One of the biggest frustrations I encounter with executives and managers I work with is making bad hiring decisions The impact of making wrong decisions can be costly to the company

Here is the scenario He’s the star producer in your most profitable division

The inspiration for the subject of this month’s article was an article I read in BNET The gist of the article was that a person needs to identify the key weaknesses or limitations that are holding them back and work to eliminate them

A few days ago, I read an article about Southwest Airlines where the author claimed that the company’s values were to put employees first, customers second, and shareholders third Wouldn’t it be great if making business decisions was this simple

Our subconscious mind controls most of our actions The conscious mind can only handle one to three events at a time and process 2000 bits of information per second, while the subconscious mind can handle thousands of events at one time and process four billion bits per second

The worst assumption that managers can make about their area of responsibility is that they know everything that is going on in the department In reality, they only know what their people want them to know or think they need to know

Now do I have your attention I’ve written on the subject of motivation and incentives in the past, but recently have come across some additional information and research that continues to challenge conventional business wisdom as it relates to use of monetary incentives to encourage higher performance

I do not make New Year’s resolutions I find that the process of deciding what I want to accomplish in the next year is much more intense than simply coming up with a few “like to do’s” for the coming year

Most managers feel that a major part of their job is to motivate people who work for them The problem that many have is distinguishing the difference between motivation and manipulation

The term “groupthink” was first used by Irving Janus in 1972 when he was researching why teams made excellent decisions one time, yet made disastrous decisions another time The two most famous and widely used examples of groupthink that led to disastrous outcomes are the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion