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The Most Important Word in Performance Management

The most important word in your performance management strategy may be one that typically does not come to mind. Let’s consider a couple of the ways in which we encourage, teach and train our leaders to improve the performance of their teams.

is it all just “common sense” ?

From time to time in my business life, someone will ask, or sometimes say that project management is ‘common sense’, meaning it is just common sense. Often they are making a statement along the lines of ‘what’s all the fuss about this PM stuff, it’s all just common sense isn’t it’? Well, my question is, …

A First Set of Questions to Ask Your Potential Client

Consulting books often suggest a sequence of steps or phases that a consulting project goes through. The nature of the sequence depends on the perspectives of the authors of the books. The initial phase has been referred to by a variety of names, for example, Start-Up and/or Entry. (Some books even mention these two terms …

Marketing and Backlinks – The Key to SEO

Backlinks are links from other sites that are directed to your site. Backlinks are widely regarded as one of the primary building blocks of SEO – important for high ranking by search engines. Concentrate on getting highly ranked, relevant, natural backlinks.

Free Team Building Exercise: Blindfold Square

This quick team building exercise gets small teams to communicate when they can’t see one another or their progress. Communication is the key to success with this team building exercise Overview The challenge is to take a length of rope and lay it out on the ground to make a perfect square. Throughout the task …

VUCA Prime – A Leader’s Response

Recap from VUCA – A Leader’s Dilemma A multinational organization faces a major structural reorganization that contains significant functional changes and leadership challenges. Facing the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) are four leaders responsible for implementing a significant part of the organizational change without losing strategic momentum. Finding VUCA Prime Like most organizations, the …

A Performance Review That’s Not a Winner

A not so great performance review doesn’t have to be a career setback. Recently I coached a talented project manager who had received a not so stellar performance review that could impact her career advancement. Getting negative feedback from your boss is not a joyride. In fact, it can be devastating. I know from experience. …

Non-Profit’s Impact on the Cycle of the Economy

Recently, I wrote an article about how non-profits both must work together as partners, but must also compete for sustainability. I had a response from a fellow blogger from WhyDoParentsBlog http://whydoparents.blogspot.com/2011/01/social-returns-on-financial-investments.html Jeremy Parrott blogs about non-profit as well. He has a theory that the economy should be like the life cycle of water. The cycle …

A Change Of Pace

Whoever said an event had to be a dinner or a luncheon to work? The key to making any event succeed is to learn, well in advance, what will bring out your audience: existing donors, new donors, corporations, government officials, community leaders, etc. Almost every event can benefit from an occasional change of pace … …

When Learning Takes Place: PowerPoint vs. Presenter

Running a presentation skills seminar at a large federal agency’s training forum, I was impressed by how much learning takes place when participants share ideas in a Power Point-free environment. I found this post on my LinkedIn Training and Development group and some of the responses given by professional trainers and speakers gave me pause. …