Tuesday Tip Tweets

Unfortunately, in most organizations today “communication” is cited as the biggest challenge to growing and developing their businesses.  In a recent assessment of a new client, we confirmed this common issue and took note of some particularly interesting quotes; here’s one…

Does your organization have a series of standard, weekly staff meetings at all levels and in all departments?  If not, then you should consider creating a meetings waterfall to facilitate organization-wide communication.  What is a meetings waterfall and how does it work?

If it has been a while since you felt like your staff meetings were effective and meaningful, then maybe it is time to make some adjustments.  So where do you begin? Instead of muddling through wasteful brainstorming sessions on how to make improvements, why not invite an Outside Facilitator?

When was the last time you were sent a meeting invite and you had no idea why?  When asking the meeting organizer about it, did you get “no need for a formal agenda, it’s a short brainstorming session,” as the reply?

Like it or not, we all attend meetings.  They are the perverbial necessary evil that can eat up plenty of productive work hours if you’re not careful.  Unfortunately, many people have given up on doing anything about their unproductive meetings and have accepted the notion that meetings are bad and that’s life.  Not so!

One of the main reasons for attending meetings is to tell your colleagues about performance and the status or progress of various work activities.  Another, often overlooked, reason for attending meetings is to hear what those same colleagues have to say about their important initiatives and activities.  Being a good listener can be difficult if you aren’t properly prepared.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.  Leaders face important business decisions every day.  To help you refine your decision making skills you can use one of several decision making models.  There are 6-step models, 9-step models, and even systems designed to score your decision making accuracy.  One thing for sure, is that you need to have appropriate, timely, and meaningful data to help you make the best decisions.

Today, many departments or business units could be described as “dysfunctional areas” rather than functional areas. Too often, they each operate with their own agendas.  They form their own departmental cultures.  And, they even have differing methods for defining and measuring success.

Today, many departments or business units could be described as “dysfunctional areas” rather than functional areas. Too often, they each operate with their own agendas.  They form their own departmental cultures.  And, they even have differing methods for defining and measuring success.

Managing day-to-day business performance is challenging enough, even when things are going well.  What do you do when you know your team is performing well, but when looking at your scorecard it gives you the impression that everything is going wrong?  Is your scorecard telling a story far different than what your instincts are telling you?  Well, you are not alone, many managers today share this same frustration.  The good news is that something can be done about it.