8 Posts found for Publisher: The Conference Board Review

If your organization is suffering from a plague of projects, stopping a few of them only fixes the symptoms of the plague. Your first step should be to change the way projects are started. One of the best tips is to make sure all projects are launched with a kill switch of some kind—that is, tangible metrics and milestones defining when the project should be … [ Read more ]

Author: Paddy Miller | Source: “Kill Your Darlings” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Management, Project Management

Instead of asking, “Are we all on the same page?” or, “What am I missing?” and accepting predictable responses, one should conclude a meeting by going around the room and asking each person to say aloud what she is committing to do and by what date. If you establish a pattern of asking people at the end of a meeting to explicitly state everything to … [ Read more ]

Author: Jeff Grimshaw | Source: “There Must Be Some Misunderstanding” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

If the service you’re delivering is disappointing—if it’s average or spotty in a model you assumed would produce reliable excellence—a common explanation is a mismatch between your employees and the jobs you’ve tasked them to do. Sound at all familiar? If so, we advise companies to first try to get a sense of the size of the employee-job gap.

First: Go undercover. Get out of the … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Morriss | Source: “Only Human” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Customer-Related, Management, Organizational Behavior

The third time is often the charm-especially when searching for the perfect job candidate. Brian Tracy, author of Hire and Keep the Best People: 21 Practical and Proven Techniques You Can Use Immediately, recommends practicing the “Law of Three” when assessing applicants. To apply this technique, Tracy suggests that you interview at least three candidates for any position, then interview the applicant you like most … [ Read more ]

Author: Vadim Liberman | Source: “Manager’s Tool Kit” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Human Resources

As Jerome Mattern, chairman of the compensation and benefits committee at the Society for Human Resource Management, explains, “A vacation donation policy is a kind way for employees to engage in social camaraderie.” Such a program allows workers to donate vacation hours to a common “bank,” from which employees who are unable to work due to personal illness or crisis may draw. Employees in need … [ Read more ]

Author: Vadim Liberman | Source: “Manager’s Tool Kit” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Control systems are one of the most important, least understood, and least examined aspects of management that we have today. Most companies tend to accrete their control systems, whether on the financial, production, or sales side. So over time you get hundreds of these systems. If you ask companies how many control systems they have, they don’t know. If you ask them how much they’re … [ Read more ]

Author: A.J. Vogl | Source: “Excellence Won’t Save You” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subject: Management

Peter Drucker’s thirty-year-old concept of creating a “manager’s letter” probably remains the best performance-management technique to use with senior executives. Each executive writes an annual letter to her superior, spelling out the objectives of her own job and those of the superior’s job as she sees them. She then sets down the performance standards she believes are being applied to her. She lists the goals … [ Read more ]

Author: Dick Grote | Source: “Passing Judgment” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

Instead of making wholesale layoffs, more companies should try layoff alternatives, such as:

• Pay cuts
• Job sharing
• Sabbaticals
• Job furloughs

Seek employee input for thoughts on these altenatives and for suggestions for other alternatives.

Author: Shari Caudron | Source: “Another God That’s Failed” | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management