Management Musings

Our blog has moved to sister site.

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:15:00 GMT

Rather than maintain two blogs our main blog articles have moved to our sister company site at

http://www.causerelatedlearning.co.uk

Why not take a look.

The best thing about planning is........

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:07:00 GMT

Business planning is critical - so why do so few businesses have a written plan?

Now make it stick

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:07:00 GMT

How to help your message to be received and understood.

People are human beings so treat them that way

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:25:00 GMT

In a speech at HR Magazine's employee engagement breakfast earlier today, David MacLeod warned that HR has not won the employee engagement argument as yet. (see article at http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/news/bulletin/weeklyupdatebulletin/article/1049738/?DCMP=EMC-DailyNewsAlert

Whilst those of us working in the HR arena have a strong belief that the evidence linking levels of engagement to performance is clear, many managers and directors of businesses have still not successfully made the connection in a way that actually engages them (ironic really). HR professionals must take some responsibility for that fact.

The evidence is all around. Last week I had cause to help a friend who was having quite a bit of trouble with her energy supplier. I have experience in the sector so offered to help. After several conversations with different employees from the supplier involved, we were getting nowhere. Each time, the employees failed to listen to what I was trying to explain. Each time, they jumped in with what they thought was an obvious solution; even trying to make me feel as though I clearly did not really understand the situation. In the end I had to be quite aggressive with them to simply get sufficient attention for them to finally grasp the real issue. They seemed intent on a quick fix that stayed within the narrow parameters of their system. They were clearly uncomfortable moving very far from the routine process.

As the customer, I felt processed and was left thinking that the supplier simply did not care. I'm sure they were trying to be efficient, but failed to be effective.

Unfortunately, far too many employees are left with similar feelings at the end of their working day. They are under pressure to expedite and process rather than resolve the problem. This approach is then replicated in poor service, ultimately having a negative impact on the business.

Perhaps it is seen as too simplistic a view, but treat your employees as people and they will treat your customers as people. It shouldn't take an army of analysts to reach that conclusion.

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How to grab audience attention

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:09:00 GMT

7 simple strategies for opening a presentation.

Agenda free future beckons for presentations

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:13:00 GMT

I recently sat through a number of middle manager business presentations and, as is typical, virtually every presentation had an agenda as part of the introduction. I suspect this is brought on by people following the old adage ‘tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them’. Now this strategy is not without merit. You will experience it most evenings if you watch a TV news, but there is a key difference. The news will give you a headlines summary at the beginning, the story content and a headline summary at the end. The business presenter will frequently give you a bland list of topics at the beginning, a storyless load of facts and data in the middle and a dull topic summary at the end (if you have stayed awake that long). For some reason, many business presenters feel compelled to share their process with us, which tends to make it more like ‘tell them how you will bore them; bore them; tell them how you just bored them. Add a number of word heavy bullet point slides and you will achieve the infamous death by powerpoint.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Effective presentations tell a story in a way that engages the audience, yet meets their needs in terms of information. In most cases an agenda is not adding a great deal of value. To me, it is an early clue that the presentation is likely to be quite dull. You don’t start reading a book to find the author explaining, first the characters will meet, then they will travel to Africa, then I will explain how they get into trouble with an underworld gang, how the gang is defeated and finally how peace is restored. You simply get immersed in the story.

So, take a chance an eliminate agendas from your presentations. Instead, start with an attention grabber of some sort (some ideas in an upcoming blog post) and get into the story. You will be amazed how grateful people will be.

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Employee Engagement in Six Words

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:47:00 GMT

The Employee Engagement Network has just released an ebook entitled Employee Engagement in Six Words. See my contribution on page 12 at

http://www.davidzinger.com/wp-content/uploads/Employee-Engagement-Six-Word-ebook.pdf

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Employers urged to break the talent myth.

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:58:00 GMT

www.hrmagazine.co.uk/news/bulletin/weeklyupdatebulletin/article/1035244/

Tags: employee engagement

How do you recognise a good coach?

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:51:00 GMT

It is a question that has cropped up on a number of occasions recently, and one that could be answered in many different ways, whether considering business coaching or personal coaching?

Coaches come in many types and with potentially wide ranging approaches, however, in my experience there are two fundamental measures that start you on the road to answering this question.

RESULTS - typically someone is using a coach to help them achieve different results in some aspect of their work or life. Whilst nothing guarantees success in a coaching relationship, a great starting point is considering if progress is being made in achieving the identified results or outcomes.

OWNERSHIP - a more subtle test is to consider where the ownership is sitting within the relationship. A very common trap that many coaches fall into is taking far too much ownership of the issues and potential solutions/actions. This is frequently an accidental side effect of great intention. In their willingness to 'help' and to share their experience coaches inadvertently, or in some cases deliberately, generate a dependency which is really defeating the whole purpose of coaching in the first place: helping people learn and develop themselves.

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What are you doing to keep your people?

musings@rhlassociates.co.uk — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:21:00 GMT

Re-posting of an article from HR Magazine's news digest.