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Stop email from secretly undermining your success
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementHow awesome is email? With it, we can work remotely, delegate, share files, manage teams, stay productive while traveling and more. Yet as useful as it is, managing email can also waste time, challenge communication and foster bad habits. Here are a few simple ways to ensure email does not secretly undermine you or your team’s success. For example, with email, we can respond to anyone, anytime and anywhere; presumably, this makes us more efficient.
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Applying an agile tool to make your proposal processes better
Maryann Lesnick Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementWe talk about it in our proposals. We know it works. Agile practitioners take it seriously and are diligent about its use. What is it? It’s the idea of using lessons learned from each proposal effort to improve our approach the next time. In the Agile Scrum world, they call it a retrospective. APMP best practices suggest that conducting a lessons-learned review on each major bid opportunity is a critical best practice. Lessons learned should be well-documented and stored for others to access and reference on future opportunities.
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3 essential steps to avoiding leadership burnout
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementBurnout does not always look like a heart attack, high blood pressure or weight gain. It is not only increased stress, loss of sleep or a caffeine requirement. While these physical symptoms may be the easiest to recognize, many of us have figured out ways to incorporate exercise and healthier habits into our routines thereby reducing the physical issues most commonly associated with burnout. In such cases, burnout may show up as a strained relationship, reduced free time or downtime, or daydreams of an off-the-grid escape vacation. The key is to understand what burnout looks like for us.
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4 questions to strengthen team relationships
Deborah Ike Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementWhat have you asked your team lately? As project managers, we have to ask about the progress and status of various tasks. However, we can also use questions to develop our team and our relationships with team members. For example, your project team is used to you asking them to finish a task or give you a status update. However, what if you turned things around for a moment and asked how you can help them? The key to this question is to listen carefully and work to fulfill their request if possible.
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The road to association excellence
Robert C. Harris Association Management"Are we the best we can be?" It’s a question boards and association executives should contemplate. There are many roads to excellence. Begin by considering what’s best for the association. Some programs focus on the organization and others the individual. What are the associated costs and how much time will it take? What will be the return on investment for the cost of time and fees? Which platforms for excellence positions the organization to advance its desired outcomes?
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Where to draw the line
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementLeaders must be clear, firm and consistent. In this article are three steps to ensure you are drawing the line at the right time, the right way and for the most benefit. For example, integrity is a big word to throw around at work. Most of us do not work in an environment that tests our ethics regularly. Yet it is because of this, many supervisors do not know where to draw the line. My specialty and favorite kind of work challenges are those that push me to think about ethics, integrity and the impact the lack of these characteristics can have on the work environment.
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Simple changes we can expect to see in workplace environments
Scott E. Rupp Interior Design, Furnishings & FixturesThe death of the cubicle may have been long-predicted, but it seems its demise is getting closer. The workspace continues to change, and rather than cubing employees, efforts are being made to make work environments more open, livelier and more technologically savvy. Traditional workspaces, if not dying, are evolving dramatically, driven by the wants and desires of younger employees — millennials and Generation Z — who are dramatically influencing office design. What else are we going to see in the near term in regard to office design?
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A better way to explain the job to candidates
Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementRetention is directly related to new employees having a clear understanding of the position upon hiring. Candidates who ultimately succeed can hit the ground running because they are doing exactly the job they thought they were going to within the environment they expected. Conversely, those who experience a significant disconnect start off behind the curve and can have a hard time getting in sync with the leadership and their team. This problem can be minimized by incorporating a better way to explain the job to candidates.
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Give your team a motivational makeover
Lisa Mulcahy Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementWant your staff to run like a well-oiled machine on that new project? The key to making that happen is to whip up some good old-fashioned group enthusiasm. You need to stress the importance of true team spirit, so that your workers help each other help your organization. The result: each person is motivated to work to the best of their ability at the exact same time — and everyone enjoys doing so. Research is here to help you get your group enthusiastically in sync. Try these scientifically-tested tips.
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Why it’s important for leaders to admit their mistakes
Simma Lieberman Business Management, Services & Risk ManagementHaving worked with leaders in organizations who value inclusion for over 20 years as an adviser and facilitator, I’ve developed a list of behaviors that are crucial for leaders who want to expand and sustain their influence. Relevant to today and every other day is acknowledging and taking responsibility for past, present and future actions that have negatively impacted others. We talk about courageous leadership, and it takes courage to admit you’ve made a mistake, a wrong decision or hurt another person in some way.
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