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Articles by Leon Noone
7 Tips That Will Gain You More Time To Run Your Small Business.
Small business managers are often under extreme time pressures. They work longer and longer hours just to “keep up”. They spend more time “fire fighting” and feell guilty about neglecting their family responsibilities. If this describes you, consider these techniques.
How To Build A Champion Team In Your Small-Medium Business.
Summary. “A champion team will always beat a team of champions.” That statement’s often heard about sports teams. But it applies in the workplace too. Manager sometimes concern themselves with building a team of champions. They should concentrate on building a champion team. These ideas may help.
7 Things You Must Do To Gain Staff Commitment To The Success Of Your Small-Medium Business
If there's one wish, one hope, one desire I hear more than any other from small medium business managers it's this. Why can't my staff be more committed, more dedicated, even just more interested in my business? Don't they realize that they have a major vested interest in its success? It isn't as difficult as it seems. But you need the right mindset.
Try This Unique Way Of Perceiving Customers In Small-Medium Business
What's a customer? Someone who buys something from you? Someone you provide a service to? Someone to whom you provide goods and services to in return for payment? However you define "customer" they are vital to any business. In small-medium business how you treat customers could be the difference between success and failure.
Are You Stopping The Very Performance You Tell Your Staff You Want? Check These Examples?
Demanding top performance from employees is every manager's right. But some managers demand high standards then put obstacles to achieving them in the path of employees. Put bluntly, these managers become "performance stoppers". Do any of these describe you?
Getting Management Information: How Phrasing Questions Can Make Or Break You
The quality of the information managers receive is determined by the questions they ask. Some managers believe that they merely have to ask in order to find out what they need to know. If only it was as easy as that...! The good news is that the problem's easily fixed. The bad news is that if it's happening, it's probably your fault.
Make Your Incentive Scheme A Practical Success By Following These 5 Essential Principles
Summary. You need sound structures to underpin your incentive schemes. You also need good administrative back up. Your actual incentives may be very attractive. That's not enough. You need to get the basics right before you start.
10 Golden Rules For Best Business Results Through People In Small-Medium Business.
Summary. Small-medium businesses have unique characteristics that require special responses. They are not underdeveloped big businesses. This is particularly so in people management. If employees don't respect each other's work and contribution, you'll have "people problems".
The Big Secret To People Management In Small-Medium Business.
We need well schooled and skilled managers. But knowing how to manage is only part of the story. What you're about to read isn't mentioned frequently by management gurus. That's because the management development industry is based on developing individual skills. That hides a secret you should know about.
7 Tips For Ensuring That Staff Performance Standards And Customer Feedback Are Always Linked.
We should design customer feedback to include measurement of staff performance. But we don't. We're so anxious to discover what customers think of us, we fail to ask them what they think of our performance standards. It's so simple, we forget to do it.
How To Complete Staff Performance Appraisal Every Day And Never Fill Out A Form
"Performance Appraisal" often strikes fear into the heart of the most intrepid manager. It's associated with "in depth" interviews, filling out complicated forms and planning career development. No wonder it scares people. But if you do it every day, it's a breeze.
Small Business: 10 Important Tips On The Importance Of Meeting Staff Expectations
Small business owners and managers face two special issues. Your staff see and talk to you daily, even frequently each day. You're exposed in both good times and bad. That's high visibility. The other's high dependency. If you're business doesn't succeed, their jobs are seriously threatened. Manage staff expectations carefully.
Do You Unwittingly Punish Your Best People? To Find Out, Use This 7 Step Approach.
Many managers encourage good performance then punish the good performers. They don't do this intentionally. But the effect is no different.
5 Simple Keys To Improve Employee Performance Without Using Training.
Are you tearing your hair out because your training's not working and you can't understand your employees? Why not try an engineering approach for better results? Each of the following statements flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Yet each of them is absolutely true.
Improve You Selection Interviewing With These 5 Simple Rules
Successful selection interviewing is a great skill. Most managers just don't get enough practice to master it. If you follow these simple rules your lack of practice won't be a problem.
How On Job Performance Is Directly Related To Your Job Vacancy Advertisement.
Do you advertise for staff in the local paper? Do you use a consultant or a notice board? Whatever you do to attract people to join you, bear this in mind. The on job success of the person you select will be largely determined by your position description or job analysis - "the ad you put in the paper".
Small Business Staff Selection: Beware Of Overemphasizing Past Experience.
We place great emphasis on experience when selecting staff. Yet, in other areas of our lives, we know that there's more to successful accomplishment than experience.
Small Business: Why Using Performance Standards To Measure Staff Progress Improves Productivity.
Performance Standards are more important than goals. They tell people how well they're progressing towards goal achievement. They are the scoreboard that keeps us informed about how we are going and whether our goals are worth persevering with, and whether we need to change our tactics.
People Management: Ensuring That Your Staff Meet Your Expectation
Do you find yourself complaining that some staff don't do what you want them to do? Do they repeatedly make simple errors that drive you nuts? Do they lack "common sense"? Maybe you're part of the problem. Try these simple but effective techniques.
Staff Performance Management: What You Get From Your Staff Is Mainly Determined By What You Expect.
In "Pygmalion" George Bernard Shaw wrote "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves. It's how she's treated." Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe based their famous musical "My Fair Lady" around Shaw's concept. If it's good enough for Lerner and Loewe and GBS, maybe you should consider the power of expectation.
Managing People Performance: 5 Ways To Make Consequences Positive For Employees
Consequences are a vital key in people management. Your most brilliant ideas can soar or crash depending on how much thought you give to consequences in your planning.
If You Want Your Staff To Believe What You Say About Performance, Set Clear Performance Standards.
Millions of words have been written about the importance of performance standards. But the very fact that they exist says something about you to your employees. And what it says is worth a thousand pep talks.
Small Business: If You Want Your Staff To Be Really Enthusiastic, Try These 5 Methods.
“It isn't theirs!” That’s the reason your employees don’t commit to your business in the same way you do. You don’t stick up for other people’s children the way you do for your own. You don’t feel the same sense of outrage when someone else’s car is stolen as you do when yours is. It's not yours. It's as simple as that.
Take Care When Recruiting Staff For Small-Medium Business: They Need Unique Qualities.
Small business is unique. It's not a kindergarten big business. Staff who succeed in small business need adequate qualifications and experience. But they need other qualities too so that they'll "fit" the small business environment.
Phrasing Questions To Get The Information You Really Want
"Good managers ask lots of questions". So they should. But that's not the point. It's the answers you get to your questions that matter. And if you don't phrase your questions properly, you won't get the information you want.
An Approach To People Management Especially For The Small Business Manager
A small business is not a little big business. You can take many big business principles and apply them effectively in your small business. But there are differences merely because the business is small. People management is such as issue.
7 Keys To Open The Door To Effective Face To Face Workplace Communications
"Be a good listener". Every manager has heard that exhortation umpteen times. It's true. Sadly it doesn't say how. So we ask lots of questions and shut up. Being a "good listener" needs more than that. Here's how.
Practical Performance Appraisal: There’s No Need For Forms For Successful Results.
The term "performance appraisal" usually means filling out forms, reviewing employees' work, a formal interview and planning development or remedial activities. And it's often a hassle. It shouldn't mean any of that.
10 Things You Must Do To Write The "Ideal" Job Advertisement To Attract The "Ideal" Applicant
The "ideal" job ad attracts only one applicant. That applicant meets each requirement of your job analysis or job description precisely. He or she lives locally, is delighted with the remuneration package and desperately wants to work for your company. Ensure that your job ad attracts no one else.
Small Business: 7 Simple Methods To Create Positive Staff Expectations In A Recession
In a recession, the doomsayers have a field day. Doom and gloom dominates. Your employees hear and read the dire predictions. They can become negative about the future of your business. If this happens, you're in trouble. As the owner or manager of a small-medium business, it's you job to create positive expectations.
Small Business. How To Avoid & Major Staff Selection Traps
Much of what you're about to read is totally different from what you'll hear from selection "experts" and recruitment courses or read in staff selection books. If you want a different way, you'll find some useful ideas here.
Small Business. Lead Your Staff Through A Recession And Empower Them To Help Your Business Prevail
You'll survive recession in various ways. But survival isn't enough. You'll need your staff to ensure that your business is viable in 2011/12. How you lead will have a major impact on business viability.
Small Business: How Your Telemarketing Voice Must Enhance What You Say
We tend to concentrate on what telemarketers say: the "spiel", rather than how well they said it. You must have the right product or service, target market, offer, script and all those essential basics in place. But the sound of the telemarketer's voice TIES those basics together.
Small Business: A 7 Step System For Rectifying Poor Employee Performance
When an employee's work performance falls below standard or expectation most managers "have a chat" with the employee. I reckon that's the last resort. Here's a systematic alternative.
Small Business: Help Your Staff Delight Your Customers With “Seamless” Customer Service.
In tough economic times, retaining current customers is essential. "Seamless" customer service will go a long way towards that. Your customers will judge the quality of your service on how they're treated by your staff. And regardless of all your lecturing, hectoring and exhortation, you won't change that.
Small Business 7 Ideas You Can Use To Create Better Staff Performance By Creating Positive Consequen
Have you ever introduced some new staff initiative or benefit only to find it didn't work well? Perhaps it failed completely. Were you surprised? Perhaps you simply failed to consider the real consequences.
Small Business: How To Stop Doing Your Employees' Work And Have More Time For Your Own
So many managers allow their employees to "delegate upwards" as it were. These managers effectively do their employees' work. A General Manager I used to work for had a sign on his desk "Be Part Of The Answer, Not Part Of The Problem". Trite? Yes. Corny? Yes. Old Fashioned? Probably. Sensible? Absolutely!
Small Business: How To Use Exit Interviews As A Tool To Improve Your Future Business
Exit interviews are discussions between terminating employees - those who've resigned of their own accord – and employers. They are your last chance to benefit from the resignee's experience with you. Use them to obtain information which you can use to improve systems and relationships in the company. They are not "to discuss problems of working for us".
Small Business: How To Ensure Your Staff Realize Why Value Is More Important Than Cost Or Price.
People ask "How much is it?" and "What's it cost?" for two reasons: to find out if they can afford "it" and to decide whether the price or cost is good value. In other words, is "it" worth the money? Value is what really matters to consumers. And that includes consumers of ideas.
Discard Your Performance Appraisal Form. You'll Get Better Results With Just One Question
One question: that's all you need ask. Ask yourself. Ask the employee. You can have meaningful performance appraisal based on one question alone. Of course you also have to know how to find the answers. That's another good reason to ask it.