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Andrew Cox's Articles in Business

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  • SMART Goals Reduce Ambiguity and Increase Commitment
    Ambiguity is a fact of life in all organizations. In many cases it can be an advantage. But in most cases, the clearer the requirements, the better. Use SMART goals, keep them simple, and watch people respond with a high level of commitment to the enterprise. They can be, as in this case, the difference between success and failure.
  • When Is The Best Time To Change?
    When is the best time to change? It's when preparation and the opportunity to create interest and urgency come together around some incident or condition that can focus attention and effort. That's when real lasting change occurs. Use that answer to focus your own personal and organizational change efforts for maximum impact and value.
  • Valuing Individual Differences - Key To Team Success
    Leaders place a high value on being able to see things through different lenses. Successful problem solving teams and project teams value individual differences as the means of arriving at innovative ways to meeting their goals. The keys in valuing differences as key to team success involve two dimensions.
  • Ten Steps To Empowerment
    Empowering people can take many forms. In most organizations, there are many actions that can be taken, without financial risk to the organization, to start empowering people. From the biggest for profit corporation to the smallest non - profit, there are empowering behaviors that can add tremendous amounts of energy and leverage. Here are ten behavior driven actions to take to empower people.
  • Become Thirty Percent More Effective In Selecting The Right People
    Success starts with the right people in the right jobs. Particularly in leadership positions. But if that's really the belief of most organizations, why is it that so many selections fail at their jobs - or - even worse, just hang on and take up space? It doesn't have to be that way. In fact, every organization striving to improve their selection batting average can become at least 30% more effective. Here's how:
  • The More Trust, The More Time To Succeed
    Bill Oncken, in his book Managing Management Time, says that the more trust you have with your "universe " of people, the more time you have to do the things that lead to success. Trust is hard to earn. Once lost it's hard to regain. It's the most precious asset in any relationship - at any level - at any time. Read on to see how a successful Division President builds trust.
  • Excellent Customer Service Starts With Excellent Employee Service
    Nothing sets the standard for excellent customer service more than excellent employee service. It's critical to measure the level of customer service. It's also critical to measure the level of employee service. There is a direct correlation between the two. Take the six elements of excellent employee service listed in this article and see where your organization stands.
  • How To Increase ROI On People Development Investments
    How to ensure your critical people development investments are effective and carry a high ROI? Read on and ask yourself seven questions. The answers will help define the best way to go about developing the skills, expertise and abilities of your people while increasing your ROI on development investments.
  • Nine Essentials Of Employee Termination
    It comes time to part company. At that point, the most critical part of the termination process takes place. It's the place where the people remaining evaluate how it was handled - it's critical because well handled terminations create positive emotions toward the organization, and poorly handled ones cause the organization to lose credibility in the eyes of its employees.
  • Qualities Of Resourceful Leaders
    Resourceful leaders get more done with available resources than less resourceful managers. It results in outcomes that far exceed expectations. It What are the qualities resourceful leaders share - regardless of position within an organization? We asked our clients - here's what they identified as eight essentials for resourceful leaders.
  • Organizational Silos - How To Deal Effectively With Them
    I was driving through dairy country in Virginia, and the silos at every farm reminded me of a client I was working with at the time - a successful manufacturing company undergoing change. They had organizational silos - much tougher to deal with than the ones on the farm. But they do share certain characteristics.
  • Plenty For Everybody - Project Team Success Depends On It
    Project team success depends on a number of variables, but the one that shows up as most important involves the willingness of team members to collaborate. And collaboration requires a belief that there is plenty for everybody. And it's tough to spot as the reason a highly qualified, highly resourced, experienced, interdisciplinary team just did not click.
  • Lessons in Survival - A Critical Leadership Skill
    To survive - to hang in there - to keep your head while all around you others are losing theirs - to stay in play - is a critical skill of leaders. Let's face it - even the most astute, successful person will suffer setbacks, and surviving and overcoming those setbacks is the true measure of a leader. Read on for an example of survival and leadership.
  • Ten Ways Leaders Overcome Analysis Paralysis
    One of the biggest challenges leaders have is to ensure that preparation and analysis add real value and provide the framework for action. The biggest enemy to action is analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis is the graveyard of many organizations and careers. Here are ten ways leaders have ensured they and their organizations don't fall victim to analysis paralysis.
  • How To Keep Top Candidates From Falling Through The Cracks
    Top people are scarce - just ask any organization how tough it is to attract the best, let alone select the best. At the same time, I'm willing to bet that more top people - the right people for the right jobs - slip through the cracks in the selection process than anyone could imagine or admit. Here are ten of the top, invisible ways those cracks occur.
  • How Leaders Create The Energy Essential To Success
    Leaders know high energy individuals, workgroups and organizations create success. How to create and sustain that high energy is the key challenge leaders face every day. The following behaviors and beliefs are keys that leaders we have worked with have found work to achieve consistent high energy with their people.
  • Think Outside The Box - A key Question To Make It Happen
    Think outside the box - how to do that? My experience tells me to look to others, ask the key question "what do you think?" and then use collective thinking to form a solution no one person would be capable of coming up with. The most important belief in thinking outside the box is that the product of focused thought and collaboration and communication of a knowledgeable group is the best way to arrive at new and unique solutions.
  • How To Gain Respect
    There's a secret to gaining respect - one that I had the good fortune to learn early in my career - and from a most improbable source. The secret to getting respect is to give respect. Read on to see how that lesson was taught to me by a very special person.
  • Career Suicide - Proclaim Yourself A Victim
    There is no quicker way to career suicide than to proclaim yourself a victim. No one likes victims – people are attracted to problem solvers and people in the know – they are repelled by self proclaimed victims. A true story to describe my point:
  • A Leadership Tool To Encourage Thinking Outside The Box
    Thinking outside the box is a critical Personal Skill - one that will make the difference between success or failure. The real critical leadership skill is accessing the thinking of others to help see what possibilities lie outsidethe box – outside the individual world of thoughts and beliefs and biases. Try this tool to get the "out of box" thinking flowing with your “universe” of people.
  • Eight Bad Assumptions We All Make and How To Remedy Them
    These eight assumptions have the potential to get us in trouble - big trouble. They destroy clarity, create distrust, and stand in the way of organizational success and personal success. These assumptions are the ones we make based on our own behaviors, attitudes, and skills.
  • A New Hire, An Aquarium and Overcoming The Status Quo
    What does an aquarium have to do with the status quo and a new hire? More than you think. Read on and see how an experience in ignoring the rules of good aquarium management resulted in a lesson that has much broader application.
  • Hiring The Right People - Keys To Increased Success
    The most effective action you can take to improve success in hiring the right people for the right jobs, particularly for leaders and emerging leaders, is to evaluate your own selection process. Find out how your organization appears from the viewpoint of candidates - you'll be amazed at what you find.
  • Leadership Through Goal Setting - vs - Brute Force management
    Setting goals as the way to create priorities is what leaders do to maintain direction and focus. Unfortunately, many managers take a tremendous amount of potential leverage out of their organizations by not prioritizing. Many do it by using the Brute Force style of management.
  • Keys To Success In New Jobs
    The Five Keys - plus a Bonus Key, can help you become more successful, quicker, in a new job. The Keys are from many successful leaders. Their experiences in new jobs - and as the boss of new jobs, can help you bridge those critical first few months and add to your success.
  • Hire The Right People - 10 Recommendations On Using Assessments
    Assessments are powerful tools to use in selecting the right people for the right jobs. And the higher up in the organization the more critical assessments can be to successful selection. Here are 10 Recommendations to help you decide how to most effectively use these tools.
  • Ten Steps To Hiring The Right Person For The Right Job
    Hiring the right persoin for the right job is one of the biggest challenges and opportunities any organization faces. Here are Ten Steps to take to improve success in hiring and selection.
  • 12 Ways Leaders Tell Their People They Are Important
    Leaders know their actions speak more loudly than any words they may say.. Learn 12 Way successful leaders use their behavior as the means of communicating the importance of their people. These powerful behaviors can make the difference between a mediocre manager and a true leader
  • Managing Goals - Leaders Know How To Trim The Tree
    Too many goals, too little time. Leaders know what to do about that all too common condition. Learn what trimming a tree and goal review have in common.
  • Increase Success In Selecting People
    Experts and successful leaders all share a little known fact about human behavior, and use it in evaluating people. They know that every one of us believes other people will act, react, understand and judge as we would - given the same circumstances.
  • Successfully Managing Change
    Every successful change process follows the same Four Stages, and within those Four Stages certain conditions will maximize the possibility of success. Successfully manage change in your enterprise by planning for the Four Stages and creating the conditions critical to success.
  • Project Teams - How to Ensure Their Success
    Project Teams - How To Ensure Their Success By Andrew Cox To maximize the contribution of project teams, five Essentials need to be in place. The good news is that the essentials to team success don't require the expenditure of large amounts of capital or expense money, and don't require new brick and mortar.
  • Tools For Change - Targeted Surveys
    When faced with change of any kind, the use of Targeted Surveys can communicate the issue to the organization, involve the people impacted by the issue in feedback and design, and assure information is gained from all the people, not just the vocal 10% that may not represent the thinking of the enterprise. Here are the 9 To Do's of effective Targeted Surveys.
  • Successful Leadership - Beware The Silver Bullets
    Successful leaders know the Silver Bullet approach to management - sometimes called the Program of the Month approach, just doesn't work. Read an example of Silver Bullet thinking, the downside of Silver Bullets,and 9 questions to ask yourself about changes, initiatives or programs to ensure they meet your organization's long term needs.
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