151 Quick Ideas

Research and experience demonstrate two areas with which many new managers are completely unfamiliar: delegating tasks and work, and making decisions. Some struggle with this for years. But it doesn't have to be hard. 151 Quick Ideas for Delegating and Decision Making combines 50 years' experience of two managers, and the experiences of other managers who have been interviewed and observed. Each real world idea has been tried and tested. The best ones are here, in an easy to understand form for you to use. Select those that fit your particular circumstance, for example: • Start with the End in Mind • Know which decisions to make when • Avoid group think • Show them, don't tell them • Put confidence in competence • Give credit and reward success And even if you are already in a supervisory position, this book can help you do a more effective and efficient job at managing people and tasks.

Do you work with other people? Fellow employees; your boss; customers; vendors; colleagues? Of course, we all work in organizations comprised of people. People with whom we must have strong, positive relationships in order to ensure our own success as well as the organization's. Do we get any training or education on this key skill at our companies? Rarely. 151 Quick Ideas to Improve Your People Skills is constructed to help everyone do a better, more effective job of working with others. These ideas are culled from the study of human behavior, relationships, and communication. Everything here will help you be more effective, efficient and in control of your relationships with people. In this book you will: * Learn the difference between social intelligence and technical knowledge * Create friends, allies, and supporters * Learn how to analyze tough personal situations and solve them * Understand when and how to negotiate

Too many of us live our lives trying to shoehorn our many activities and responsibilities into too few time slots available. Increasingly for businesspeople, fathers and mothers, even kids, (ineffectively) managing the myriad of activities has become an all-consuming chore. And we're so stressed that our relationships and job performance suffer. Why? Because we organize our time and our lives poorly: We spend five years of our lives waiting in lines, three years in meetings, and two years playing telephone tag! We get interrupted 73 times per day, interfering with our productivity, and take an hour of work home every night, interfering with our family time. But we can solve these problems. This book presents 151 quick and easy ways to meet these challenges in our daily lives. Each idea comes from the real-world experiences of people like you-people who are experimenting with, examining, and discovering unique solutions to the time problems all of us face every day. These tried and tested ideas work! And now they are available to you. Select those that fit your particular circumstance and try them out! Here are a few: • Start Your Day the Night Before • Undercommit and Overdeliver • Organize Your Workspace • Block Contingency Time Every Day • Use Voice Mail as a Call Screener • Fight SPAM with an E-mail Blocker Do more in less time, take control of your schedule, and create a new balance between your work and your family life. You'll be surprised at how easy it is to take charge of your time and increase your quality of life-day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

Most managers understand the importance of giving their employees recognition and rewards, but when it comes to actually doing so, they often come up empty or use outdated, ineffective strategies. 151 Quick Ideas to Recognize and Reward Employees will help managers stock up. Recognition and rewards are consistently found to be among the most powerful of all motivators for employees at any job level. In fact, when employees are asked to describe their most satisfying experiences at work, they frequently mention situations in which they received recognition and rewards for their performance. And, importantly, when managers are skilled in providing this type of feedback, their employees typically reward them with increased productivity, commitment, and overall performance. However, just like customers who always order the same old entree at a restaurant, managers tend to choose the same old kinds of recognition and rewards. Some traditional rewards still work well, of course, but there is always room for new ideas. 151 Quick Ideas to Recognize and Reward Employees offers you the full menu of recognition and reward strategies. It comes with detailed descriptions of the most popular ideas in business, plus others that are destined to become classics. Ideas such as: • Enriching jobs by giving employees more autonomy and decision-making responsibilities. • Purchasing personally signed books suited to the potential you see in each employee. • Awarding special coupons for free gasoline or transportation. • Hiring a masseuse to rub out stiff necks and backs. • Making your employees more invested by offering profit-sharing. • Plus many free or low-cost rewards. Included with each of the 151 strategies is an "assignment" that you can use as a roadmap to bring the idea to life.

Traditional ways of motivating a sales force have included money, incentives, contests and even turnover (regardless of performance). While it's true being a sales professional is not for everyone, there is a way to identify, build and retain a top-notch motivated sales force. The trick is to build and keep a sales team that delivers sustainable results. The insights included in this book are designed to shift your thinking about traditional ways of motivating sales professionals you manage. It categorizes key sales-motivating management skills, tools and techniques while incorporating the art and science of sales management, leadership and the human dynamic. In this book you'll learn: • Coaching and Development • Sales force Processes and Systems • Keys to Sales force Leadership • Reward, Recognition and Incentives Sales managers that learn, know and implement a next-in-class approach to motivating their sales professionals will reap high rewards and beat their competition.