Should we listen to “Gurus”?

Posted on March 12, 2014 by AnyaWorkSmart

“Guess correctly three times and they’ll call you an expert” – said a wise man. In the age of Internet and other mass-media guessing has become especially easy, as every correct prediction could be inflated beyond any proportion while small uncomfortable facts (such as the bankruptcy of companies created by famous business consultants) are downplayed to oblivion.

We are surrounded by Gurus of every possible expertise, offering their enlightened opinion on everything we want to know about, but does it make our life easier? Can we trust the majority of Gurus’ opinions? Should we listen to them at all? Continue reading →

The Science of Management: does it really help us?

Posted on February 25, 2014 by AnyaWorkSmart

Last week I’ve been talking to a friend who was just editing the final exam for his course “Decision-making in Disaster management”. Living aside the nice feeling of talking to people from the academic environment, there was actually something in our conversation that troubled me to the level of feeling a need to share it with the readers of my blog. Continue reading →

Judging people: External vs. Internal

Posted on January 30, 2014 by AnyaWorkSmart

Happy New Year, everybody! 🙂

AnyaWorkSmart is back online and will continue with discussion of every aspect of Management that can be improved by fighting Biases. I decided that the first post of the year should deal with a situation where the negative influence of Biases is most critical – our attempts to judge others based on their appearances and actions. Continue reading →

A Happy New Year present for my readers: my Top 5 Favorite Movies for Managers

Posted on December 17, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

As Season Greetings are almost upon us and Anyworksmart will traditionally go into well-deserved recess for the next month, I decided to finish the year with something light yet meaningful in order to thank my readers for being with me during the last two years. The best thing that came to my mind was to provide you with a list of five of my favorite movies and TV shows that you can watch with your family during the holidays, while also benefiting from their very serious insights about being a Manager. Continue reading →

“Biases: Where do they come from?” – From Ask Anya mails

Posted on December 10, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

Following post: Biases: Where do they come from?

“I’ve been interested with cognitive biases and misconceptions for some time already, reading all available material on the subject, including your blog. However, I noticed that just knowing about biases doesn’t really help to get rid of them. Last week I was talking to a friend about politics and was suddenly faced with a sad reality of failing to see through “Halo effect” bias. What happened was that as we were discussing with my friends a politician who recently achieved infamy by openly demonstrating unwanted behaviors in his private life, I made a statement that someone who behaves this way in his social life has no chance of filling his office properly. It seemed logical to me when I said it, but when my friends pointed to a fact that there is no known correlation between someone’s personal and professional life, I immediately understood that my statement was caused by “halo effect”. This situation made me wondering: is there any benefit in learning about biases, if it only helps you to understand what you already did wrong? Continue reading →

When it is right to throw money at the problem

Posted on November 19, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

We all are familiar with situations when decision-makers keep throwing money at the problem instead of trying a structural solution that could potentially be much more beneficial to the system. The examples are too many, especially in our austere times.

Naturally, we tend to be critical of such wasteful strategies, but a story told to me last week by an older friend about his time in the Military reminded me that sometimes solving the situation by spending more resources may be more beneficial than attempting a structural decision. Continue reading →

When to delegate and when to do it yourself

Posted on November 12, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

Delegation is such an integrative part of Management that it seems everything has already been said about it. We all understand its benefits for grooming potential Leads and know how to redistribute the load of responsibility according to people’s natural tendencies. However, in real world we sometimes find it hard to apply our knowledge for the simple reason that delegation basically means trusting people with important things, and having some actual experience in dealing with employees sometimes makes trust a very rare resource. Continue reading →

Lessons Learned: How to Deal with Failure

Posted on October 29, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

A few weeks ago a friend sent me an amazing piece of memorabilia – a journal article from the year 1905. It made such an impression on me that I immediately decided to share its wisdom on the ever discussed question of what is success and what is failure and how can we influence their relationship by learning the lessons our life experience provides us with. Continue reading →

The Other Top Ten posts of AnyaWorkSmart

Posted on October 1, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

After the warm reception that my previous Top Ten post received, I decided to add another one, but this time a little different. As most people do not have the patience to look through archives of the blog for posts that do not contain the easily recognizable keywords for topics of interest, I thought to remind my readers of several posts I published in the past that to my opinion are very important for everyone to know. Continue reading →

Living like a Boss: Project-Managing your life

Posted on September 24, 2013 by AnyaWorkSmart

When I was first asked to participate in a joint effort of PM bloggers to simultaneously publish a series of posts about their field, I asked myself a very simple question: what would be the single most basic thing about Project Management that I would consider critical for everyone to know? Continue reading →