In many companies and industries there has been a trend to combine “management” roles in an effort to reduce costs or improve efficiency. Personally, I first noticed this trend with combining project management and functional management roles. The reasoning is that any competent manager should be able to handle the project management duties for their […]

Because it speaks so much to my values, my all-time favourite management/leadership book is First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. It’s not so much that I am a rebel, breaking rules whenever I want. It’s because the book is based on a 25-year Gallup study on what great managers do: […]

It’s remarkable how many people are accidental managers. These are people who became managers because they happened to be around when there was a need to put a manager in place. There just as many others who choose to become managers because of dreams of how it “should” be or pressure from family and friends. […]

Managers love pie charts. Unfortunately, my initiation to the Dark Side did not include the Handbook of the Art of Pie Charts. When I see a pie chart in a presentation I usually wonder “What’s up with this pie chart?” or “What is this really trying to tell me?” It usually flashes up on the […]