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Category Archives: Management
References
As a hiring manager, I always call a candidate’s references. I always ask for them and I always contact them (with a candidate’s permission). These references tend to give the shiny version of the stories and so I also use… (read more)
Yes, and . . .
How many times have you said “Yes” to a request, only to regret it later? Many of us like to please our coworkers (and especially our bosses), but always saying “Yes” to a request puts you on the fast-track to… (read more)
A Charles Dickens Management Lesson
In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a ghost grants Ebenezer Scrooge the chance to look back into his past and see a company holiday party that Fezziwig, his employer at the time, threw one year. Scrooge observes Fezziwig and his… (read more)
Getting over the hump
I had lunch with a colleague this past week and the subject of long, large-effort projects came up. Projects with a big “hump” keeping you from finishing easily and quickly. (see graph) He manages a small team of folks who… (read more)
Interviewing
As a hiring manager, I’m very interested in many things about a candidate. I always use an interview team (or panel) during this process and assign specific aspects of the interview to individuals on that team. I do this for… (read more)
High Authority / Low Responsibility
Leading up to this last week’s post on the Responsibility/Authority Ratio, I was challenged to think about a special (and unlikely) case of responsibility/authority imbalance: high authority and low responsibility. I agree with @IAmRoot that few would admit to being… (read more)
Responsibility/Authority Ratio
It’s not uncommon for me to hear the lament that someone (usually the person lamenting) has too much responsibility. On closer examination, however, I frequently find what’s really happened: They have been given too little authority. Their responsibility level is… (read more)
Posted in Management
Tagged authority, management, Peopleware, responsibility, trust
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Managing in the White Space
A few years ago, I was given the task of improving an internal process at my company. Before this assignment, I had successfully managed groups of ten-to-twelve people: Unix administrators, web infrastructure experts and internet security technicians. But I managed… (read more)
Posted in Management
Tagged credit, management, org charts, selling, teams, titles, white space
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