Slacker Manager

June 23rd, 2008

Why Do Managers Fail?

Lisa Haneberg recently shared a brilliant list of 5 simple reasons managers fail. #1 came as no surprise to me.
Fail to build positive and trusting relationships.
So simple, yet often completely missed by many managers. Management is a team sport folks, and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t be a manager.
If you get that point, […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 8 comments

April 16th, 2008

3 Ways to Make Great Decisions

There are lots of ways you can make great decisions. I’ve got 3 big ones:

Interpret the Information
Know your options
Know your negotiables and non-negotiables

I credit Steve Bannister with the first tip. He does a great job sharing his 4 tips to interpret information:

Rumor (Steve calls this rumour, he’s from Canada, I’m from Wisconsin)
Belief
Opinion
Fact

Great advice! You must […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 3 comments

April 14th, 2008

Great Leaders are Great Stewards

“Great leaders of the most successful companies in the world are great stewards.” - Jason Jennings

Those words rang in my ears as I left the 2008 HDI Annual Conference a few weeks ago, and they are still bouncing around in my head today.
Jason Jennings shared a great message, about how the organizations he studied all […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 6 comments

March 26th, 2008

Never Say “Do More With Less” Again

This is a guest post from Michael Kanazawa.
When things get stressful, we often throw out phrases automatically to try and get beyond the issues for the moment without really doing what is right. But often these phrases don’t do much to help in the moment and don’t’ solve the true issues either. There are a […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 9 comments

February 22nd, 2008

Training Tips, Tricks, and Thoughts

“It’s better to train your people and have them leave than it is to not train them and they stay or they don’t get training and they leave.” - Phil Gerbyshak
OK, so it’s no shock I’m a HUGE proponent of training. I write at 3 blogs frequently (Slacker Manager obviously, Make It Great! and Joyful […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 5 comments

January 9th, 2008

4 Success Factors for a Distributed Team

Recently I shared 7 Strategies for Effective Distributed Teams, and asked the readers to share their best practices. Sarah Heal stepped up to the plate to share her best practices for working on a distributed team. She also has a nifty blog called Desire Lines.
Here’s what Sarah says:
We’re a small business that has only ever […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 3 comments

January 5th, 2008

7 Strategies for Effective Distributed Teams

Via the Future of Work Weblog comes this great article about the 7 Strategies for Effective Distributed Teams. The 7 strategies they share are:
1. Introduce benchmarks to assess/measure performance
2. Standardise your implementation strategy
3. Understand it’s much more than technology
4. Be prepared to remodel existing business processes
5. Not right for some - Ideal for others
6. Maintaining […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 4 comments

December 4th, 2007

13 Sources of Workplace Irritation

Who gets to you at work? What gets to you at work? What are those things that irritate you the most?

Here are 13 sources of workplace irritation:
The Enemy: People who are employed by the organization but only see the organization as the enemy.
Slide junkies: Their 30 minute presentation consist of 129 PowerPoint slides as they […]

By David Zinger -- 5 comments

November 28th, 2007

Do you WOO?

Can you mentally move from woe is me as a manager to woo is you focused on followers and customers?
Do you woo? Do you know what woo is?
Here is the description of woo from the Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0:
Woo stands for winning others over. You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you. […]

By David Zinger -- 1 comment

November 27th, 2007

5 Habits of Highly Successful Slacker Managers

As it’s nearing year end, the time is right for us to talk about performance evaulations, and how we can now whether we, as slacker managers, were successful or unsuccessful in our year’s efforts.
Here’s a list of 5 habits of highly successful slacker managers. To me, slacker managers are those managers that are the most […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 4 comments

November 23rd, 2007

5 Ways to Thank Your Team

As a manager, I’m sure you realize your team is the biggest contributor to your success. You realize that we power is more than me power, and that it’s the team that’s irreplaceable, and not you.
So how do you give them the thanks they deserve, without blowing the budget?
WARNING: The meaning behind the gift is […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 5 comments

November 21st, 2007

7 ways to be a damn good manager

Andre Gaulin writes a relatively new management blog called Damn Good Manager. He says DGM “is decicated to helping fellow managers make good decisions and become the type of leader that employees only dream of.” Awesome purpose Andre!So I was browing around DGM, and came across Managing a Manager’s Time, an insightful article on how […]

By Phil Gerbyshak -- 5 comments