The Management Guide for Executives
Management is a complex, yet critical responsibility when growing a successful organization. Managing people, products, projects, processes, risks, and operations are just a handful of the challenges executives should double down on.
This management resource here includes the practical management guides I’ve worked on for my team and advisory clients released to the public.
The world of management in the 21st century is shaped by a myriad of emerging roles and specialties and a digital ecosystem that is rarely taught at management schools.
As a result, the vast majority of all managers fall into one of the two categories:
- MBAs with no practical industry expertise (and former background from the bottom-up)
- Niche professionals promoted to management once they reach their cap
These shortcomings show up on the job and can escalate quickly.
This compilation of management resources should help you navigate the management space better and fill in some gaps as and where you see fit.
Introduction to Management
The essentials in managing a business
Leadership Development: How to Promote and Grow Your Management Team
According to several independent studies, 80% of leadership positions have no formal training at all. If you run a mid-sized business and promote your management team internally (as the majority of the organizations out there), you likely fall into the majority of the businesses that grow organically.
6 Traits of Great Managers
What defines a great manager in practice? Management is a complex science on its own but communicating with people sits on top of the process. Clients, stakeholders, your team, executives, vendors, partners — find out how to improve your management chops.
22 Areas for Self-Improvement
As a manager, you need to be an exemplary leader in order to help your organization grow. There are lots of leadership traits that define great managers. Most of them are hard to observe and investigate unless you know what you are looking for. In this piece, I will uncover some of the most important traits that we look for when hiring intrapreneurs and top talent internally, as well as the main areas to work on with individuals and managers for professional self-improvement across different organizations.
Business Process Challenges for Project Managers
Managing business processes consumes 90% of the time of an enterprise-grade manager. Smaller organizations are still lean and haven’t developed all workflows fully. Also, if you’ve just transitioned in a new role, you may be struggling with the processes you need to comply with and manage yourself.
Can Management Consultants Be Good Startup Founders?
Traditional management consultants (and advisors) are MBAs who have spent a decade or more in the corporate space. Find out here if management consultants can be good startup founders.
Employee Motivation Strategies
A happy employee is a productive employee. But managing expectations and boosting motivation is not trivial. Find out what it takes to handle critical situations and convey the right message to your team here.
Niche Management Concepts
Specific strategies and caveats surrounding the management field
How to Manage Difficult People in Your Team
If you are a new manager or a new business leader and you are currently or constantly dealing with problematic employees or struggling over confrontations with difficult people, here are some tips to help you out.
How to Stop Procrastinating: 14 Effective Leadership Strategies
When it comes to leadership, efficiency and consistency are integral to success. Fighting procrastination is one of the key goals while undergoing different training courses in relation to motivation, building discipline, productivity, or time management. Let’s dive deeper into the problem and uncover the possible steps to getting the job done (figuratively and literally).
Developing Discipline: 8 Integral Traits and Tips for Practical Application
The more disciplined team members we have in the organization, the more we reduce the odds of certain bugs or issues from happening and the more we can actually free up time for fun activities. This is the core reason why discipline is important. This is the guide to developing discipline, including both the essentials and the tactics to make it a habit either personally or professionally.
Employee Relations and Conflict Management
How to handle employee relations at the workspace properly? Conflict resolution and managing expectations across departments and divisions within the organization is a skill of its own. Read on for other tips you can apply in practice.
Micromanagement – The Good, Bad, and Ugly
Micromanagement has nothing to do with caring about an employee. However, it’s important to review the different phases of a business and the professional experience of an employee – along with the work environment. So, found out more here.
Important Lessons About Burnout
Burnouts are often more painful and significantly longer than sick leaves. As a manager, you may fail to recognize an employee going through burnout or miss an opportunity to save them while it’s still possible.
Read the burnout guide and find out what will help your team prepare for possible energy drains and mental outages.
How to Handle a Resignation by a Key Player on Your Team
Handling resignations can be a tough process especially when it’s the top employees who are leaving. Searching for the best replacement for that soon-to-be-vacant role is the most challenging part of the process. So, as much as possible, you want to prevent them from leaving and ensure that employee turnover remains acceptably low for your company.
Working with Remote Teams
Remote and distributed teams have successfully gone through a validation phase. Companies like GitLab and Automattic are fully remote, employing over a thousand people each in a distributed fashion. If you’re still facing troubles managing remote resources, here’s what you need to know.
Tech Management
Management for tech companies is a whole different beast, but worry not
Managing Existing Projects
Existing projects that have been in the works for months or even years are hard to get into. But great managers know how to get onboarded quickly, assess their teams, analyze historical data, focus on the problems at hand that need immediate attention.
12 Productivity Frameworks And Tools For Effective Management
This is a compilation of my own strategies, tools that I use to perform at my best, and techniques I’ve learned from industry leaders and productivity trainers over the past 15 years.
Non-Technical Founders Managing Technical Companies
Are you a non-technical founder of a tech firm? Managing engineers is probably rough. Engineers are in demand and represent a smart fraction of the population that needs both independence and vision at a time. Here’s how to navigate the complex process in this case.
Importance of Technical Leadership
Technical leaders are aware of the business processes, the technical environment, and the development team. CTOs have a strategic role – research, architecture, platform design, picking the right technical layer for a new solution, and strategically leading the dev team.