Embracing Change – From Ask Anya mails

Ask Anya MailFollowing series of posts on Change Management – “Why change doesn’t stick?”

Question:

Change is important, but it involves risk and it is very hard to motivate the team members to embrace the changes and even harder is to get help with identifying the real risks in a constructive way. How can I make the team members to be proactive and get them on board?” Continue reading

This is Sparta?!! – Since when did it become a norm not to achieve any result?

SpartaDuring one of my previous employments, a rumor came through the grapevine (you know how it is) that 300 people are going to be laid off next week. Putting aside what it did to the overall mood in the workplace, something bothered me about the number itself. Continue reading

Inducing Loyalty through Team Building

Inducing Loyalty through Team Building 1In my previous post on Loyalty I mentioned that in our uncertain times it’s much more logical to build Loyalty on the small scale of a specific Team or Department, than on a company level. People can’t be sure anymore that the company will stay around for long, or even if it does – that it will still have enough resources to employ them. Continue reading

Employees’ Loyalty – Corporate vs. Personal

Employees' Loyalty – corporate vs. personalIn one of my previous posts we’ve already discussed Employees’ Loyalty and its importance for proper Team Management. Now it’s time to understand how it could be successfully defined, increased and sustained.

Let’s start with a meaningful definition. Continue reading

Learning to be Rational – From Ask Anya mails

MailFollowing series of posts on How good are you in making decisions.

Question:

“There are so many components to our decisions that I doubt the change in a decision making process can be achieved so easily. How can we become rational if we don’t always know when we’re irrational?Continue reading

Why do you need long-term goals?

Importance of long term goalsA few years ago I have had an honor to participate in a panel on military technology development. It comprised several specialists from different fields, including IT, Theoretical Physics, Medicine, Disaster Management and, of course – guys in uniform.

It was most interesting to learn how they deal with different management-related problems Continue reading

When to stop doing what you’re doing?

Hi, how’s work?

Your team is working like clockwork, all your projects are delivered on time, your business is so profitable that it leaves the competition behind?

No? Yes, but…?

Then may be YOU HAVE TO CHANGE SOMETHING. Continue reading

Decision-Making and Strategic Planning: how to fight Uncertainty

Decision making and Strategy planning: How to fight UncertaintyDecision-making by its nature has a natural connection to long-term planning: by trying our best to make our decisions better we’re trying to influence the future. Taking into account our decisions and their possible consecutive outcomes is practically the essence of planning strategically. The problem is: how can we know the results of our future decisions to plan our next move? How can we fight the uncertainty of the future? Continue reading

Validating Skills on the interview – From Ask Anya mails

MailFollowing Post Thumb rule #1 for building your team

Question:

“I agree that ability to learn is really an important attribute. What would you consider a good indicator of this ability, i.e. how can you assess a candidate for that?”

Answer: Continue reading

How much is “Most People”?

How much is most peopleWhen I previously wrote about utilizing data and research in management, I mentioned that not always when people are using a certain word or term, they are understood the way they meant to. This is especially relevant when we’re trying to express quantities without using numbers. For example, how many people are “most people” or how frequent is “usually” ? Continue reading