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. Management, along with leadership, is often taught “on the job”—without an MBA degree or background in economics to help you move forward. Leadership training can help people. Your staff will become more aware of their weaknesses and strengths. Communication skills—along with other critical soft skills for leaders—are improved by learning to clearly express… Continue Reading

10 Major Digital Marketing Strategies For SME Executives

According to Joel House, businesses that show up on the first page of results get 92% of consumer traffic. Hence, it is not surprising when WordStream’s report showed that just 8% of advertisers are decreasing their advertising investments on Search this year; this compared to a whopping 46% that is increasing them. With this, it is only imperative for business executives to re-inspect their digital marketing strategies and consider doing an upgrade. Digital marketing techniques continue to change over time and the feasibility of certain methods and techniques continues to rise and fall. Business executives have access to methodologies and… Continue Reading

6 Traits Of A Great Manager And Top Tips To Develop Them

There are good managers. And then, there are great ones. According to The Predictive Index, nearly 30% of employees believe their managers fail at team-building skills, and a portion of them suck at handling feedback, delegation, and time management. While some best practices to obtain qualities of a good manager are inherited over the years (starting with the way families raise their children), the evolution of management builds on top of "hard skills" in the corresponding business segment, interpersonal communication, mastering psychology techniques for handling conflicts, and getting to know each team and the business objectives separately. It's an iterative… Continue Reading

6 KPIs Your Hire Needs to Hit to Pass the Probation Period

Regardless of whether you enforce a probationary period or not, you need to ensure that your new hire has completed the onboarding process successfully and fits the organizational culture. Even the best recruiters out there can't gauge employment efficiency during the interview cycle. And several studies, including a recent survey by Checkster Research, show that 78% of applicants misrepresent themselves. While we continuously refine and improve our recruitment process, certain metrics can't be deducted over the course of an interview or two. Speed of execution, working in a team environment, and attention to detail are some of the common denominators… Continue Reading

5 Business Process Challenges For Project Managers

Management and ownership are different. But are these truly incompatible? Successful business owners and entrepreneurs have simply struggled for a continuous period of time, juggling with anything and everything from legal and accounting through sales and marketing, IT, operations, recruitment, branding, management, negotiations, to name A FEW. This isn't necessarily a great thing if the vast majority of your time goes into dreadful stuff. I always cringe when I need to handle accounting or legal cases for over an hour! Experienced managers, however, are paramount to the future (and the growth cycles) of an organization. Yet, these are rare to… Continue Reading

How to Make Different Business Leadership Styles Work (With Case Studies)

Several thought leaders have referred to 2020 as the year of great reset. But if you want to be really strict about it, most of the biggest business shifts started way back at the onset of the 21st century.  Traditional business leaders who are banking on traditional business leadership styles in this new century needlessly risk losing their businesses to unhealthy age-old leadership practices. The pandemic just helped reiterate the need for business leaders to change the way they approach business problems primarily due to the following reasons: New technologies Pace of change Changing demographics and employee expectations Changing customer… Continue Reading

7 Reasons Why It is Difficult to Manage New Projects (Or Inherit an Old One)

What makes projects so difficult to manage? As a project manager, you need to assess the culture, your role, your team, how problems escalate, what your responsibilities are and how to tackle edge cases (delays, problematic team members, running out of budget, handling scope creep, disagreeing with a client, etc.) And within the right environment, everyone follows the company mission statement and the core principles of the organization. This will turn your decision-making process into a quantifiable, well-oiled machine, which should facilitate the team and get the work done. Project management is, in theory, the activity of ensuring a project’s… Continue Reading

8 Things Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Running a Business and Landing Customers

We certainly live in the most entrepreneurial era since the inception of humankind. Starting a new business endeavor gets more prominent thanks to mass media, startup accelerators, venture funds, and digital opportunities to launch quickly. The premise of "being your own boss" is a tempting solution to giving entrepreneurship a shot. How to Run a Business? The entrepreneurship wave combined with the demanding millennial rules of freedom and results-driven business models will break the norm in the corporate world over the next decade or two. Entrepreneurs need to know how to join progressive organizations and handle separate departments using shared… Continue Reading

Top 10 Business Advisor Skills Your Company Can Benefit From

Gaining experience is not a solo adventure, and learning from the best is a shortcut that many people underuse. For business owners and executives who are wise enough to seek help, work with and learn from a reliable business consultant. Those who are much wiser take hints from how consultants work and what business advisor skills make them highly valuable to a company so they can benefit from adopting such skills. Key Reasons to Hire Advisors Employing external help can be a valuable experience for any organization. Advisors and consultants work with a portfolio of clients, manage multiple companies, and/or… Continue Reading

Ten Leadership Skills to Develop in 2023

The past two years been a great learning opportunity for us. The COVID-19 situation has changed a lot of our working habits and the entire concept of onsite work has transitioned to remote across most of the universe.  This has also led to more opportunities and new ways of living; however, it's not necessarily permanent either—meaning that people have bounced between back and forth, between lockdowns and going to work, between remote and onsite.  This has changed the perception and expectations in any form of long-term planning for the vast majority of people, especially those with kids, and having to… Continue Reading