January 2012

Jan 09 2012

How To Set Your Team’s Goals

Some of our readers have asked that we cover some of the essential management topics in more specifics. So here is a brief how-to on goal setting...

 

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Jan 05 2012

5 Ways to Take the Dread out of the Dreaded Performance Appraisal

It’s that time of year again. Time to judge the people that work for you. Feels a little like death by 1,000 cuts, doesn’t it? Despite a recent WSJ article, suggesting the annual appraisal is losing steam, only 1% of companies have scrapped them.  Most managers likely feel as Edward Deming did in 1986 when he categorized the annual appraisal as one of the “seven deadly diseases.” Let’s face it, are they really effective at improving performance? Not according to the WSJ article. So why are companies still requiring them and how can we make them more effective?

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Jan 03 2012

Four Things I've Learned About Goal Setting

“In the end, you only hit what you aim at.” - Thoreau

Setting goals for your team is one of the toughest parts of the manager’s job. Not only does your team need something to aim for, but you also need a way to quantify results. After all, measuring performance is a lot easier when you have something to measure against.

As a new manager, I agonized over setting goals for my team members and tried nearly every methodology, from flying by the seat of my pants to devising a highly formulaic approach. Here are a few things that I learned the hard way.

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