Get More Done, but Also Get the Right Stuff Done

Effective time management is accomplished by using the Pareto principle of 80-20.  Making sure that  80% of your time is spent on the 20% of the work that makes most of the difference.  Some have called this the Picasso work. Where creativity, talent or experience is critical.  The book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell also discusses this principle and calls it reaching the level of unconscious competence.  Brain science and scanning have recently proven the biology behind this, whereby human beings used neuroplasticity to rewire their brain for certain sophisticated tasks. This is why experts who have spent 10,000 hours or more can potentially answer or do something in the blink of an eye. Where the book title comes from.

There are some things experts can do in hours, or even minutes, that others could never accomplish in weeks or even months. That is the invisible value of five or more years of experience, When...

There are far too many texts and systems on management, and I do not want to create another.  However, there is a simple and effective system I use that leverages many of these wonderful systems that can be anywhere from fantastic to disastrous in a particular situation.  In every case, some thought must be given as to which technique is appropriate for each special circumstance and individual. 

A simple, yet very effective, model for people management uses the following combination of well known management styles by selecting the appropriate method for each individual.  This is an easy model to understand and implement, and adjusts the management style to each individual's specific abilities and limitations.  In general, you are going to work very closely (micromanage) with anyone when they are first hired to help determine where they are on this scale and then move down the scale until you reach their current ability to perform.  Initial...

Consultants And Getting The Most Value Added

As a CEO I struggled long and hard over any decision to use a consultant. There are many issues that need to be managed by the client to keep a consultant from going overboard on time and costs.

Too many need to long to get up to speed on your business (on your dime), cost too much, and can not provide tangible results on a limited project basis. Too many are unproductive and do things in ten hours that I know I could have done in 2-3 hours, as paying by the hour is often a demotivation, while paying by the task aligns the client's and consultant's interests more.

All that said, I currently make my living as a consultant and do believe there is a better way.

The old saying that a consultant is someone who you pay to learn your business who then goes down the street to sell that expertise to someone else next week can be true if you let it happen that way. But it does not have to be that way if you use consultants appropriately and as a...

From the moment a new company is founded to its appearance on the Fortune 500 list, executives must be able to transform the way they manage a company — shifting gears, often dramatically to a different management style — to ensure the company’s optimum development. I am not referring to individual executive style here. What I am talking about is the total adjustment and evolution of the context in which major management decisions are made. I call this the “Mode of Management”, which is very dependent on the company’s current developmental stage.

Would you make the same product development decisions in an identical way with one hundred dollars in the bank and no customers as you would with $50 million in the bank and 1,000 customers? Of course not! So why do many managers often run an organization in the same way despite the many gradual and often sudden changes that happen between these two extremes? It is human nature to continue to do what we...

How to Manage Employees At Varied Levels of Experience 

There are far too many texts and systems on management, and I do not want to create another.  However, there is a simple and effective system I use that leverages many of these wonderful systems that can be anywhere from fantastic to disastrous in a particular situation.  In every case, some thought must be given as to which technique is appropriate for each special circumstance and individual. 

A simple, yet very effective, model for people management uses the following combination of well known management styles by selecting the appropriate method for each individual.  This is an easy model to understand and implement, and adjusts the management style to each individual's specific abilities and limitations.  In general, you are going to work very closely (micromanage) with anyone when they are first hired to help determine where they are on this scale and then move down the scale until you reach...

I would not say they are “In vogue” at all. They have always been a fundamental building block of good management. Recently the term OKRs has become more common because it has been used and promoted by some VCs, Google, Intel and other successful companies. However, OKR is almost identical to Management By Objective (MBO) that was created in the 1960s by Peter Drucker, The Father of Management.

This is a classic management principle that any professional manager should understand, which most business schools fail to teach well. It is the “Blocking and tackling” of management that cannot be ignored. Sometimes it is called SMART Goals, a slightly different take with 90% overlap too, that is an acronym for Specific, Measurable (metrics), Attainable, Realistic and Time bounded. All-important attributes to set non-ambiguous goals.

Decades of research has shown a 56% improvement in value creation at companies that use good goal setting systems, specifically...