Sunday, August 11, 2013

Unhappy, Underperforming Staff?


It may be a boss issue for your staff, more than a salary grievance, as this article suggests. But it may also be a host of things that you, as the boss, ought to look into. My advice: Don't assume. Instead, ask your staff, show interest, look broadly.

Workers Would Rather Have A Better Boss Than A Salary Increase

These findings support the latest research from Gallup, which found that trouble with an immediate manager is the No. 1 reason people leave their jobs.

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Leadership is not Personality


Leadership is not personality, so says Jim Collins.

If I might rephrase:  Leadership is not defined by personality alone. The best of leaders have a mélange of personalities that defy single categories.




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Things to Avoid Saying to your Staff


This should be common sense advice, but unfortunately I've had previous bosses who've said a number of these things (sigh). If you're one of them, then this article gives you a chance to do better with your staff.


9 Things A Boss Should Never Say To An Employee
#7 Don’t Say – “We’ve always done it this way”. This statement is a sure way to squash innovation. A better statement is to ask “What do you suggest we do to improve?” In all likelihood, employees do know what can and should be done to enhance any task. Our job as managers is to encourage workers to find creative solutions to age old problems and to reward them for their clear thinking.
Forbes writer Alan Hall apparently received such an overwhelming response to his article, that he wrote a follow up one - 9 Things A Boss Should Never Say, Part 2: "My Boss Is A Jerk. What Can I Do?"

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Business Lessons from Kathy Ireland


Forbes positioned Kathy Ireland as having transitioned from super-model to super-mogul. But she relates that design and business were always her passion, since she was a little girl. Modeling seemed more of a detour, a very successful one at that, but her path had always been business.

In this video, she talks at Google, and shares some hard lessons learned: Each day, she asks, for example, do we break down or do we break through?

Kathy Ireland will share her journey as an entrepreneurial child, whose unexpected detour as a model, delayed rather than opened, the doors of her dreams: motherhood, philanthropy and fashion CEO.

Kathy recently was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine. In 2011, she received the Phenomenal Women of the Year Award from the YWCA and received the American Heritage Award from the Anti-Defamation League. 
Today, more than 100,000 items carry her label.
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The Imperfect, Humorous Effort at Results


How do we manage projects or serve customers, when our colleagues may have such different notions about how to go about it and when our communications with others may be imperfect at best?  How do we produce results, when we're not always or entirely sure what results we ought to be produce?

Natalia Van Veen just shared this on Google+:


I commented, I've seen this a few times, and every time I laugh! It's also been framed as project management. Sometimes there is such wisdom in humor, isn't there. 

Here's a related version:

As you see, there is a credit citation on this image:  www.projectcartoon.com.  Apparently some clever and enterprising person ran with the original idea, and developed it into a modifiable e-template and into an apparent e-commerce.  

From either a project management or customer service perspective, this is an awesome development!  

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Monday, August 5, 2013

En Route to Revenue for Yahoo!


(image credit)

Alok Sawney posted the following in the Business community on Google+:
How do you think Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's CEO, did in her first year?
As one of only a few women CEO's to run a fortune 500 company, the stakes were high for both Yahoo! and Mayer in her first year. During this time, she led a number of acquisitions as well as focused on the people and the culture of the corporation. 
As the stock has about doubled since Mayer has taken the helm, my favorite quote from Marissa Mayer regarding her company's strategy for future profitability is "People then products then traffic then revenue”.
Sawney also posted this balanced, well-written article - Marissa Mayer's Yahoo! - one year on.  

(image credit)

I commented, So far so good for Marissa Mayer, and "still here!" means a lot, after a revolving door at the top. She has analysts in her favor, as Yahoo! stock performance has been on a steady climb in the past year, as you noted, Alok. Managing expectations + producing results remain crucial for her, going into Year 2, as is her apparent mantra: "People then products then traffic then revenue."

I am glad to see that my focus on Leadership > People > Results echoes the sequence that Mayer emphasizes.  

But training our eyes on numbers, for the sake of this article, here are some choice quotes from Mayer from the article Sawney posted:
This beautiful magazine like reading experience [i.e., Yahoo! Mail app for tablets] has contributed to daily active users being up 120% across our mobile mail applications.

We also launched our redesigned Yahoo! app for iOS and Android complete with some integration. As a result of this launch we saw a 55% increase in daily active users and a 60% increase in time spent using the application.

We see 250,000 blogs being created new each day on Tumblr. Those are largely being driven by new user sing-ups. We also are seeing more than 75 million posts every day on Tumblr.
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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Tweetchat: From Leadership, to Performance












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