Kaveh Kalantar's Blog

Every day I go to meetings where language suggests people are cogs. With peers in a few CEO roundtables, I've heard things like: "I plan on hiring 3 biz dev people to get $345K per headcount in revenues." After publishing a book about closing the execution gap by focusing on the "peopley" stuff, CEOs of major companies took me aside (in a friendly way) to suggest I had made a major faux pas, and would be seen as having gone "soft." In spite of a forest's worth of academic papers and rafts of best practices published by the likes of HBR on the importance of the "soft" stuff, most companies continue to treat people as inputs in a production line. I've had leaders ask me if this "people engagement thing" is something that can be added on, after the core business stuff is done, sort of like adding frosting to a cupcake.

Burn out is theoretical, psychological, a fuzzy thing. Burn out is standing at a lathe for 10 hours doing the same thing. (In) an exciting job, you are turned on every minute and wanting more and more and more.... Jack Welch Jack Welch has never been one to pussyfoot around when it comes to discussions of leadership, and he doesn’t break from form during a lively give-and-take with MIT Sloan Dean David Schmittlein and an audience of Sloan students. Schmittlein starts with a series of questions involving the reasons why some top corporations lose their market leadership positions. “Complacency and arrogance,” Welch believes, clearly lie behind these drops in stature -- believing you “know it all” when in fact you always have to “know somebody’s doing it better than you.” Managers and their staff must understand “somebody’s always shooting at you,” and “you have to always find a better way of doing it.”

I am a chatty guy. Catch me while I’m not overworked and I will gladly jump into discussion. If you happen to be my colleague, it may be a discussion about our company. That’s perfectly fine for me. I believe in transparency so I won’t keep all information as they were top secret. This means I’m likely to tell you more than your manager. Not because I don’t know how to keep a secret but because vast majority of managers talk with their teams way too little. With this approach I usually know a lot of gossips told in companies I work for. Since I also happen to fulfill rather senior roles I have another perspective too. I know what is discussed on top management meetings.

I have read this article for several times since 2006 and still I love to read it. Especially what Peter Drucker said about Marketing. Unfortunately in many organizations this is not the case. Example is GM: 1958, Frederic G. Donner (a finance man) became CEO and Chairman and literary destroyed what Alfred Sloan had created. (From Nig Brands, Big Troubles by Jack Trout)

Kenneth Blanchard wrote a very small book called "Leadership and the One Minute Manager". Have you ever read it? If you are a student of business (Undergrad or graduate level) or if you are a manager of one to several thousands personnel, then you MUST read it. If you are a manger with years of experience and you are reading this blog then I bet you need to read "Leadership and the One Minute Manager" more than anybody else out there. Actually start reading it today before destroying your team and loosing your key people and your face again ;)

Give constructive feedback , coach them to be better,Stop criticizing and blaming, Let them do Mistake, Let them learn from their mistake , Encourage team work, Believe in your Team, show them you believe in them, Encourage them, trust them, remind them the goal, keep them on the track, Don't push them off course and the most important UNITE them!

As you watch the video below, think about how closely the mental preparation they talk about for baseball can be applied to your career and personal life! E:60 Evan Longoria from E60 on Vimeo .

Gary Convis, President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky Since this column is meant to link automotive engineers with lean manufacturing, I would like to share my personal experience as a mechanical engineer who started out in the traditional way of manufacturing, and along the way discovered a much better way - the Toyota Production System. I will describe what it was like to transplant this philosophy to American soil, in hopes that anyone attempting to change the culture of an existing plant towards "lean manufacturing" can benefit from my experience and observations. In particular, I intend to focus on the role of management in a TPS (or any lean manufacturing) environment.

Does your organization have what it takes to keep your best project talent? Learn how to keep your star players — and what you can learn if you lose some. 29 March 2011 During the recession, even your best project managers may have been scared to venture out into the great unknown. But as economy starts to tick upward, they may no longer be content doing the same old tasks for the same old salary. Dangling the promise of higher salaries, bigger bonuses and better career paths, rivals can poach your best people.

In the race for IT and business success, reaching the finish matters most. So it’s no surprise an important IT career path is project management. "In American business, growth is associated with the ability to lead other people," says Sid Kemp, author of three books on project management, including Project Management Made Easy. "If you demonstrate an ability to lead teams, you're on your way to being an IT project manager. And good IT project managers can write their own ticket at a lot of companies."