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Showing posts from November, 2015

Escalate a Performance Problem with a Formal Plan

Escalate a Performance Problem with a Formal Plan One of the hardest jobs of a manager is to take an employee down a path that may ultimately result in termination.  It is hard enough for most managers to provide performance feedback to begin with – even when the employee performance is good.  When the employee performance is not where it needs to be, it is even harder.  The first thing you need to do when you see a performance problem is sit down with the employee, discuss the performance observations, try to determine a cause and put a short-term action plan in place so that the employee has a chance to turn the situation around.  Unfortunately, sometimes the initial performance feedback and short-term plan do not have the desired effect.  If this occurs, the manager needs to take additional actions.  In some companies and in some positions, the next step might be a demotion or termination.  This might also be the case at smaller companies where the management team needs to make pers

Managing Staff

Managing Staff Topic 1. Overcome Team Resistance to Project Management It's one thing to build a Project Charter and the schedule. It's another thing to effectively manage the project. If you could issue the plan and the work assignments and have everyone complete his activities on time, your life would be much easier. However, the process of managing the team and the schedule becomes complicated because of the people element involved. People are unpredictable. To understand how the project is proceeding and to ensure that it stays on track, controls are needed. You may need to go around and ask people how they are doing. You need people to tell you in Status Reports and status meeting how they are doing. You need to keep updated statistics on work completed, in-progress and not started. Unfortunately, team members do not always respond well to these management and control processes for a number of reasons.  They may think the processes are cumbersome and keep them from compl