Middle tier managers have the worst of both worlds when it comes to organisational change: maximum expectations from above (with insufficient support), and maximum chaos from below if the change is not widely understood, poorly managed, and impacts people’s worlds (doesn’t it always?). More needs to be invested so they can do better than cope with change

Meanginful work is a right not a luxury. Companies can do plenty to improve the work experience for their employees. Individuals can do a lot to improve their own working lives. Just do it I say.

How many times do we expect our people to understand or be across a change because they were sent the details in an explanatory email.
Sure – email is a convenient form of communication. Its fast, we can reach a lot of people,  and we can attach content like there’s no tomorrow. And once we hit the [...]

If you haven’t discovered www.slideshare.net yet I recommend you take a look.
For any users or facilitators of The 6-Hat thinking process, this one page mind map is a treasure.  I’ll share more as I find them.
6-Hats Mindmap

As business professionals, we spend lots of our time interacting with all sorts of people – clients, suppliers, consultants etc. Our interactions can be in person, on the telephone, by email or even these days, by sms.
If you do some reading on the subject, you’ll quickly find the predominant school of thought is that all [...]

With all the bad news around lately, I’m surprised any of us are getting out of bed in the morning.
Just yesterday a friend I worked with said he felt flat and uninspired – like he was tired of pushing a heavy wheelbarrow up a hill that never got any shorter.
I hear this sentiment echoed in [...]

In my idealised world (I live there a lot),  I believe people who are good at what they do should be rewarded. And rewarded fairly.
So when situations like the bonus scheme at AIG get world focus, it does give me pause.
There’s a bunch of people who may or may not have worked hard – we [...]

These are taken from an article by the highly regarded Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford Graduate School of Business) in the Nov-Dec 2008 edition of Management Today, published by the Australian Institute of Management.

Myth: Just because a manangement practice is popular is evidence it works.
Reality: There are numerous examples of management practices advocated by executives and consultants, [...]

I wrote the article below  – Problems with Performance Management - a few years ago, and for the most part, I still believe the content is true. Most employees see performance management as a means for managers to give feedback (usually badly) on where they need to improve, to find reasons not to give a bonus [...]

OK – I am a week or so behind the times on blogging on this article. Better late then never!
See the Top 100 here.
Google remains at the top for the second year running, although half of the top ten have changed from 2007.
Check out some the unusual benefits being offered by these companies:

scuba diving certification [...]