Thanks to having our blog listed on Amatomu, a local blog aggregator that tracks and reports on local blogs, I discovered “The Practice of Leadership” a very insightful local leadership blog.
One of the first articles that attracted my attention and that I would like to share with you was “Are you demotivating your employees?” in which the blog’s author George Ambler explores the question of employee motivation or rather demotivation by employers. Its well worth a read by all managers on any level.

There was an short article in Fortune last year that was based on a survey on management techniques and there correlation to success. Certainly some interesting, if not unexpected results.
“(FSB Magazine) — Micromanaging will do more than annoy employees; it will slow your growth. A recent study by Cornell University, sponsored by the Gevity Institute, a human resources outsourcing firm in Bradenton, Fla., found that small businesses that granted workers more autonomy grew at more than four times the rate of those that relied on tight top-down controls.
That’s not all.
The …

In the quest for something new in the study of management I see a new buzz word has emerged in management consulting, that of “toxic management”. I spotted in the new South African edition of Entrepreneur Magazine and in “Facts” Newsletter from Fasset, the Finance Services SETA.
It really amuses me how these “new” concepts come along taking long known and dealt with issues, in this case the effects of poor and negative leadership on staff morale, and package them in a new guise and hey presto – all and …

I have been a long time fan of the business management writer Tom Peters, in fact his “In Search of Excellence” was the first business management book I really read as a student at Varsity. His management philosophy is extremely innovative, action-oriented and inspirational.
I regularly read his website and download the PowerPoint Presentations of his seminars that he presents worldwide and which he kindly makes available on his website. The Presentations can sometimes be a bit cryptic but they are extremely thought provoking and inspiring.
One of his current tenents of …

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
- Peter Drucker

The obvious benefits of computerization and automation of the debt collection process, at whatever stage, is obvious. This extends from pre-hand over to pre-legal collections through to legal collections. I remember as a young candidate attorney in the earlier 1990s being at an attorneys firm with a large collections department. The staff was large to deal with the extremely manual process, various collection supervisors, an army of typists, collection clerks, filing clerks and payment clerks. A staff compliment of 4 employees back then dealt with what a current single collection …

“What Great managers do” by Marcus Buckingham, in an article in the March 2005 Harvard Business Review, based on his book, “The One Thing You Need to Know”. He starts with a great analogy:
“Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess.”
The difference?

The 20th March 2006 issue of Fortune Magazine has a very interesting cover story entitled “How I work” in which various world-class business leaders were interviewed and give insight into their practical methods of achieving effectiveness in their work.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”
William Penn
There are volumes of books that have been written on ?time management? for business executives. Today more and more time is at a premium in our workday. Yet, as with most things in life, effective use of it comes back to self-management and how we manage ourselves and what happens around us.

In the 21st March 2005 issue of Fortune Magazine they ran an enlightening article entitled the “The Best Advice I Ever Got“. The Article asked the business giants of the world such as Warren Buffett, Richard Branson, Peter Drucker, Jack Welch and many others what was the best advice they ever got was and the answers certainly make for a good insight into the business minds of these greats.
The one that particularly struck me was the chairman of the US based Coffee giant Starbucks, Howard Shultz, who stated his advice …