Effective managers and leaders know that they can climb greater heights and achieve remarkable goals only if they delegate work to the good, able and talented people around them. The logic is simple – if they are able to rope in more brains and bodies to do the tasks, they are able to get more things done within the same time frame. Having these tasks out of the managers' hands will free up

There is no indefinite job security. Market conditions fluctuate so fast that workers would rather play it safe by working into the good books of the employer. What better way to do that than to be the first person to step into the office and the last to leave. What started out as pure work enthusiasts end up being workaholics. Workaholics' lives center around work and nothing else.

Working hard and being extremely competent in what you do is not the key to getting a promotion. Not when you have an idiot and a fool as a boss, supervisor or manager. All of us may at one time or other work with bosses who belong to that “no-brain, no-skill” category, and our favorite happy-hour conversations always center upon how these bosses got to that position of power in the first

Procrastination – putting off till tomorrow things that we should do today. At some point in our lives, we are either guilty of procrastination or know of friends or colleagues who are. Is procrastination a bad thing? Would you call procrastinators lazy? Are they poor decision makers? Would you marry or stay married to a procrastinator? As you will read, we do not view procrastination as

A startup business crumbles after 2 years and needs a couple of million dollars of funds to keep it afloat. Entrepreneur A seeks financial help from banks, negotiates scheme of arrangement with creditors, and when all these don't materialize, he prays that a white knight will come to his rescue. Entrepreneur B adopts a similar approach with banks and creditors. However, instead of waiting

A purpose is a mission statement. An organization invariably has one, which it expects every employee to live up to. Sure, the employee will do what he is told to do, but he is motivated to work for a different reason. He works because he has to support a family; he has to work in order to survive. Although the employee is committed to the work, there is no alignment between the employee's

A life without obstacles is as good as dead. Whether they are everyday problems or crisis situations, how we handle them will determine how good we are as a leader. The weak leaders crumble when the odds stack up and surrender even before any attempt to overcome the obstacles. The great and successful leaders on the other hand see adversity as a challenge. Against all odds, they rise above

To value the importance of teamwork, we have to appreciate the value of every individual. Many managers think that they are good team players. When they get into action, they begin to “take charge” of the whole process and dictate their beliefs. They are deaf to other people's inputs and suggestions. Sometimes, they may ask for ideas from the members and appear receptive. At the back of

Favoritism is a human trait found in many relationships, e.g., parent-children, teacher-students. As long as there are two persons we have to interact with, it is in our nature to compare and favor one over the other. CEOs, employers, bosses and managers who deny that they have pet employees are deceiving themselves. They should accept that they have, but be skillful enough to manage the

Many of the success stories begin with simple ideas. In the course of work, your employees or staff may likewise have creative ideas and innovative solutions to carry out their work more effectively and efficiently. Sometimes, they improvise the processes without the Management being aware of it. It could very well be that the same improvisation can be applied to other work processes across

One mistake that people often make when they are faced with a situation is to jump straight into finding solutions, giving little thought to defining the problem. For example, a hotel manager saw a sudden dip in occupancy rate, and asked the staff to propose “ways to increase the occupancy rate.” Everyone went full steam into publicity, promotional offers, events and other gimmicks. Months

In many places of work, there is only one rule – “The Boss is Always Right” or “The Boss is Never Wrong”. What if we know that the Boss is wrong? Well, simple ... refer back to the rule. All around us, we see and hear of double standards and inequality. The recent case of celebrity heiress Paris Hilton being released after three days in Los Angeles jail sparked fierce debates on the

No two humans come out of the same mold and differences in ideas and opinions are bound to arise. Differences lead to Conflicts. When well-handled, conflicts are in effect good for the organization as they often lead to creative ideas and changes for the better. Conflicts become counterproductive when they give rise to enmity, hostility, tension, confusion and sabotage among the workers. If

It has been widely believed that the most stressful jobs are those in the IT, nursing care, education, secretarial, and service industries. There are also surveys that included lawyers, engineers, marketers, and human resource personnel among the most stressed professionals. Is it true that if you are in these professions, you must necessarily feel stressful at work? Can there not be

Everybody has a role model, someone who has done the same job we are doing or taken the same path of life we are traveling on. Sometimes, we are embarrassed or are too ego-conscious to admit having a role model. The reality is that without tapping on the knowledge and experience of the people who have succeeded before us, we are likely to fall into the same pits that they could have fallen

Are decisions made by gut feelings good? Business writer Malcolm Gladwell seemed to think so. In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, he presented cogent arguments on how decisions made in an instant, almost without thinking, stood up better than decisions made after analytical considerations. Dotted with examples like how a fire-fighter suddenly knows when to

One of the important aspects of motivation is knowing what we want to achieve. Once we have that, we can go through a series of goal-setting steps to state, define and execute our goals. This first step of knowing what we want is by no means simple. Try asking your children what they want to achieve. You will get answers ranging from scoring the perfect grades in their examinations to being

“NO” is a two-letter word but one of the most powerful words in leadership, management, and career growth. Learning to say No when you really want to is one of the important skills in work survival. It is not a negative mindset of avoiding work. Instead, it is a way of gaining control over your work and personal life, making work fit into your purpose of life, and seeking fulfillment and job

Corporate disclosure has always been a sore point between stakeholders and the management. The decision on what must go into the public domain is difficult due in part to the reality that companies thrive primarily on well-kept business secrets of success. These are legitimate concerns although history had also uncovered improper practices which were well-hidden and protected under the cloak

Meetings are such a dread. Haven't you attended meetings which are totally unproductive, time-wasting, and boring? Or are you guilty of chairing such meetings? In one of my places of work, I had meetings almost round the clock. “Remember that time is money.” If you agree with Benjamin Franklin, time is a huge cost to the company. While I won't say they were all unproductive, I would

Leadership is not an inanimate object. It has a face, and more importantly, it has a heart. The good leaders do not merely command respect, they earn it. A leader who rules with an iron fist will influence people once. A leader who rules with a kind heart will influence people for a lifetime. We like to associate with leaders who see themselves as humans, and not an extraordinary species.

In the business environment, there are the Davids and the Goliaths. Occasionally, we read inspiring stories about how one small startup company can gobble up a large share of the pie and surprise the older boys. More often than not, they are not about David killing Goliath, but about the two of them forming strategic alliances and capitalizing on each other's strengths. It boils down to

When things go wrong, as they often do, what is your first reaction? Blame it on others. This blaming game is played even at the highest levels in the corporate offices and in our government. When complaints arise and it is obvious that the fault lies in a certain person, he gets the whole troop of officers in the department to share the blame. It sounds unfair, but it is a useful strategy.

A majority of complaints and agitated office gossips are related to the bosses, either they are too incompetent, demanding, unreasonable, or autocratic. It is difficult to work under these types of managers and supervisors and the frustrations at work lead to misery and low morale and eventually disaster for the company. While many of the complaints are fair and true, we have pulled out a

When formulating theories and business plans, we are usually fond of qualifying them by stating the assumptions we have made. The commonly used assumption is the latin phrase “cēterīs pāribus”, basically stating that our plans are based on “all other things being equal.” Should there be a change in these variables or assumptions, our projections would be different. The critical thing to