by Michael Holland Here are two headlines from the week of November 11, 2013: Microsoft Abandons ‘Stack Ranking’ of Employees Yahoo ‘s Latest HR Disaster: Ranking Workers on a Curve It’s so intriguing to see two large companies having so much fun with the most basic of management tasks while going in opposite directions with [...]
by Michael Holland “Blah, blah, bah. . . I have to get this work done. . . blah, blah, blah” There’s a fine line between working hard and being addicted to work. I see many executives and employees who work hard and enjoy most of the work they do. But I also see some who [...]
by Michael Holland In the midst of the chaos comes yet more work. You're already way overloaded with 20-plus direct reports, and you still have to fill those two open manager positions. You are working 13 hours a day just to keep the fires at bay by providing minimal direction and insight to all [...]
by Michael Holland Each summer our neighborhood in upstate NY comes together for the Rick Braiman Memorial Lawn Mower Race. A race course is designed new each year to weave among several homes and around obstacles, requiring racers to negotiate chaos-inducing spots. Our recent race included two laps with two drivers, creating a “difficult” change [...]
by Michael Holland Manager Matt sits at the small table outside a coffee shop enjoying the fresh air and the aroma of coffee. He’s waiting for Erin, one of his employees, to arrive. It’s time to deliver her yearly performance review. Matt relishes the opportunity to have this climatic yearly conversation because he’s [...]
by Michael Holland Normal managers are everywhere: in fact, most managers are virtually the same in the way they manage and lead their teams. These normal managers follow the status quo of the culture and fight to maintain the mediocrity of entitled management, wearing their self-proclaimed status symbols of “Back to Back Meetings” [...]
by Michael Holland How effectively are you integrating new employees into your company? Into your team? To be honest, orientation programs usually suck. From an employee’s perspective, being loaded down with hours of mind-numbing data and stale presentations on the vision-mission-values of the company sets the stage for personal soul searching regarding whether or not they [...]
by Michael Holland Are you struggling as a leader to figure out how you’ll get everything done? Consider adjusting your “planning assumptions”: those parameters or guidelines that act as guard rails to keep you aligned on your original path. Planning assumptions are great when they help to keep you moving forward on autopilot, [...]
by Michael Holland Part of the art of leadership is the give and take of that information which is not common knowledge. There's a barter of sorts which occurs between leaders as they share bits and pieces of information they know, or sort of know, or are conjuring up as they piece together [...]
by Michael Holland Why is it that some employees are just heads and tails above others? It’s not that they are the most talented in the bunch, though they do have some talent. And it’s not that they work the hardest all the time, though they do work hard. Rather, it is more [...]
