Articles written by Mitch McCrimmon
Showing 94 Articles
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Leadership and Intelligence
Post heroic leadership places facilitation skills above intelligence. Gone is the heroic individual with the wisdom to cut through complexity single-handedly.
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Keys to Building an Effective Team
The more complex work becomes, the more important it is for teams to work well together. Fostering team work is an essential skill for all managers.
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The Strategic Manager
It is time to challenge the popular view that only leadership is strategic. Management is strategic if all CEO decisions are management actions.
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The Changing Role of the Chief Executive
Because leadership is now dispersed throughout organizations, it is no longer the monopoly of the Chief Executive. The role of Chief Executive is gradually shifting.
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How to Make Career Decisions
Too many people drift through their careers because uncertainty about possible roles makes career decision making extremely difficult.
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Leadership and Creativity
Creative thinking and innovation are in such high demand in business today, we need a clear understanding of how they relate to leadership.
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The Manager's Role in Modern Business
Today's managers must be supportive facilitators. They still need to be directive and decisive but they can no longer use an autocratic management style.
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Innovation in Business
To be successful, businesses need efficiency AND innovation, individual AND team innovation. Also, their form of innovation must fit their business model.
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How to Manage Absenteeism
Motivated employees overcome obstacles to make it to work. The key to reducing employee absenteeism is to create a culture where employees want to come to work.
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Fostering Trust at Work
Managers who know how to build and maintain trust will be far more successful at everything they strive to do than those who fail the trust test.
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Preventing Employee Turnover
Managers must learn to communicate deeply about an employee's central concerns, in an atmosphere of trust, in order to enhance employee retention.
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Why Are There so Few Innovative Managers?
Innovation is critical to business success. Does this mean that managers need to be more innovative or should they be better at fostering it in others?
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Creating Partnerships with Employees
When one partner has far more power than the other, care must be taken to foster trust. Otherwise, the partnership will fail.
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What Is Competitive Advantage?
All forms of competition, in sports as well as business, are won by those with an advantage. Successful businesses constantly seek new forms of competitive advantage.
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The Danger of "Keep it Simple Stupid"
Everyone prefers simplicity to excessive complexity but we need to avoid the equal risk of oversimplification.
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What Is Knowledge Management?
In a knowledge driven era of highly specialized experts, businesses that can share and multiply that expertise the fastest will win the race.
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Herzberg and Employee Motivation
Motivating employees is an ongoing challenge. Herzberg helps ensure that you make rewards dependent on the behavior you want to encourage.
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What Is the 80-20 Rule?
Constantly driven by what is urgent, people don't take time to think about what is most important. The 80-20 rule helps you get more bang for your buck.
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Leadership Development Needs
While executives differ widely, there are some common strengths and weaknesses that keep repeating themselves.
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The Leaderful Organization
The move to distribute leadership throughout organizations has many names, including the novel "leaderful organizations".
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What is Organization Development?
Organization development, begun in the mid 20th century to improve organizational effectiveness, has morphed into diverse subfields.
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Organizational Democracy
Organizational democracy is a popular idea that only applies in employee-owned businesses, not to those owned by shareholders.
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How to Communicate Clearly
Communication is hard enough without information overload and work pressure undermining concentration. Effective management requires extra effort in this area.
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Celebrating Success at Work
Celebrating success is a good employee motivation tool, but only if it is used regularly and for all employees.
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Leadership and Teamwork
Employees need to be competitive to get ahead, but future leaders are skilled at getting the balance right between teamwork and personal aspirations.
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Succeeding in a New Job
Trying too hard to prove yourself in a new job can backfire if you don't first build relationships with key players.
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What Is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is a way to manage. It's not just preparing for the future because it means more involvement, hence more shared ownership and motivation.
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Relationship Management
Managers who fail to make time to build relationships have limited success. They fail to understand the full meaning of getting work done through people.
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21st Century Leadership
The meaning of leadership has always entailed occupying a static position at the head of a group. Today, we need to see that leadership is an occasional act, not a role.
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Coping with Pressure at Work
Workplace stress is so intense and damaging, employees need the smartest stress management techniques to be effective under pressure.
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Auditing Leadership Talent
Which assessment method is better, one that focuses on personality or one that is more behavioral? Pros and cons of both methods are set out in this article.
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Executive Derailment
Executive derailment is as much due to the pressure to produce as it is to individual personality traits.
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What Is Servant Leadership?
Servant leadership means serving the needs of followers, but business leaders need to be hyper-competitive to succeed, even if this means sacrificing employee needs.
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Vision and Leadership
Visionary leadership can motivate employees to surmount huge challenges, but first, you need to decide whether your business really needs a vision.
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What Is Change Management?
Change is resisted because it disrupts our routines and makes us fear failure. Also, it is too top-down. Employees need to be more fully engaged at all stages.
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What Is Project Management?
Projects are attractive because they provide variety and the satisfaction of completion but they require a high level of organizational skill and discipline to manage.
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Transformational Leadership
Being a transformational leader means having the ability to really inspire and motivate employees to achieve new heights, but it is only one leadership style.
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Smart Management
Smart managers are enablers, catalysts, facilitators, coaches and developers of others, not doers.
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What Is Leadership Integrity?
Our reaction to lapses in leadership integrity depends on our expectations of them. We need to be clear what integrity means and what we can expect of leaders.
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The Courage to Lead
Great leaders are admired for their courage. It is risky to challenge the status quo, but everyday acts of leadership don't require enormous courage.
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What Is Level 5 Leadership?
The main difference between level 4 and 5 leaders is that the latter have a participative leadership style.
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Managing People Effectively
Empowerment, career development and recognition are standard ways of motivating employees but the real key is employee engagement.
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How to Become a Chief Executive
What personality types become CEOs? What other CEO qualifications count? You need to learn the keys to success for senior executives in your own culture.
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Leader or Manager, Which Are You?
Pure leadership is just influence. Managers focus on getting things done. Managerial leaders do both.
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Organizational Culture and Climate
Although organizational culture endures like personality, it is easier to change. Climate is variable like mood and is just as important as human feelings.
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Assertiveness at Work
Do you hate saying "No!" because you like to please people? To manage your time effectively, learn how to say "No!" constructively.
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Innovation or Efficiency
All organizations have two objectives: to be profitable today and to create the future. The challenge is to be both innovative and efficient.
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The Meaning of Followership
Followership used to mean unquestioning obedience. Now it is becoming more like partnership and some followers can show leadership to their bosses.
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What Is Charismatic Leadership?
Charisma is the triumph of style over substance while, for thought leadership, content is king. Leadership is moving away from the power of personality to content.
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Leading by Example
All employees can lead by example by exceeding expectations in every aspect of their jobs.
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Playing to Your Strengths
Confidence is your most important strength but it can be lost easily if you focus more of your time and attention on a few weaknesses at the expense of your strengths.
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Giving Constructive Feedback
The best way to give negative feedback constructively is to draw it out of employees with supportive questions.
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Decision Making Styles
Managers make decisions in a structured, rational way or by trial and error. Innovation calls for more of the latter even if it seems less rational.
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Employee Development
For effective talent management, employees must be developed on a continuous basis by managers using coaching skills.
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The Meaning of Leadership
Leadership is cluttered with too many meanings and we need to cut through the fog to really understand it.
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Career Transition Counseling
Career transition counseling helps employees move onto new jobs. It helps them make career choices and approach the job market effectively.
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What is Talent Management?
To be a strategic undertaking, talent management efforts need to focus on the strategically most important employees: innovative knowledge workers.
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Essential Management Skills
The skills of managers are similar to those of investors but with important differences.
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Skills for Effective Management
To be effective, managers need to be good at task execution, managing people and making a profit. Their primary role is to get work done efficiently.
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What is Management Effectiveness?
Effective management entails efficiency, getting things done with least cost. This means performance management but not treating people like machines.
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What is Autocratic Leadership?
Autocratic leadership is common throughout the animal kingdom but it is fast becoming dysfunctional and needs to be replaced by thought leadership.
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What is Informal Leadership?
Our concept of informal leadership depends on how we define leadership. Normally, it means taking charge of a group without being formally appointed into such a role.
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What is Management Style?
Reactive managers are often punitive without meaning to be so, but proactive managers can also instill fear in employees. The best managers are proactive and supportive.
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What is management today?
To appreciate the role and importance of management we need to understand how the concept has evolved in recent years.
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How Effective Leaders Communicate
Only a few leaders can communicate an inspiring vision. The key to effective leadership communication is to be able to draw good ideas out of others.
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How the Best Managers Learn
Some personality types are more interested in learning than others but we can all push ourselves to try new experiences and encourage others to challenge us.
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The Manager as Coach
Managers need to be good coaches because they don't have all the answers and employees have the power to walk if not engaged. Coaching aids development as well.
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What is Participative Leadership?
Being a participative leader means involving team members in making decisions. This is most essential when creative thinking is needed to solve complex problems.
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Be the Best Manager You Can Be
Managers fail by not coping with the pressure they are under and by paying too much attention to the work itself and too little attention to people.
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How Management Is like Investment
The question 'what is management' is answered by comparing it to investment, the goal of maximizing the return on people and other resources.
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Improving Your Leadership Style
To improve your leadership style beyond being merely a competent and decisive problem solver, pay attention to what works with different people and situations.
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How to Play to Your Strengths
To understand your career strengths, be careful who you compare yourself with. Examine what is required in your target job and beware of discounting real strengths.
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Leadership Styles
The classic leadership styles are explained in practical terms so that team leaders can apply them.
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Emotional Intelligence
It has become accepted wisdom that leaders need emotional intelligence but this is only true if you equate leadership with being an executive.
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What is an Executive?
Executives have a number of roles. They can manage or lead or both. They also do things themselves. Breaking down the executive role into parts can simplify their job.
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What is Leadership Style?
Leadership style varies with personality and situational need. Leadership style is partly decision making style and partly a way of motivating employees.
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The Number One Job of Leadership
Business success is increasingly elusive and leaders are under enormous pressure to deliver. So much is expected of them, their number one job can easily get overlooked.
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Motivating employees
Motivating employees is a never ending challenge for managers. Here are some basic principles to follow to foster better employee motivation and performance.
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How To Manage People Effectively
To manage people effectively, broaden your role from that of decision maker to catalyst, coach, and facilitator as well. Ask more questions, do less telling.
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How Strategic Are You?
To be strategic you need to monitor your external environment constantly and be prepared to shift gears fast, combining planning with entrepreneurship.
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How's Your Leadership Confidence?
To build your leadership confidence, recognize that it's just about showing people a better way. Then, start small and use positive influencing tactics.
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How to Say No
Saying no is not easy. We don't like to make people feel we are not up to the job, so we let them overburden us. Here are some practical tips for saying no.
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Does your Organization Learn?
Even if employees learn, organizations can be poor learners if they are too risk averse to experiment or be entrepreneurial.
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Fostering Team Work
Before you build a team, think about what sort of team you want, but do this with your team so that they participate and jointly own how the team should function.
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Improving Employee Performance
To motivate employees, it is essential to understand what makes them tick, their work style, interests, preferences and aspirations.
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Managing Performance
Managers find it hard to correct performance without upsetting staff, but there are some simple techniques for making it less traumatic for both sides.
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Managing your Boss
Bosses need to be managed as customers. To promote yourself, probe to understand your boss's needs.
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The Confident Manager
Managerial confidence is based on the ability to make decisions or offer solutions when it should be on drawing solutions out of others.
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The New Broom
Too many incoming executives replace their direct reports with familiar faces. It's an unnecessary and costly emotional reaction.
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How to Delegate
Managers who struggle to delegate either do too much or abdicate, letting people do whatever they want. Here are some practical tips to make delegation easier.
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How Management Got Trashed
Management was made the scapegoat when the Japanese became successful in the U.S. It is time to upgrade management to restore it to its rightful place.
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What is Leadership?
Leadership is a hot topic but its meaning is very confused. We need an understanding of leadership that shows how all employees can show it, not just those at the top.
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What is Management?
Management is the organizational function that, like investment, gets things done efficiently, to gain the best return on all resources.
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Barriers to Delegation
The main barrier to delegation is the manager's need to be seen as calling all the shots as having all the answers.
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