Gina Abudi » Leadership

How Good a Boss Are You?

Gina — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:08 +0000

Are you a good boss? And what does that question even mean? A good boss to one person may not be a good boss to another. One employee may want a boss who stays out of her way; another may see that boss as a “not so good one,” and prefer a boss that [...]

5 Ways to Engage and Retain Talent

Gina — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:30:33 +0000

How well are you doing retaining your top talent?

Talent retention is essential to any business – regardless of the size of the business. However, retaining top talent isn’t always easy – you need to understand what drives employees. What is important to them? What makes them excited about the job and their role [...]

Communicating Effectively With Employees

Gina — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:30:54 +0000

How well are you doing?

How effectively are you communicating with your employees? I was talking to a potential client just recently who was concerned about how to best position the many changes coming up in their business. Specifically, she wanted to be sure that she was communicating to employees effectively now and in [...]

How Effective are You as a Leader?

Gina — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:30:41 +0000

Are you keeping your employees energized and engaged?

I read an article on How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work on McKinsey Quarterly that talked about how senior executives “routinely undermine creativity, productivity and commitment” of their employees. The article noted that employees are most happy in their work when they have “inner positive work [...]

If Managing People Were Easy…Everyone Would Do It! Part II

Gina — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:30:47 +0000

Managing people is not easy. In most businesses there are certain processes and procedures that must be followed; and in many cases flexibility in how you handle human resource issues is just not practical or feasible. If you haven’t read Part I yet, please read it first. In Part II we’ll look at some [...]

If Managing People Were Easy…Everyone Would Do It! Part I

Gina — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:30:31 +0000

I was having a conversation with someone I met at a conference recently who told me that she was promoted to a management role about a year ago. She manages a staff of 10 and she recalls how excited she was when she was promoted. She isn’t any longer. She recounted this story about [...]

Think about this, next time you take a decision

Jeroen — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:30:58 +0000

Best-selling author Paul C. Nutt did extensive research on decision making for his book Why Decisions Fail. He found that more than 50 percent of all decisions fail. They are either quickly abandoned, partially implemented or never adopted at all. 81 percent of all managers pushed their decisions through persuasion and edict. And only [...]

14 striking strategy execution figures

Jeroen — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:30:00 +0000

On average, companies lose 40-to-60 percent of their strategic potential during execution. Imagine the amount of money you could save by closing that gap.

HOW TO CLOSE THE EXECUTION GAP?

But in order to take the next step – to close that gap – organisations need a more detailed view of exactly where [...]

What I learned from… Michael Smith, VP Coca-Cola

Jeroen — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:30:29 +0000

Michael Smith is Vice President Group Strategy and Planning at Coca-Cola North America. He helped me write Strategy Execution Heroes. Here’s a selection of Michael’s tips:

Steer the frontline

Make sure you are able to take a complex strategy and turn it into three-to-five priorities for the frontline. Not everything can be important. And it’s [...]

Are you a strategy tourist?

Jeroen — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:30:27 +0000

Let me start by reassuring you: the chances that you are a strategy tourist are close to zero. You are proving you are interested in getting things done by reading this action-oriented blog. (Unless, of course, you have mistaken this blog for something completely different).

But I’m sure you do know a strategy tourist.

Most likely [...]

How Leaders Can Benefit From Reading

Guest — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:30:30 +0000

Guest post by University Alliance

Reading often gets lost in the busy shuffle of everyday life. People tend to quickly scan a document, get the necessary information and then move on to the next task. Many people think that they do not have time to read, when the truth is that they just aren’t [...]

Managing a World Away

Gina — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:30:05 +0000

A recent article in Business on Main entitled, How to Manage a Far-Flung Workforce, reminded me of a friend who was recently assigned the responsibilities of managing her organization’s workforce in China. The company had recently expanded into China and, in addition to bringing over some resources from the United States, had hired the [...]

7 Elements of a Great Leadership Development Workshop

Dan — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:30:07 +0000

Whenever I’m designing a leadership development workshop, I’m always aware of the cost of pulling 20 or so supervisors, managers, or executives away from their work for anywheres from 4 hours to 4 weeks. The biggest cost of any training program isn’t the instructors, travel, facilities, and food. It’s not even the salaries of [...]

Best Practices for Leading Others in a Virtual World

Gina — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:30:27 +0000

There are many challenges for leaders today. Trying to manage individuals who are located all over the world or who just work from their home office and rarely show up in the office is certainly not easy and takes great skill. As a leader you must have trust and confidence that those who report [...]

Setting the tone: 10 tips for leadership

David K — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:30:51 +0000

We’ve all been put into situations where we need to take control of a situation early on. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves constantly looking up at a perch of credibility and respect we’ll have to work hard to climb up to, if we can even get there at all. With that in mind, I came [...]

Developing a Talent Management Program – Part III

Gina — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:30:48 +0000

Research and Analysis of Data

In Part I of this post, we discussed a client’s (National PR Services Firm) initial steps to gather information for a project focused on developing and launching a talent management program for employees. In Part II we discussed the initial “kick off” meeting and the group’s plans to socialize [...]

Developing a Talent Management Program – Part II

Gina — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:30:26 +0000

Socializing the Initiative

In Part I of this post, we discussed a client’s (National PR Services Firm) initial steps to gather information for a project focused on developing and launching a talent management program for employees. First, I apologize to my readers as it has been a while since I posted Part I, so [...]

Helping a Problem Team Member – Part II

Gina — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:30:48 +0000

He’s starting to care about others!

In Part I of this post we began a story of a new member of a project team, Jack, who had exceptionally strong technical skills but was not good with people. Read Part I for background before continuing with this part of the story.

When we left off [...]

Are You Managing the Grapevine?

Gina — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:30:25 +0000

Let’s face it; every business has a grapevine – regardless of the size of the business.

A grapevine is defined as an informal means of circulating information (Langenscheidt’s Pocket Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1997, p.329). You know they exist; heck, you’ve probably been part of one.

This grapevine is an important source of information for any [...]

Helping a Problem Team Member

Gina — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:30:54 +0000

Who isn’t well liked by the others and doesn’t seem to care…

Here’s a story to consider. I was approached by an individual we’ll call Susan for suggestions on how to manage an employee who frequently had to work on project teams and who was not getting along with others and, based on past [...]