal lives or in our business practices:

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Customer Focused Approach in Strategic Planning

Posted on September 11, 2008
Filed Under Customer Focus | Leave a Comment

Are your products and processes customer/client focused? Or are you trying to sell products and services blindly? This video by Robin Lawton of International Management Consultants, Inc. gives a clear picture of why this strategy doesn’t work, and why designing your strategies around your customers is incredibly more effective than expecting your target market to adapt to you. (Hey, just ask Google!)

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SpeedReading People® Workshop

Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Speed Reading | Leave a Comment

It’s easy to communicate with people who think like you. It’s those who don’t that represent the challenge.

Learn to communicate effectively with all kinds of people, even those very different from you. SpeedReading People® is a communication system that enables people to quickly size up others and learn to “speak” their language.

Learn more at our SpeedReading People® workshop September 24! Click here for more information!

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A Different Approach to Employee Feedback

Posted on September 2, 2008
Filed Under Giving Employee Feedback, Leadership Training | Leave a Comment

As business leaders, we all know the importance of giving regular, valuable feedback to our employees to help them identify areas of strength and weakness and to encourage their professional growth.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of today’s leading management thinkers, has developed a new approach to employee feedback called FeedForward. This exceptional tool, instead of focusing on past performance, focuses on suggestions for the future. By looking ahead, this method works to help employees work towards and achieve positive change in their future:

“Providing feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for leaders. As they strive to achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are doing. They need to know if their performance is in line with what their leaders expect. They need to learn what they have done well and what they need to change.

“There is a fundamental problem with all types of feedback: it focuses on the past, on what has already occurred - not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.”

Learn more about the FeedForward tool here.

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Coaching According to Google

Posted on August 26, 2008
Filed Under Effective Coaching | Leave a Comment

What does it take to build an incredibly successful business like Google? Or a strong company culture of innovation like exists at Google? Ask a Google coach.

This video - called Coaching: Leading from Strength - by Google coach Carolyn Foster talks about the power inherent in working from and leading from your strengths:

By identifying and further developing our unique talents and character strengths, we contribute more effectively and enjoy the process. This talk will draw on findings from positive psychology, brain science, and resilience research to describe practical strategies for articulating passions and reaching goals.

Hey, if it works for Google, right?

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The Benefits of HR Outsourcing

Posted on August 19, 2008
Filed Under HR Outsourcing | Leave a Comment

Human resources outsourcing is a smart strategy for any business, small or large, because it gives businesses the ability to delegate time consuming, complex tasks and instead focus their time on their core competencies and client relationship development. In today’s economy, maintaining strong client relationships and efficient, profitable operations are key to long-term growth and sustainability.

This video explains how outsourced human resources works:

Increasing your available time to focus on business development and core competencies will give you the ability to focus on the things that will keep your business strong and increase your value proposition. In addition, outsourcing internal processes to an external specialist gives you access to compliance expertise, the latest technologies and proven strategies, because these outsource service providers make it their businesses to be experts in these business operations practices. It’s a win win, when you find the right provider. Click here for more information about HR consulting and outsourcing.

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