Service with a smile

You can try whatever gimmicks you like to try to get staff to provide excellent customer service. But good service starts with good management. Unless managers treat their staff the way they want their staff to treat their customers, they'll never get good service results.

15 years in the making

The recession we find ourselves in now was inevitable and it has been brewing for the last 15 years. Why? Because investing has been replaced by short-term trading and the interests of shareholders and staff have been placed above those of other stakeholders.

Why isn't good leadership recognized?

He lets others take the limelight. He encourages his people to make decisions. He delegates. He asks for others' opinions before giving his own. Sounds like great leadership to me. So why are so many people sniping at James L. Jones, President Obama's national security advisor?

What's your new boss like?

Relationships with a new boss do not start with a blank slate. They are very much influenced by the quality of the relationship with the previous boss and employee expectations of the relationship they are likely to have with the new incumbent.

What's the balance of your Trust Bank?

Trust is a critical resource at the moment. But it is all too easy to forget that while trust takes a long time to build, the balance can be quickly depleted with just one careless withdrawal.

Can too much success lead to failure?

A strange phenomenon has arisen as a result of the recession. Because it's the most successful companies which seem to be the ones needing to make the most radical changes in their thinking in order to weather the storm.

A lesson in change management

Much of the focus over the election of Barack Obama has been the hope for change that he represents. But for managers, there has also been a great lesson to learn from the smooth transition of power from the outgoing to the incoming president.

What's working around here?

The financial crisis and the ever-increasing rate of unemployment highlights the need to foster creativity and innovation. But before you expect employees to be innovative, managers have develop their own creative mindsets.

Tough times call for tough leadership

When they're confronted by a downturn, business leaders all tend to take the same short-term, top-down approaches. But in the longer term, they don't work. So how about taking some really tough decisions - like asking the people who work for you what they would do to get out of this mess?

Just how important are first impressions?

Before they stepped into their private jets to fly to Washington and beg for billions from the public purse, perhaps the CEOs of Ford, GM and Chrysler should have realized that first impressions matter.

20 is the magic number

What gets rewarded usually gets done. So, when CEOs earn more than 364 times the pay of the average worker, it's only natural they will focus almost exclusively on short term, bottom-line results. There has to be a better way. So what is the appropriate way to pay a CEO?

Who guards the guards?

All the discussion about how companies, particularly financial organisations, are regulated seems to be ignoring one glaring structural weakness. That is the erosion of the boundaries between a company's board and its management – between its leadership and management.

Did Plato have the answers to Wall Street's problems?

Almost 2,500 years ago, Plato argued that the endless quest for pleasure affects the kind of leaders that democracies produce. Those who do rise to the top are unlikely to be motivated by concern for the common good, but rather by self-interest. Sound familiar?

Creating an image – can a speech do it?

The imminent "official" start of the US Presidential election campaign is a good time to remind managers and CEOs just how far the use of rhetoric, imagery and metaphors can have am impact on how others perceive and act on their message.

Tour de Farce or Team de Force?

Do you manage a team or a group? The distinction is an important one, because there's no point in trying to develop a team ethos amongst a group of people who do no real need to work cooperatively together.

What's in a name?

Not all business-speak is jargon – some of it can even be useful. The trouble is, there's so much nonsense spoken in workplaces these days that it's easy for valuable concepts to be tarred with the "office-speak" brush.

What's happened to trust ?

The Deutsche Telekom spying scandal is just the latest example of an organization in which trust has broken down. So is honesty on the decline in the business world? And if so, why?

Are you dead on the job?

Here's a challenge for you. Find someone doing something good today and tell them what a good job they're doing. Because praise is the thing that motivates us the most, even though it takes so little time and costs nothing.

Do you know who your customers are?

Knowing who its customers are is the foundation for any successful organisation. And as the US Federal Aviation Administration has demonstrated, getting this wrong can be disastrous.

The aging workforce – a disappearing asset?

Organisations throughout the developed world face two key challenges. How do they keep their best, most experienced and knowledgeable people? And how can they make better use of those who are considering retirement?

Is business acumen a substitute for leadership?

If the top of an organisation is full of people with business or technical skills but little grasp of how to manage people, problems can quickly ensue. Because running a business is not just about the balance sheet.

What do you get when you pay people to perform?

It may be popular with employers, but individual pay for performance can undermine organisational effectiveness. Because if everyone is out to "do their own thing", the consequences for effective teamwork can be damaging - and sometimes even fatal.

Why loyalty pays

Loyalty is something that seems to have been lost in many modern organisations. Corporate decision-makers seem to think that paying people more will gain their loyalty. It does not. All it gains is their compliance.

How to select your new boss

Did you ever find out after starting in a new role that your boss was not all that you thought he or she might be? We often neglect the fact that recruitment is a two way street and unfortunately, the consequences of not selecting the right boss only become obvious once it is too late. So here are some vital "boss selection strategies".
About Bob Selden

Bob Selden has been a boss many times over. He's also worked for many. Some of these relationships have been fantastic and some did not work as well as they might have.

He currently gives advice to both bosses and employees on how to make the best selection. As MD of the Australian National Learning Institute, he would love to hear your "war" stories or to offer some free advice.

Bob's latest book, What To Do When You Become The Boss is a practical guide to what to do (and what not) when you become a boss yourself.

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