management

In my previous post I laid out a system to define incentives. The question still needs to be asked: when should I offer incentives?

To answer that you'll have to ask more questions. The biggest: How will offering this incentive affect my employees and the business? Think of the positive and negative effects. Sometimes the negative outweighs any gains you might get.

Another big question: What do my employees want as an incentive? This does not get asked enough. Money is not always the answer! The most fun incentive I ever had was a competition I had with my first sales manager. Whichever one of us went farther above what was expected of us in terms of cold calls and appointments would get lunch at a restaurant compliments of that month's loser.

One last major question to answer: how will this affect anyone who doesn't have an incentive? Team Go For The Bonus might be surrounded by Coworkers Willing To Sabotage Everything. If you have to explain the bonuses and how people were chosen, do so. Let everyone know what's going on and why.Read more

In reply to my post on employees, management, and communication going up and down a company hierarchy, Mike asked me about compensation and incentives:

"It seems to me that if Management expects certain Actions from Employees, they should create a incentive structure that rewards Employees for doing the Actions. "

I've heard and been part of numerous debates on the good and bad of pure hourly/salary compensation and offering incentives and bonuses based on performance. Incentives make sense if you can have the following happen:

1) Make sure the incentives are tied to something measurable. If there is any doubt as to whether or not the goal was achieved, it's more likely to cause an argument than motivate employees.

2) Make sure the goal is clear. 20% increase in site traffic within 8 weeks. $50,000 in new business by the end of the month. Simple and clear works.Read more

One of the more rewarding things I do is bridge the gap between our company's President and CEO and my marketing team.

Most of what I do is manage our campaigns based on the information I get from my team and my bosses. Sometimes what I have on my hands is a disconnect between members of my team and what my bosses are looking for. It happens everywhere.

Ever found yourself wedged between two sides?

My advice is to listen to everyone before assessing the situation. Start with the person who has the most responsibility and then talk to everyone else. Ask them questions about how they perceive things and let them talk.

The person with the most responsibility should be able to give you the guidelines for the situation. Look for that person's expectations and actions. Compare their actions with everyone else's experiences. What are the possible problems in this situation? Not just one, look for as many as you can. What's not working here?Read more

One of the biggest problems I’ve encountered working in small businesses and start-ups are the devastating effect blind spots have.

You might be thinking, “Hey, isn’t that important to every person, every business, and every conscious living thing?” Yes, it’s important across the board. I’m talking about the realm where blind spots can crush everything around them. One end of the spectrum feels the impact far more than the rest: smaller groups and individuals.

Why is this?

One word: resources.

The larger the group, the more resources the group has. While not all groups are equal, having many more people means there is a higher chance someone in the group can handle a certain task at any given time. If any task can be handled by finding the right person to do it, blind spots are less of an issue.Read more

For me, the most difficult aspect of managing a team is deciding when I need to let them do their thing and when I need to focus their efforts.

In college one of my professors loaned me a book on applying theories in quantum physics to management. What stuck with me was the section on chaos. The author described how an entire organization will structure itself if no one is given any guidelines other than “get the job done.” Since there is no structure employees find what they feel is the best way to communicate with one another and get things done. Some things seem obvious looking back, like having engineers, manufacturing, and design people all work close together instead of sending their changes back and forth to be rejected or approved by everyone else.Read more