Something You Should Know about Management

February 19, 1020

Interview with Terry R. Bacon, author of the book What People Want: A Manager's Guide to Building Relationships That Work

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Mike Carruthers:
A lot of managers are lousy at their job and the process of promoting managers is a big part of the problem.

Terry Bacon:
A lot of managers are promoted because they're very good technically at what they do.  And they're so good technically, they're promoted into positions of management, often without having a real aptitude for people and usually without any real good training on how to manage people.
 

February 9, 2010

Interview with Alice Adams, author of the book Playing to Strength: Leveraging Gender at Work

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Mike Carruthers:
A common belief (in the workplace anyway) is that men and women have very different strengths that they bring to the table.

Alice Adams:
"Men are more analytical, have higher intensity leadership qualities, women are more empathetic they’re better at collaborating..."

Alice Adams, author of the book Playing to Strength, says these perceptions about gender differences in the workplace are actually completely false.

January 19, 2010

Interview with Daniel Pink, author of the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

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Mike Carruthers:
Reward and punishment, the old "carrot and stick" are the classic methods organizations use to motivate their people. However…

Daniel Pink:
There’s actually a better approach to motivation that is not routed in carrots and sticks but has to do with autonomy and mastery and purpose.

 October 19, 2009

Interview with Len Merson, CEO of Chaos Over, Inc.

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Mike Carruthers:
Disorganization in the workplace comes at a very high cost.

Len Merson:
There are studies that have been done over the last 15 years in the area of information management, all these studies have been independent of each other, but they happened to ask one question in common. The question that was asked was, “How much time does an employee spend per day looking for information they can’t locate?”