Teryl @ Work

Feeding the Right Wolf This Cherokee story resonated with me (see below).     Like many business people, I get caught up in managing details, instead of focusing on strategy and growth.   Measuring myself against the Good Wolf concept has become a way of thinking for me. Feeding the good wolf - focusing on the right stuff! In a previous article on this topic, I commented that the message is simple, the wolf you feed is the one that grows. The good wolf attributes in a business are where we ideally should spend our time, that good old 80 – 20 rule focusing on our   engaged employees, improving client experience and quality of product,   to name a few. Creating a Good Wolf Environment While we have many different tools – appraisals, customer and employee surveys – to try and understand the temperature and levels of entropy in our businesses – the truth is that it is really difficult to explain to people that they are not seen as feeding the good wo...

KPAs, KPIs, Job Descriptions - and whatever other acronym you might be using, they all do the same thing - define the performance areas, describe the job, lay out objectives, success factors etc You know what they are, you understand the job, you are delivering according to the requirements, but you have the impression that your boss is not really that happy with you. It might just be that you don't understand your boss! During my career, I have reported into a number of people with huge variations of management style. There were the detail people, they needed to understand everything down to a granular level There were the big picture managers, just paint the situation in broad strokes, and mention any risk There were those who wanted everything in writing There were those who wanted to talk situations through in great detail, and get nothing to read  You get the picture... The critical way to success in a job is to understand what presses your...

Irreconcilable differences are a common reason for divorce, and while there might be jokes around squeezing the toothpaste tube from the top or the bottom, it is a fact that the smallest things become huge issues in an incompatible relationship.  (I have to admit that my husband of 32 years and I solved this one by using different brands). At work, it is as difficult as at home.  Incompatibility is a rather vague description, because it is not easy to pin down exactly why two people simply do not get the best out of each other.   In a boss /employee scenario, it may have a serious impact on productivity, as well as making one or both extremely unhappy.  A junior person may even feel that he is being bullied. There is also the possibility that they actually get on well together but their work styles are so different that their deliverables are not being achieved, anyway. Years ago, I had a Services Manager who was a brilliant trainer of new software field consul...