How to make the most of weekends August 18, 2014 Highly successful people seek inspiration, think long term and don’t waste the last 15 hours. It's tempting to imagine that successful businesspeople see the weekend as an extension of the working week – a time for catching up on emails, reading market reports and troubleshooting process documents. Not so, according to time management expert [...]
The secrets of time management August 17, 2014 You can boost productivity through email subfolders, press-ups and a virtual assistant. At the office, often the last thing you can do is work. Emails flood in, colleagues make urgent requests, and fires need to be fought. But a few pointers can help get the most out of each day. IMPORTANCE, NOT URGENCY [...]
The art of asking the right questions August 14, 2014 Business life doesn’t always lend itself to novel ways of questioning, but doing so is vital. A young Motorola engineer called Martin Cooper was asked, back in the early 1970s, to develop the firm’s car radiotelephone. But before setting to work, he took a step back and asked this question: “Why is it that [...]
Is management speak always a waste of time? August 13, 2014 It’s annoying, but corporate jargon can often serve a useful purpose. When thinking of management gurus, the last person to come to mind is the comic singer-songwriter Weird Al Yankovic. But his recently released album Mandatory Fun provides some cutting observations about the kind of jargon that’s taken over business. One track, Mission [...]
How you can get the most out of a business mentor August 12, 2014 When it comes to wanting mentoring in the workplace, you’re not alone. Our recent research has found that one in five employees are not currently mentoring or being mentored, but would like to be. Mentoring provides great development opportunities for both mentor and mentee, so why did nearly 30 per cent of mentees surveyed say [...]
How leaders can develop a truly powerful vision August 11, 2014 It’s vital to understand the future in rational, but also emotive terms. Too often, leaders use financial goals to motivate people. But employees say they don’t get out of bed in the morning to achieve financial objectives – they come to work wanting to be inspired by a sense of doing something important, something [...]
The skills you’ll need at every leadership level August 10, 2014 Most of us intend to climb the career ladder, and there’s no shortage of advice about the skills you need to succeed as a leader. But which ones matter most, and how can you ensure you keep improving them? Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, chief executive and president of development consultancy Zenger/Folkman, surveyed over [...]
Is email dying? Some firms are betting on social August 8, 2014 But the trusty inbox isn’t set to disappear in the near future. It's so ubiquitous that it sounds strange to ask whether email might be on its last legs. But if Ofcom’s latest report (released yesterday) is anything to go by, it’s a question worth considering. The regulator found that young people are turning [...]
It’s a mistake to take Pareto’s 80/20 law too literally August 6, 2014 The Pareto principle is a rough rule of thumb, not a silver bullet. Business books tend to be full of seductively simple rules for achieving success. But few have proved as enduring as the 80/20 law (or the Pareto principle, after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian engineer and economist who provided the germ for the [...]
What the extreme survivors can teach us about business August 5, 2014 It’s important to manage your emotions and have an achievable goal. We're all used to picking up work – even life – tips from the business greats. But what about other exceptional groups? As business and lifestyle blogger Eric Barker recently pointed out, there is much we can learn from extreme survivors – people [...]