Just asking the right questions and thinking the right set of qualifications is not going to get you anywhere if they are just words for you. The rub as to advancing (and holding) right people is that you are talking platitudes and only platitudes, unless you are willing to devote whatever time and travel are [...]

The Laboratory of Psychological Studies of the Stevens Institute of Technology has made a study of unsuccessful executives in over 200 companies. Inability to make decisions, the study showed, was a leading reason for the failure of the executives. Certainly this finding is borne out by the experience of practicing executives. How can you improve [...]

There is much talk and writing these days about resistance to change. This is an important topic in an age of fast0moving markets and technologies. However, the problem has not been analyzed correctly in many discussions. The real pitfalls lie not in inability to master the technical aspects of new processes, nor in some inherent [...]

Delegating authority is a tough job. And it gets tougher all the time as one’s responsibilities are increased and the stakes get larger. But it is also a rewarding job. It is rewarding not alone in financial returns but also in the feeling that one has contributed to releasing the creative potential in an associate. [...]

Why is it important to fight for the men and women under your supervision, and how should you do it? How should you try and sell your ideas of management? In answering these questions we can draw on a wealth of practical experience, for a great many successful executives have won their promotions because they [...]

The value of encouraging people to use other’s help increases as their individual abilities increase. That is, the more each person can contribute, and the more he can profit from using others’ contributions, the more the organization stands to gain from their making use of one another’s skills and experiences. This brings us to the [...]

How should you deal with friction and rivalry? Here are some suggestions: 1.    Try to channel the drives that produce rivalry into constructive effort. Much of the time the motives, desires, and drives that get us into personnel troubles with associates have a strong “asset value” to the company. That is. We want to do [...]

Almost everyone accepts the principle that a manager, like his company, should know what he wants to do, what he wants to accomplish, where he is going. Planning has become a byword in literature of management. There are books, chapters, articles and speeches on it; there are courses on it in schools; it is in [...]

In this article, we shall discuss standards of work, and in particular, standards of achievement. First we shall see how standards affect performance in a business organization. The standards set by management have a deep and far-fetching influence on the way people in an organization think and perform. There is a direct relationship between high [...]

IF you want to do a good job of managing people, you must be able to help them grow in competence and understanding. You must be able to teach them. Two promising young supervisors start out with equal desire and equal opportunities for advancement. But do well for a time, earning promotion, regular pay raises, [...]